Gustavo Arellano is a longtime Los Angeles Times columnist and chronicler of the Latino community. In my recent California Sun podcast he brings his deeply personal perspective to the immigration crackdown unfolding in Los Angeles.

He shares observations from the epicenter of protests. Born to a Mexican father who snuck across the border as a teenager, Arellano’s voice carries both the weight of historical context and the urgency of someone who sees his community under siege.

This post is FREE for everyone. Please spread it far and wide. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber to TalkCocktail. It’s $8 a month or just $80 for the entire year!

Also Follow Me on X @jeffs2009

When the Soviet Union collapsed, it wasn't the end of history—it was the beginning of capitalism's most seductive experiment.

Russia became a Wild East where Big Macs symbolized freedom and suitcases of cash ruled reality. Western corporations flooded Moscow with intoxicating chaos, chasing astronomical returns that seemed too good to be true. They were!

Charles Hecker, talks to me about his provocative book "Zero Sum: The Arc of International Business in Russia." He explains how corporate greed and willful blindness transformed this capitalist Camelot into Putin's authoritarian trap—a cautionary tale of moral compromise that still tempts businesses today.

On this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast I talk with Jeffrey Wasserstrom, historian and author of The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia’s Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing.

He explains how China tells three crucial stories: the story it tells itself to maintain legitimacy, the story it tells the world to project power, and the underground tales that threaten both narratives.

Wasserstrom also takes us into the “Milk Tea Alliance” connecting young activists across Asia to the Chinese bookstores now operating in exile in Washington, DC. In doing so, he reveals how ideas of resistance travel across borders even as authoritarianism spreads globally.

As Trump faces the challenge of negotiating with Xi, and as China leverages America’s own democratic struggles to expand its influence, Wasserstrom offers a way to understand these competing narratives.

Matthew Specktor, joins me on this California Sun podcast to discuss his new memoir “The Golden Hour.” He offers us a unique perspective on Hollywood’s transformation — as both the son of legendary talent agent Fred Specktor and a thoughtful cultural observer, he explains how the movie industry shifted from a close-knit “family business,” where art and commerce balanced, to today’s corporate-dominated landscape.

When we stop thinking, we enable harm. In this WhoWhatWhy podcast Elizabeth Minnich warns us that systemic evils don’t need monsters — “it takes all of us” through everyday compliance.

I talk with moral philosopher Elizabeth Minnich, who delivers a timely warning about collective thoughtlessness. Building directly on her experience as Hannah Arendt’s long-time teaching assistant, Minnich reverses Arendt’s famous “banality of evil” thesis.

Where Arendt observed how unremarkable Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann appeared during his trial — a conventional man simply “doing his job” — Minnich argues the true danger lies in the “evil of banality”: the way unthinking adherence to clichés, career preservation, and social conformity creates the conditions for extensive harm.

My guest, journalist Jeanne Carstensen uses one devastating 2015 shipwreck to illuminate the global refugee crisis affecting over 100 million displaced people worldwide.

In our conversation, she talks of refugees as a self-selecting population—educated professionals like Afghan bankers and Syrian artists who pay smugglers tens of thousands of dollars to escape violence. Their shared dream: reaching safety and rebuilding lives with dignity. Carstensen argues we're witnessing only the beginning of massive global migration, driven by climate change, authoritarianism, and conflict. Contrary to anti-migrant sentiment portraying refugees as society's "dregs," many are middle-class families risking everything for survival. This single story represents countless others in our interconnected world of forced displacement.

This post is FREE for everyone. Please spread it far and wide. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber to TalkCocktail. It’s $8 a month or just $80 for the entire year!

Also Follow Me on X @jeffs2009

When we stop thinking, we enable harm. In this WhoWhatWhy podcast Elizabeth Minnich warns us that systemic evils don’t need monsters — “it takes all of us” through everyday compliance.

I talk with moral philosopher Elizabeth Minnich, who delivers a timely warning about collective thoughtlessness. Building directly on her experience as Hannah Arendt’s long-time teaching assistant, Minnich reverses Arendt’s famous “banality of evil” thesis.

Where Arendt observed how unremarkable Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann appeared during his trial — a conventional man simply “doing his job” — Minnich argues the true danger lies in the “evil of banality”: the way unthinking adherence to clichés, career preservation, and social conformity creates the conditions for extensive harm.

A former NATO ambassador shows how Trump has shattered 80 years of global trust in just 120 days, forcing allies to act without America for the first time.

In just 120 days, President Donald Trump has accomplished what no foreign adversary could achieve in eight decades: the systematic destruction of America’s global leadership from within.

On this WhoWhatWhy podcast, I’m joined by Ivo Daalder, former US ambassador to NATO under President Barack Obama, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and director of European affairs on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council.

He delivers a sobering assessment of how rapidly the post-World War II international order is collapsing. The system that brought unprecedented peace, prosperity, and freedom to billions — built on collective security, free trade, and democratic values — is being deliberately dismantled by the very nation that created it.

Adam Nagourney, a veteran New York Times reporter based in Los Angeles, wrote recently about whether the California Dream had become a mirage.

On this California Sun Podcast, Nagourney reminds me that even as the state has grown into the world’s fourth-largest economy, the promise of reinvention that defined the Golden State feels increasingly elusive. As young people flee, wildfires destroy neighborhoods, and a hostile White House turns its back, Nagourney believes California is still resilient and capable of that dream.

On a recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I spoke with Katherine Stewart, author of Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy.

She outlines a covert alliance of wealth, faith, and fear is quietly dismantling American democracy — one lie, one spectacle, and one grievance at a time.

When we imagine democracy collapsing, we picture tanks in the streets, ballots burning, or shadowy hackers pulling invisible strings. Yet the gravest threat to America’s democratic experiment isn’t loud or sudden — Stewart argues that it’s a quiet, methodical corrosion of truth, fueled by grievance, money, and a dangerous sense of divine entitlement.