Talk Cocktail

No matter how close or estranged any of us may be for our parents, there always linger the questions of how well do we know them...that is really know who they are.  Think about the questions kids wonder about, what their parents really do a work, their sex lives, the conversations that go on after they go to bed.



And as kids become adults they often still wonder...and sometimes they even transfer those very same questions in trying t understand their partners, or their spouses and ultimately themselves.  



Because we are the sum total of the answers to so many of these questions.  We keep seeking answers, aware of it or not, since it is a large swath of who we are.  This intimate search for identity is at the heart of Susan Faludi’s new work In the Darkroom. 



My conversation with Susan Faludi:

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We are awash in information.  Estimates are that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are produced every day.  That’s everything from data from space probes to your photos on Facebook.  Google alone process approximately 3.5 billion requests per day.  



But as TS Eliot so aptly said back in 1934, “where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”



From the billions of items posted on Facebook, to the tens of thousands of so called news sites and bloggers around the world, how is it even possible to begin separate it all, to know fact from fiction?



Never before in human history or human evolution have we encountered such a problem.  As a result the way we approach it has to take the best thinking tools we’ve evolved and transform it to meet the needs of the 21st century and beyond,.  



This is the road map to truth put forth by Daniel J. Levitan in
A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age.



My conversation with Daniel Levitan:

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It is the job of historians and journalists to take contemporary information and give context and connection to events far beyond the time in which they happened. This is true for wars, for politics and for religion. 



It’s true even in these highly polarized times, when we all hear the admonition, especially around get togethers of family and friends, to make sure you never discuss politics or religion.  



So what is it about both of these subjects that are so personal, so internal, so potentially inflammatory and have been so powerfully connected both historically and right here in America.



This is part of what Ken Woodward examines in Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama..



My conversation with Ken Woodward:

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Nothing in the medical world is the way it used to be.  Change is everywhere.  The economic pressures, the political pressures and the very men and women who choose medicine as a career, has all being undergoing disruption.



Add to this maelstrom the issue of race.  The shocking lack of black physicians, diseases that overwhelming impact black communities and the inherent complexities of race in the  doctor/patient relationship and you see some of the problem in medicine that have confronted Dr. Damon Tweedy.  A graduate of Duke Medical School and Yale Law School Dr. Tweedy shares his personal story in his memoir Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine



My conversation with Dr. Damon Tweedy:

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We’ve all seen the pushback to Michelle Obama as she has attempted to improve food quality and nutrition in our nation’s schools.  In part, it reflects the degree to which everything is politicized these days.  But it also reflects the degree to which food is and has been a political, cultural and historical touchstone



It’s long been observed that if we want to understand the history of a nation or a city or a period in time, we can start by looking at its food.   



Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe have long taken this approach and now they look at the food of depression era America in their new book A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression.



My conversation with Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe:

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The very fact that an unqualified, demagogic, racist could be close to the Presidency tells us less about the candidates and more about the shape and mood of America in the 21st Century.  



The red/blue divide is after all, not about pure politics. It’s not about classical liberalism vs. Burkean or Randian conservatism.  It’s not Disraeli vs. Gladstone.  



What we see in America today is a cultural divide. One in which our own personal experience breaks out and defines itself into a kind of moral and political matrix that both traps and defines us.  



These principles are universal and enduring and perhaps if we can better understand them, we can, if not accept, at least have compassion for the better angels of our opponents.  



That exactly what noted sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild has tried to do in Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right



My Conversation with Arlie Russell Hochschild:

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It’s a funny thing, all this talk about trade and globalization.  On the one hand it’s used to divide us. To create walls and differences.  But in fact, it has been one of the most powerful forces in shrinking the world.  In allowing us to move personally, not unlike goods and dollars, freely between nations and cultures.



But even with the cultural homogenization of globalization, it has allowed us to appreciate and to come to understand how other cultures operate, what they value and how they see the world.  In the end, it allows us to return home again and in the words of T.S. Eliot, “know the place we started, as if for the first time."



That the story that Frank Ahrens lives and share in Seoul Man: A Memoir of Cars, Culture, Crisis, and Unexpected Hilarity Inside a Korean Corporate Titan.



My conversation with Frank Ahrens:

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We think that events move at a rapid pace today.  But back in the late 1960’s, events spiraled out as if in a whirlwind.  In 1967 San Francisco experienced the Summer of Love. Just two summers later, we would all experience men landing on the moon, Woodstock, the Manson killings and the concert at Altamont that would perhaps mark the end of the era of Peace Love and Music.



It wasn’t long after Altamont that the racial tensions would escalate. People like George Jackson would dominate the news.  Hundreds of bombing would take place on the streets of America, The SLA would kidnap Patty Hearst and everyone would look back at Altamont as a turning point.



Joel Selvin's Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day, puts it all in the perspective of the times.  
look at 



My conversation with Joel Selvin:

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When the national conversation does turn to real economic issues, it’s usually about numbers. Growth, GDP, home ownership and of course, the ongoing and too slow recovery.



What we often overlook is the impact of those number on real people. Not just those at the bottom, not those left behind. But those struggling to maintain a middle class life.  The psychological impact that it has on their families, their marriages, their children and the way that it completely alters the trajectory of their lives.



There is a real estate website that advertises with the slogan, “What does home mean to you?”  The most obvious meaning is a physical location where you live. But home is so much more than a warm bed and a comfy couch. Like it or not, it's come to represent love, security and connection. Home isn't a place, as much as it is a state of mind. This is at the heart of Joe McGinniss Jr's Carousel Court.

My conversation with Joe McGinniss Jr.

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Amidst all the talk of the things that divide america, Race and Class always rise to the top.  Over the years there have been many efforts to understand the social, cultural historical and policy underpinning of both of these divisions. And sometimes even efforts for solutions.



Add to this list of efforts the work of  J.D. Vance in his captivating work Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.   Vance takes us deeply, from his own profound experience, into the heart of poor and rural America to try and help us understand the the resentment, intergenerational poverty and loss of hope that seems to be driving 45% of our country today.



My conversation with J.D. Vance:

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