Talk Cocktail

We know that children living in poverty generally tend to do worse academically than middle class kids.  We also know that even some kids from wealthy backgrounds fail or breakdown. We’ve come to learn, in part through the writing of my guest Paul Tough, that it’s more than IQ or temperament. There is something else. Something that has to do with innate character, perseverance or just plain old fashioned grit.



But are these traits preordained? Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why.
Are children merely geographically and genetically predisposed to succeed or fail, or are these attributes of success something that can be multiplied, embedded and programmed into children in ways that increase the likelihood of success in school and in life?  This is part of what Paul Tough now writes about in



My conversation with Paul Tough:

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“We hear of of war and the rumor of war.”  We thank our soldiers for their service and we think that we are welcoming them back into society.  But what are actually welcoming back into? They return often with an experience we cannot really comprehend. An experience that often bonds them together into their own tribe.  One that makes them different from us.  



In fact as many of us work hard to breakdown the tribal bonds that divide us as a society, as globalization continues to homogenize us,  both domestically and internationally, the experience of war often forms new, personal and deeper such bonds among the soldiers. In so doing, it makes it so much harder for them to be among us. 



Sebastian Junger the bestselling author of The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont and Fire takes a look at this phenomenon in Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging



My conversation with Sebastian Junger:

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If anything represents the new new thing in our technological age, it's the arena of artificial intelligence.  From the factory floor to the glittering glass office of law firms, smart machine are doing job, after job, after job.



The conversation about jobs going offshore is so yesterday.  Today it’s robots and algorithms that are the threats.



Manufacturing is only the beginning.  Service sector jobs, clerical jobs, accounting, paralegal, are all starting to be done by machines.  Drones will soon do deliveries and driving,  perhaps the largest bastion of blue collar jobs, will, within 10 years, be replaced by the autonomous vehicles.



So what’s left for humans?  As machines start to program themselves, as we’ve seen with autonomous cars, as more and more higher level functions are done by machines, what’s a human to do?



That the subject of Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines, a new book by Julia Kirby.



My conversation with Julia Kirby:

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Look around us. Conflict is everywhere. In our culture, certainly in our politics, in the broader world and in our interactions with institutions.  Sometimes, to try and seek shelter from that sea of conflict, we look into our own personal relationships for solace.  When we do, we place even more pressure on those relationships and often the seeds of more conflict are sown.  



So with all of this conflict how do we negotiate our way out of it?  How do we break the habits of pervasive conflict, prevent or dampen conflict with those we care about, and are those skills applicable to the large framework of conflict.



These are some of the issues that Daniel Shapiro, the founder of Harvard’s International Negotiation Program takes up in Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: How to Resolve Your Most Emotionally Charged Conflicts.



My conversation with Daniel Shapiro:

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Recently I had a conversation with a Professor at UC Berkeley about the subject of Power.  In the course of the conversation he referred to what he saw as key centers of power. People who he saw as  exercising real power. He referred to great generals, political leaders and Wall Street.



Wall Street was once a reflection of America's business. It was there to serve business. Today Wall Street and the business of finance is it’s own power center. It’s often greater than and in control of the whole of American and even global business.



Wall Street has become THE symbol of corporate greed.  Railed against by politicians, analyzed 24/7 on several cable channels, the focus of it’s own newspapers and it’s stars, people like Stephen Schwarzman and Lloyd Blankfein, gracing the covers of magazines.



So how did this happen?  How did Wall Street and the business of money become bigger, more powerful and more important than the business it was originally there to serve.  



Rana Foroohar, the Assistant Managing Editor in charge of Economics and Business for Time magazine takes us through the history and future in Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business



My conversation with Rana Foroohar:

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Whether we want to believe it or not, every relationship we have...with a friend, a spouse, a child or co-workers, has a power dynamic as a part of it.  Power may shift and morph, but it’s a part of every relationship and often a force for good. 



In understanding power at this most intimate level, we can better understand how it plays out, or should play out, on a more macro scale. It’s not something that comes from the barrel of a gun, or from bullying, but from empathy and social intelligence. As  UC Berkeley professor Dacher Keltner points out, power is not something that’s won, but something that’s earned and given. The problem or paradox is that once we have that power, we act differently; often counter to the ways in which we earned it.  



That what Dacher Keltner call the The Power Paradox



My conversation with Dacher Keltner:

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We throw around the word globalization without really thinking about all of its impacts.  The instant and free flow of goods around the corner and around the world comes with a cost.  The iPhone delivered overnight from China, the speciality coffee from around the world, the stores filled with goods from hundreds of countries.  



Rarely do we stop to think how all of this gets to us. Sure we see or even complain about all the trucks on the road. But that’s only the end of the journey, sometimes the last mile.  Many of items of daily life travel hundreds of thousands of miles to reach us.  Think about all those container ships at every major port in the world.



Beyond this, the story of traffic and of our cars, only compounds the problem.  What successful community is not dealing with the scourge of traffic? 



That’s the hidden story that Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ed Humes tells in his new book Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation.



My conversation with Ed Humes:

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We live in a world of bombast and noise.  Sometimes it seems the volume is turned up full blast, all the time.  A quick look at our Presidential campaigns is ample evidence.



We forget that for leaders, or just average folks, sometimes quiet can have amazing power.  The power of thoughtfulness, of creativity and competence



For young people, trying to find their place in the world, sometimes growing up amidst this cacophony of a boiler factory is not the healthiest thing.  



This is the world that Susan Cain took us into in her bestselling book QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CAN’T STOP TALKING.



Now she looks specifically at young people in Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts



My conversation with Susan Cain:

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The poet William Blake talked about art as “seeing the world in a grain of sand.” I suppose that what he also meant was the ability to move in so tightly on something, that inside of it, we could construct an almost fourth dimension, through which to view the world and our experiences in it.



In a way that’s what New Yorker Staff writer, author and Pulitzer Prize winner William Finnegan has done with surfing.



Living the surfing life alongside the literary life,  Finnegan has reached the apex of that duality in his autobiography Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life



My conversation with William Finnegan:

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Not since the 1960’s have we lived in a time of more public anger.  Today, issues of race, economic disparity, power imbalance and distrust of traditional institutions, have all conflated to bring us to what some believe is the brink of insurrection.



But should we be surprised?  Insurrection, riots, strikes have long been an instrument of policy for the disaffected.  It was a central form of protest in the 17th and 18th centuries and we saw our own examples in the 1970’s



But given the anger, given technology, given the immediacy of communication, what might riots look like today and are they on the horizon.



Joshua Clover, a professor of critical theory at UC Davis, thinks they are. He looks at the history in Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings.




My conversation with Joshua Clover:

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