Talk Cocktail

A Scottish writer, back in 1915, coined the phrase “think globally, but act locally.”  While it was about grassroots movements, it could just as easily have been about our understanding of the universe.



The fundamental laws of physics which govern the workings of the cosmos, are not some abstract untethered set of rules. They have a direct impact on how we live and on the very meaning of human existence.   It has to. After all, it’s the only way we can look out on the vastness of space and time, and ask ourselves what’s it's all about, and what's my place in it.



Few ask these questions and find answers as well as  Sean Carroll, a renowned physicist at Cal Tech and the author of The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself.



My conversation with Sean Carroll:

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For better or worse, particularly for those of us here in the Bay Area, we have come to think of science in rather utilitarian terms.  A better phone, a better app, or a better car.



In fact science, especially theoretical physics, is or should be the real lens through which we see the world.  It is our understanding of the larger universe that shapes how we see our place in it and that more than the latest gadget, shapes our times.



It’s why we need to understand that world and why we need guides along the way like Stephen Hawking and Christophe Galfard. Galfard, a protege of Hawking and has just published The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time, and Beyond.



My conversation with Christophe Galfard:

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Think about our built environment and how much of it is designed around safety and security.  The gated communities, the numbers on top of office buildings, the entrances and exits, garages and elevators. eyes on the street.   



Now imagine seeing our daily landscape through the eyes of someone that wanted to break into our homes and our offices.  Suddenly architecture takes on a whole new dimension. One that my guest Geoff Manaugh conveys  in his new book A Burglar's Guide to the City.



My conversation with Geoff Manaugh:

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Ask any of the 20 and 30 somethings working in tech in San Francisco and Silicon Valley and I assure they think they are inventing the world.  But the fact is that most, including some that have become household names, are merely leaving footprints in the shadow of David Sarnoff.



David Sarnoff born in 1891, had a visionary understanding of everything from the telegraph to the future of the internet.  And just as Steve Jobs had Wozniak, Sarnoff had Edwin Armstrong.  Not surprisingly, that relationship ended in an even worse way.



That story, the idea of everything old being new again and that history does repeat itself, is at the heart of .The Network: The Battle for the Airwaves and the Birth of the Communications Age, by Scott Woolley




My conversation with Scott Woolley:

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It’s hard to believe from the rhetoric coming from both sides of the campaign trail this year, but there once was a time when policy mattered. When candidates on both sides talked about programs and public policy.



Perhaps it was Reagan wanting to shrink the size of government and drown it in a bathtub, or Bill Clinton declaring that the era of big government is over.  The fact is we have stopped looking to government as an institution of proactive change.  While it still may have a role in crisis, as we saw in 2008 and 2009, its larger role, to shape the betterment of life in America, has long ago reached a kind of perigee.



Perhaps the last time policy mattered was during the time of LBJ and the Great Society. A time when bipartisan politics really worked.  This is the era that Randall Wood takes us into in Prisoners of Hope: Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society, and the Limits of Liberalism.



My conversation with Randall Woods:

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How many times have you experienced an even mild form of depression, or anxiety or obsessive fear and wondered “how you got this way.”  It turns out the answer may have as much to do with your ancestry as with your circumstances.



While today with things like 23andme and the vast array of genetic testing and sequencing we can do, we look for every clue to our health.  What diseases we may carry and what medical dangers we may face.  However, we are yet to fully understand how family trauma, the trauma of distant ancestors, might actually impact our genetics in a ways that affect our mental health.  This is the world that Mark Wolynn reveals to us in It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle.




My conversation with Mark Wolynn:

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We hear it in all the loose talk about health care.  About the wonders of medicine, about how we are living longer and about the advances of our doctors.  The fact is we are mostly still in the dark ages. The standard treatment for cancer today, poisoning the body, is a little like how we once viewed leaching.



As for diagnostics, a huge percentage of today's sickest patient go through a multi year odyssey, just to discover what’s wrong with them… and that’s if they are at a world class medical facility.



But all of this is changing.  We are on the cusp of the brave new world of genomic medicine.  A time when treatment will be personalized, when the brutality of some treatments will be vastly refined and when medicine really will be worthy of the 21st Century and all the highfalutin rhetoric we hear 



Nowhere is this more clear than in the story that Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Mark Johnson and Kathleen Gallagher tell in One in a Billion: The Story of Nic Volker and the Dawn of Genomic Medicine.



My conversation with Mark Johnson & Kathleen Gallagher:

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There is seemingly nothing in our society today that has not become politicized. From what bathrooms we use to the soda we drink, to the food we eat.  Sometimes if feels as if common sense and good judgment have gone out the window.



We forget there are some absolutes.  There are some facts that are irrefutable. Sometimes to ignore this, is to do irreparable damage.  One of the areas where this is certainly true is with respect to the environment.



Where once protecting the natural environment was a conservative value, today for conservatives attacking those that seek to protect the environment has become an applause line.



For environmental activists, their extreme views, their disregard for business and property rights have helped to push the reaction on the other side.



In short there is plenty of blame to go around. However renowned lawyer Frederic Rich doesn't assess blame.  Instead, in his book Getting to Green: Saving Nature, he looks for a bipartisan answer.



My conversation with Frederic Rich:

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American history shows us that amidst election season we are often divided.  That partisan rancor is often high and it is a healthy part of the passion of democracy.  But today we seem to have something worse.  While we’ve been here before as a county, we are at one of those historical inflection points where the bitterness spills over into every aspect of life. 



And while history shows us other bitter splits, today, the long tail of the Internet and technology has made us more tribal.  More prone to confirmation bias and only associating with our own tribe.  Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said we are all entitled to our opinions, but not our own facts.  Today, the proliferation of information, has made everyone feel empowered by their own facts, true or false.



We live in a world that William Butler Yeats writes about when he said that “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The best lack all conviction and worst are full of passionate intensity.”



Mark Gerzon, like Barack Obama thinks he can change that.  He outlines his plans in The Reunited States of America: How We Can Bridge the Partisan Divide.



My conversation with Mark Gerzon:

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As they have done in so many other areas, the millennial generation has picked and chosen which parts of their social and sexual legacy they want to inherit.  Particularly for millennial girls who were handed a legacy of sexual revolution, increased efforts to promote self esteem, Title 9, several waves of feminism and the ability to Lean In, they have made some interesting choices and compromises for themselves.



Nowhere is this more profound and more complicated than in their navigation of their own sexuality. How this plays out in our culture, how it impacts our daughters and what is says for the future of men women and sex is at the heart of Peggy Orenstein's new book Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape.



My conversation with Peggy Orenstein:

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