Talk Cocktail

While America fixates on President Donald Trump’s psychology, the real story may be the fundamental mutation of American power itself — one that makes Trump merely a symptom of a deeper transformation reshaping our world.

On this recent week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with British novelist and essayist Rana Dasgupta, who argues we’re missing the seismic shifts beneath the surface. Author of the upcoming book After Nations: The History and Future of the Nation State, Dasgupta reveals how three interconnected crises are fundamentally altering the relationship between the state and its people, creating conditions that demand exactly the kind of disruptive figure Trump represents.

America can no longer control the flow of strategic resources that once guaranteed its superpower status. China is building alternative trading networks that bypass traditional American corporate access. Meanwhile, the dollar’s global dominance — which has allowed the US to sustain massive debt — faces unprecedented threats from China.

In March 1998, I had the privilege of sitting down with Jane Goodall, whose pioneering work transformed how we understand chimpanzees and our shared planet. This week, as we mark her passing at 93, we revisit that conversation. The recording has survived nearly three decades — the audio may not be perfect, but her wisdom and spirit shine through.

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How one of California’s corporate crown jewels, Apple, faces an unprecedented rebellion. Tech leaders such as Spotify’s Daniel Ek and Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney are waging a legal war over what they have portrayed as a shakedown operation — the 30% App Store cut that generates massive profits for Apple while stifling competition.

On this Califonria Sun podcast I talk with WSJ reporter Tim Higgins to discuss his new book “iWar,” examining Apple’s hold on the mobile world, and how the rise of artificial intelligence is threatening to potentially displace the smartphone era altogether.

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We inhabit a fractured information landscape where truth itself has become negotiable. Lying has not only lost its stigma — it’s become a viable strategy for success.

My guest on this WhoWhatWhy podcast, Renée DiResta, author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality, reveals the machinery behind this transformation.

Politicians lie with impunity, corporate leaders fabricate narratives, and social media influencers craft false personas, all understanding that in the attention economy, authenticity is just another performance metric.

The infrastructure of deception, she explains, has become so sophisticated and pervasive that we’ve normalized dishonesty as simply another tool in the communications toolkit.

Jeff Chang, in his new biography “Water Mirror Echo,” and in our recent California Sun podcast explores how the short of life of Bruce Lee helped shape modern Asian American culture and politics.

Born in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Lee was denied the lead role in Warner Bros.’s 1970s TV series “Kung Fu,” which was given instead to David Carradine in yellowface. Lee’s collision with Hollywood rejection became a catalyst for his rise at a time of emergent Asian American political consciousness.

Chang discusses how Lee became a global symbol of Asian American dignity, and how his legend has only grown in the decades since his death.

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What Ghislaine Maxwell knows about her father Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein may be the final untold chapter of two of the great scandals of our time

Both men were fabulously wealthy, both wrapped themselves in the trappings of power, both had rumored ties to intelligence services, and both of their lives ended in disgrace. Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail cell remains a source of speculation and allegations of conspiracy. Robert Maxwell’s fall from his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, is no less shrouded in mystery.

And at the center sits Ghislaine — the connective tissue between these two disgraced moguls. A kind of modern-day Mata Hari whose knowledge of Epstein, Trump, her father, and their networks of power and corruption could rewrite history if ever fully revealed.

On the WhoWhatWhy podcast I spoke with British author John Preston about Robert Maxwell. His book, Fall: The Mysterious Life and Death of Robert Maxwell, Britain’s Most Notorious Media Baron, captures a man whose life was a study in hubris, ambition, and deceit. Today, revisiting that conversation sheds light not only on Ghislaine’s inheritance but on the larger web of power and predation that continues to haunt us — linking Maxwell, Epstein, and the whole bloody mess in between.

Joan Williams— a UC law professor, author of Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back delivers the prevailing wisdom on Democrats' working-class exodus: how cultural condescension drove voters to Trump. But this tidy narrative misses deeper currents of economic and technological transformation, aspirational politics, and structural failures that shaped today's realignment. Getting the prescription wrong could doom us to years more of the chaos we're desperately trying to escape.

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Violence subsumes us this week, but at the end of the day, it’s still the economy that impacts all of us.

Politicians sell tariffs as job protection, but economist Kimberly Clausing cuts through the spin: They’re a direct assault on working families’ wallets while destroying the very manufacturing jobs they claim to save.

In this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast The former Treasury official and UCLA professor talks to me about how Donald Trump’s trade war has become an expensive lesson in economic self-sabotage.

Clausing walks through the real costs: $2,500 annually per household from existing tariffs, with over half of our imports being materials that American companies need to stay competitive. When those costs rise, US manufacturers become less competitive globally, leading to layoffs rather than job creation.

The conversation reveals how political rhetoric about trade obscures where the money actually goes — from working families paying higher prices to corporations and governments collecting tariff revenues, funding a policy approach that economists broadly agree makes little economic sense.

The sons of the elite also struggle.

Filmmaker Peter Jones turned his camera on his former classmates from the Harvard School for Boys, a former military academy for boys in Los Angeles, for his new PSB documentary “Fortunate Sons,” chronicling the lives of the 1974 graduating class through their 50th reunion.

In this California Sun podcast, Jones tells me that what started as pandemic Zoom calls became surprisingly honest conversations about addiction, suicide, and the pressure of living up to successful fathers. Jones discovered that wealth can’t shield against every hardship, and that the men now in their 60s were finally ready to drop the macho act and talk about what really happened.

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How did Silicon Valley's best and brightest become Trump's cheerleaders? Journalist Scott Alan Lucas may have found the origins in his investigation of Cash App founder Bob Lee's 2023 murder.

When Lee was killed in San Francisco, tech elites immediately abandoned their supposed data-driven principles, blaming liberal governance despite clear evidence pointing elsewhere. The same figures—including future Trump advisor David Sacks—chose narrative over facts, ideology over analysis.

Lucas reveals how this case foreshadowed tech's wholesale embrace of Trump, exposing a disturbing pattern where supposedly rational leaders prioritize political convenience over truth, offering crucial insights into how Silicon Valley went MAGA.

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