Talk Cocktail

Fifty-five years ago Joseph Heller gave us the paradox of Catch 22.  It came to mean a set of contradictory ideas and rules that conflicted with themselves. And while Catch 22 remains a cornerstone of American literature, it also just might be a cornerstone of the Obama Presidency.
Barack Obama came to office on a wave of hope and change.  He came to Washington to change it.  Only to realize, that if you want to get stuff done to change Washington, you can’t change it, unless you work within it.  
It is n that paradox. in that Catch 22, through which we can perhaps best understand the past six years of the Obama presidency. 
Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, as captured the essence of this dilemma in his examination of the first six year of the Obama presidency in  The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House.
My conversation with Chuck Todd:

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It’s been said that if you live to an old age, you give give up all the things that make you want to live to an old age.  At a time when 10,000 boomers a day are reaching retirement age, when the generation that sought to change the world, is being changed by the ravages of age, when the cost of care for this huge generation of seniors could bankrupt us personally and as a nation, it’s time for a frank conversation to examine, if there is a better way forward.
MacArthur “genius” grant recipient Ai Jen Poo plunges into the heart of this discussion, in her new book  The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America.
My conversation with Ai-Jen Poo:

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Can you imagine if immediately after 9/11, filmmakers like Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Fincher or Apatow would enlist in the military to make films about the war on terror?  Films that would show America at war against its Taliban and Middle East enemies.  Well with  the exception of Clint Eastwood, that's pretty hard to imagine.
Yet in WWII, that's exactly what happened.  Filmmakers John Ford, William Wyler, Frank Capra, John Houston, and George Stevens would in various ways, join with the military in the war effort.  
The work that they did, the impact it had on them personally and on the country, would forever change the workings of Hollywood. It emphasized the importance of film as entertainment and as an art form, as well as how Americans viewed war.  In that sense, those images still shape our perceptions today as they are a part of our cultural and political DNA.
Mark Harris takes us though the war work of these great Directors in Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War
My conversation with Mark Harris:

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How many times have you heard someone say that they were of two minds on a particular subject?  What they were in fact reflecting and acknowledging, is the idea that we are literally of two minds. That the left and right hemispheres of the brain represent different and sometimes independent parts of the whole.  Discovering this, understanding the foundations of cognitive neuroscience, how the brain works and how the two hemispheres communicate with each other, has been the work and crowning achievement of Michael Gazzaniga.  
Often call “the father of Cognitive Neuroscience,” Gazzaniga has written his memoir Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience.
My conversation with Michael Gazzaniga:

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How many of you have ever left the house, gotten half way to your destination and were convinced that you had left the oven on, or left the door open, even though the rational side of you knew you had not?  The more you tried to think about it, the more you became obsessed. Until you had no choice but to turn back, go home and find that yes, the oven was off, or the door was closed. 
Then imagine this kind of obsession impacting every aspect of your life. Turned on 24/7, often about the same issues.  That gives you just a glimpse into the life of someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD.)  
Science journalist,  David Adam has been dealing with OCD, our fourth most common mental disorder, since he was a young student.  
In his book The Man Who Couldn't Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought, hegives us a glimpse of the illness, its causes and treatments.
My conversation with David Adams:

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For the ten million or so people that saw Fifty Shades of Grey this past weekend, or the many more millions who read the books, in a way what they were doing is trying to understand touch.  The complex ways in which our bodies and our brains process pleasure and pain. Why childhood development is so crucial to that process and the ways in which touch shapes our sexuality,  our cooperation, our well being and our own internal interaction between the physical and emotional world.   
Professor of neuroscience David Linden, examines this interface in his new book  Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind.
My conversation with David J. Linden:

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There is a principle in physics known as the uncertainty principle.  the idea simplified is that it’s impossible to observe or measure certain phenomenon without having an impact on that which is being observed or measured.
In many ways we might look for the same impacts among those that give us the images of war and disaster. What do these images tell us about sufferings of people in faraway places? Images that do more than report,  that can inspire dissent, foster violence, or create sympathy or apathy. They often tell us about the nature of war and the obligations of conscience.  Sometimes they even make us think or feel about a reality far beyond what any picture can convey?
Few understand this better than Lynsey Addario.  One of the greatest photo journalists of our time, her work has appeared regularly in the New York Times. She is  recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant and the Pulitzer Prize. Her memoir is It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War
My conversation with Lynsey Addario:

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Back in the early 1960’s, in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the world took note of the decadence of life in the Italian capital of Rome.  Inspired by two major political/sex scandals of the era, the film which would win the 1960 Palme d'or in Cannes, depicted a Rome that was ultra sophisticated, ultra modern, ultra decadent and ultra cool.
Fifty plus years later,  Rome is kind of  antidote to America.  There is less sexuality, less modernity, less sophistication and less decadence. 
However there is more chaos, corruption and insecurity.   How did a nation that was so desired for so long, come to its current fate? John Hooper tries to give us some answers in The Italians.
My conversation with John Hooper:

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Short Stories, films ,novels and performance art.  Over the years we’ve spoken to many guest that do some of these things, at the top of their profession.  However,  Miranda July has done them all and all of them exceedingly well 
Her collection of short stories, NO ONE BELONGS HERE MORE THAN YOU won numerous awards and has been published in 23 countries. Her film,  ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW, was a winner of Camera d'or at the Cannes Film Festival and a special Jury prize at Sundance.  
If there truly is such thing as a renaissance woman, it is Miranda July.  Her debut novel is The First Bad Man.
My conversation with Miranda July:

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We often throw terms around in our political and geopolitical debates like capitalist, and communist, and oligarch, and class divide.  But very few who use these hot button terms truly understand the deep essence of what they really mean.
One of those that does understand is Bill Browder. He rebelled against communism as a teenager, became of capitalist and then made millions in Putin’s Russia.  What he didn’t know was just what kind of price he would pay for getting involved in the ever entangling web of Putin, oligarchs and a system 180 degrees from our own, a system of men and not of laws. 
The result was the brutal death of Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky and Browder’s still ongoing quest for justice.  
The story is all told in his new book, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice.
My conversation with Bill Browder:

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