Talking Beats with Daniel Lelchuk

“Going out and listening is one of the most enjoyable things we do—and fruitful. By paying attention, we feed our imagination, we feed our creativity, we renew ourselves. We bust out of the algorithms and the fake news into the sensory reality of the living earth.”

Biologist and writer David George Haksell joins the podcast, with his new book Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction. For most of the history of the planet, the only sounds that were made came from the planet itself-- oceans, storms, rivers, rain. No animals made any sound-- until they did. What happened? What is the history of sound itself on planet earth? Fast forward to now...Haskell calls us humans "both great creators and great destroyers." What do we gain when we listen and take in the natural world? Are we losing this ability and habit? Haskell and Daniel discuss this and much more in an in-depth conversation. 

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David Haskell is a writer and biologist. His latest book, Sounds Wild and Broken (Viking), is an Editor’s Choice at the New York Times and explores the story of sound on Earth. Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth history, he illuminates and celebrates the emergence, diversification, and loss of the sounds of our world, including human music and language.

Haskell holds degrees from the University of Oxford (BA) and from Cornell University (PhD). He is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of the South, where he served as Chair of Biology. He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, a 2014-2015 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and an Elective Member of the American Ornithologists’ Union. His scientific research on animal ecology, evolution, and conservation has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the World Wildlife Fund, among others. He has served on the boards and advisory committees of local and national land conservation groups. Haskell’s classes have received national attention for the innovative ways they combine action in the community with contemplative practice. In 2009, the Carnegie and CASE Foundations named him Professor of the Year for Tennessee, an award given to college professors who have achieved national distinction and whose work shows “extraordinary dedication to undergraduate teaching.” The Oxford American featured him in 2011 as one of the southern U.S.’s most creative teachers. His teaching has been profiled in USA Today, The Tennesseean, and other newspapers.

"In our society, you've done your job as a citizen if you've voted, done jury duty, and paid your taxes. But Athenian democracy was direct democracy, not representative democracy-- so every citizen had to hold a public office. A radically different societal make up."

Historian of the ancient world Barry Strauss is here, along with his new book, The War that Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium. In the wide-ranging conversation, Barry and Daniel cover many aspects of this pivotal yet little-known battle that was to define the future of the Roman Empire and consequently Western civilization. Besides the intricacies of the relationships between these larger than life figures and their ambitions, Barry connects leadership and its essential qualities to situations of today's world, so the characters of the Ancient World shine in a new relevance. Besides discussing this particular battle, Barry and Daniel also speak about the importance of teaching history in a university setting, and how crucial it is for students of the 21st century to face the tough lesson of the past-- whether pleasant or not. 

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Barry Strauss is a classicist and a military and naval historian and consultant. He is Professor of History and Classics, Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies at Cornell University, the visiting Corliss Dean Page Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Series Editor of Princeton’s Turning Points in Ancient History, and an author of bestselling books. Professor Strauss has spent years researching and studying the leaders of the ancient world and has written and spoken widely of their mistakes and successes. He is also a widely acclaimed military and naval historian whose analyses of the strategies and campaigns of some of history’s great commanders reveal the successful rules of engagement that were true on the battlefield and resonate in today’s boardrooms and executive suites.

He is a former Chair of Cornell's Department of History as well as a former Director of Cornell’s Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, where he studied modern engagements from Bosnia to Iraq and from Afghanistan to Europe. He also served as Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School. He is an expert on military strategy. He is currently director as well as a founder of Cornell’s Program on Freedom and Free Societies, which investigates challenges to constitutional liberty at home and abroad. He holds fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Korea Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the American Academy in Rome, among others and is the recipient of Cornell’s Clark (now Russell) Award for Excellence in Teaching. In recognition of his scholarship, he received the Lucio Colletti Journalism Prize for literature and he was named an Honorary Citizen of Salamis, Greece. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale and a B.A. from Cornell. Professor Strauss's books have been translated into nineteen languages. He is also the author of over 60 scholarly articles and reviews.

Professor Strauss is a well-known television personality with appearances on The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, CNN, PBS, and Netflix. He is the host of the popular podcast, "ANTIQUITAS: Leaders and Legends of the Ancient World," which is accessible on most platforms.

"How do we make the case for and understand the necessity for intact forest ecosystems in a way that will resonate with people, and in a language that's accessible to the non scientist and the non specialist? People should be concerned about what's happening-- but also marvel at what still exists. We should marvel at what exists as the energy drink of action."

Conservationist John W. Reid joins the podcast with new book in hand, co-written with the late Thomas E. Lovejoy. The book, called Ever Green: Saving Big Forests to Save the Planet, explores the role forests play in our climate. What are some of the issues conservationists face today? How do major naturalistic figures like John Muir figure into today's movements? John also takes the listener on a tour of some of the most hidden indigenous peoples in the Amazon, and their intense relationship to the trees. There are five so-called "mega forests" in the world, and all are at risk. What can humans stand to gain if we put nationalistic enterprises aside and work to cooperate on the preservation of our treasured woodlands? How can an urban dweller in 21st century America become more connected to nature?

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John W. Reid is a conservationist and economist whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic, and Scientific American. In 1998 he founded Conservation Strategy Fund, a group that delivers innovative training and analytical collaborations for activists, governments, and development agencies. The organization has worked with the governments of Brazil, Indonesia, Peru, Bolivia, Uganda, Mexico, California, and others; with the World Bank, USAID, the Inter-American Development Bank, and UN agencies; and with hundreds of environmental and Indigenous organizations in over 90 countries. This practical applied brand of “conservation economics” won CSF the 2012 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. Through it all, John got the greatest satisfaction teaching and mentoring emerging environmental leaders from around the world. It was also clear that economics, while strategically handy, was failing to appropriately value very big forests. It really could only see the value of their parts, often after disassembly. A new logic—or perhaps old wisdom—needed to guide the policies that would save our big places and planet in the process. Puzzling over these questions would eventually draw him into partnership with Tom Lovejoy, and to his current post with Nia Tero, an organization that supports Indigenous guardianship of vital ecosystems. John serves as Senior Economist and leads partnerships with several Indigenous peoples in the Brazil, Peru, and the US.

Thomas E. Lovejoy was a pioneering biologist who led and championed forest conservation efforts for over 50 years. Tom’s first encounter with a large forest was when he arrived at Belem, Brazil, the port city of the Amazon, in June of 1965. The dreams he had of a PhD in East Africa were immediately and permanently eclipsed by the experience of being in the world’s largest tropical forest, which was the size of the contiguous 48 states. It was beyond a biologist’s wildest dreams, vast, brimming with biological diversity (a term yet to be coined) myriad indigenous peoples, and encompassing parts of eight countries. Part of Tom’s role in conservation has been generating new ideas. He was the first to use the term “biological diversity,” in 1980. That year he produced the first projection of global extinctions for the Global 2000 Report to President Carter.

"I listen to classical music very specifically because I need to be able to feel at the end of what I'm listening to like I'm able confront the darkest sides of what I'm experiencing as well. I feel comforted by Beethoven. I feel comforted by his ability to say something to me that cannot be said any other way. A sense of hopelessness that is not without giving us some worth."

This is a rebroadcast of Ep. 80, aired originally in February 2021. The conversation was recorded in October 2020. Jorja Fleezanis died on September 9th, 2022. To read Daniel Lelchuk's written appreciation of Jorja Fleezanis, click here. 

Violinist Jorja Fleezanis is here to talk music and the staying power of music, the spell it casts, over children and adults alike. From the first time she heard a violin record as a young child to right now, after a career of more than five decades-- what does music say to her today that it didn't then? How do the names she thinks of as the 'Mt. Rushmore' -- Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann -- sustain her and grow with her? And why is she currently listening to every song The Beatles ever recorded? Jorja and Daniel explore what it is to be in an orchestra, and how the will of the ensemble must rise above political and personal fractures.

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Jorja Fleezanis is adjunct professor emerita of music in orchestral studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Fleezanis was concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1989 to 2009—the longest-tenured concertmaster in the orchestra's history and only the second woman in the U.S. to hold the title of concertmaster in a major orchestra when appointed. Prior to Minnesota, she was associate concertmaster with the San Francisco Symphony for eight years and a member of the Chicago Symphony.

A devoted teacher, Fleezanis became an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota's School of Music in 1990. She has also enjoyed teaching roles with other organizations: as teacher and artist at the Round Top International Festival Institute in Texas (1990-2007); artist-in-residence at the University of California, Davis; guest artist and teacher at the San Francisco Conservatory, where she served on the faculty from 1981 to 1989; artist and mentor at the Music@Menlo Festival (2003-2008); teacher and coach at the New World Symphony (1988-present); and faculty of the Music Academy of the West since 2016. She has been a visiting teacher at the Boston Conservatory, The Juilliard School, The Shepherd School of Music, and Interlochen Academy and Summer Camp. She is also a frequent guest mentor at Britten Pears Center at Snape Maltings, England, in programs for both young musicians and professional orchestral violinists.

Fleezanis has had a number of works commissioned for her, including by the Minnesota Orchestra with the John Adams Violin Concerto and Ikon of Eros by John Tavener, the latter recorded on Reference Records. Her recording of the complete violin sonatas of Beethoven with the French fortepianist Cyril Huvé was released in 2003 on the Cyprés label. Other recordings include Aaron Jay Kernis' Brilliant Sky, Infinite Sky on CRI, commissioned for Fleezanis by the Schubert Club, and, with Garrick Ohlsson, Stefan Wolpe's Violin Sonata for Koch International.

Fleezanis studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music.

“The idea of national service is to get people in urban America to live in rural America, and vice versa. I think people who get exposed to that want change. People want to be proud of what their generation does. They want to be able to look back thirty or forty years later and know they made a difference while they were in power.”

David Gergen joins the podcast. Advisor to four presidents in both parties, he has had a front row seat to fifty years of American politics and international affairs. He is now turning his attention to the idea of leadership with his new book Hearts Touched with Fire: How Great Leaders are Made. As he points out, when our country was founded and had a population of three million people, we produced six world-class leaders: Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, and Madison. Now in 2022, we have 330 million people and we do not seem to be able to produce one great, charismatic leader. What is happening? What is happening with the nature of civic life in this country? Is it time for baby boomers to step aside and pass the torch to a younger generation?

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David Gergen is a professor of public service and founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. In addition, he serves as a senior political analyst for CNN and works actively with a rising generation of new leaders. In the past, he has served as a White House adviser to four U.S. presidents of both parties: Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton. He wrote about those experiences in his New York Times best-seller, Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton (Simon & Schuster, 2001).

In the 1980s, he began a career in journalism. Starting with the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour in 1984, he has been a regular commentator on public affairs for some 30 years. Twice he has been a member of election coverage teams that won Peabody awards, and he has contributed to two Emmy award-winning political analysis teams. In the late 1980s, he was chief editor of U.S. News & World Report, working with publisher Mort Zuckerman to achieve record gains in circulation and advertising.

Over the years, he has been active on many non-profit boards, serving in the past on the boards of both Yale and Duke Universities. Among his current boards are Teach for America, The Mission Continues, The Trilateral Commission, and Elon University’s School of Law. 

A native of North Carolina, David is a member of the D.C. Bar, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the U.S. executive committee for the Trilateral Commission. He is an honors graduate of Yale and the Harvard Law School. He has been awarded 27 honorary degrees.

"We are going to be facing food shortages because there's less pollination and more people. We need to be able to grow food, and insects are the only ones that can do what they do."

Oliver Milman, environment reporter for Guardian US is here, sounding the alarm for what might surprise many: the demise of insect populations world wide. In many cases insect populations have plummeted by 50%, 75%, and even higher. Milman, who is here with his book The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World, dives into the torrent of recent evidence that suggests this kaleidoscopic group of creatures is suffering the greatest existential crisis in its remarkable 400-million-year history. What is causing the collapse of the insect world?  Why does this alarming decline pose such a threat to us? And what can be done to stem the loss of the miniature empires that hold aloft life as we know it?

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Oliver Milman is a British journalist and the environment correspondent at the Guardian. He lives in New York City.

"How do we create a better free speech culture? How do students learn things like the first amendment in school and in their peer groups? What if at sports events before we sing the National Anthem we recite the first amendment?"

First amendment specialist Stuart Brotman joins the podcast, new book in hand. The book, called The First Amendment Lives On: Conversations Commemorating Hugh M. Hefner's Legacy of Enduring Free Speech and Free Press Values, is a series of interviews between Brotman and some of the leading free speech figures of the past half century. From Geoffrey R. Stone to Floyd Abrams to Nadine Strossen and others, Brotman paints a picture of some of the free speech pioneers of recent history. What is the state of free speech today? What is the difference between free speech in a legal sense and a culture of free speech? What are universities doing -- or not doing -- to protect that which we hold sacred? And what does the future hold, as we look to exercise the freedoms of the first amendment in new and robust ways?

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Stuart N. Brotman is the inaugural Howard Distinguished Endowed Professor of Media Management and Law and Beaman Professor of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Brotman is an honorary adjunct professor at the Jindal Global Law School in India and an affiliated researcher at the Media Management Transformation Centre of the Jönköping International Business School in Sweden. He serves as an appointed arbitrator and mediator at the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and as a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar, where he was a Visiting Scholar in its Academy on Media and Global Change. He also is an Eisenhower Fellow.

He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Federal Communications Law Journal, Journal of Information Policy and the Journal of Media Law and Ethics, as a director of the Telecommunications Policy Research Institute, and on the Future of Privacy Forum Advisory Board. He is the first Distinguished Fellow at The Media Institute, where he also serves on its First Amendment Council.

At Harvard Law School, he was the first person ever appointed to teach telecommunications law and policy and its first Visiting Professor of Law and Research Fellow in Entertainment and Media Law. He also served as a faculty member at Harvard Law School's Institute for Global Law and Policy and the Harvard Business School Executive Education Program. He served as the first concurrent fellow in digital media at Harvard and MIT, at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and the Program on Comparative Media Studies, respectively.

He held a professorial-level faculty appointment in international telecommunications law and policy at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He also chaired both the International Communications Committee and the International Legal Education Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section of International Law and Practice.

"Ethics is everywhere. It's in the arts, it's in entrepreneurship, it's in family, and business. No matter what walk of life, no matter your passion, ethics is the great connector both for individuals and for the larger society."

Ethics expert Susan Liautaud joins the podcast. She has written a book called The Little Book of Big Ethical Questions, in which she poses situations and questions to the reader that we all come into contact with in our daily lives. “Would you apply for a job you know your friend is applying for?” Or “Should voting be mandatory?” Or "what about police using facial recognition technology?" "What would I have done?" "Is there one correct answer?" And ultimately: "How can ethics help us navigate these situations to find the best outcome for ourselves and others?" In a wide ranging conversation that goes in many directions, Susan and Daniel talk broad themes-- ethics and social media, for example-- and also connect ethics, structure, harmony and dissonance to Ukraine, COVID preparedness, the world of music, and more. 

If you like what we do, please support the show. By making a one-time or recurring donation, you will contribute to us being able to present the highest quality substantive, long-form interviews with the world's most compelling people.

Dr. Susan Liautaud is Founder and Managing Director of Susan Liautaud & Associates Limited (SLAL), a consultancy in ethics matters internationally. She brings broad global experience with ethics and governance to business, non-profit, governmental and academic organizations and leaders. Susan is the Author of The Power of Ethics and of The Little Book of Big Ethical Questions. She also teaches cutting edge ethics courses at Stanford University and was a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center of Philanthropy and Civil Society from 2012 to 2015. She also founded a non-profit, independent, cross-sector laboratory and collaborative platform for innovative ethics called The Ethics Incubator. She serves as Chair of Council of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and as Vice Chair of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). Susan has been appointed to the UK Cabinet Office’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACoBA), to the Stanford HAI (Stanford Institute for Human- Centered Artificial Intelligence) and to SAP’s AI Ethics Advisory Panel. She also serves on a number of other boards and advisory boards, including: the French Ambassador’s Foreign Trade Advisory Council in the UK; member of the board of directors of the Pasteur Institute, and the American Hospital of Paris Board of Governors. She formerly served as Chair and member of the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières US Advisory Board, to the Advisory Council to the UK Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation board, and as member of Care International Supervisory Board.

Susan holds a PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science; a Juris Doctor from Columbia University Law School; a M.A. in Chinese Studies from University of London School of Oriental and African Studies; a M.A. and two B.A.s from Stanford University. She speaks fluent French and Spanish, as well as advanced intermediate Chinese and intermediate Italian.

“There’s this kind of visceral dimension to art that is at the core of art. Understanding the why and how is very important too, but we all want to keep in touch with that immediate pow—that thing that art does for us.”

Art critic Jed Perl is here, to talk defense of the arts and why now more than ever the arts need defending. Radical, liberal, conservative, reactionary—through decades and centuries people try to push the arts into one of these boxes to fit certain social or political agendas. But Perl argues that the arts inhabit their own sphere and operate with their own set of rules. As he says, figuring out the politics of Mozart or Jane Austen would be a fool's errand. But in a time of increased pressures, identity politics, and certain "box checking," can art have the freedom it needs to thrive and grow in modern day America?

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JED PERL is the author of the two-volume biography of Alexander Calder. For twenty years, he was the art critic of The New Republic. His previous books include Magicians & Charlatans, Antoine’s Alphabet, and New Art City. He lives in New York City.

“We have a privileged position. It has always been grand in the thinking that we humans are unique and special. We must look back to see how connected we are. That we are part of a continuum.”

Two neuroscientists -- Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam -- have teamed up to provide a history of the brain and thinking beings on this earth. What was the planet like three billion years ago? How did oxygen and breathing develop simultaneously and make the planet hospitable? What is a sense of "self" that humans have that others lack? Where did language come from? Using all these fundamental questions as jumping off points, Daniel and his guests take a dive into the origins of thinking beings. The conversation also traces the development of the brain, from the simplest, tiny forms, through worms, fish, birds, dolphins, monkeys, humans, and...? As we look back and place our species on a continuum, where do we, where can we go from here?

If you like what we do, please support the show. By making a one-time or recurring donation, you will contribute to us being able to present the highest quality substantive, long-form interviews with the world's most compelling people.

Ogi Ogas, PhD, was a Department of Homeland Security Fellow at the Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems at Boston University and a research fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He coauthored Dark Horse, The End of Average, and Shrinks, which was longlisted for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

Sai Gaddam PhD, was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Adaptive System at Boston University. He coauthored A Billion Wicked Thoughts. He lives in Mumbai.