The San Francisco Experience

In her latest book, Lara Bazelon demolishes some popular myths about working Moms : the perfect life/work balance, the selfless mother and toxic female ambition among other tropes. She calls on women to embrace the imbalances of working and raising kids and to demand flexibility in the workplace and the home. The book is a blend of personal memoir and interviews of numerous career women and their stories. Lara shares her professional and personal accomplishments in this warm, fast paced interview.

Neutral Sweden and non-aligned Finland will join NATO in reaction to Putin's invasion and war against Ukraine. An adamant foe of NATO expansion, Putin has achieved what he long railed against - NATO on Russia's doorstep. 

Truffaut's 1973 ensemble comedy is a movie about making a movie. Jacqueline Bissett was one of the cast members and principal lead. The movie won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1974 with French filmmaker Truffaut accepting the award. It is one of his best films and worth re-watching.

Robert Altman's 1975 drama takes place in Nashville, Tennessee and chronicles the intersecting lives of numerous people - the main cast numbers 24 actors - with country music, the entertainment industry and politics the principal themes. The film runs 2 hours and 40 minutes and at times feels like a documentary.  A 1970s classic.

Abortion in Canada  was decriminalized in 1988, 15 years after the American Roe v Wade decision. While the Roe decision treated abortion as a woman's right, Canada treats it as a medical procedure to be discussed and agreed to by the pregnant woman and her doctor. Has Canada's approach been better than America's ?  Sean Fine walks us through our neighbor's very different approach to terminating a pregnancy.

Last week's unprecedented leak of an unpublished Supreme Court decision - the first time in the Court's history - has rocked Washington. And the prospect of overturning a 49 year old legal precedent which will take away a woman's right to an abortion at least nationally, is just beginning to sink in. Will other Supreme Court decisions such as legalization of contraception or gay marriage be under threat next ? American society is about to undergo a massive and historic change.

Freezing Order is a true story of money laundering, murder and surviving Vladimir Putin's wrath. Bill Browder's latest expose of Russian graft and criminality recounts a Russian tax refund scam, that the Interior Ministry created for the financial benefit of Putin's oligarch cronies, and then sued Browder in US courts as the engineer and beneficiary. With Vladimir Putin as one of the likely recipient's of part of the deal, the Russians pulled out every legal and political trick to divert the trail to the despot.

Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion on April 25. The deal will close later this year. Musk has stated that he believes in Freedom of Speech and looks forward to ensuring that the social media messaging platform continues to remain open to all. But major changes are bound to follow in the business operations of Twitter once Musk takes control. 

Two months ago Russia's foreign reserves were frozen and crippling economic sanctions were imposed on the country. The goal was and is to push Russia into a deep  recession,  cause runaway inflation and bring a speedy end to the war in Ukraine.  Have they started to bite ? But could they be thwarted by  China, India and Israel providing a back door lifeline to bust the sanctions ?

 San Francisco's District Attorney faces an unprecedented recall election in less than seven weeks - June 7 - and the polls augur ill for him. 68% of San Francisco voters want to get rid of Chesa Boudin, mid way through a four year term. Bungled cases, judicial admonitions, high staff turnover and rising crime rates show Boudin has an uphill struggle to hold onto his office. Can he engineer a Hail Mary pass to save his office or is it a lost cause ?