x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Talk Cocktail

Jeff Schechtman

Jeff Schechtman talks with authors, journalists, newsmakers and opinion shapers, and sheds light on the issues of the day, from local stories to national and international headlines and ideas. jeffschechtman.substack.com

news & politics

All Episodes

22:12

Personality and temperament determine everything!

Talk Cocktail ·

2015/01/23

F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby, defines personality as “an unbroken series of successful gestures.” Certainly that is the outer manifestation. But science, brain research and cutting edge psychology tells us that it's all part of a much more complex overall system. A system that shapes our lives, our identities and our emotions. It's a system that determines that the way in which we understand ourselves and our own personalities, shapes how we view and interact with others. This is

en

24:21

Congress then and now....Lyndon Johnson and the...

Talk Cocktail ·

2015/01/20

American political history is a complex and dynamic process. In that process, there have been periods of entropy and period of great progress and imagination. Both have been a function of a political system designed by our founders. But also, the temper and tenor of the times and the degree to which individual leaders have known how to work those levers of power has also shaped our political destiny. The period of the Johnson Presidency, post 1964, is one of those period. The Great Society, The

en

19:59

The media history that must be the context for the...

Talk Cocktail ·

2015/01/16

So many of the weaknesses of our media today are blamed on the digital revolution. Certainly the transition to digital has rendered change. But to a large extent those changes only magnify some of the fundamental flaws that afflicted American media as it evolved in the 20th century The weakening of regulation, the increased power of the free market to shape coverage of news and the increasing conflating of news and entertainment ALL added to the mix. Today, those forces, combined with the impact

en

22:58

The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and...

Talk Cocktail ·

2015/01/15

Our nation was founded in opposition to dynasty. From the push back to George III, to our concerns about another Bush/Clinton Presidential race, Americans have always been suspicious of the dynastic impulse. Yet today, we seem to be smothered in a dynasty of the elites. Even while the politics of the fringes gets all the media attention, the centers of power in both political parties seem fixed to support candidates and policies that further the social and economic interest of the "one

en

29:22

Can anybody save Yahoo?

Talk Cocktail ·

2015/01/13

Just as we demand a lot from our political leaders today, we also demand a lot from CEOs. Even if they are not founders, they need to be telegenic, charismatic, visionary, have a detailed plan, and adept at working the politics of the boardroom. They need to be comfortable in being a part of the one percent, have media coaches and PR people and be on a short leash from quarter to quarter. Today, the CEOs that rise to that definition are few: Jamie Dimon, Tim Cook, Alan Mulally, Jeffrey Immelt

en

21:32

The Political Classroom or can we ever teach...

Talk Cocktail ·

2015/01/13

We live in an age in which everything has become politicized. The coffee we drink, the food we eat, the shows and movies we watch, and the cars we buy,all seem to convey some kind of political message. Where once these things represented class, or taste, or education, today it’s all about politics. Even in non-partisan races, political ideology becomes the central issue. So what impact does this have on our ability to teach politics, or citizenship or democracy or even science in the classroom

en

30:17

The Internet is Not the Answer

Talk Cocktail ·

2015/01/10

The industrial revolution changed the world. It changed the nature of work, it displaced workers, it ushered in the Gilded Age and created more inequality. It shrank the world, drove consumerism, and reshaped political ideology. The Internet revolution, 150 years later, has had startling similar effects. We worship at the altar of creative destruction, we fetishize technology and the freedom and democratization that the Internet had promised. But at what price? Simply, can the same

en

28:10

The Killing of the Creative Class

Talk Cocktail ·

2015/01/09

Long before radio, I spent years in Hollywood. This was just as the Word Processor and the high volume copy machine were taking hold. When those things came along, everyone joked that screenwriting software and easy access to copying machines would lower the quality of screenplays. Little did those jokesters know, that was just the beginning. Not only did the medium become the message, it subsumed the message. The medium, the technology, the process in fact became the creative endeavor. Today

en

16:26

Close Encounters of the mystical kind

Talk Cocktail ·

2015/01/05

It was Churchill who said that when the present sits in judgment of the past, we loose the future. Obviously not the attitude of memoirists. But also not the attitude of someone who looks back on the totality of one's life and tries to understand who they are and where they came from. Barbara Ehrenreich discovered, late in life, a journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence. She writes about a mystical experience, that to her rational and atheist self today, was nothing less than

en

27:21

The Medicalization of Ordinary Life

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/12/31

When something goes wrong with a car or an appliance, or even the human body, the “instructions” for repair are often clear. However my guest argues that the manual that tries to define the parameters and terms of mental illness, is without that kind of scientific basis. He says that even an auto repair manual, much less a biology textbook, has more science than the DMS 5 Yet with the fifth volume of the DSM, and the concurrent explosion in psychotropic drugs, Doctors are relying on it, more than

en

26:38

Sit right down and write myself a letter

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/12/27

What might our knowledge of history be like if snapchat had been around in earlier centuries? The good news is that it wasn’t. In a time when people wrote letters, not texts or emails, those letters got saved and later curated. Letters that give us little glimpses into personalities, history and the human condition at another time, in another place. Shawn Usher, has devoted himself to being a curator of many such letters. He is the founder of the blog, Letters of Note and now that’s been turned

en

24:41

The Sounds of Silence...Deaf Culture and what it...

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/12/26

Remembering the early days of the cell of phone, we all remember, “can you hear me now.” For most of us this was modern nuisance. But for some, those that are hearing impaired, or profoundly deaf, those words have far greater meaning. While much progress has been made in the technology, treatment and study of deafness, we are just beginning to understand the broader implications, with respect to brain development, literacy and the very ideas surrounding the acquisition of language. This is the

en

17:55

What caring and service really means

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/12/24

What would it take for you to give up your Western lifestyle, move to Ghana, live in a mud hut and commit yourself to helping thousands of lost children? You would think that this kind of thing only happens in the movies, or in literature. That real lives are generally not a kind of fairy tail. Not true. Lisa Lovatt-Smith did exactly that. She traded in her glamorous life in Paris and a glamorous life at Vogue for the experience of moving with her daughter to Ghana and trying to change the

en

13:53

Language is Culture, Culture is Language

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/12/23

To achieve proficiency in a new language late in life is near impossible. But suppose you didn’t just want to learn the language, you wanted total immersion. You wanted to learn the culture, the origins of the language, to become one with the language. That’s what my guest William Alexander set out to do with French. He wanted to be French and language was simply the vessel. But even with that kind of commitment, the effort almost broke his heart. He tells of that effort in Flirting with French:

en

21:08

Why Learning Beats Knowing

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/12/23

It used to be that the classroom prepared you for a career. Today your lifetime career is a classroom, where you must be continuously learning. In doing so, the horizons open up and opportunities abound. The traditional straightjacket of education and career have been, like most things, disrupted. In it’s place, possibility and creative destruction.. Along with this comes a whole new way of doing business. A place, not unlike sports, where the newcomer, the rookie has an important role to play

en

14:40

A Father and Daughter Cook Their Way Around the World

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/12/22

One of the foundations of the changing nature of education, is the idea of deeper learning. Direct, hands on mastery of content, though solving real world problems in a collaborative way. This has created dramatic results in all academic areas. But it’s also something that can take place right at home. That’s what best selling author Mark Kurlansky did with his daughter Talia. They combined culture, geography, chemistry and all in the context of preparing delicious meals. Now they share their

en

17:57

The quest driven life

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/12/19

To dream the impossible dream has been the great engine of progress in the world. From the early explorers, to scientists and engineers, to man's quest to explore the planets. The story of exploration is the story of mankind. When John Kennedy laid down the predicate of reaching the moon by the end of a decade, he defined for the whole county that kind of clear goal that also drives individuals forward. The story of some of these individuals, along with his own quest, is what Chris Guillebeau

en

25:46

We may be an insignificant and fleeting moment in...

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/12/18

Conventional wisdom has long held that we live in a vast and indeed expanding universe, in which we humans are but a seemingly small and insignificant part. But in that classic view, are we not giving ourselves enough credit? Perhaps we are more unique than we think. Perhaps we are not all that ordinary, on a not so ordinary rock in the vast cosmos. Just maybe, that classic view, needs to be reexamined. That is what Caleb Scharf has done in his new book The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic

en

26:57

Gus Speth explains why the Environmental Movement...

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/12/17

Perhaps part of what plagues us when we think about most issues today, is that we tend to see them in very myopic ways. The world is a more and more complex place, and yet we do the opposite of what we should do. We too often silo information or categories, or problems. We don’t always see the connections and therefore we get frustrated, because we can’t seem to solve the problems. Environmental issues are no different. My guest, one of the fathers of the environmental movement, James "Gus"

en

16:08

Why Dreamers matter!

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/12/16

How often does a story leap off the pages of a magazine, to become a book, a documentary and a major motion picture? Very rarely. And when it does, it’s clear that the story it tells has touched a powerful nerve among readers and viewers. Such is the story that Wired Contributing Editor Joshua Davis tells, of four underdogs from the streets of Phoenix, who, using Spare Parts would take on the best High School and College students in the country, including MIT with the resources of

en

1,369 results

Similar Podcasts

English News - NHK WORLD RADIO JAPAN

NHK WORLD-JAPAN

Громадське Радіо: Всі програми

Громадське Радіо

Burmese News - NHK WORLD RADIO JAPAN

NHK WORLD-JAPAN

برامج

مونت كارلو الدولية / MCD

Journal Monde

RFI