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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

19:10

The making of Super Althletes

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/11/04

Almost no aspect of life has not been touched by the forward march of science and technology. The world of sports is no exception. When we watch a game, or even multiple games as in the Olympics, we want to see things we’ve never seen before. The narrative of human performance drives our love of any sport. And today, science is glad to oblige. As we learn more about the brain, the body, genetics and biological evolution itself, scientists and engineers find news ways to enhance innate athletic

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19:27

Just how absurd is life on the West Bank?

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/11/04

The Middle East is always ripe with stories. Unfortunately, few get to the heart of the absurdity of the human condition there. In much the way that Catch 22 or Mash did for our wartime military, The Hilltop, a new novel by esteemed Israeli writer Assaf Gavron, does for the settlements on the West Bank. My conversation with Assaf Gavron:

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22:21

By the Book

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/11/03

How many of you have been asked recently to name your favorite or most influential books? It’s a process that has been all the rage on social media. And while such lists have been around for a long time, perhaps what inspired this current flare up is New York Times Book Review Editor Pamela Paul’s weekly Q & A with authors and journalists in the BY THE BOOK feature in Sunday’s New York Times. The feature is an all access pass into the private world of authors, as they reflect on their work habits,

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30:42

The Lessons of 1970's S. Africa

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/11/03

The world of historical fiction always plays an interesting role. On the one hand, it's an entertaining way for us to understand, often from 30k feet, the broad historical sweeps of history. But beyond that, it’s an opportunity for us to see, up close and personal, how conflict, change, stress, fear and intimacy affects the human condition. To see how others act, and to better understand and appreciate the diversity of humanity in our current world. That's what Mark Fine has done in looking back at

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23:54

Literature vs. The Future

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/31

Although it doesn’t seem like it in today's world of images and 140 characters, words, stories and literature once moved people and nations and changed the world. In fact, even in our own nation, the act of reading was once even seen as subversive. Yet it fueled the quest for freedom, fired up our democracy, and launched a nation. Today that same nation and its discontents, seems to eschew literature as a form of creative engagement, of social discourse and as an element of citizenship. How we got

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21:15

Superstorm Sandy +2 years - What have we learned?

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/30

As we watch day after day, the government response to a potential Ebola crisis, we are reminded of so many mistakes that various government agencies have made in response to other disasters. It hardly fills us with confidence. Katrina, of course, remains in all our minds. And more recently Superstorm Sandy, exactly two years ago, where municipal response, particularly in N.Y. City, would have embarrassed even the Keystone Cops. Kathryn Miles, in Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy, dives

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25:48

The Birth of the Pill

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/28

There are many legacies of the 1960’s. The Civil Rights movement, the antiwar movement, and the efforts of women to have reproductive choice. Of these, arguably the reproductive freedom of women has had the most profound, lasting and global impact. Before the efforts of four mismatched anti establishment characters in the 1960’s, women had, since the days of ancient Egypt, sought to control their biological destiny. And while today, we look at The Pill and birth control as the norm, the efforts

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26:00

Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/26

When we think about the Supreme Court, and its hushed, hallowed halls, and John Adams dictum that we are a nation of laws and not of men, words that do not often come to mind are passion, Salsa Dancing, ambition, and people skills. Yet all of these have been a part of the life and Supreme Court tenure of Sonia Sotomayor. Her story is not just a legal story, it’s the story of the rise of the Latino population in America and it’s ever larger and growing role in the politics of the nation. My guest

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26:53

How the World Works

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/24

Today, as we look around the world, it sometimes seems to be spinning out of control. It feels like a time, to quote Yates, when the falcon cannot hear the falconer, when the best lack all conviction and the worst seem full of passionate intensity. Does the fault lie in the vagaries of human nature, or in our leaders and institutions? The answer is that both are intimately linked in ways that, when fully understood, explain the essence of how the world works. This is the journey that Francis

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24:43

The Robots are coming

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/23

For a while now technology has seemed to focus on only one aspect or another of information. Everything from Google to Facebook, to Instagram, to all aspects of the sharing economy are essentially all about trying to achieve perfect information. Slowly the emphasis is beginning to shift. Now voice recognition, robots, drones and a renewed interest in artificial intelligence are all pointing to a new technological direction. Just as we’ve had to readjust to the creative destruction and social

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27:27

Understanding the Internet of Things

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/23

Although the origins of the quote are a bit murky, the idea that the only way to predict the future is to invent it, certainly seems true in the 21st century. In fact, that future is being invented right now. As technology moves from dedicated devices, to virtually everything, soon everything from our pens to our trash to our kitchens to our most intimate desires, will be connected to the each other and to us, in ways unimagined until now. Will that technology be more humane or more

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29:00

The Week Politics Went Tabloid

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/20

For those that study and write about politics, the holy grail is to find those seminal moments in the nation's public and political life that change everything. And while the antecedents of those events may be years in the making, they usually create a perfect storm that results in an event that is a kind of tipping point; one that marks a permanent tectonic shift in the political landscape. Sometimes we have to let time pass, before we appreciate or even understand those moments. The televised

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17:17

Capitalism vs. The Climate

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/20

It was actually Winston Churchill, not Rahm Emanuel, who said that we should never let a serious crisis go to waste. A crisis often creates a great opportunity to face, to talk about, and even sometimes to act upon issues that had been previously frozen Or, as Donald Rumsfeld once inarticulately put it, sometimes the only solution to an unsolvable problem, is to create a bigger problem. It could be said that climate change provides such an opportunity. That in seeking to address the issues of man

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25:09

How the Obesity Crisis Is Complicating America's Love...

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/20

Some of you may have seen the story recently that marriage is at an all time low in America. We also know that two out of three Americans are overweight, or obese. Is there a link between these two issues? Has our national physical decline and the rise of obesity changed the way we view love and sex, and if so, what are the broad social and economic impacts of that? That’s what Sarah Varney, senior health policy correspondent with Kaiser Health News, sets out to find out in XL Love: How the

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24:55

Terrorism and the Search for Justice

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/17

For decades, it seems, we've read and watched stories about suicide bombers in the Middle East. We process the information without emotion, as we do most news stories. Then 9/11 happened and suddenly suicide bombers took on a new meaning for most Americans. With that new understanding, award winning journalist Mike Kelly looks back at a story of a suicide bombing in Israel, that took place in 1996, years before 9/11. The story, fraught with the humanity and frustration of loss, would have, if we

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20:43

Superintelligence

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/16

Whether we are thinking about our smart phones, or HAL in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, we are usually deeply conflicted about artificial intelligence. Will it be a panacea to enhance the already unique power of human intelligence or, like HAL, will its survival depend on usurping human control That balance informs both our fear and appreciation of machines and technology and what they both can do. This is the balance that Oxford Professor Nick Bostrom seeks to find in Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers,

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26:08

The no problem, problem

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/15

Revolutions are often exciting. The stir change, mobilize ideas, and are often at the cutting edge of excitement. Yet what happens after revolutions is often the work that matters. The problem is that it’s hard work. The cameras are off, the story has grown cold, but this is where the work gets done that can truly change the world. Arguably the women's movement is such an example. While dramatic changes once took place, arguably the hard work since has not been quite enough While the

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21:47

I'm not the boss of me

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/14

The common portrayal of Millennials is as generation that is narcissistic, self absorbed, entitled and demanding. Yet they are almost 90 million strong and will soon be taking their place in leadership in business, in politics and in almost every other aspect of society. What will they be like in this new role? How will they be when they are the boss? That’s the situation that Lindsey Pollak looks at in Becoming the Boss: New Rules for the Next Generation of Leaders. My conversation with Lindsey

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23:27

Daring: My Passages

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/13

Kierkegaard said that “life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.” Such is the powerful value of memoir and reflection Sometimes, though, that reflection takes in more than just the individual life, it becomes a way to reflect on a time, a place, and movement. Gail Sheehy’s life encompasses all of that. The mainstreaming of hippie culture, feminism, new journalism, publishing all exist side by side with the touchstones of love, loss and family. Her story is, in short,

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22:43

How Change Happens

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/11

We often say that actions have consequence. So do ideas. And we don’t always know the full extent of those consequences. Just as the science of splitting the atom, changed the nature of geopolitics and may still reshaped civilization, so the ripple effects of certain inventions have consequences and impacts, far beyond what was originally thought or intended. As we worry about the spread of disease these days, it provides an interesting analogy. Essentially, if we think of certain inventions as

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1,369 results

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