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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

23:10

A new perspective on the Middle East

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/10

When we think and talk about the Middle East today, we look at it terms of the religious and ethnic strife and extremism that define today's conflicts. We also assume that these conflicts has been going on for centuries. That the holy wars and clash of civilizations of today have been the basis for the whole history of the region Middle East historian Brian Catlos has a different view. One that puts those conflicts in a more political and economic perspective. In fact, it was really a world of

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33:42

Cosby

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/08

The recent suicide of Robin Williams puts into bold perspective that we really don’t know very much about the inner lives of the people that make us laugh. From Lenny Bruce to Richard Pryor, from Johnny Carson to Bill Cosby, the demons and private lives that drove these comedians were often anything but funny. Cosby was particularly unique in several ways. He broke the color barrier for television with I Spy. He appealed to predominantly white audiences, yet subtly advanced the civil rights

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24:43

How many scandals can we understand at once?

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/07

If you’ve ever borrowed money for anything, from a mortgage to a student loan, you’ve been impacted by LIBOR. The London Interbank Offered Rate. The global standard for interest rates. The problem is, like so many other recent aspects of our financial markets, we’ve now come to find that it’s been rigged. That a system built on trust, has been anything but trustworthy. That the gentlemanly system of the London bankers has joined the international movement toward greed, and dishonesty, at the

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24:57

Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles Blow

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/06

When we talk about America's history of segregation, its not just about race and class, but also about geography. Even as the civil right movement would begin to take hold in the late 60’s and seventies, there were parts of America, particularly in the rural South, that we untouched by that progress. Places where slavery was not just a legacy to be overcome, but still in the fabric of the cultural DNA of place. It is into this landscape that a young boy grows up, prematurely comes of age due to

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22:41

Writing in the 21st Century

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/03

Years ago, in Hollywood, someone once remarked that the amount of bad screenplay writing increased with the advent of the copy machine. The same claim was later made when word processing and screenwriting software came along. The fact is there is a lot of bad writing that goes on in many arenas. Today much of the blame gets heaped on email, or texting, or technology, or just “kids today.” The real issues are more nuanced, more complex, and not quite as rigid as some might wish. These are some of

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31:39

Gratitude & Trust

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/10/02

The world is a crazy place. Everyday here we talk about all the forces that are impacting us, making life more complex, confusing and making so many people less sure of who they are, how they fit in, and whether the decisions they make lead them in the right direction. Sure, many people want to change their lives. But for others, it’s simply a matter of trying to find true north. Of seeing the guide posts or the modern day yellow brick road that will lead to a sense of certainty and security. For

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20:32

The world's first tech start-up

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/30

Socrates was worried about the rise of written text. He feared that it would change our habits of mind and not allow us to remember. The printing press would spark another revolution, as mass produced text would change the world. Not unlike our current digital revolution, the push back was fierce and loud. And because history does repeat itself, we can indeed learn a lot by looking back at the last great technological revolution in publishing. One that gave birth to the publishing industry itself,

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23:57

How technology is reshaping philosophy

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/27

We've all played the game of thinking about and listing the most important inventions in the progress of mankind. Certainly from the wheel, to the printing press to the transistor, there are plenty to choose from. But seldom do we think about philosophical revolutions. The invention of ideas and philosophies and habits of mind, that have also changed the world. Of these, there have been less. Perhaps, according to Luciano Floridi, only three that have truly shaped our conception of the world and

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27:04

Foreign Correspondent

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/26

Once upon a time we got our international news through the relentless reporting of foreign correspondent. The Vietnam war may have brought war into our living rooms for the first time, but reporters still provided context. Citizens would come to understand events through the consistency of work from a reporter, though time and experience. Today, that foreign correspondent, satirized by Evelyn Waugh and celebrated by Hitchcock is an endangered species. Today the freelance reporter, dashing

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22:26

Words to eat by

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/25

Few things ignite all of our senses to the degree that food does. Once simply a form of sustenance, food today, in restaurants or in markets, represents status, sexuality, politics, and education. Where all of this comes together, is not just in taste, or smell, or texture, but in the language that is used by purveyors of food, and the language that we all use, in talking about food. Stanford linguistics Professor and MacArther Fellow, Dan Jurafsky gives us a menu to interpret this in The Language

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25:29

This is your brain on narcissism.

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/24

Like it or not, the nature of our society and of our culture today is focused inward. Walk down any urban street, vs. 40 years ago and instead of looking out, we’re look down or inward. At our phones, our images, at our own world. In a culture where self branding is celebrated, where selfies rule and Millennials are self absorbed, is it any wonder that narcissism seems rampant? But is this just a societal phase, resulting in the kind of prolonged adolescence that A.O. Scott talked about in his

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27:29

Instant Gratification and the Decline of Institutions

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/23

It seems quaint now, but there was a time we had to rely on others for most of our needs. We had to rely on family for food, operators to place calls, travel agents to book travel, the post office to deliver mail, and large institutions to fulfill our needs. The technological revolution that began in the 70’s changed all that. As consumers, as individuals we become empowered. We could do our own thing, we could customize our lives. But this new found power was a little like an 18 year old going

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27:50

Technology, IS making us smarter!

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/22

If we were to listen to many of the Cassandras out there today, you would think that technology, information, and progress were all bad. They are the same people who would have objected to the printing press, the telephone, television and the automobile. They look at education and don't understand why memorization and rote learning are no longer worthy of attention and want to put the technology genie back in the bottle. Well, it's not going back in! In fact, much of what we have wrought as a

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21:25

Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/17

It seems that every generation seeks to find fault with the adolescent generation coming of age. Just as the parents of boomers eschewed the 60’s, so today, we boomers are all too quick to criticize and disparage the state of Millennials. Perhaps if we better understood adolescence, the process that the brain goes through as it remodels itself, we’d better understand the young adults that are coming of age. And while we are quick to judge what seems to be the extension of adolescence today, new

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27:29

Why do we celebrate diversity, and then try and...

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/17

Be it immigration, race or sexual orientation, we have an odd human tendency to expect that tolerance and integration to really mean sameness. The idea of a social, political and cultural melting pot is often seen as the primary metaphor for accepting difference, as opposed to … well just accepting and appreciating differences. Perhaps nowhere has this been more profound than for gays and lesbians. Once shunned, now we look to gay marriage, child rearing and fashion, as a kind of establishment

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28:34

The New Capital of Big Data

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/16

Is there anyone that believes that we still have a measure of privacy? Not only are there cameras everywhere, not only is big data a part of almost every business, but the uses of the this data, not by the NSA, but by corporate America, are becoming ever more sophisticated. After all, it’s what we say we want. Better customer service, better consumer satisfaction and greater personalization. After all, when you look up something on Amazon or Google and then you see ads for that item within

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23:15

The Boys In The Boat

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/12

Think about some of the great themes and conflicts of our times. Freedom vs. Tyranny, the 1% vs the 99%, East Coast values. vs the Western ethos, team effort vs individual effort, the US vs Russia, the triumph of the Greatest Generation, craftsmanship vs mass production, and the moral as well as physical victory of America in the Second World War. All of these themes and more are part of the story that Daniel James Brown weaves together in his bestselling The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and

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23:25

The 9/11 generation

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/10

As we approach this anniversary of 9/11, it's worth noting that the Afghan war has become the longest in American history. Also, to think about how many of the men and women who have served in that war, were motivated and inspired to act, by those events thirteen years ago. Michael Golembesky is one of those. He would go on to become one of the first members of the US Marines Special Operations Team, that was created in 2006. His story, his eight years of service, is a telling snapshot of both the

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24:12

The Gold Rush...then and now

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/09

When we talk about success, be it on Wall Street, or Silicon Valley, or even the boom in natural gas, we always talk about it as “the new gold rush." In part because the Gold Rush represented the mobility, energy and adventure of Americans in pursuit of riches. But those riches, that began in California in 1849, were anything but easy. While many made fortunes, many of those fortunes came to those who took care of the hundreds of thousands who would come looking to change their lives.That’s the

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24:28

Do we need a constitutional amendment to take money...

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/09/08

Election day 2014 is fast approaching. At the end of the process, we will have spent over three hundred million dollars to decide if Mitch McConnell or Harry Reid will have a two vote margin. While there are many social, political and psychological reasons for our current state of political gridlock and polarization, money is certainly at the core. The next Presidential election could well cost over one and a quarter billion dollars. It costs ten million, at the very least, to become a US Senator

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1,369 results

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