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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

23:26

The invisible hand, that isn't

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/03/10

Just like in The Wizard of Oz, sometimes it seems that events, coincides and serendipitous good fortune happen as part of a grand plan. Later we think that it’s the the result of a great and powerful force pulling the ropes and levers. Only much later do we discover that events happen on their own, and it’s only in a dream, driven by our penchant to find order and connection, that the events are tied together. For many of us this happens all the time. Thinking about an old friend who suddenly

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26:48

Modern Love

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/03/10

Some people have jobs that are often very disconnected from everyday life. But Daniel Jones’ job is a form of daily life incarnate. As the long time editor of the Modern Love column in The Sunday New York Times Magazine, since 2004 Jones is perhaps the reigning expert on love, relationships and why we all “need the eggs.” If hundreds of years from now, an alien civilizations wanted to find out about the mating habits of humans, they could do no better than to look at Jones new book Love

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32:19

Is education the only route to more economic equality?

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/03/07

I think we can all stipulate that we continue to witness growing income inequality in America. Class mobility is at an all time low and if we don’t begin to address the problem, the consequences for American democracy will be severe. But even if we embrace the problem, how to we begin to solve it? Programs, including taxes to create any kind of redistributive fairness, are a non starter in Washington and in Statehouses everywhere. So where do we begin? UC Irvine Professor Greg Duncan and Harvard

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29:45

The Making of Network

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/03/07

Most of you know that the mad prophet the airwaves was Howard Beale. The very idea that we can listen to a clip from Network, made 38 years ago, and its sounds as relevant as if it were written yesterday, speaks to the genius of Paddy Chayefsky's script, and the serendipity of the movie and its production. The movie was at once spot on in its portrayal of its moment in time and prescient about something as big and hard to hold on to as the television and the media landscape. It is truly a movie for

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24:50

What if the government got really good at technology...

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/03/04

When we think about the cutting edge of technology, our thoughts usually turn to Silicon Valley, or to other tech centers around the world. When we think about technology and government, we tend to think about failure. The inability of the government to make a simple website work, or the fact that it was a big deal for the current President to get a Blackberry when he came to office, or that most government agencies, including the IRS, don’t function with email. In a funny kind of way, it

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28:20

James Meredith, Civil Rights and the rise of Black Power

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/03/03

The recent debate and court challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 reminds us of what was the once and future fragility of registering black voters in the south. Back in 1966, a year after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, James Meredith, who became the first African American student at University of Mississippi, set out on an almost solitary march from Memphis to Jackson Mississippi to register black voters. At the end of that march, which started on June 5 1966, the civil rights movement

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22:45

Statistics never lie...That's the first lie

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/03/02

Years ago the Wall Street Journal ran an ad campaign referring to itself as the “Daily Diary of the American Dream.” Today, we might say that the barrage of statistical information we get about the economy is that kind of diary. Just this morning, we probably all heard the latest GDP numbers. But what does it mean and what problem is it solving? Sometimes it seems there is a kind of “uncertainty principle” at work. In that the process of trying to measure every aspect of the economy and even

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29:34

Is Cold War strategy relevant to dealing with Russia...

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/28

Amid the violence and upheaval in the Ukraine and the Russian response, a debate has broken out in Washington about the relevance of Cold War strategy. Whether it still should be relevant to viewing Russian actions and geopolitics? It would be interesting to know what George Kennan might think about it. He was after all, the architect of America's cold war policy of containment and perhaps our greatest political and diplomatic strategist with respect to the Russia and the former Soviet Empire. He

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20:13

Batter Up

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/26

As sports stories go, the legendary rivalry between the Giants and Dodgers, is one of the best and most enduring. Yet it’s a rivalry that has had it’s had its dark and ugly moments. One of the those moments came a couple of years ago as Giants fan Bryan Stow was attacked and beaten in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium. A sad incident that perhaps reflects the mean spiritedness of our times. Another ugly incident happened back in 1965. It had a better outcome. One where the rivals, Juan Marichal of

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25:51

Demographics are destiny

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/25

We know that there are powerful demographic trends taking place in the US. That the economic divide in America is widening at an almost geometric pace. That certain groups repeatedly, in spite of powerful evidence to the contrary, vote against their own economic self interest. We’ve seen and continue to see examples of the ways in which Big Data and the vast amount of individual information available today, make it easier to define the electors. Back in 1964, journalist Eugene

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27:13

The Twilight of the American Enlightment

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/24

For those that didn’t live through the 50’s and early 60’s, Mad Men has given us a clearer idea of so many of the changes that were impacting the nation and the culture. The post war period freed up Americans. We were no longer bound by the needs of the war and the depression that preceded it. Television, labor saving appliances, medical breakthroughs and a new sense of tolerance would begin to change America. George Marsden, in his new work The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s

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21:19

Why the collapse of Detroit matters to all of us

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/22

Jane Jacobs, writing about the life and death of cities, reminds us that people living in vigorous cultures typically treasure those cultures and resist any threat to them. So how and why, she wonders, can a people so totally discard a formerly vital culture, so that it becomes virtually lost. The city of Detroit was such a culture. Once the heartland of industrial America, now it sits as an urban corpse. What does it say about America, about Detroit, but more importantly about the people that

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17:10

Still Life with Bread Crumbs

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/21

When we hear talk of the reinvention of our lives, I think re reflexively think this is something we do in our 30’s or 40’s or even 50’s. Today though, men and woman are both reinventing themselves into their 60’s and beyond. Sometime it’s to pursue new dimensions of ourselves as we get older and wiser, sometimes, it’s because of death or divorce, and sometimes, as we live longer, its because we face new financial imperatives. That’s the journey for Rebecca Winter in Anna Quindlen's’ new

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27:37

Hillary

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/21

Twenty two years ago a relatively unknown Governor of Arkansas was on the ropes in his presidential campaign. He had been accused of marital infidelity and with his wife by his side, went on 60 Minutes to plead his case to the American people. His wife, was even less known to the American people, so her comments in that interview with Steve Kroft, had particular resonance. Today, that woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has served eight years as First Lady, as a United States Senator from New York,

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22:38

Could we have won the space race without the German...

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/18

Few questions occupy us more today than what do we need to know and when do we do we need to know it, with respect to what our government is doing. How much should we know, particularly in times of war and what might really jeopardize national security? These questions haunt us today, but they are nothing new. In the closing days of WWII America recruited scores of German scientists that became the bulwark of our space effort. These scientists had shady pasts and were far more connected to the

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20:00

The Strange Origins of Modern Medicine

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/17

Years from now, we will look back on the way we treat cancer today, with poisons and chemo and radiation, and we’ll look at it exactly the same way we view leaching and snake oil. Today, many look for alternative cutting edge cures, they may be the precursors of future medicine. Back in the 19th century as patients looked to avoid leaching and bleeding and things like induced vomiting, their search gave way to a host of alternative practices that have become some of our most fundamental practices

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28:15

Careless People

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/16

When we deconstruct the essential elements of our culture today, celebrity culture, the privilege of wealth, the importance of popular culture in shaping the broad national conversation, even our obsession with the automobile, we find it all had its roots in the 1920’s. Perhaps the endurance of Gatsby, is that it represents a time that was a kind of line of demarcation for the country. One world before the early 1920's and another after. This is the world that Sarah Churchwell takes us into in

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28:35

The Up Side of Down

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/15

How many of us have taken great leaps out of fear? How often has a failure, or being fired, or jilted resulted in being forced to take actions that turned out to be positively life changing? Often in our personal journey, when we get lost in the wilderness, that is what finally brings us home. As Bill Gates, unquestionably one of our most successful entrepreneurs has said, “it’s fine to celebrate success, but more important are the lessons of failure.” In the startup world, entrepreneurs are

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22:13

Writers, Musicans and other Fans Remember

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/15

We are often quick to use the term “cultural phenomenon.” Through the back lens of history though, few things truly are. Yet fifty years ago we experienced something that lives up to that idea. By now we’ve all been regaled by memories of the Beatles' appearance on the Ed Sullivan show fifty year ago last week. But with that as the backdrop, what is the larger cultural significance? Perhaps it's fair to say that the Beatles transformed music, pop culture, fashion, and movies. They also created

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28:11

The new era of competition with China

Talk Cocktail ·

2014/02/14

Great powers ebb and flow. A random walk through history shows the Turks, the Germans, the British, the Japanese, the Spanish have all, at one time, shaped geopolitics. For most of the past century, America has stood atop the world. Now China, after three amazing decades of internal growth, is looking to secure its place in the world. But is geopolitics a zero sum game? Does American influence have to wane in order for China to expand? Can China effectively shape and use its economic growth

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1,369 results

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