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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

31:20

Glamour

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/12/04

Most of us, over a certain age, remember when getting on a transcontinental or international flight was glamorous. We dressed to travel. Strong pilots and beautiful stewardess framed the wonders of the journey. The glamour of air travel imbued us with a sense of freedom and possibility. How many women were inspired by the glamour of the Charlie Girl commercial to believe that having it all was possible and the holy grail? During the depression and war years, the glamour of Joan Crawford inspired

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25:43

Can an artist be true to his work and still do good...

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/12/04

Whenever we see or hear great art, we are usually inclined to wonder about the forces that created it. What constitutes the artistic life? What influences, combined with what DNA creates the perfect storm of artistic temperament, vision and creation? Long time music critic and editor for the LA Times, Robert Hilburn, has made trying to understand this, his life's work. He has reported extensively about many of pop music’s legends, including Dylan, Springsteen, U2, Elton John and John Lennon. Now

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26:32

Terrorism's new future

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/12/02

Five years ago, on the evening of Nov. 26, 2008, heavily armed Pakistani terrorists raced to infiltrate the five-star Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. At the same time, as part of a coordinated attack, other tourist sites in Mumbai were also attacked. Throughout Mumbai more than 160 people were killed in the two day siege. The Indian commission charged with studying what happened and why, did a remarkably poor job of gathering and reporting the facts. Now we have perhaps the best and most official account

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16:10

Immigration = Great Food

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/12/01

When we look at the immigrant history of America, it can perhaps best be told through great food. As neighborhoods emerged and changed, so did the restaurants. This is just as true today. Roy Choi is one of the founders of the food truck movement. But more than that, his food, his trucks and his four restaurants, represent the melting pot that is Los Angeles today. By blending American, Asian, Caribbean and Mexican influences, Roy Choi sits at the cutting edge of our emerging culture. He tells his

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21:49

Sex and the Genome

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/30

We’ve all heard that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. The notion that men and woman are different is deeply inculcated in our culture. Yet today science, our growing understanding of the human genome and the interaction of culture and genetics, are giving us a far greater understanding of those differences. Harvard Professor of the History of Science and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Sarah Richardson, in Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome, offers a

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25:46

James Wolcott and Four Decades of Essays, Reviews,...

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/29

Let's face it, our attention spans have been decapitated by modernity. Our knowledge, criticism and even entertainment now comes to us in 140 neat characters. We ourselves can be critics, just by clicking on a “thumbs up.” Today, serious commentary and serious criticism is in short supply. It's not gone..but it's in remission. One place it still survives is in the presence of James Wolcott and and his work, primarily today, on the pages of Vanity Fair. His just published collection of work and

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15:22

Vampires and Angles and Werewolves, oh my!

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/27

For over thirty years, and through over thirty books Anne Rice has captivated us with her imaginative fiction. She has become one of the most beloved novelists of our time. With each new book or series, she not only reinvents herself, but reinvents whole new arenas of fiction. From the Vampire Chronicles, to her Christ the Lord books, to the world of angels. Now she continues her move into the realm of werewolves. Where she still brings her own quite unique perspective. During a time of when we all

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19:09

How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/26

When Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, and came in second in the New Hampshire primary, he dubbed himself “the comeback kid.” The idea being that , Americans loved and admired the story of resurgence. The ability and the character to come back from seeming defeat. Perhaps no President's story embodies that more than FDR. Struck down with polio at age thirty-eight, his polio not only further shaped his character, and honed what Oliver Wendell Holmes called “his first class temperament.” but

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29:21

The Smartest Kids in the World

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/23

Like almost everything else in our globalized world, education is now competitive. We are long past the time when American kids could stand on the ramparts and look down at the rest of the world. Even some of our most prestigious and wealthiest communities can’t compete with the “average” kids in places like Korea or Finland or Poland. As is normal when we are under attack, our knee jerk reaction is to come up with excuses. We are more diverse, we are larger, we focus on different things and

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29:33

Oswald acted alone...

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/22

If the assassination of a President took place today, we’d all know about it in a matter of seconds. Alerts, tweets, the Internet. We’d all have the same facts, literally in an instant. In a way that microsecond information impacts the way we process the news itself. 50 years ago, upon the assassination of JFK, this was not the case. The information came out slowly. Even on the streets of Dallas, news traveled by word of mouth, from person to person. Bit by bit, drop by drop we lived the story

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29:59

It was the Mafia....

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/22

kennedy-everett.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">Fifty years ago this week, the nation experienced one of the seminal moments of the 20th century. Along with two world wars, the dawning of the nuclear age, and the landing of men on the moon, the assassination of JFK was one of the century’s tentpoles. As such, it never ceases to fascinate us. What other event of the 20th century still conjures up as many unanswered questions? Is there

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24:10

The Generals - American Military Command from WWII to...

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/11

In the private sector, when corporations get into trouble they replace the CEO. When sports teams repeatedly have a losing season, invariably they replace the coach. If sales are down, managers are replaced. Yet in the military today, it's very rare that generals are replaced. Even in the wake of catastrophic failure. Esteemed military journalist Thomas Ricks argues in The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, that failures in America's recent wars can be directly

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26:47

The resilience of the human spirit

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/10

Woody Allen, in Annie Hall, said that he felt that life was divided into the horrible and the miserable. The horrible he thought were terminal cases, and blind people, and those with severe disabilities. He said, “I don't know how they get through life.” Yet many don't have that choice. Particularly for parents of children with severe disabilities. It appears on the surface that horrible is what they have to deal with every day. However for many of them, it’s not horrible at all. It is difficult,

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20:08

# Tweet, Tweet

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/09

For years people have referred to Hollywood as being like High school with money. Well, Hollywood has matured a lot. But today the same might be said about the tech world. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the story of the rise and rise of Twitter. Started by four young guys looking to change the world, the drama of their story would rival anything in the world of high school mean girls. Now, coinciding with the Twitter IPO, NY Times reporter Nick Bilton gives us Hatching Twitter: A True

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27:46

The Psychopath Inside

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/07

Even if you are not a football fan, you’ve all seen the diagrams of plays with all those X’s and O’s. It makes you think, and even sometimes makes the players and coaches think, that they have it all figured out. If you just follow the pattern, you will have success and that it will be a winning play. Problem is, it’s not true. There are dozens of factors that enter into the equation. The weather, the turf, memory, mental ability, the agility to pull it off and of course the plans and mindset of

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21:59

One family's life defines the 20th Century

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/06

When we look at the emergence of the diaspora of any ethnic group, we realize how important immigration is. To the Jews of the 20th century it was everything. Some would migrate to America and become pillars of both capitalism and communism. Some would migrate to Palestine and birth the state of Israel out of the desert. Others would be left behind in Europe and suffer the last full measures of the holocaust. They to would impact history, both by their courage and even by what they might have

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24:37

What it means to be human

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/05

We know that genes help make us what and who we are. But, of the 25,000 genes we possess, a relatively few are significantly different from person to person. Some of those genes are often referred to as the Compatibility Genes. Genes that both impact our relationships and determine how we responded to infection and disease. Daniel Davis, in his new book, The Compatibility Gene: How Our Bodies Fight Disease, Attract Others, and Define Our Selves, cuts through the complexities of modern genetics to

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28:05

Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn...

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/04

Imagine if decisions in Washington, or at any level of government for that matter, were really made on the basis of policy. If careful analysis could win out over politics. Certainly the current health care debate would be very different. But so would our discussions about economic policy. If our discussion of the 2008 financial meltdown had been about analysis of what happened, as opposed to who's to blame, perhaps we’ve have learned a lot more from it. Wesleyan Professor of Economics,

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35:02

A beacon of democracy or an apartheid state?

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/11/02

If I said that this conversation was about authoritarian politics, the religious right, the rise of Christianist fundamentalism, a demographic crisis facing one political party, and the continued rise of military power, you would easily assume we would be talking about the US. In fact, these same forces are at play in greater Israel, and they are constantly reinforced here, by perhaps the most powerful political lobby in the United States. The complexity of Israeli politics, its relationship with

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28:36

The Everything Store

Talk Cocktail ·

2013/10/31

We all know, or have heard about life in Silicon Valley. The perks, the collegiality, the PowerPoint, the team ethos. In fact, perhaps the most successful company to master the Internet is none of those things. It engages in predatory pricing, it is fiercely competitive, it eschews both PowerPoint and perks. Its leader was Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999 and and yet, is just now 14 years later, reaching the zenith of his power. The company is Amazon and its leader and founder Jeff

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1,369 results

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