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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

39:54

An Existential Moment for Iran

Talk Cocktail ·

2026/02/18

Iran on the brink. On a recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I spoke with Shay Khatiri who insists that the real question isn’t what happened on January 8 and 9 — it’s what comes next. Because this wasn’t an economic protest that got out of hand. This was the maximum force Iranian civil society can muster on its own. And it wasn’t enough.Khatiri — a leading Iran scholar expalins that every previous uprising (2009, 2019, 2022) left a residue of unfulfilled promise and mounting rage. This time, the pattern

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29:23

The Climate Fight Without America

Talk Cocktail ·

2026/02/14

While America now fully abandons climate action, the world races ahead—and watches in dismay. A look at the cost of US denial and how good things happening without us.Mads Christensen, the executive director of Greenpeace International, has spent three decades on the front lines of environmental activism. In my conversation with him on a recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, he brings a perspective that cuts against the prevailing American narrative of climate despair.He explains that while climate change

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39:54

What Comes Next For Iran On The Brink.

Talk Cocktail ·

2026/02/11

The numbers coming out of Iran stop you cold: 12,000 to 20,000 dead in 48 hours. Not across months of civil war or years of grinding conflict, but concentrated into two January nights of systematic slaughter.My guest on this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, Shay Khatiri, insists we’re focusing on the wrong horror. The real question isn’t what happened on January 8 and 9 — it’s what comes next. Because this wasn’t an economic protest that got out of hand. This was the maximum force Iranian civil society

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31:11

What We Lost When Diversity Became Politics

Talk Cocktail ·

2026/02/07

Diversity has become a political weapon—but what if it was never meant to be political at all? UC Berkeley law professor David Oppenheimer argues in our conversation that diversity is an intellectual principle, not a moral slogan or corporate checkbox. Drawing on history, law, and hard science, he explains why diverse perspectives drive better thinking—and how the idea got lost along the way. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe

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31:23

Are We All in Cults Now?

Talk Cocktail ·

2026/02/04

Daniella Mestyanek Young escaped a notorious sex cult, then joined the Army where she studied terrorists—and recognized the same coercive tactics everywhere. The author of The Culting of America, she reveals in our podcast how cult dynamics pervade American life, from MAGA's authoritarian tribalism to corporate culture. We're obsessed with AI threats, she argues, while missing the real danger: human manipulation operating at scale through social media and political movements demanding absolute

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38:29

An Artist’s Insane Technique for Disturbing Times

Talk Cocktail ·

2026/01/31

On this recent California Sun Podcast, I spoke with Los Angeles-based artist Laurie Lipton about creating massive political works in chaotic times, her obsessive cross-hatching technique learned from Dutch Masters, and returning to the US after 36 years abroad to find America rolled back to 1955. A relentlessly productive artist, Lipton described drawing as an almost physiological need. “I use my work to deal with life. … I have very, very strong emotions, but I need the illusion of control,” she

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38:36

When the Video Isn't Enough: How LA Fought Back After...

Talk Cocktail ·

2026/01/28

It started with Rodney King—eighty-two seconds of video that should have changed everything but didn't. Thirty-four years later, after George Floyd and now events unfolding in Minneapolis, we're still asking: what happens after the cameras capture undeniable truth? Danny Goldberg was there in 1991 when an unlikely Los Angeles coalition fought to hold the LAPD accountable. His book Liberals with Attitude raises the question: is such cross-ideological cooperation even possible today? While this

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35:45

The Wine Industry In Crisis

Talk Cocktail ·

2026/01/21

Esther Mobley, the senior wine critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, joins me on the California Sun podcast to talk about California and the world’s wine industry crisis — In California alone, nearly 5,000 wineries competing for declining demand, 38,000 vineyard acres removed in 2025, mounting closures. She discusses why younger generations aren’t drinking wine, what happens to tourism-dependent communities when vineyards close, and whether wine’s romance can survive its greatest challenge yet

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41:00

From Ocean to Bloodstream: The Truth About Plastic

Talk Cocktail ·

2026/01/17

Two garbage trucks of plastic hit the ocean every minute. Microplastics are in your brain. Recycling doesn’t work. What the plastic industry never told you.In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, former EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck pulls back the curtain on an industry built on deception. Her new book, The Problem with Plastic, connects dots most people miss — between fracking booms and plastic floods, between what you’re told to recycle and what actually happens, between industry promises and

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42:21

Tom Freston reflects on how MTV changed our music,...

Talk Cocktail ·

2026/01/14

Last week, MTV officially shut down, ending an era that revolutionized music, video, and shaped California’s youth culture. Tom Freston co-founded the television channel 44 years ago, building a creative empire on principles that seem impossible today: hiring people with no experience, protecting creatives from corporate pressure, valuing disorientation over data, and treating loyalty as strategy. He joins me on the California Sun podcast to discuss his memoir “Unplugged.” Freston chronicles how

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33:39

The Technophobia Trap: How America Lost Its Nerve in...

Talk Cocktail ·

2026/01/10

Why is America uniquely terrified of AI while the world races ahead? The arguments driving that fear often collapse under scrutiny—real concerns go unaddressed.In this Talk Cocktail podcast, economist and author of the Noahopinion Substack, Noah Smith helps us understand what happened to American optimism—and why our fear may be built on foundations far shakier than we realize.Somewhere between our childhood dreams of robot friends and today’s reality of having them in our pockets, America lost its

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41:46

Fired by Email: What It Felt Like To Be Targeted by...

Talk Cocktail ·

2026/01/04

Eleven federal workers reveal what it felt like to be fired by Musk’s DOGE — the emails, the trauma, and the institutional destruction we’ve never heard about.On this recentWhoWhatWhy podcast I talked with journalist Sasha Abramsky, the author of American Carnage: How Trump, Musk and DOGE Butchered the US Government. Abramsky spent six months embedded with 11 fired federal workers from eight different agencies, documenting their lives as they unraveled in real time.They were fired with an afternoon

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51:47

What If the America We Think We Live in Never Existed?

Talk Cocktail ·

2025/12/18

We’re not one nation split by politics — we’re 11 regional cultures that have been at war since the colonies. And now the divisions are life and death.What if the America we think we know has never actually existed?The divisions tearing us apart aren’t new — they’re four centuries old, rooted in the very founding of this country. And now there’s data proving it.On this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, I am joined by Colin Woodard, a bestselling author, George Polk Award winner, and director of the

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43:38

Who’s Really Building Our Tech Future?

Talk Cocktail ·

2025/12/13

When billionaires mock the Pope with memes and fund “cheating apps,” something’s gone seriously wrong. The collapse of tech idealism; betting takes its place. Silicon Valley used to sell itself as the future. Today it often feels more like a funhouse mirror of the culture — loud, aggrieved, addicted to posting, increasingly divorced from any notion of social purpose.In this WhoWhatWhy podcast I talk with Jeremiah Johnson, co-founder of the Center for New Liberalism and author of the Infinite Scroll

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45:41

Democracy's Punishment Problem

Talk Cocktail ·

2025/12/06

Arkansas legally whipped prisoners until 1968. Today, U.S. officials celebrate images from El Salvador’s concentration camp-style prisons while federal courts abandon “evolving standards of decency” for 1790s baselines. Yale Law Professor Judith Resnik, author of book Impermissible Punishments, talks to me about how prisons maintain structural ties to plantations and argues democratic governments cannot “set out to ruin people.” A urgent conversation about what we owe those we cage—and whether mass

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35:00

A queer rock pioneer remembers San Francisco’s lost era

Talk Cocktail ·

2025/12/03

On this recent California Sun podcast Roddy Bottum, a founder of the alternative metal band Faith No More, talks with me about 1980s and ’90s San Francisco — a dark, overlooked era between the Summer of Love and the tech boom. His memoir, “The Royal We” recalls a vanished city of bicycle messengers and punk rock in the shadow of the AIDS crisis. It’s a poetic testament to community, loss, and the creative rebellion that defined pre-tech San Francisco. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at

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29:04

Who Gets to Be Indian?

Talk Cocktail ·

2025/11/29

In this recent California Sun podcast I talk with Dina Gilio-Whitaker, author of the new book “Who Gets to Be Indian?“ She explores how California became ground zero for Native American identity fraud — from Hollywood’s early film lots to today’s casino capitalism and tribal disenrollment crisis. All of it created the perfect conditions for “Indianness” to become commodified, challenging authentic tribal sovereignty and belonging across the nation. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at

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35:39

What’s Really Happening in Latino Communities

Talk Cocktail ·

2025/11/26

Families who voted for Trump now carry passports to prove they belong here. Inside the fear, resistance, and betrayal reshaping Latino communities.Something remarkable is unfolding in American politics, and most people are missing it. The Latino voters who handed Donald Trump a historic victory less than a year ago are now turning against him in numbers that should terrify the Republican Party.But this isn’t just about polling — it’s about something far more profound happening on the ground in

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32:02

The Radicalization of Silicon Valley: Democracy Is...

Talk Cocktail ·

2025/11/22

When the world’s richest men decide democracy is optional, we all pay the price.They once championed marriage equality and promised to make the world more open and connected. Now Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and a tight network of Silicon Valley billionaires are bankrolling authoritarian politics, questioning democracy itself, and leveraging their control of our communication infrastructure to reshape American power.But here’s the uncomfortable question: Is this genuine ideological

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33:10

The Anti-Billionaire: How Patagonia's Founder Yvonne...

Talk Cocktail ·

2025/11/19

Can capitalism have a conscience? Yvonne Chouinard built Patagonia into a billion-dollar empire while trying to save the planet—then gave it all away rather than be called a billionaire. My guest NYT reporter David Gellis expalins how in an age of Musk and Bezos, Chouinard’s story reveals both the promise and paradox of doing well by doing good. A half-century journey led by a French-Canadian dirtbag who slept in the dirt, managed by absence, and stayed so stubbornly uncommercial that only someone

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1,369 results

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