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75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

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

24:40

What Is The Future of Transportation? Hint...It‘s...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/10/08

A recent survey showed that the reason people are reluctant to go back to the office has nothing to do with COVID, but with their commute. It’s not the office they object to, it’s getting there. Particularly in places like New York, San Francisco, Atlanta and Washington DC, commute times have exploded in recent years. Perhaps when the dust settles, perhaps what we will have changed as a result of a year at home, is less how we work, and more how we move about. But will we ever give up our love

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20:17

No Cell Service, No Technology and Electrosensitives...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/09/30

I suppose even the most ardent technologists have at times wanted to get off the grid...usually that urge doesn't last long. But for the people of Green Bank, West Virginia, it’s an ongoing state of affairs. The only town that is designated as a national radio quiet zone, is actually not all that quiet. It seems that just as before technology subsumed us, people do find other ways to communicate, and to get into all sorts of trouble. The story of Green Bank and its people is where my

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24:49

Police, The Courts and the Subversion of Civil...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/09/28

While the issue of systemic racism, along with a long history racial conflict occupies a large portion of our social and political landscape, the issue of racial influence in law enforcement and the problem of police violence directed at people of color, holds a unique place in our history. The idea of equal justice under the law is a unique pillar in the American experience. It is, arguably, one of the weight-bearing pillars upon which our entire system of law and justice is based. And yet for

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35:18

As You Look At The Emmys, Remember That It Is Only...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/09/18

It wasn’t very long ago that to see a foreign language film, you wound up in the smallest theater in the multiplex or a little art theater somewhere in a college town...or you lived in New York or San Francisco or Boston. But like everything else, creative destruction has done its job. Streaming and the long tail of the internet has moved to supplant cable, movie theaters, broadcast television, and even the English language as the talisman of all of our entertainment. Even amidst the bifurcation

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28:57

The News About the News: A conversation with Martha...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/09/15

For journalism, it may be the best of times and the worst of times. On the one hand, the national media is more vibrant than ever. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as broadcast and cable news networks are thriving. For these outlets, the transition to digital has been painful, but successful and is still ongoing. It was recently announced by CNN and NBC News that they would be moving to a streaming model. Today, The New York Times derives more than

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26:18

The Myth of ”Nobody Saw it Coming”

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/09/04

The more we know about disasters, the more we realize that most were preordained. Covid 19 or Katrina, the current fires in California or the deep freeze this past winter in Texas. None of them were what we would call Black Swan events. We are certainly, because of climate change, complexity and complacency, going to be experiencing more such events, we had better become much better at disaster preparedness. If we know these disaster events are coming, how can we get better at dealing with the

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33:04

Democracy Dies In The Chaos of Competing Truths: A...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/08/31

Survey after survey shows that trust in the news media is at an all time low. And it’s not just the left/right divide. A recent study by the American Press Association reveals that not all Americans universally embrace core journalistic values, and that the trust crisis might best be understood through people’s moral values even more than their politics. When journalists say they are” just doing their jobs,” the problem is many people harbor doubts about what that job should be. Couple this with

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36:44

America Is No Longer A Serious Nation: My...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/08/24

Almost everywhere in the world, liberal democracy is, if not under siege, or at least being tested. Only in rare historical times have would-be autocrats found such fertile ground. But why? The world's and yes, America’s standard of living is rising overall. As Steven Pinker has pointed out, crime and violence is down. The census tells us that diversity is naturally occurring and technology has made life easier. While we are not perfect, the arc of history is bending towards justice. And yet

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22:54

Roger Bennett Teaches Us About Soccer AND About America

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/08/20

From Alexis de Tocqueville, to Alexander Solzhenitsyn to John Lennon, it has often taken those born outside of America to help us understand and define America back to those of us that have grown up here. Those of us long engulfed in both the popular culture and political noise inherent in our society, often can’t see the proverbial forest from the trees. Today British/American broadcaster Roger Bennett has taken up that mantle. The impresario of the Men in Blazers media empire not only explains

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40:51

The Second American Revolution - Will it Ever Be Won?

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/08/16

In the 1960s and early 1970s political and social battles were fought by people who were trying to reshape America. Sixty years later, we are still at war. My guests on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, David and Margaret Talbot, label that war the Second American Revolution. The issues revolved around armed conflict abroad (Vietnam), civil rights, feminism, gay rights, Native American rights, workers rights, and the role of celebrities in the political process. One of the Talbots’ conclusions is

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32:12

The Ultimate Corporate Delusion: The Story of WeWork

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/08/05

If someone pitched the story idea of a guy who was a former baby clothes salesman who then started a company that sublet co-working office space to millennials, and that that company would then become the most well financed startup ever, and that the story of its eventual rise and fall would give birth to an Apple tv series, a Hulu documentary, an HBO movie, several books, and two podcast series, the pitch would be rejected immediately. And yet this is the story of Adam Neumann and WeWork. But it’s

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17:17

Trump's Final Days: My conversation with Carol Leonnig

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/08/02

If daily news reporting is the first draft of history, books that come out almost contemporaneously to events are I suppose the second draft. But today the world is speeded up. Today, especially in the wake of Trump, we need the facts much sooner. We need to learn not just how to escape the mistakes of history but to escape their repetition and to learn quickly from the actions of recent times. Pulitzer prize winning Washington Post reporters Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig have become the modern

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32:31

A Car for the Ages: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/07/29

While everyone has their own personal list, we could all maybe agree on some of the most iconic cars ever made. The VW Beetle, the 1968 Ford Mustang, the 1960 Corvette, the 57 Chevy, the Porsche 911, The 1955 Mercedes gull-wing, the DeLorean, and just for good measure, the 1963 Aston Martin. But equally important is a vehicle that gets little attention, All of its models together only traveled under 100 miles. When it was built it was over budget, over schedule, and was only a two-seater. It was

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30:57

Bill Gates Has Always Shown Us Who He Is: A...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/07/23

Two years ago if you convened a focus group to give an opinion on Bill Gates and his foundation, the response would have been overwhelmingly positive. Today, not so much. The divorce, the behavior with respect to female employees, and violation of rules that any employee would know much less the company’s founder, former CEO, and chairman, and his condoning of poor behavior by his associates would be enough in and of itself to change public opinion. Add to this his relationship with Jeffrey

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27:08

What AI Really Is, Whose Making It Happen and What It...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/07/18

When Hal asked Astronaut David Bowman to “open the pod bay doors,” it was as if our most primal fear of machines came rushing headlong into the 20th century. Today, in our 21st-century world, we understand the basics of the artificial intelligence behind HAL. We see on display every day our interaction with Siri and Alexa, our reliance on algorithms in flying our planes and soon our self-driving cars. It’s the full blossoming of the promised brave new world. But AI is just the Internet in1995

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30:10

How We Got To Globalization Today: A Conversation...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/07/12

In the period immediately following WWII, the United States dominated the global economy. We had won the war, and the economic status that went along with it. Then over time, and initially as a result of our efforts and generosity, other economies began to grow. Japan, West Germany, Canada and Australia would stir, but the world would, in the war's aftermath, acquiesce to an American imposed system of monetary order. One underpinned by gold and the US direction. But 28 years later the children

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30:52

A Constitution of Knowledge: A Conversation with...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/07/09

Some days it seems that everything we’ve taken for granted with respect to the functioning of America and American democracy is under siege. Hundreds of thousands of words are written and spoken almost every day as to why. However, before we can even begin to answer that question, we must understand what it is that’s being attacked and how the system was built before we can shore it up. It’s like a building after an explosion or a natural disaster. It can’t be righted until someone comes in, looks

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24:49

We Are Our Information: A conversation with Caleb Scharf

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/07/06

We are awash in data and information. So much so that we wonder if it has any meaning at all? But what if the very existence of the information and data was actually our society's knowledge. A kind of intuitive database acquired from absorbing all the information that surrounds us. And as we do so, how does it change us? Are we even aware of it, or like velocity and position, can it even be measured. These are just some of the mind bending ideas put forth by renowned astrobiologist and the

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26:43

Amazon, Bezos and a Global Empire

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/06/30

Back in 1953, it was reported that Charlie Wilson, the then head of General Motors, said that what’s good for General Motors was good for America. While that quote is a bit apocryphal, the idea was real. The notion that the success of any particular business was inextricably tied up with the success of the nation. Perhaps in the 70’s it might have been said of Exxon. Today it might very well be said about Amazon. The company has changed the way we shop...not insignificant in a nation where retail

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28:31

Our New Addiction to Outrage: The American Psychosis

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/06/28

There once was a time when we were, if not united, at least we had a common set of cultural touchstones. Movies, TV, sports, even the three networks that delivered the evening news were part of a national town square that provided both water cooler conversation and comity. No more! Over the past 40 years, all that has changed. The long tail of the internet coupled with the evolution of our politics has divided us as never before. Even COVID, an outside enemy that should have united us, has become a

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1,369 results

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