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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

23:41

Where Is The Information We Have Lost In Data

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/02/19

During the past year, perhaps a year like no other year, we have been bombarded with statistics. Covid cases, numbers of deaths, positivity rates and flattening the curve. Add to this an election and polling data that drowned us in information. On top of all of this is disinformation and the traditional ways in which numbers and statistics can be used to deceive us. And then just this week, statistics about stocks, and all manner of economic information. Data is everywhere. Every publication

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27:22

Mike Nichols: A Life

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/02/16

Amidst the cacophony of social and cultural noise that’s all around us, we have too often neglected the role of the arts in shaping who we are and how we might be better, or at least different. Like almost everything else, we tend to commodify the arts. Everything from streaming revenue, to box office grosses, to the price of paintings at auction. I would argue that what we don’t do enough of is look deep into the artists themselves. Artists who because of the very nature of their work, must

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30:47

Why The Exploration Of Space Should Still Matter

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/02/08

Once it was the moon. Today Mars is the holy grail of space exploration. In the coming months three missions, one from the US, one from Taiwan and one from the UAE will be approaching and/or landing on Mars. Next year Russia, Japan, and India have missions planned. It could get crowded up there! And while NASA, the President and Congress may be less enamored by space than by that latest social media site, there is amazing work being done at NASA. Also the private sector, in the form of wayfarers

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18:07

Are You A Broker, Expansionist or Convener? It Will...

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/02/02

As we work the phones and Zoom calls, it makes you wonder if physical connection is even necessary? Has the pandemic given us a new normal. How has it impacted things like conversation in the hallways or parking lot, a lunch meeting or a discussion over a glass of wine. Just like science, when you change the way and the amount of elements you mix together, you get a different result. It’s just chemistry right? So is the same true for real life? Is the chemistry of our connections a static condition

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24:13

Armed Members of Congress. Bloodshed in the Capitol....

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/01/25

For some of us, a sense of history is the only thing that gets us through each day. As divided as we are, as angry as we are, as exhausted as many of us are, history tells us that we’ve been here before. And while history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, as Mark Twain says, it often rhymes. To better understand our current moment, the run up to the Civil War gives us clues. We were a country going through transformation. Members of congress were armed. One congressman beat up a member of the

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32:40

The Hispanic Republican Vote

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/01/19

The great baseball manager Casey Stengel famously said that he never makes predictions, especially about the future. That also might be good advice for political pundits. For months in the run-up to the election, we heard pundits talk about the Latino vote, that they were all reachable by Democrats and it was just a matter of Democrats committing more time, more energy, and resources. Latinos were just waiting to be given a reason to vote for Democrats. The problem is the demographics, history,

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23:59

It's Time For America to Create a New Origin Story

Talk Cocktail ·

2021/01/08

If you follow business, you know that part of the lure of every company is its founding story or myth. Over time the myth takes on a life of its own, as it comes to define the company and its products. In a similar way it’s true of nations, including the United States. We were a nation forged from disparate regions. The Northeast, the South, the West, Midwest. Each with different cultures, different philosophies and demographics. And yet we have bought into the myth of one nation, one United

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25:37

Understanding Goodfellas and the Trump Henchman

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/12/30

When we think of the past four years of the Trump administration, the analogies to The Godfather come immediately to mind. The reality truly reflects the sometimes magisterial and always violent family saga of the large organized crime family But what about for the foot soldiers that have been corrupted by Trump? Those who have taken on his imprimatur to lie, steal and cheat. To understand them, we need to go back 30 years and look at Nicholas Pileggi's Wise guys, later to become the

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28:03

The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/12/26

There is no more significant issue than race in America. If perplexed our founders, it flies in the face of the notion of American exceptionalism, it clouds our dealing with the other nations, and it's an underlying current throughout American political history...right up to this very moment. The Black lives matter movement, profound and successful as it is at this moment, is simply part of the arc of history trying to bend toward justice. It’s impossible to understand that without understanding

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28:27

Broke is the definition of every aspect of American...

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/12/16

Regardless of whether you are for single-payer health insurance, fee for service, a hybridized French system, or the Affordable Care Act, what’s clear is that most of our health care system is broken. It’s left behind from the world of technology and creative destruction and it’s far too expensive. It’s a system that is broken, and that increasingly places barriers to entry for those without knowledge of the system or the poor without the financial resources to access it. But what about the

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31:11

The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann...

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/12/08

Every company has its foundational myth. Usually carved out of air by its founder. It becomes the basis of its culture, its marketing and its fundraising. However, often, the reality of running a business is much more mundane. It’s often separated from the myth. Most people, even charismatic founders of companies can understand the difference. It's like what used to be said of political campaigns, that candidates campaigned in poetry and governed in prose. Sometimes though when the myth takes over

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29:21

The Saudi Enigma - How Will Biden Deal With It?

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/12/01

There was a time when we looked upon Saudi Arabia as the gas station to the world. Certainly to the US. At the time it generated fear and a lack of understanding. It’s tribal structure, our lack of knowledge about its history and the repeated failures of US policy in the Middle East all placed the kingdom beyond our comprehension. Its effort today to modernize both its culture and its economy, the US’s own confidence about oil independence and other dramatic geopolitical shifts have caused us to

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28:33

Does America Need to Find Its First Principles? A...

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/11/23

The past four years, really right up to this moment, have been a test for the American republic. Over and over we’ve heard it asked, “can our institutions hold, are the ideas and documents of the framers adequate for the modern age.” At the same time, we’ve heard over and over again since Nov. 8, 2016, how did we get here? What has driven us to such political and social division, to our appetite for authoritarianism, the disregard for norms, the rural-urban and the educational divide?What ties all

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18:53

A Dolly Parton Moment

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/11/16

During our last great cultural and political upheaval in the 60s, music provided the soundtrack. Rock stars were not in Silicon Valley, but in the recording studios of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Nashville. Historically, our culture has been shaped by music and music has shaped by our culture. Additionally music, like sports, has been a way out of poverty for many. Few personify this better, particularly for many women, then Dolly Parton, and no one captures this better than Sarah Smarsh in

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24:55

The Collapse of America's Founding Mythology

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/11/09

Every company has its foundational myth. From the beginning, it becomes the basis of the company’s culture, its marketing, and really its DNA. The same is true for nations. And perhaps not surprisingly no nation has done a better job of that mythology than the United States. From the ideas of manifest destiny to John Winthrop's shining city on the hill, from freedom and equality to American exceptionalism, these stories are not only foundational for Americans, but they run in the American

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22:40

Biden..We Hardly Knew Ye

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/11/02

With the election just hours away, think about how many Presidents we’ve watched grow into the office. Clinton, Bush, and Obama. Earlier JFK and Jimmy Carter also came to the office unseasoned Compare this to Ike, or Reagan, George HW Bush, or Lyndon Johnson all who arrived, for better or worse as fully formed political and human beings. In this year’s election, policy aside, Joe Biden comes to us having lived a very long public life during which time he has grown into the person and politician

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18:38

Up Close and Personal with Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/10/29

The United States Senate was once considered the world’s greatest deliberative body. As we witnessed in the first presidential debate, it’s entirely possible that honest debate in America is actually dead. And why should we assume that the US Senate is any different? But rather than coming to mourn what once was, perhaps by summoning up the history of some of those senators who once infused the body with all that made it and the country great, we can almost by sheer force of will create an

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23:56

Is Socialism Coming To America?

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/10/27

Bernie Sanders an avowed Democratic socialist, never a member of the Democratic party, ran two failed presidential campaigns, and yet he has succeeded in moving the Democratic Party to the left. AOC, is a one-term congresswoman with no previous political experience and yet her Democratic Socialist views have gotten attention on a national scale. Particularly among young people, there is a growing dissatisfaction with the state of capitalism and free markets today. Even the likes of billionaires

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31:13

Are We So Divided that Secession Is The Only Answer?

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/10/23

There was a time when there were things that united us. Through most of the 20th century for example they were things that had nothing to do with politics. They were movies and TV shows and books and sports and one of the three choices for getting our evening television news. We were for a long time part of a commonweal, a kind of national town square that provided our water cooler conversation around the things we had in common. Over the past 40 years all that changed. Technology and the

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31:23

Jimmy Carter: A Good and Decent Presidency

Talk Cocktail ·

2020/10/14

Before his massive failure with the Covid crises, someone remarked that Donald Trump may not turn out to be the worst President we ever had, but for sure he will be the worst person ever to be President. In many ways, Jimmy Carter is the opposite. He may not have been a great President, but he may have been one of the best people to ever be President. It’s hard to say if the problems that Carter faced, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, inflation, unemployment, and the Iranian hostage crisis,

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1,369 results

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