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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

25:43

Can America's Military Ever Recover?

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/12/19

We all know that whether it’s a child’s toy or a powerful institution if something is built solid, misuse or the infliction of damage will not usually break it. How many times have you dropped your phone and it’s been fine? On the other hand, that which is weak or frayed will unravel with the least amount of stress. In many ways, we can say that about America’s foreign policy and military establishment. Weakened over the years by uncertainly, hesitation partisanship, bad decisions and an exaggerated

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30:22

From Useful Idiot to Working Asset

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/12/18

Perhaps our greatest spy novelist of the cold war, John le Carré, talks about what he sees as the appetite for superpower, that still exists in the U.S. and Russia. He says that what’s shared is the desire for oligarchy, the dismissal of truth, the contempt actually for the electorate, and for the democratic system. That’s common to both of them. While the U.S. has certainly made mistakes, and was not always been pure in its motives and actions, today under Donald Trump something is different. What

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00:00

The Model For Taking It To The Streets

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/12/17

Just as we saw in America in the 1960s, as we saw when the Berlin Wall fell, as we witnessed in the Middle East, during the Arab Spring, and as we are witnessing today in Hong Kong, young people are always at the ramparts of change and revolution. This was equally true in France in the run-up to WWII and in the resistance to the German occupation. On a day when people, mostly young, are taking to the streets, it’s worth talking to Ronald Rosbottom, about Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the

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19:49

Why Quantum Mechanics Matter and Why You Should Care:...

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/12/13

The great screenwriter William Goldman once said of Hollywood that nobody knows anything. The physicist Richard Feynman once said that no one understands quantum mechanics. And yet random as knowledge sometimes might be, it safe to say that the entire technological infrastructure of modern society, all of Silicon Valley, is built on top of the reliable functioning quantum mechanics. Quantum Mechanics has been around since 1927. It is so ubiquitous in some ways that it’s been a little like being able

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18:24

What Happens to Ancestry Testing DNA?

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/12/09

It’s no surprise that many fear technology is out of control. AI, facial recognition and robotics are the stuff of science fear. But it’s biotechnology and the understanding of what makes us tick that may be the ultimate frontier to both human understanding and human abuse by those that are malevolent. Few understand this better than bestselling novelist Dr. Robin Cook. He has used his insights into the future to scare the bejesus out of us in his books like Coma, Cure, and Fever. Now in his latest

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25:57

The Best and the Brightest of America's Diplomats

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/12/02

Clausewitz said that politics or diplomacy was “war by other means.” Churchill put it more colorfully when he said that “diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.” The Impeachment hearings have pulled back the cover on the work, the integrity, and the quality of America’s diplomats. Perhaps it’s their self effacing, sometimes quiet professionalism that makes them targets for the more malevolent unprofessional forces in government. This was as

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27:40

Kickstarting a Better World

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/11/26

The great playwright Arthur Miller once wrote that too often “we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Perhaps nowhere is that truer than today. In a world where profit maximization and transactional value often seems to dominate, and the current push back to that could have unintended consequences, how do we find our equilibrium? How do we create a world of money and value, a world of profit and purpose, unbridled ambition and deeper meaning? Yancey Strickler, a co-founder and

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15:58

Fake is Sometimes Real

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/11/18

Artificial flavors, fake news, authentic copies, and real replicas. They all sound like oxymoronic gibberish at worst, overzealous marketing at best. And so it is that sometimes the fake is indeed real. Today we can appreciate and even learn or feel something by looking at a replica piece of art or liking an artificial version of our favorite food flavor or enjoying fake meat, But how about owning a Chinese made Louie Vuitton bag, Rolex or Mont Blanc pen? The danger of course, on every level, is

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24:50

Only Whistleblowers Can Save Democracy

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/11/12

Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Coleen Rowley, and the whistleblower who let us know about the Ukraine call, are just a few whose actions sparked international dialogue and their names may be universally recognized. But brave though they were, their courage isn’t universally revered. Back in 2002 TIME magazine named three whistleblowers as people of the year and famed whistleblowers such as Frank Serpico, Jeffrey Wigand, and Karen Silkwood have been the subject of major films. Yet vitriol continues

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22:32

Why is Science Under Assault?

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/11/12

Even when we don’t realize it, science is part of our lives. Physics, chemistry, biology...it’s all essential to our survival. So why is the general subject so confusing these days? Why do laymen think they know better than scientists? And perhaps more importantly, at a time when everything else is advancing, when the cutting edge of science impacts us all, how have the methodologies of science kept pace with modernity? Perhaps we’re all too stuck in the mindset of high school science class, and

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30:28

The Battle of Mosul - The Last Great Battle Against...

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/11/05

While many of you can recite the great battles of WW I and II and even the Civil War, the more recent battle that have been fought in the Middle East against ISIS are already forgotten. Certainly, the battle for Mosul was one of those Beyond that, there is the relevance to events taking place today. The battle for Mosul, which helped take down ISIS in 2017, had as a major component, the forces of the autonomous region of Kurdistan. 40,000 Kurds that were part of the joint military effort in a battle

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29:38

He is a Being Made of Television

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/10/29

There is not a morning that goes by without some story about the impact of social media. The power of Facebook or Twitter, or Instagram. With all of that, it’s easy to forget the power of television. Its impact on our lives growing up, its power today and what it has wrought. It’s given us Ronald Regan, Josiah Bartlet, and Donald Trump. Howard Beal laid it out for us in Network, but James Poniewozik gives us the contemporary context in his new book Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the

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21:05

The Science of Kindness Is Real

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/10/27

In many communities you often see people wearing a button that says Be Kind. In an ever competitive and sometimes selfish world that’s not always easy to do. Our political dialogue makes it even more difficult. Add to that our economic and personal pressures and the acceleration that we all face, and kindness often gets left way behind. But suppose we found out that kindness is not just something we can do to make us feel better, suppose we discovered that kindness can really help us live longer and

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28:23

Why Health Care Is Broken, and How to Fix...

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/10/24

Imagine if you went to buy a car and rather than one price for the car, you had to essentially buy it ala carte. You had to negotiate a separate price for the wheels, for the engine, for the paint, for seats, all separate. All from different suppliers and all with hidden fees. Sound ridiculous? But that is essentially how we pay for health care in America. It’s no wonder that there is no more polarizing issues than the delivery and the cost of health care. It’s why it’s front and center in our

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29:12

Deep State: Trump, the FBI, and the Rule of Law: A...

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/10/22

The world is a complex place. The news comes at us at hyper-speed and 24/7. All while we have to deal with family, work and life. Therefore more than ever, it’s critical that there are those among us, journalists mostly, whose job it is to distill and explain events to us. Not to tell us how or what to think, but to present the big stories in-depth and in a narrative that allows us to be smarter about the world, and refine how we are to live in it. Few do this better than James B. Stewart. He has

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18:39

Harold Bloom 1930 - 2019

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/10/17

Harold Bloom, who died last week at the age of 89, was one of our great teachers and literary critics. Often out of sync with contemporary literary fashion, he defended the “Western canon” and fought against what he called “the School of Resentment,” multiculturalists and those whom he argued betrayed what he saw as literature’s essential purpose. I had the opportunity to know Professor Bloom as a student, and later in life, I had the opportunity to interview him. Most recently in 2000 upon the

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27:27

A Conversation with the Recipients of This Years...

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/10/15

Beyond the common denominator of poverty what are aspects of the poor that we just don't understand? We've learned that poverty itself creates a different life, a different view of the world. A view that arguably accounts for the fundamental failures of so many well-meaning programs. Why this is, what works and why has it been so hard to find the magic bullet. Trying to answer this has been the work of the winners of this year's Nobel Prize in economics, Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee. My

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20:59

The End of America's Cultural Hegemony

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/10/14

A look at the news any day reminds us that America is no longer the singular dominant power in the world. This is true vis a vis soft power, moral persuasion, and now cultural power. American movies, music, and art no longer are the single option for global entertainment. Perhaps not since the British invasion of the ‘60s have we seen so much art and entertainment coming from outside of the U.S. This time form India, South Korea, and even Turkey. This is the world that Fatima Bhutto takes us into

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25:18

The Tyranny of Virtue: Political Correctness Run...

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/10/13

Once upon a time, we didn’t have to think about political correctness. And we survived as a culture! We self-corrected, we became more sensitive to others, we learned to accept and appreciate diversity. It was sometimes difficult, even painful. But a lot of it was organic. Often we slipped up. We fell backward, and sometimes it even took appropriate legislation to provide better guardrails for our behavior. Such was the forward march of mankind. But today, the bludgeon of political correctness hangs

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22:43

Just Who is Brett Kavanaugh?

Talk Cocktail ·

2019/10/09

Most of us remember being transfixed, just one year ago, to the hearings from now Supreme Court Justice Brent Kavanaugh. This week, as the court begins its new term, Justice Kavanaugh will be part of a court deciding on some of the most fundamental cases that affect our politics, our culture, and our freedoms. All in an atmosphere that, if even possible, is even more polarized than it was a year ago. So who is Brett Kavanaugh? Certainly the one week FBI investigation and the televised circus that

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1,369 results

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