Monday, April 30, 2012

The Last Days of Old China

The China we are all to familiar with today is a modern nation, moving rapidly from a rural to an industrial economy. A center of commerce and modernity. But just before WWII China, particularly Peking, as it was known then, was a colonial outpost, a mix of privilege, scandal, superstition and opulence. The British were omnipresent, the Japanese were encircling the city. It was truly the last days of Peking. Amidst this the murder of a British schoolgirl would capture the city's imagination and fear. A murder that would reveal a side of Peking that few wanted to acknowledge. China expert and British expat Paul French has picked up the threads of this story and woven them into a remarkable picture of time that is truly a prelude to modern China. He takes us on a remarkable journey in Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China.


My conversation with Paul French:


Click here to listen on your iphone or ipad

Bookmark and Share

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Do the twenties matter?

Research tells us that we probably will have many careers in our elongated lifetime; that we may even have many spouses. This is a far cry from the the post war boomer ideal of one career and in some cases one job and one spouse. Given all of this life change, does what happens in our 20s really matter? In an era in which graduate school is almost de rigueur for a good job, when young men are more and more in a state of prolonged adolescence, in some cases moving home to mom, is 20 simply the new 20? Dr. Meg Jay has stirred up some controversy with her new look at twenty somethings: The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

 My conversation with Meg Jay:



Click here to listen on your iphone or ipad

Bookmark and Share

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

How Goofing Off Drives Success

The culture of business today, particularly in the world of tech, is not modeled after Sterling Cooper. While in the days of Mad Men, twenty-percent of the time might have been spent boozing and flirting, later to be supplanted by golf, today that same time is often spent by individuals working on their own pet projects. These are not your fathers companies and the results are impressive. Long time technology journalist and blogger Ryan Tate takes us inside companies that practice The 20% Doctrine:

My conversation with Ryan Tate:

Has Cause Marketing Gone Too Far

We live a world in which we want everything to be easy. We want instant gratification, sound bite politics, fast food and instant cures for all problems. We also want our philanthropy to be easy and painless. If we can go shopping or just wear a bracelet and do good, what could be better? The problem is, like most things instant, it’s not that simple or that good. Or maybe it is, if we only think of ourselves as consumers rather than engaged and caring human beings. This is the jumping off point for Mara Einstein in Compassion, Inc.: How Corporate America Blurs the Line between What We Buy, Who We Are, and Those We Help

My conversation with Mara Einstein:
Bookmark and Share

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Gluttony and Hubris in an Age of Epic Inequality OR Why Greed is Not Good

The level of economic inequality in America today exceeds every other Western nation. This is ironic when one realizes that it was the rise of the middle class that built post war America. So what has happened in three generations, in just sixty years, that has so stratified the nation, that makes Wall Street look like Versailles in the age of Louis the 14th, and in 2008 almost drove the economy off the cliff?Esteemed Canadian journalist Linda McQuaig takes us to the Billionaires' Ball: Gluttony and Hubris in an Age of Epic Inequality

My conversation with Linda McQuaig:

Monday, April 23, 2012

Entrepreneurs and The Coming Prosperity

We sit at the apogee of four hundred years of human progress; never have we been closer to democratizing that progress to every corner of the globe. Yet here we sit today, in a nation fearful, paralyzed and seeing our futures almost choked off by that fear. We are in a time where, as Yates observed, “ the best lack all conviction, the worst are full of passionate intensity.” While we rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic, the rest of world looks out to opportunity and progress. And it is entrepreneurs that sit at the forefront of that progress. George Mason University professor Philip Auerswald argues that how we respond to these challenges will determine The Coming Prosperity:

My conversation with Philip Auerswald:



Click Here to listen on your iphone or ipad

  Bookmark and Share

Independent Book Blogger Awards
Vote for this blog for the Independent Book Blogger Awards!
Vote

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Equal Pay and Fairness: A radical idea

Equal pay for equal work. Sounds like such a simple idea. Yet it had to take an act of Congress and the support of the President to make it a reality. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was the first bill signed by President Obama. It was passed with bipartisan support, but now it's become a campaign issue, with one Republican Senate candidate calling it a "nuisance," and Mitt Romney, not surprisingly on the fence about it. Lilly Ledbetter never dreamed she'd be the center of national controversy. She was just trying to do her job and support her family. Now she gives us a first hand account of what she went through in Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay and Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond

My conversation with Lilly Ledbetter:

Independent Book Blogger Awards
Vote for this blog for the Independent Book Blogger Awards!
Vote

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Is it possible?

On June 12th, 1994 a double homicide took place in Brentwood, CA. that would forever change the way we view crimes, criminal procedure and the American justice system. No crime and trial has ever drawn a bigger audience than the trial of O.J. Simpson for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The players, the events, the moments are still powerfully etched in the public consciousness and even our popular entertainment had to shift to accommodate the perceptions we had all been inculcated with as a result of the crime and trial. But was justice served? Did O.J. get away with murder? Has the downward spiral of his life been a kind of karmic punishment for a crime he got away with, OR...was he innocent? Did someone else actually commit the crime. Private Investigator Bill Dear has a different theory and like it or not, he's spent the past eighteen years pursuing it and now he lays it out in O.J. is Innocent and I Can Prove It My conversation with Bill Dear:


Independent Book Blogger Awards
Vote for this blog for the Independent Book Blogger Awards!
Vote

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Israel on the brink

In his new book The Crisis of Zionism, esteemed journalist, author and professor Peter Beinart argues that Israel is in danger. Not just from outside forces, not just from Palestinians or Iranians, but from the unraveling of its own core values, central ideas and founding principals. He says that we need to view Israel today not as some Disneyfied version of the holy land, but as a modern nation state, with real power, that must merge the responsibility of that power, with the values that created it in the first place. And that perhaps the greatest threat to accomplishing this, comes not only from within Israel itself, but from an American Jewish community that has made power, real estate and Zionism a religion unto itself. My conversation with Peter Beinart:



Click here to listen on your iphone or ipad

Bookmark and Share



Monday, April 16, 2012

Mike Wallace

As many of you saw last night, 60 Minutes devoted an entire program to a retrospective of Mike Wallace's remarkable body of work. It reminded me of a conversation I had with Wallace back in 2006, just after his retirement from 60 Minutes, and upon the publication of the second volume of his memoirs. At the time Wallace was 87 years old, yet still personified and profoundly understood the role of broadcast journalism.

This seemed like a good time to post that interview with Mike Wallace

  Bookmark and Share

Independent Book Blogger Awards
Vote for this blog for the Independent Book Blogger Awards!
Vote

Friday, April 13, 2012

The Summer that changed Baseball - and America

1968 was certainly one of the most tumultuous years in American history. It was a year of political turbulence, civil unrest and violence; the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. It was a time that some thought the country would never recover from. It was also, although not quite as profoundly remembered, an unforgettable season in the history of baseball. Baseball had reached its apogee of popularity and it was a much need national distraction. Writer and journalist Tim Wendel takes us back to the Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball--and America--Forever.

My conversation with Tim Wendel



Click here to listen on your iphone or ipad

Bookmark and Share


Independent Book Blogger Awards
Vote for this blog for the Independent Book Blogger Awards!
Vote

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Atheism 2.0

The battle between religion and secularism seems to have reached a feaver pitch in the US. Alain de Botton argues in his new work, Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion, that there may be a middle ground. That religions have important things to teach the secular world. That the tired old debate between atheists and believers is not helping the modern world and that we need to move onto more fruitful ground. For too long, de Botton says, we have faced a false choice between either swallowing doctrines or doing away with some worthwhile rituals and ideas. Botton's is a kinder, gentler atheism.

 My conversation with Alain de Botton:

Independent Book Blogger Awards
Vote for this blog for the Independent Book Blogger Awards!
Vote

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

The joy of taste

Almost as much as our fingerprints or our relationships, we each seem to have very individualized taste profiles. We might like our coffee black, while our partners or colleagues might like it with only cream and sugar. We might like broccoli and hate sweets, just the opposite of others. How does this profile develop, can we refine it, change it and even get more enjoyment out of food? What's the link between how food tastes and and how it sometimes leads to problems. Barb Stuckey has been a professional food developer for 15 years and she takes us on a journey of taste in Taste What You're Missing: The Passionate Eater's Guide to Why Good Food Tastes Good. 

 My conversation with Barb Stuckey:



Click here to listen on your iphone or ipad

Bookmark and Share

Independent Book Blogger Awards
Vote for this blog for the Independent Book Blogger Awards!
Vote

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Great Soul

There are very few individuals for whom just the mention of their name conjures up a complete set of beliefs and values. Gandhi is certainly one of those. So it is remarkable that as India continues to go through its current transformation, that Gandhi's legacy is still evolving. Former New York Times Executive Editor and Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Lelyveld in Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, takes us on the journey of Gandhi's extraordinary struggles on two continents, his ideals and values and how the nation that still revers him, rejected so many of his values.

My conversation with Joseph Lelyveld:
Independent Book Blogger Awards

Vote for this blog for the Independent Book Blogger Awards!

Vote

Monday, April 9, 2012

when God talks back

It seemed that everywhere we turned last week religion was front and center. Easter, Passover and even our political dialogue, all contained different sides of religious discussion. But what happens when the religious rhetoric goes to extremes? When individuals and even politicians claim to have spoken directly to, or are taking insttructions from God? Is this still religion, or have we crossed a line in psychosis? This is the backdrop for Tanya Luhrmann’s, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God

My conversation with T.M. Luhrman

Friday, April 6, 2012

From North Korea to Freedom

If there ever was any question about the human instinct for freedom, the story of Shin Dong-hyuk's escape from a North Korean prison camp will lay that doubt to rest.

North Korea currently holds as many as 200,000 political prisoners in a half-dozen labor camps. Many spend their lives there, often dying from malnutrition and mistreatment. Only one man, born inside one of the brutal camps, raised to be a laborer, has managed to escape. Journalist Blaine Hardin in Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, tells the story of Shin Dong-Hyuk - how he was starved, tortured and forced to witness the execution of his mother and brother, and how he ultimately found his way to freedom.

My conversation with Blaine Harden:



Click here to listen on your iphone or ipad
Bookmark and Share