Another Love Discouse: A Conversation with Edie Meidav

Sometimes the world makes little sense. That’s why when the right novel comes along, it helps us to look inward at the things that really shape us, move us and help carry us into tomorrow.

For a time, amidst the dark days of the pandemic, there was a precariousness about life itself. When we felt more confident of coming out of that, it gave way to an equal uncertainty about our most intimate relationships. It opened a pandora's box, letting out our grief and fear and inadequacies.

This is some of the stuff of Edie Meidav's new novel Another Love Discourse.

My conversation with Edie Meidav:

David Gergen on How Great Leaders are Made

We often look at leadership today as about celebrity or attention. In a time when we have elected a reality show star as President, when celebrity politics is the lifeblood of the American political class, it’s hard to imagine world class a politician or global leader emerging today

It makes you wonder, Is there something in our culture that has become antithetical to leadership? We watch Valdamer Zalinsky in wartime, and we’ve seen the leadership qualities that are possible. We even see it in some of our military leaders…but why the seemingly dearth of political leaders today.

David Gergen, who has devoted more than half a century of public service, and has served as a White House adviser to four US presidents of both parties: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, examines the perils of leadership in his new book Hearts Touched with Fire: How Great Leaders are Made.

My conversation with David Gergen:

 

Why Anxiety is Good for You!

It seems we live in a society where everyone wants to be protected. We don’t want to hear views we disagree with for fear that it might upset us, we don't’ want to go back to the office because we get stressed by a commute. We are afraid to let our kids go out and play unless they are supervised. We are anxious about money, about politics, about family…it’s no wonder there is an entire drug industry with provides for our every anxious moment.

We live emerged in first world problems that pale compared to the Greatest Generation, that fought a World War, lived through a Depression and did duck-and-cover drills in fear of nuclear annihilation.

Just maybe the fault is not in our society but in ourselves. Maybe instead of trying to eliminate all that might make us anxious, suppose we just got better at dealing with it. Just Maybe coping has fewer side effects than medication? Maybe that is what we were trained to do, as man first stepped onto the savannah, and the lion came after him. He learned very quickly to cope with anxiety. That coping is still buried somewhere in our DNA

This is where Tracy Dennis-Tiwary takes us in her new book Future Tense - Why Anxiety Is Good for You.

My conversation with Tracy Dennis-Tiwary::