You're Fired !

In the private sector, when corporations get into trouble they replace the CEO. When sports teams repeatedly have a losing season, invariably they replace the coach. If sales are down, managers are replaced.  Yet in the military today, it's very rare that Generals are replaced. Even in the wake of catastrophic failure.

Esteemed military journalist Thomas Ricks argues in The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, that failures in America's recent wars can be directly traced to failures of those in command. Ricks examines U.S. military leadership from World War Two to the present day, and concludes that the mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan can be traced to the Army's inability to come to terms with all the lessons of Vietnam and how that continued lack of accountability has shaped the military.

My conversation with Tom Ricks:

The resilience of the human spirit

Woody Allen, in Annie Hall, said that he felt that life was divided into the horrible and the miserable. The horrible he thought were terminal cases, and blind people, and those with severe disabilities. He said, “I don't know how they get through life.”

Yet many don't have that choice. Particularly for parents of children with severe disabilities. It appears on the surface that horrible is what they have to deal with every day. However for many of them, it’s not horrible at all. It is difficult, it’s often painful, but it’s also a powerful lesson about unconditional love, about finding strength in broken places and about redefining one's identity. Often by entering an alien world, that sometimes turns out to be a place of love, and safety and enrichment.

This is the world that National Book Award winner Andrew Solomon lays out for us in Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity.

My conversation with Andrew Solomon:

# Tweet Tweet

For years people have referred to Hollywood, as being like High school with money. Well, Hollywood has matured a lot. But today the same might be said about the tech world.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the story of the rise and rise of Twitter. Started by four young guys looking to change the world, the drama of their story would rival anything in the world of high school mean girls.

Now, coinciding with the Twitter IPO, NY Times reporter Nick Bilton gives us Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal. It takes us inside the remarkable story of the company and the four men who stated it. It’s a story of money, loneliness, bitterness, technology and personal growth; all driven by a grand vision to change how we communicate.

My conversation with Nick Bilton:

The Psychopath Inside

Even if you are not a football fan, you’ve all seen the diagrams of plays with all those X’s and O’s. It makes you think, and even sometimes makes the players and coaches think, that they have it all figured out. If you just follow the pattern, you will have success and that it will be a winning play.

Problem is, it’s not true. There are dozens of factors that enter into the equation. The weather, the turf, memory, mental ability, the agility to pull it off and of course the plans and mindset of the opposing team.

In many ways the same is true for the human brain and human behavior. We might have brain patterns, genetics and chemistry that tells us that we should or will develop a certain way. The problem is there is also environment, parents, and many other factors that make us who we are.

That's the backdrop for neuroscientist Dr. James Fallon’s look at psychopathology in his book The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain

My conversation with James Fallon:

One family's life defines the 20th Century

When we look at the emergence of the diaspora of any ethnic group, we realize how important immigration is. To the Jews of the 20th century it was everything. Some would migrate to America and become pillars of both capitalism and communism. Some would migrate to Palestine and birth the state of Israel out of the desert. Others would be left behind in Europe and suffer the last full measures of the holocaust. They to would impact history, both by their courage and even by what they might have accomplished.

David Laskin, has written The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century. It'sabout his own family, but it's also a history that incorporates all the strands of the journey and the history of the Jewish diaspora in the 20th Century.

My conversation with David Laskin:

What it means to be human

We know that genes help make us who and what we are. But, of the 25,000 genes we possess, a relatively few are significantly different from person to person. Some of those genes are often referred to as the Compatibility Genes. Genes that both impact our relationships and determine how we responded to infection and disease.

Daniel Davis, in his new book, The Compatibility Gene: How Our Bodies Fight Disease, Attract Others, and Define Our Selves, cuts through the complexities of modern genetics to reveal much about the most important selection of genes, the ones that define what it means to be human.

My conversation with Daniel Davis:

Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them

Imagine if decisions in Washington, or at any level of government for that matter, were really made on the basis of policy. If careful analysis could win out over politics. Certainly the current health care debate would be very different. But so would our discussions about economic policy. If our discussion of the 2008 financial meltdown had been about analysis of what happened, as opposed to who's to blame, perhaps we’ve have learned a lot more from it.

Wesleyan Professor of Economics, Richard Grossman takes a long view of several economic crises and what we got WRONG: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them.

My conversation with Richard Grossman:

A beacon of democracy or an apartheid state?

If I said that this conversation was about authoritarian politics, the religious right, a demographic crisis facing one political party, and the continued rise of military power, you would easily assume we would be talking about the US. In fact, these same forces are at play in greater Israel, and they are constantly reinforced here, by perhaps the most powerful political lobby in the United States.

The complexity of Israeli politics, its relationship with the US, and its impact on our own politics are all issues that exist not just in the abstract world of policy wonks. Each and every day they impact the lives of thousands of people on the ground in Israel, Gaza and the Middle East.

Max Blumenthal takes a brave and controversial look at this in Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.

My conversation with Max Blumenthal:

The Everything Store

We all know, or have heard about life in Silicon Valley. The perks, the collegiality, the PowerPoint, the team ethos. In fact, perhaps the most successful company to master the Internet is none of those things. It engages in predatory pricing, it is fiercely competitive, it eschews both PowerPoint and perks. Its leader was Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999 and and yet, is just now 14 years later, reaching the zenith of his power. The company is Amazon and its leader and founder Jeff Bezos. Clearly the company is doing something different and doing it very, very well. Now we have the very best picture of Bezos and Amazon in Brad Stone's fascinating new book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.

My conversation with Brad Stone:

New York as a metaphor for America in the 50's

Mark Helprin, whose novels include Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War and Freddy and Fredericka, is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.

Helprin holds degrees from Harvard College and Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and did postgraduate work at the University of Oxford. He served in the British Merchant Navy, the Israeli infantry, and the Israeli Air Force.

In his latest novel, In Sunlight and in Shadow,  he take us to New York in the post war years.  Helprin, who wrote speeches for Bob Dole when he was a Presidential candidate, gives us what some might consider to be an idealized version of the times.

In a wide ranging conversation, Helprin and I discuss Mad Men, The Greatest Generation, irony, sex in the workplace and the power of love and counter culture.


My conversation with Mark Helprin:

Minerva Schools at KGI

Higher education, like so much else in education is beginning to change. While the American higher education system is the envy of the word, it still needs some modernization.

Just like other form of education, it has remained pretty much the same throughout the 20th Century and into the 21st. Think about it. 100+ years of creative destruction has impacted virtually every aspect of society, but University education has not fully adapted.

It has started to. First by addressing that we live in confusing times. Our personal connections and our world is becoming both more bifurcated and more interdependent, both a the same time. We need to understand each other better, but we also need to understand the wider world much better. So what kind of higher education do we need to try and square this circle?

Former US Senator and former head The New School, Bob Kerrey, is a key part of the new Minerva School at KGI.

My conversation with Senator Bob Kerrey:

"A riddle wrapped in an enigma, inside of a mystery."

Back in the days of the former Soviet Union, we use to look to any public clue to try and understand what went on behind those Kremlin walls. It gave rise to a whole group of people who were referred to as Kremlinologist.

Today, it seems we look at the Supreme Court in much the same way.  At a time when the other branches of government talk about transparency and are exposed by leaks, when we often know too much about Members of Congress and the White House, the court often remains that enigma wrapped in a mystery.

Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet helps us shed some light on the current court with, In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court.

My conversation with Mark Tushnet:

The panic, pleasure and history of CANDY, in one bite

This week marks the official start of candy season. The bags of Halloween candy, followed by chocolate turkeys, chocolate gifts,  the Chanukah chocolate, endless Christmas candy, all portend to a season of secret consumption by adults, a watchful eyes on kids and endless candy guilt. Plus the requisites articles about how sugar is more addictive than cocaine and seemingly every disease studied by the CDC, amplified by sugar.

In fact, the story of candy is a story of American industrialization, sensuality, the beginnings of artificial food, the seduction and independence of children, as they first use candy to control their own pleasure. It’s a story told by Rutgers University professor Samira Kawash in Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure.

My conversation with Samira Kawash:

Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

At the Harvard Business School, which George W. Bush attended, there are many case studies about business partnerships. One of the recurring themes is that in tough times partnerships are easy. When everyone is struggling for a common goal, unity is always easier. But when a business starts to succeed, the partnership is always a lot tougher.

Political partnerships are different, but still similar. There is no bottom line to worry about, but when one partner starts to succeed politically, ahead of the other, usually there is trouble and strain on the relationship. The Bush/Cheney partnership is a good example.

It seems that every modern Presidential aspirant, when he picks a Vice-Presidential nominee, says that it’s going to be a unique and special partnership. The Bush /Cheney partnership was certainly true to that, especially given the events of 9/11 and the impact that the partnership had on the nation, in ways that we’ll be living with for decades to come.

That’s why New York Times, Chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker's new book, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House is so important and so central to understanding the history of the Bush administration.

My conversation with Peter Baker:

Occupy Wall Street...two years later

The "one percent," "occupy," "income inequality," all are ideas and phrases that have become part of our national political conversation and all born of the movement that started in Zuccotti Park, in lower Manhattan, two years ago.
The degree to which politics, from President Obama to New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio are talking about these issues, should be a sign of success. But is it? Does this two year old movement feel like it has succeeded and if not, what’s left to accomplish?

Recently Bill Ayers talked to me about how movements should eschew ordinary political success in favor of organizing in communities, in neighborhoods, in school and in the workplace. So what’s the legacy of Occupy Wall Street?  Nathan Schneider was present at the creation of Occupy and he takes us back in Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse.

My conversation with Nathan Schneider:

Where They Were From

Usually when we all have conversations about race and poverty, it's usually in a very abstract way. We often loose sight of how these realities impact peoples lives. Not in a political or policy sense, but simply with respect to what life is like in the poor and rural parts of the American South.

Few have a better ear or better understanding of this reality than National Book Award winner and Stegner Fellow Jesmyn Ward. Now she looks back at the loss of five men that she grew up with, in her memoir, Men We Reaped:

My conversation with Jesmyn Ward:

Palling around with Bill Ayers

During the government shut down, many commented that the radical elements of the Republican party were acting like terrorists. Even if we might have disagreed with their goals, the Tea Party ideas of direct action, grassroots organizing and commitment to their ideas of social change, were very reminiscent, in the minds of some, to the efforts of many groups in the 1960’s. However, most didn't like the analogy. In fact Sarah Palin commented that the Tea Party groups were specifically not like Bill Ayers and the "terrorists" that the President "palled around with."

Well, Bill Ayers, who became Public Enemy number one in the eyes of Republicans in 2008, is still deeply committed to social change. The President doesn't pal around with him or take his advice, anymore than he does with Ted Cruz. Bill Ayers has now written a  second memoir, picking up where his last, FUGITIVE DAYS, left off.

My conversation with Bill Ayers:

League of Denial

We worry about too big to fail. Yet bank losses pale in comparison to the degree to which the National Football League, has been too big to tell the truth. Its denials have seemingly directly resulted in the death of NFL players. Even worse, it has created untold dangers to young kids playing football, because their parents believed the leagues denials about the risk of brain injury coming from concussion and repetitive head trauma. When seen in its totality, it’s hard to deny that this ten billion dollar Park Avenue business, that is the NFL, does not have blood on its hands.

We’ve all heard the debate questioning the impacts of repeated concussions and head trauma on NFL players. But the facts are are not up for debate. This is not a case where the cover up is worse than the crime. For the NFL, the cover up is the crime.

Two of our top investigative journalists, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru look inside twenty years of denial on the part of the NFL, in their book and Frontline documentary League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth.

My conversation with Mark Fainaru-Wada & Steve Fainaru: