Jeff Schechtman's "Talk Cocktail"

"To discover to the world something which deeply concerns it, and of which it was previously ignorant; to prove to it that it had been mistaken on some vital point of temporal or spiritual interest, is as important a service as a human being can render to his fellow creatures..." John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"

Friday, December 6, 2013

South Africa After Mandela

Nelson Mandela stands as one of our greatest symbols of the struggle for freedom. His shadow will always infuse the politics and culture of...

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Glamour

Most of us, over a certain age, remember when getting on a transcontinental or international flight was glamorous. We dressed to travel. S...

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Can an artist be true to his work and still do good in the world?

Whenever we see or hear great art, we are usually inclined to wonder about the forces that created it. What constitutes the artistic life? ...

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Terrorism's new future

Five years ago, on the evening of Nov. 26, 2008, heavily armed Pakistani terrorists raced to infiltrate the five-star Taj Mahal Palace Hotel...

Friday, November 29, 2013

Sex and the Genome

We’ve all heard that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. The notion that men and woman are different, is deeply inculcated in our c...

James Wolcott and Four Decades of Essays, Reviews, Hand Grenades, and Hurrahs

Let's face it, our attention spans have been decapitated by modernity. Our knowledge, criticism and even entertainment now comes to us ...

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Vampires and Angels and Werewolves, oh my!

For over thirty years, and through over thirty books Anne Rice has captivated us with her imaginative fiction. She has become one of the m...

Monday, November 25, 2013

How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency

When Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, and came in second in the New Hampshire primary, he dubbed himself “the comeback kid.” The ide...

Saturday, November 23, 2013

The Smartest Kids in the World

Like almost everything else in our globalized world, education is now competitive. We are long past the time when American kids could sta...

Does America Still Have A Future?

This year's National Book Award winner, George Packer deconstructs the past thirty years of "progress" in America. In The...

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Oswald acted alone...

If the assassination of a President took place today, we’d all know about it in a matter of seconds. Alerts, tweets, the Internet. We’d al...

It was the Mafia....

Fifty years ago this week, the nation experienced one of the seminal moments of the 20th century. Along with two World Wars, the dawning ...

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

An American Family in Iran

Thirty-four years ago the Iran hostage crisis forever transformed our view of that nation. For many of us, our memories of and attitude tow...

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Dallas 1963 = America 2013

We have this very understandable habit of always thinking our era is unique. Even that our current period of political extremism is unparal...

Monday, November 18, 2013

Amsterdam: The World's Most Liberal City

With the election of Bill de Blasio as its Mayor, New York seems to want to recapture its Liberal roots. For some that may mean simply thin...

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Crime and Funishment

To date, Patricia Cornwell’ s books have sold some 100 million copies in thirty-six languages in over 120 countries. She’s authored twenty...

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Moral Tribes: The Gap Between Us and Them

There is a current fad in the diet world known as the paleo diet. The idea is that we should eat what paleolithic man ate, in order to be p...

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About

Jeff Schechtman: Napa, California, United States; I grew up during the Kennedy Presidency. It was a time when the best and the brightest sat center stage in the nation's psyche. I've always remembered the story, that at an arts gala at the White House, Kennedy looked around the room and proclaimed it "the greatest gathering of talent since Thomas Jefferson dined alone." Without the benefit of such trappings, I've had the opportunity, for the past nineteen years, to have a seat at an international banquet of ideas and history. My radio program provided me a unique opportunity to "travel" around the world and speak to thousands of the most imaginative thinkers and leaders in the arenas of politics, religion, journalism, business, popular culture, academics, science, economics, history, and medicine. During these years, I have taken many people with me on this journey. It has been a momentous time. The trauma of politics, the onslaught of technology, the insights of science, and the changes in the human condition make this a period almost unequaled in history. I'm excited that technology has now made it possible for me to take more of you along with me on this journey.

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