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"

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Foreign Correspondent

Every day we are inundated with domestic news coverage . Every nuance, every utterance by every political actor is reported and analyzed ov...

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus

The current debate about how we deal with sexual assault on college campuses has been playing out for well over a decade. It is, among other...

Saturday, September 23, 2017

The Vietnam War and Why It Still Matters

For those us that were alive and aware in the 60’s and 70’s there was no greater division than Vietnam. Perhaps, other than the Civil War it...

Thursday, September 21, 2017

How America Went Haywire

Whether you are on the left or the right, I think it's fair to say that you can go through your entire day, week, month and maybe even y...

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

The 90's Rise Of The American Libido

It certainly seems that every decade has its own center of gravity. In the post war 50’s, New York, both the city and its suburbs, defined...

Monday, September 18, 2017

The Triumph of Fear

The ability to create fear is the most basic, primal and exploitive of the tools for manipulation. From the Garden of Eden, to would be Pres...

Saturday, September 16, 2017

The Best of Us

We celebrate births and deaths, we mark anniversaries. But what are we really celebrating or marking? Sometimes the real significance lies ...

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Why Meditation May Be Our Best Survival Mechanism

We all know of, or have heard of, Moore's Law. It says that our computing power doubles every year. It’s often the core thesis in discu...

Thursday, September 7, 2017

How Music Shapes Us and How We Shape Music

Old songs like old photographs are the purveyors of a kind of double imagery. They have relevance in the moment, just as they make yesterda...

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

New Research Shows That Alzheimer's is Reversible

In the panoply of diseases that Baby Boomers are facing, perhaps none seems as insidious as Alzheimer's. Cancer we always feel we can b...

Monday, September 4, 2017

American Women's Lives At Work since 1964

It seems that every day we are reliving and relitigating the past sixty years. Nuclear fears, war in Korea, Russia, espionage, the Klan, ci...

Thursday, August 31, 2017

The End of White Male Privilege

You know the old adage about a stopped clock being right twice a day? The same is true of Donald Trump. Occasionally, usually by accident, e...

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Civil War History Can Be Factual, but Fluid

Because memory is imperfect, because traditions and stories are often altered as they are passed down from generation to generation, because...

Saturday, August 26, 2017

What Could Happen While You Were Totally Off The Grid For A Few Hours?

Think about what touches us every day?Certainly technology in many forms and soon artificial intelligence. We are touched by our consumption...

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Attica 1971: What Lessons Have We Learned?

Certainly with respect to history, it too often seems like everything old is new again. Think about it: Racial conflict, mass incarceration,...

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Natasha - A New Film from Director David Bizmozgis

Everyday Russia is in the news. After being off of our collective radar for so long, suddenly it's a national obsession. Sure, a lot o...

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Liberal Arts Education Should Matter Now, More Than Ever

If you do a Google search about STEM education,(science technology engineering and math,) you come up with over 69 million entries. It has b...

Sunday, August 20, 2017

The Chickenshit Club: Or Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives.

Years ago you may remember that the Presidential candidate and former US Senator John Edwards spoke of two Americas. One poor and one rich a...

Monday, August 14, 2017

China's Stranglehold on Our Technology

Most of you woke up this morning hearing bellicose talk about the possibility of a trade war with China. What we don’t hear is that virtua...

Saturday, August 5, 2017

Why Are We Looking Back at Vietnam?

Coming up next month, Ken Burns’ powerful documentary about the Vietnam war will be in living rooms across America. It makes you wonder why...

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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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