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 history is factual, but fluid, we often build statues or preserve buildings as triggers to our remembered past.

Normally this is played out in community battles over preservation vs. progress. But when the subject is the Civil War, everything changes. Perhaps, as it should. The civil war was after all the penultimate flashpoint of America's original sin.

While other wars come and go, often left to cloistered historians to debate, the Civil War, slavery, and fabric of the republic are re litigated over and over and over again. And so it goes today in the battle over statues, that some see as the embodiment of all that went wrong.

To better understand this, I talk to Christy Coleman, the Chief Executive Officer of the American Civil War Museum.

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Christy Coleman:

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 of media, the intense partisan divide fueled by tribalism, and the fear and frustration that sometimes makes us want to escape, and be able to look at all of this from 30K feet, so that we can see it's absurdity.

But of course moments later we’re dropped right back into it. So imagine if all of these powerful and metastasizing forces came together in a recipe that multiplies all of them.

What you’d have is Matt Richtel’s prescient new novel Dead on Arrival.

My conversation with Matt Richtel:

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, over aggressive policing, and the police getting off scot free. This is not yesterday’s news. This is the story of an event that took place on September 9, 1971. The uprising at Attica Prison.

In many ways the events of that week set the unfortunate predicate for so much that would happen after. It’s an event from which we’ve learned all the wrong lessons, often, until now, with many of the wrong facts.

Now, Pulitzer Prize winning historian Heather Ann Thompson puts it all in historical context in Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

My conversation with Heather Ann Thompson:

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 of it is political, but beyond that it makes us aware of another country, another place and and a people whose life and culture just might impact us all.

Today, a new movie appears on the scene, NATASHA, from director David Bizmozgis . It’s a little like taking a walk through a Jewish/Russian neighborhood and listening very carefully. When you get to the end of the neighborhood, you feel you know and understand a lot more about the immigrant experience overall and the Russian immigrant experience, particularly through the eyes of young people.  We’re going to look at NATASHA today with it’s two lead Alex Ozerov and Sasha K Gordon.

My conversation with Alex and Sasha:

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 become the educational mantra of our times.

Yet if one looks at the workforce, looks at the jobs of the future, looks at the needs business have and listen to the CEOs, we find that these STEM skills, while important, have become overrated and out of all proportion to our future.

I suppose everything in cyclical and the liberal arts, which certainly had its day, has gone into remission as the central pursuit of college students. It shouldn't have. Its focus on curiosity, the ongoing pursuit of knowledge, creativity, and what it means to be a good human being, make it essential if any of us are going to survive into the second half of the 21st century and beyond.

Forbes contributor George Anders looks at this in You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a "Useless" Liberal Arts Education.

My conversation with George Anders:

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 and powerful The same might very well be said for America's justice system.

One which is zealous to the point of recklessness in prosecuting street crime and drug offenses and the other that is benign and feckless in prosecuting the white collar crimes, many of which have deliberately, and criminally wrecked our economy and hurt real people.

But this hasn’t always been the case. Where once, not that long ago, the government prosecuted the likes Michael Milken and the executives of Enron and Adelphia and Worldcom, today executives at Wells Fargo, or Goldman Sachs, or so many that were clearly responsible for the potential criminal acts that caused the 2008/2009 crash, have escaped the long arm of the law.

Why? What happened what's changed . Are the same forces that are giving our economy two Americas also responsible for two justice systems?

This is what Pulitzer Prize winning ProPublica reporter Jesse Eisinger tries to find you in The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives.

My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Jesse Eisinger:

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 virtually all of the technology we depend on, from the phones in our pockets to the fighters, carriers and missiles that keep us safe, are all totally dependent on what's called rare earth minerals. Without them we become technologically paralyzed. And the funny thing is, that right now, we have no other alternative other than to get them from China.

How did this happen? Does it matter, and are we going to do anything about it? Geologist and journalist Victoria Bruce explains in Sellout: How Washington Gave Away America's Technological Soul, and One Man's Fight to Bring It Home.

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Victoria Bruce:

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 now, 42 years after the fall of Saigon, we are once again looking back at the tragedy that was the Vietnam war.

As part of this look back, it’s imperative to look at one of the seminal works of that war, A Rumor of War: By Philip Caputo. Upon its original publication in 1977, it gave Americans its first and perhaps deepest insight into what it was like for young men to fight in that war. It also helped us to understand, as much as we could at the time, the war itself.

Many have argued that the Vietnam war, more than any other modern event, shattered the innocence of America. Philip Caputo’s book, A Rumor of War, just republished in The Classic Vietnam Memoir (40th Anniversary Edition), showed us how it also shattered the innocence of those that fought in it.

My conversation with Philip Caputo:

Is the American Experiment in Self Government at an End

There was the belief at the end of the Cold War, and the fall of the Soviet Union, that the West had triumphed. That liberal democracy, that the ideas of the enlightenment, were not only on the march, but were inevitable.

Nothing could have turned out to be more false. Not just for the world, but for America as well. Whether it was merely the cycles of history, the onset of change from from both technology and social structures, or the unintended consequences of perpetual and normal economic cycles, the opposite has happened.

Today liberal democracy, the very cornerstone of western civilization, is under siege. Authoritarianism, ignorance, and nostalgia for a simpler time are on the march. So much so that it's possible that both the American experiment in self government and its tradition as a model to the world, both may be coming to an end.

How we got here, and what lies ahead are at the heart of a new book by Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism.

My conversation with Ed Luce:

Seduced By The Road or Why Boys Like Big Trucks?

It is estimated that there are about 3.5 million truck drivers in the U.S.  Yet most of us know very little about the business, the culture, or the world of the long haul trucker.  They see America, not the way most of us see it, from 30K feet, but up close and personal.

We’ve talked to endless to pundits to try and understand what’s going on in America today. Perhaps no one really understands it better than long haul truck driver.

One of the best is Finn Murphy, the author of The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road.

My conversation with Finn Murphy:

Slowing Down to Be Human in the Digital Age

Perhaps never before in human history has so much change so rapidly been foisted on human beings. Sure change is a constant and whether it was the Renaissance, the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution, we have gone through previous periods of dramatic and painful change.

But never has the change come so fast and had the power to produce such dislocation. Today, technology in all of its forms, from smart machines, to robotics, from AI, to how we communicate, to how we will continue to learn, will make sure we are never the same

It's estimated that almost half of the current jobs can be and will be replaced by machines. Eighty million jobs could be gone in our lifetime.

For some, the fear of and resistance to this change will animate their every action. For others, that seek to embrace the change, to excel with it, to live in the real world, the questions will be how best to do it. That’s what Ed Hess talks about in Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age.

My conversation with Ed Hess:

THE DARKENING WEB: The War for Cyberspace

Companies being hacked. Nations and democracy being hacked. Privacy under siege. The internet was supposed to change the world, create more freedom and break down traditional barriers between nations and people.

The irony is that it may be having the opposite effect. As individuals, nation, and corporations seek to protect themselves, and exploit the internet for greater profit, we could easily loose the very things it created.

After all, with all do respects to Amazon, it was meant for more than just shopping.

So where are we in this battle. For answers we turn to Alexander Klimberg, the author of The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Alexander Klimberg:

Parenting in the Age of Trump

Recently a candidate for Congress beat up a reporter on the night before the election, and he still won. The echoes of the Access Hollywood tape and the language of Donald Trump, still reverberate. Trump's dark vision of America and of a world in chaos is the underpinning of fear, that is the principal political ingredient in the Trump stew.

Not since the darkest days of McCarthyism and of the duck and cover drills of the Cold War, has so much fear, anxiety, polarization and simple unpleasantness been a part of our cultural and political landscape.  We have succeeded in, to paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan, defining decency downward.

So what impact is all of this having our our kids?Dr. Ava Siegler, the author of How Do I Explain This to My Kids?: Parenting in the Age of Trump.
What added responsibilities do parents and teachers have in this? Trying to understand this is

My conversation with Dr. Ava Siegler:

To Have and To Have Not

In the movie, Wall Street, Oliver Stone, through his character Darien Taylor, played by Daryl Hannah, reminds us that “when you've had money and lost it, it can be much worse than never having had it at all!”

This fundamental principle is true, not just on a grand, Bernie Madoff style scale. It often plays itself out in the lives of people whose fortunes have been subject to the whims of disruption and transformation, even in the most traditional of businesses.

We should remember that when an industry falls, as the auto industry did in Detroit, it often takes with it huge parts of its city and many other business that have grown up alongside.  That’s the story that my guest Frances Stroh tells in her memoir Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss.  It's a look at the Stroh Brewing Company, and the reality and perils of a closely held family business, and the rise and fall of privilege.

My conversation with Frances Stroh:

Ronald Reagan and Blue-Collar Conservatism

The current Congressional debate about health care, is more than just a policy debate. It it is a kind of tabula rasa for defining the various factions in the Republican party. But while the mainstream talk focuses on terms like “moderates” and “conservatives,” none of that really goes deep into the fissures dividing some of the core difference in the GOP.

In trying to understand that, perhaps there is no better way than to begin with what many perceive to be the party's true north; the ideas and philosophy of Ronald Reagan.

But to what extent has that philosophy become apocryphal over the years, and of what real value does it have in the 21st century? These are some of the issues that Henry Olsen takes up in The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism.

My conversation with Henry Olsen:

After your kid gets into college, how will he/she come out?

Like most of us, I’ve just spent the past few months listening to parents agonize about their their high school graduates and where they were going to college. The college tour, the campus visit, the stress, the applications, the waiting, the status, the acceptance and figuring out the cost and how to pay. These are just a few of the inflection points in getting kids into college today.

However not as much thought or effort goes into to thinking about what the academic experience will be like. No, not the social and emotional experience, but the academic experience. You know, the actually learning that goes on in the classroom. The actual transfer of knowledge that is the cornerstone of education.

It’s interesting that while we are seeing a lot of progress and disruption in K-12 education, including project based learning, collaborative learning, the effective use of online resources and the incorporation of technology, oddly enough we’ve yet to see nearly as much disruption in higher education.

Jacques Berlinerblau, director of the Center for Jewish Civilization at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, gets to the essence of this in his new book Campus Confidential: How College Works, or Doesn't, for Professors, Parents, and Students

My conversation with Jacques Berlinerblau

Happy 10th Anniversary

The Economist recently said about the iPhone, that “no product in recent history has changed people's lives more . Without the iPhone, ride-hailing, photo-sharing, instant messaging and other essentials of modern life would be less widespread. Without the cumulative sales of 1.2bn devices and revenues of $1trn, Apple would not hold the crown of the world's largest listed company. Thousands of software developers would be poorer, too: the apps they have written for the smartphone make them more than $20bn annually."

Today we mark the 10th anniversary of this device that is both iconic and historic.
The iPhone, like every major technological innovation has its official origin story. However on this anniversary, we are going to go behind the original story and talk about the real story that has delivered a product that has truly changed the world. Brian Merchant tells that story in The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone

My conversation with Brian Merchant:

Why 1967 Still Matters

It is indeed a very tired cliche, with apologies to Kierkegaard, to say that “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” The problem is, it’s not always true. Fifty years ago, at the apogee of the summer love and the Vietnam war, those that were there all sensed that they were part of, or at least touching something, unique in the cultural history of America.

We know this today, not just because we remember the songs, or the clothes or where we were, but because the seismic shifts that took place then, are still producing aftershocks. It was a moment, as author Joel Selvin says “that
was a kind of big bang,” when art, politics, morality and culture would join together to create an expanding universe of creative imagination.

Danny Goldberg’s new book In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea almost makes us present at the creation.

My conversation with Danny Goldberg:

The 70% Of The Planet That We Overlook.

When most of us look at a globe or map of the world, our eyes are drawn to some combination of the 196 countries that make up that world. Even when we see earth as a giant blue marble from space, it’s those land masses, the light, or the topography, that attracts our attention.

Admiral James Stavridis sees it differently. He sees the 70% of the globe that most of us miss. That is the part covered by water. The part of our plant that has seen great maritime battles, the part of the plant that allows for 95% of the world's trade, the part of the plant upon which
history has been made and changed, and the part that just might very well be the flashpoints of the future.

I think it's fair to say that unless you’ve personally sailed the world's oceans, after you read James Stavridis’ book Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World's Oceans, you will never look at a world map the same way again.

My conversation with Adm. James Stavridis:

Shouldn't We Have Objective Standards for Judging Movies?

It used to be said that everyone was in two business, their own and show business. As such, everyone wants to be a critic. It's not surprising then that some movie apps are now crowd sourcing criticism, right alongside Rotten Tomatoes.

So what are people actually seeing? What are they criticizing? Does the public really know good from bad, and is there truth to that old adage that if it’s popular, it can’t be any good?

After all, some movies that have failed at the box office have garnered critical praise, and some with great financial success have been panned.

All of this begs the question, are there objective standards? Are there a set of rules or facts that can define good and bad in filmed entertainment?

Ann Hornaday thinks so. She is the chief film critic for the Washington Post, and the author of Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies.

My conversation with Ann Hornaday: