Smoke Signals

The culture wars in America have resulted in a war on women, a war on science and a ridiculous war on drugs. Many of these strains come together in the debate over cannabis.

While marijuana still remains illegal under federal law, more than half of all Americans have used it, it is a cash crop, generating tens of billions in untaxed revenue and the majority of the public supports its legalization. Significant numbers of states have already made it legal, even in violation of federal law.

It remains steeped in myth, and ideology, but it has proven to help people over and over again. Martin Lee takes us on a journey through the great American pot story in Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana - Medical, Recreational and Scientific.

My conversation with Martin Lee:

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Ascent of the A-Word

People are often shocked by profanity, but after all, that’s the point. Profanity is a kind of social punctuation that we use when we need to shock, or describe in ways that other words just may not suffice. Perhaps few profanities today are as common or more attuned to our celebrity culture than the A-Word. A word that linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, in his new work Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years, ties to the sense of entitlement that permeates so much of our culture.

My conversation with Geoffrey Nunberg:

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What's a young activist to do?

The spirit that infused young people in the 1960’s may be a distant memory, but today a new generation lives in hope of making the world a better place. Whether they have the political skills, the commitment, or the clarity to succeed is still an open question.

Certainly if we look around the world, the Arab Spring proves that protest, as a political force, is still very much alive and can tear down walls and topple dictators. But here in America the forces allied against change and hope and progress may simply be too strong. So what’s a young activist to do? One of the generations most influential advocates for social and political change, Todd Gitlin, lays out what it takes in Letters to a Young Activist

My conversation with Todd Gitlin:

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Privacy

I’ve often quoted the former head of Sun Microsystems, Scott McNeally who once said, almost a decade ago that “there is no privacy, get over it.” And that was before Facebook, apps, Foursquare, location based retail, etc.

To a large extent this raises the issue of a generational divide regarding our attitudes about privacy. But what we don’t often think about is whether or not our attitudes about privacy are shaped by culture, economics and class. Harper's contribing editor Garret Keizer offers an interesting new anaylsis,  in his new book Privacy. 

My conversation with Garret Keizer:

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It's the economics, stupid!

Back in '92 the Clinton campaign stated, "it's the economy stupid."For this current campaign it looks like "its the economics, stupid. This past week of interviews has been all about economics.We've looked at the present and future of the American economy, of capitalism, the federal budget, globalization, the middle class and the future of the American dream.

University of Chicago Professor Luigi Zingales looked at A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity. He argues that both big government and big corporations are both to blame for dwarfing the power of the people to impact markets.

Michael Casey, a managing editor at Dow Jones, in his book The Unfair Trade: How Our Broken Global Financial System Destroys the Middle Class examine how our international financial system is deeply interconnected and who we can't solve global problems with nationalistic solutions.

On the other hand, Pulitzer winners Don Barlett and James Steele in The Betrayal of the American Dream, explain how they globalization as the heart of the problem, and how the middle class has been co-opted by a new ruling elite in America.

Finally, Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel in his new book RED INK pulls together all of this to show what will clearly become the center of this political campaign that the federal budget is not just numbers and fine print, but a blueprint for policy.

Marilyn

50 years ago this week, the world awoke to the death of Marilyn Monroe. At her death she was already one of the most well known Americans of the twentieth century. In death she would become even more famous. Steeped in mythology and contradiction, she would become a symbol of her times; the lens of her own dysfunction giving her a unique ken on post-war America.

Now historian Lois Banner, in her new biography Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox, gives us a deep and complicated woman, whose life would reflect many aspect of our society back upon us.




My conversation with Lois Banner:

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Who Gets What When Tragedy Strikes

When disaster strikes and loss happens, both human loss and economic loss, people look to be both assured first and then compensated. The assurance is often the job of government, of social institutions and of friends, neighbors and family. When people look to be compensated for a disaster, the process is often a lot more complicated. Who pays, what’s the loss worth and and how emotion enters into the economic algorithm are all relevant issues. Few understand this equation better than Kenneth Feinberg. Feinberg ran the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, was the “Pay Czar,” for the TARP bailout and was in charge of disbursing all claims in the BP oil spill. He talks about all of this, in his book Who Gets What: Fair Compensation after Tragedy and Financial Upheaval 

My conversation with Ken Feinberg:

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KP2

The Hawaiian monk seal ranks as the most endangered marine mammals in American waters. Also, one of the cutest! Only about 1,100 of these seals are in the sea surrounding the Hawaiian Islands. When a two day old seal pup is attacked and abandoned, environmental officials have to intervene. Thus begins the remarkable journey of Kauai Pup 2. Dr. Terrie Williams is the director of the Marine Mammal Physiology Project at U.C. Santa Cruz and she tells the story of the seal pup in The Odyssey of KP2: An Orphan Seal, a Marine Biologist, and the Fight to Save a Species .

My conversation with Terrie Williams:

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Teach Your Children Well

The story goes that Marissa Mayer, the newly minted CEO of Yahoo, and a former VP at Google, once declined an otherwise brilliant job applicant at Google because they had once gotten a C in a math class. 

Clearly in today's competitive world, academic success matters. The bar must be set high for academic success. But it must be set just as high for creativity, innovation and collaboration. But what about the kids that are not cut out to be the renaissance children of the next generation? What about those kids, even those from privilege, whose interests lie elsewhere? Whose job is it to see to it that they too are educated well and steered toward important places in our society?

Dr. Madeline Levine, a Bay Area clinician and the best selling author of The Price of Privilege, looks at these issues anew in her new work Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success.

My conversation with Madeline Levine:

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The Sandcastle Girls

Over the course of his career, bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian has taken readers on a spectacular array of journeys. An isolated Vermont farmhouse, the Roaring Twenties on Long Island, and the last six months of World War Two in Poland and Germany are just a few. Now, In his fifteenth book, The Sandcastle Girls, he brings us on a very different and personal journey. A sweeping historical love story steeped in the author's Armenian heritage.

My conversation with Chris Bohjalian:

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The Intention Economy

Our relationship to the things we buy and the companies we buy from, is constantly changing. David "Doc" Searls, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, argues that to date, it’s been a kind of master/slave relationship. Think of the rhetoric. Merchants "capture" customers, they want "to own" customers, they want to gather data on customer, have cookies follow them around. All so as to ostensible make our experience better. But is it?

From the perspective of the seller, John Wanamaker used to say that he knew that half of his advertising expenditures worked, he just didn't know which half.

Given the internet and the free flow of information, shouldn't the experience be more empowering for the consumer and less so for the seller? Yet it’s evolved in a way that is just the opposite. Doc Searls wants to change that, as he explains in his new work The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge.


My conversation with Doc Searls:

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True Belivers

It’s hard to believe sometimes that forty-plus years after “the sixties,” after Vietnam, civil rights, feminism, and sex drugs and rock and roll, we are still litigating the issues raised in that period. Clearly it is one of the seminal inflection points in American history. But why? What really happened; what really changed in that period, that tilted the earth's axis?

There’s an old saying that says "if you remember the sixties, you weren't really there." Maybe that's why we still haven't figured it out. Long time journalist and novelist Kurt Andersen takes his shot, as he uses it as the backdrop for his new novel True Believers.

My conversation with Kurt Andersen:

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Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?

To paraphrase a marketing expression, science, it not just for nerds anymore. If we want to fully understand the human condition, including our sexuality, our relationships and our desires, we need to understand science. Every month in Scientific America and Slate, Jesse Bering brings these issues to the forefront of consciousnes. Now he takes us on a kind of grand tour evolutionary biology  in his book Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?: And Other Reflections on Being Human.


My conversation with Jesse Bering:

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Barack Obama: The Story

George Bernard Shaw once observed “that life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." For many people that is undoubtedly true. Bill Clinton might be the penultimate example of that. But for Barack Obama, it has always been about both. About understanding the world that created him, and then using that raw material to reassemble the pieces, to create himself anew. This journey is at the core of David Maraniss's sweeping historical biography,  Barack Obama: The Story.

My conversation with David Maraniss:

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Death by a thousand puffs

We all know cigarettes are bad for us. We know they are the only legal product that, if used as directed, will kill us. What we don't know is the degree to which tobacco companies manipulate their product. The way they add hundreds of harmful chemicals and compounds, of which we are mostly unaware, and which make them the world's largest cause of death.

Given these facts, shouldn't they be outlawed? Not banned, but outlawed! Stanford Professor Robert Proctor thinks so and he make a powerful case in the 700+ pages of Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition 

My conversation with Robert Proctor:

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Escaping life on the streets

Human resilience and the instinct for survival is an amazing thing. The question has always been, is this something inherent only in certain individuals, or can others learn the skills and abilities needed to pull oneself out of difficult and in some cases impossible situations? Carissa Phelps survived the horrors of mean urban streets, while now working even harder to help others rise above their circumstances.

Turned out into the streets of Fresno at age 12, today she has a law degree and an MBA from UCLA and walked away from a career in private equity so she could model and teach survival to others and change the circumstances that lead her to an abusive life on the streets. It's a remarkable story told in her new book Runaway Girl: Escaping Life on the Streets, One Helping Hand at a Time.

My conversation with Carissa Phelps:

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The Locavore Dilemma

"Eat Local" has become the mantra of a new generation of food activists. Implicit in the locavore argument is the belief that it combines healthy eating and a high standard of environmental stewardship, while delivering important economic benefits and increasing food security within local economies. University of Toronto Professor Pierre Desrochers seriously questions the locavore perspective. Desrochers, in his new book, The Locavore's Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-mile Diet concludes that "eating local" actually delivers increased social and economic misery, environmental degradation, greater food insecurity, and poorer nutrition. How is this possible?

Here's my conversation with Pierre Dersochers:

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Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy

It has not been a good decade. Since the dawn of the 21st century, almost all of our ideas of community, culture, even our notions of what constitutes a country; not to mention how we communicate, do business, read, think and see are being transformed and are cascading in upon us.

Since the turn of the century we've experienced Bush v. Gore, 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, the housing bubble, bank collapses, the implosion of traditional media and Wall Street, the foibles of baseball and the Catholic Church, the collapse of the auto industry and the impotence of Washington. Now Chris Hayes, of The Nation and MSNBC, connects the dots among these seemingly disparate events and finds some very common threads. He lays our the arguments in his book Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy.

My conversation with Christopher Hayes:

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