EP 1005 Are Cats a Woman’s Best Friend?
There has been an association between cats and women throughout history. It’s not always been a positive one as so many histories have been dominated by the male perspective. Even in our era, as cats have taken their place alongside dogs, as popular home companions, they were derisively referenced in the 2024 campaign, as their guardians were referred to as ‘childless cats ladies.’ It has been a long and difficult history for the cats that we now embrace in our society. This phenomenon is only about a half century old and still the behavior of what are referred to as street or feral cats, two different categories, are maligned for the environmental damage they do to birds, small mammals and reptiles. Yet, the evolution of the cat itself, from the wildcat, can be directly traced to their value in protecting granaries from vermin, like mice and rats. It’s a fascinating story told brilliantly by Professor Rod Phillips, of Carleton University, in Canada, in his new book, “Cats: A History.” He is our guest today.
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What comes to mind if I say San Francisco–the hippies and Grateful Dead of the 1960’s, the locus of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s, the Internet revolution of the 1990’s, the urban decay of the pandemic era or the AI revolution that is clearly upon us? Well, I think the best answer is all of the above. The city is a complicated mix of culture, technology, business and a growing class divide. There may be no better chronicler of the city than Jonathan Weber who has been covering this beat for different media outlets since the early 1990’s. All of his knowledge and sense of place are married in his great new book, “City on the Edge: Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco.” He dispels the notion that many of us have had that San Francisco and Silicon Valley are interchangeable. They are very different places. Both have been crucial to modern-day America. When you think San Francisco remember that e-publishing, social media, video streaming, cloud software and the sharing economy really came to life there. Enjoy this fascinating conversation.
We are far from the days when Phyllis Schlafly led the Eagle Forum pushing back on the feminist leaders of the Left in the 1970’s. However, she gave voice to issues like the pro-life movement, opposition to gay rights, and others that animated the first wave of pushback. Today, with many conservative Christian women speaking out loudly and proclaiming their concern about traditional values slipping away in America, the success of their movement in self-evident by looking at who has the levers of power in Washington, D.C. today. Our guest, Katie Gaddini, author of “Esther’s Army: The Christian Women Who Power the American Right”, formerly an adherent to the cause, steps back to provide an honest and nuanced look at the various types of women who now make up a real power center for the Right in America. You will hear about the Influencers, the Black conservatives, the Make America Healthy Again stalwarts and many others on today’s podcast. Caricatures and stereotypes will be broken.
We know we are going to die, as difficult as that concept is to get our arms around, but we may imagine that our life’s work, our stuff, must be preserved because it will live on forever, particularly as we can now capture it in digital form. Some might say that we are living in an era of permanent memory: everything is stored, searchable, and retrievable, especially now as AI systems ingest vast archives of human speech, images and text. But our guest on this podcast, noted Professor of History at Stanford University, Thomas Mullaney, author of “How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information” provides us with a more unsettling truth: information doesn’t naturally endure. It breaks down, scatters, becomes unaffordable to recover, and far more than we would like to admit, simply vanishes. As you’ll discover the forces of entropy (he’ll define it in this context) are more powerful and natural than the order we try to create and sustain. It just is. He’s a fascinating man and it’s a topic I was privileged to explore with him.
The term ‘grey divorce’ referring to the increasing trend of couples over the age of 50 ending long-term marriages, often for reasons driven by personal growth, financial independence, and growing apart, after spending much time together during the pandemic, is one of several topics we discuss on today’s podcast. Divorce, by the numbers, is actually below the often-cited threshold of fifty percent dissolution of marriages in this country, but then again far fewer people, as a percentage of the population, actually live in households with two married adults. Given that I wondered about a number of issues, like the true meaning of no-fault divorces, whether infidelity is a leading cause of divorce and how second and third marriages fare in our society, Attorney Melissa Needle of Needle/Cuda Family Law practice in Connecticut, was a great resource as she delved into each topic. She gave me a new trend to consider: GLP-1 divorces. Curious? Listen in.
In a moment of crisis for American democracy and liberalism, antisemitism has become a point of ideological obsession. Now we’re questioning where free speech ends and hateful discrimination begins. Is it possible that law can check antisemitic impulses which have generally been below the surface, yet never extinguished, while avoiding the tendency to censor political speech? History should remind us of the trapdoor we’re opening unless we find the balance. In his brilliant book, ‘Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight Over Free Speech in Modern America,” Johns Hopkins Professor Jewish Studies, James Loeffler, unpacks the historical precedents and contemporary dangers as both the right and the left test those boundaries. In all of this can we dissent from policies in Israel at the hands of the Netanyahu government and still want the best for two ‘righteous victims, as Golda Meir once called the Jews and Palestinians. Our own delicate political moment in America creates many fault lines. Antisemitism certainly seems to be one of them in this moment.
So many businesses are in flux struggling to keep pace with exponentially revolutionary technologies, like generative AI, and the people they employ are in the same spin cycle with them. How do they work through this cataclysmic period? According to Steve Reiner, author of “Business Changes Fast, People Change Slow: A Leadership Guide to Accelerating Organizational Change and Building a Competitive Advantage,” it all starts from the top. The leader of the company and upper- level executives have to effectively and consistently communicate the goals and objectives of the company and how all of this change will lead to better results which accrue to the benefit of all the people in the organization. It is not an easy thing to do,but must be done with a plan over a period of time, so as not to disrupt the cohesion of the organization. It’s a freewheeling conversation which will drive home the points Steve makes in his book.
Laurence Kotlikoff, PhD. is considered one of the 25 leading economists in the world according to the respected magazine, ‘The Economist.’ And he’s been the clearest and most consistent voice as to the fiscal gap that America has accrued by way of its public debt, roughly $40 trillion, and its ‘off the books’ obligations to Americans by way of social insurance programs, particularly in an aging society with a below replacement birth rate. He will try to engage your thinking around what he deems the fiscal gap accounting which he developed so you get a picture of how bad our fiscal circumstance is. It is difficult to overstate the woeful picture we have built by increasing the debt year after year for more than fifty years, absent a few years when Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich worked to rein it in in the 90’s. The answers are by no means simple or without pain. It will require a new approach to both health care and Social Security. Unfortunately, no one is talking about it and no politicians have the courage to be associated with the fiscal medicine we will have to take. Let’s start with the reality which Professor Kotlikoff, of Boston University, lays out today on this podcast.
There may well be strong arguments for statutes of limitations, basically a deadline to file civil or criminal suits, in various areas of the law because evidence can be lost, memories fade, and witnesses may no longer be available. In the case of child sexual abuse, however, memories of what happened may be awakened many years, decades even, later when there is a triggering event or the adult self finally wants to come to terms with the trauma that has affected them throughout their lives. Yet, these statutes of limitations still exist in many states, and the federal statutes are very weak in this area. Clearly, the problems in the Catholic Church and the new attention drawn to the issue from the #MeToo movement and the Jeffery Epstein case are providing greater impetus to allowing victims to come forward when it’s right for them, in their circumstance, and not on an arbitrary timeline. To discuss this issue with us is Attorney Kelly Reardon of New London, Connecticut who has a remarkable background and much experience in this area of the law.
You’ve heard of an open and shut case. That’s what the fifty- year history of full- fledged female participation in the military has given us. So why now is there any question that they have, and are fully capable, of playing any role they have been given the opportunity to advance to, including major ranks and positions in all the Armed Forces? To answer these perplexing questions is Eileen Isola, an editor of the new book, “Necessary Turbulence.” She graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1985. Now retired from the service, she went on to become a decorated combat pilot and an international airline pilot. In this podcast she provides empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the women who make up 17 percent of the volunteer military. Yet, Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is waging a protracted war against women in the military through a host of means which we explore. It’s shameful, demoralizing and self-defeating.