The concept of true friendship has been challenged by the notion that someone who friends you on Facebook really can be counted on when you’re in need. You can be well-connected in the digital sphere and find yourself isolated and alone when the chips are down. Val Walker, a rehabilitation consultant, grief counselor and author of ‘The Art of Comforting: What to Say and Do for Others in Distress’ found herself in the ironic situation of having no one to pick her up after a surgery and realized that she needed to build new connections to others in the physical world. In the process, she moved from a pristine, but lonely, spot in Maine to bustling Boston and wrote her latest book, ‘400 Friends and No One to Call’. She shares valuable information about the growing problem of social isolation in America and ways to re-connect in ways that do not require a personality make-over. Many of us are introverts or have social anxiety, or have experienced loss and grief which affect the way we interact with others, but we can find soulmates and friends who share many of the same characteristics. It’s an important conversation and may offer you a way forward if you find that this topic resonates. Given that loneliness is a health epidemic in the United States, and many of us have been in self-isolation because of the pandemic, it will provide new ways of thinking about connection for this unique moment in time.

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All good things must come to an end, as the song goes. It’s no less true for the universe than it is for love stories. It’s not something we spend much time thinking about because a)it’s too depressing and b)it’s likely billions of years into the future. Please don’t confuse the universe with the earth. We have the power to obliterate ourselves today. Why wait for natural forces? Of course, we all hope that our better angels prevail and the scenarios that Dr. Katie Mack posits in her book, ‘The End of Everything(Astrophysically Speaking)’ are so removed from our reality that they never give us a moment’s pause. However, the end is going to happen according to the scientific community, whose sophistication in this area is accelerating at a rapid pace. So how will it come about? Will it be the ‘big crunch’ or ‘dark energy’ or ‘heat death’? You’ll have to tune in to find out. And you will have to then decide what it means, most importantly, to the way you live your life today knowing that little, if anything, we do here will remain as a permanent record. It will all vanish in time. Theologians explore the meaning of this and scientists put a clock on it. What are we to do with this information?

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One wag called it a ‘conservationist rom-com’, when the big personality of Theordore Roosevelt came into contact with the big hole, The Grand Canyon. It was there that he spoke the words which became the title of David Gessner’s new book, ‘Leave It As It Is’. Yet, it seems that Americans can’t leave well enough alone. As tourists, we want a closer look and amenities that take it from its natural state to something more tame(illustration: Niagara Falls)and as policymakers we are susceptible to the pressures and money provided by special interests to turn back protected lands for commercial purposes. Thankfully, places like Yellowstone and Yosemite were protected as parks and it took TR to do the same for the Grand Canyon. His passage of the Antiquities Act put in place one of the most important tools possible to protect our natural environment and yet there are constant challenges to its scope and intent up until this very moment. Mr. Gessner set out to re-create TR’s travels in the West and re-capture the beauty of the land, while also focusing on the challenges to keep it that way and the complex character of the man, who may have been the last president to truly love the outdoors and want to make its preservation his lasting legacy. In this podcast, we discuss the pressures on public lands, including the Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

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There is an edible space race on to bring cell cultured meat to market.  What is that, you say?  It’s having your meat and eating it too.  No slaughterhouses, fewer greenhouse gas emissions and sundry new foods derived from stem cells gathered through a biopsy from a living animal, a bioreactor maintaining the temperature, acidity and oxygen level for cell survival and a liquid growing medium inside the bioreactor feeds the cells. Once this was science fiction.  Today, it is science fact. It’s being done successfully in competing laboratories at this moment.  The questions that remain are the flavor and feel of the ‘clean meats’, how you market them and ways to continue to drive the price points down to a level where consumers will be interested.  Oh, and either making meat and dairy companies partners or outmaneuvering them on the regulatory side, where their influence and dollars have much influence.  In his book, ‘Billion Dollar Burger’, author Chase Purdy walks us through this intriguing world of food science and the impacts manufactured meat may have on the marketplace.  It could be much greater than the plant-based meats already taking off in ways previously unanticipated.

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As the father of two millennials, I am on the side of about half of my baby boom generation in regretting the sorry state of affairs we have left on their doorstep.  Think about it in these terms: after forty years of the arc of American history bending toward individualism, self-reliance and  the desires of the very wealthy, and companies foregoing generous benefits that many of us boomers took for granted, the millennials emerging into the work world were greeted with the aftermath of 9/11, the 2008 financial disaster and the pandemic and twin economic debacle.  That’s quite a welcome to adulthood.  I bristle when I hear this generation, some of whom by the way are already approaching 40, called ‘snowflakes’.  I think they are industrious, as they navigate through the new gig economy, values driven and open to many changes that undoubtedly this society must make in order to create a more just future.  Jill Filipovic lays out the case for her generation in the book ‘OK Boomer Let’s Talk’: How My Generation Got Left Behind’.  She makes a compelling argument that, by almost any measure, the children of baby boomers have started their careers and adult lives with a host of issues which make their journey more difficult than the baby boomers.  I think we had a great conversation.  Perhaps, it could be even more scintillating if the interviewer, me, disagreed with her premise.  But I don’t.  There is one silver lining for the millennials and I offer it in the midst of the discussion.  

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On the news we’ve heard from exhausted, and often frustrated, front line medical workers who have had so much to deal with during the pandemic–lack of PPE,long hours in suffocating garb, a public skeptical of the seriousness of what they face every day and changing protocols as more information has come to light about the coronavirus.  Even before the onset of COVID-19, many reports had surfaced about healthcare providers suffering from burnout, burdensome regulation, squabbles with government and insurance funders and a general disquiet over the career and calling they worked so hard to achieve.  We turn to Dr. Cathy Hung, an oral surgeon, and author of ‘Pulling Wisdom: Filling Gaps of Cross-Cultural Communication for Healthcare Providers’, to help us assess the mindset of doctors, nurses, technicians and allied health professionals in a very difficult moment. We find that even those who have not faced the immediate impacts of the pandemic have seen their practices thrown into a state of flux.  While we have seen quicker onset of some innovations in the face of this medical emergency, like tele-medicine, the fallout from this may well be reflected in the quantity of the workforce going forward and the impact that will have on the quality of our medical care.  

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There have been a number of false starts in American history toward the concept of a more equal, more integrated society. Yet, at each turn, those attempts have been blunted by forces that cannot see America without a power and status differential drawn white and black. It could’ve happened at the onset of the Continental Congress, after the Civil War, on the heels of the 1960’s civil rights movement or as the natural evolution following the historic presidency of Barack Obama. Unfortunately, it did not occur at any of those moments. Reactionary forces clinging to power, often abetted by more liberal patrons of society, never gave those changes time to build a truly integrated society. As Calvin Baker, author of ‘A More Perfect Reunion’ reminds us never has a victor(African-Americans freed from bondage)been treated so shabbily after winning a struggle. And so it goes in America. As young Americans, white, black and brown, have taken to the streets in the recent period, we are left to contemplate whether this is the moment for true integration or simply a surge of good intentions blunted by forces long opposed to true fairness and justice. Let’s discuss on this podcast.

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Many of the heroes of the civil rights movement for African-Americans have been in the forefront of public consciousness again in the recent period. Perhaps, it’s fitting that for a group of Americans who often were reticent to share their identity, the name of the leader of their movement, pre-dating the 1969 Stonewall riots, remains unknown to most. It was author Eric Cervini’s objective in his book, ‘The Deviant’s War’ to introduce us to Frank Kameny who, for almost a decade before Stonewall, challenged the orthodoxy that homosexuality was a mental illness and led an aggressive campaign against the federal government’s ban on employing gay workers. Mr. Cervini is an historian of the LGBTQ community and its politics and walks us through the battles Kameny ignited, adopting many of the tactics of the African American civil rights movement, and on through the battle for marriage equality and the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on discrimination of gays in employment. He also talks about where the movement is headed and the challenges that lie ahead.

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports there are 3,000 food deserts throughout the United States.  Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?  While our guest gives a clearer definition of this designation, it basically means where people do not have access to a large format supermarket with healthy and nutritious food choices within walking distance. Most of these food dead zones are in neighborhoods with high density,l ow income populations.  Yet given the federal reimbursements for supplemental nutrition and mothers and infants in this country, you might imagine that a grocery chain could do good business in these communities.  So, what’s going on here?  Barry Schuster, the founder of the Center for Food Service Research and author of ‘How to End Every Food Desert in America’, joins us to discuss. With skyrocketing medical costs in this country, before and during the pandemic you might imagine that encouraging investment in better foods upfront might do a world of good in addressing the growing problem of chronic diseases, like Type 2 diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and associated heart problems.  Our guest has ideas on how to address the issue and offers them on today’s podcast.

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In his compelling new book, ‘The Apocalypse Factory’, Steve Olson lays out the road to the Manhattan Project as it wends its way through Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and to some degree forgotten, Hanford, Washington.  He crafts a story of the scientists involved and the discovery of plutonium, which was a true game changer as America wrongly assumed that it was in a race with Germany to unleash new weapons capable of unthinkable destruction.  He then visits the decision-making throughout the process of using two bombs on Japan.  The first on Hiroshima, using uranium, and the second on Nagasaki, unlocking the even greater destructive force of plutonium. Our discussion then centers on nuclear weapons today, including modernization, treaties to limit and defense shields to blunt.  And, finally, we explore whether there is any serious movement to eliminate the threat to mankind forever.  In a moment of serious challenges, lurching, overarching is the potential for split second miscalculation which could obliterate life as we know it.  And, it gets barely a mention. We revive the conversation today.

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