Here’s my conversation with Josh Dean, author of a book with a very intriguing title: “The Taking Of K-129: How The CIA Used Howard Hughes To Steal A Russian Sub In The Most Daring Covert Operation In History.” No, it’s not a novel — it’s a true story, and I won’t be surprised when it’s […]
Here’s my conversation with Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist and UCSF professor, about his book, “The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains.” We discussed the thesis of his book, that “marketing, media, and technology have capitalized on subverting our brain physiology to their advantage […]
David Goldfield, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has written 16 books on southern and American history. His newest is “The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good,” which focuses on the social benefits provided to the early baby boomers under presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Johnson. Among the questions I asked […]
Here’s my conversation with Matthew Salganik, sociology professor at Princeton University and author of “Bit By Bit: Social Research In The Digital Age.” We started by talking about how the digital revolution has changed how our behavior is observed, how that gives companies and researchers more accurate portraits of us, and whether we should be […]
Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, who was then three years into his first term as a US Senator, and just 80 days into his candidacy for president of the United States. Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC’s Hardball, has written about RFK’s brother in the books “Jack Kennedy—Elusive […]
You may remember hearing about FLDS, a cult of fundamentalist Mormons in Arizona and Utah led by Warren Jeffs, the group’s self-proclaimed prophet, who has 78 wives and 53 children and still controls them from his cell in a federal prison, where he’s serving a sentence of life plus 20 years. Almost all of his […]