Episodes

Labyrinth of the Wind is the critically acclaimed debut novel of Madhav Misra, our guest in the Meet the Author series. Madhav takes us back in time to the late 1970s when Teheran, Iran was an international city, awash in petrodollars, governed by the autocratic Shah whose rule vacillated between westernization and brutal police state repression. Against this complex backdrop, Madhav weaves a love story entwined with 1970s terrorism, the last days of the Pahlavi Dynasty and the rise of fundament...

Labyrinth of the Wind is the critically acclaimed debut novel of Madhav Misra. Set in Teheran, Iran in the late 1970s as the Shah's regime is coming to an end and the fundamentalist Islamic Revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini is unfolding it is a complex story of a young expat's struggle to serve several masters. A fascinating look back to a Westernizing Iran awash in petrodollars and fabulous wealth but also poverty. And even the Shah wanted to build a nuclear capability for Iran over 40 years ago...

San Francisco has been picked on by the East Coast press for decades. Of late, they have criticized us for our homelessness mess, high cost of housing, City Hall Corruption - I agree with them on that score - and the recent tech exodus to Austin, Seattle and points East because of the high cost of living. They seem to think we live in a Film Noir Warp. But San Francisco always bounces back. In fact the mythical Phoenix, rising from the ashes, adorns our city flag. Don't count us out ! --- Sen...

With the recall petition against Governor Gavin Newsom having reached 1,200,000 signatures and only 300,000 more valid signatures of California necessary to qualify it for the ballot could California be ready for another celebrity Governor ? After all Arnold Schwarzenegger swept in to the 2003 recall election to replace Gray Davis. And even Ronald Reagan was chosen by Californians to lead the state with no elective office experience. Could Clooney or another high profile Hollywood star become Go...

Joseph R. Biden Jr. was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on January 20, 2021. His predecessor Donald Trump did not attend the ceremony, but he left a letter of support for the incoming President in the Oval Office. Biden's 21 minute inaugural address spoke of unity and toning down political rhetoric. While new American Presidents enjoy a honeymoon with the voters, his challenge will be to forge links to the 74 million Americans who chose Donald Trump for President rather than ...

As awful as 2020 has been been, 1968 was even more momentous with political assassinations, the Viet Nam War, the Prague Spring and Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia as well as major civil unrest throughout America. Amidst all these tectonic changes, a major political realignment occurred with segregationist George Wallace winning four dependably Democrat states. And we even had a mini-Pandemic, the Hong Kong flu. 2020 also witnessed a major political realignment which is still underway. But the...

The 17 mile trail that crosses San Francisco from the Bay in the South East corner of the City to Land's End in its' North West Corner, cuts right through the heart of our 49 square miles of natural beauty. It traverses urban gardens, solid neighborhoods, the Presidio, Golden Gate Park and leads you to the dramatic cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The brainchild of Bob Siegel a one time Peace Corps volunteer and college professor, the Crosstown Trail has become a top attraction during Covid...

The Siege of the US Capitol one week ago illustrated how US politics have become militarized under Donald Trump. Militias and their members were a visible presence at the infamous rally beforehand and at the storming of the Capitol. The Million Militia March scheduled for Inauguration Day January 20 will be met by 3000 National Guard troops if it turns violent. A 7 foot high unscaleable fence now surrounds the Capitol. And Trump faces a second impeachment for inciting the riot. Yet his followers...

Air India initiated a new nonstop flight from San Francisco to Bangalore - 17 hours nonstop - over the North Pole. The crew was all female, Captain, First Officer, Navigator. The new flight will link San Francisco's Silicon Valley and India's Technology powerhouse Bangalore which are already Sister Cities. And the 2.7 million Indian immigrants to the United States are very successful. But China's clashes with the Indian Army last Summer and America's trade tariffs seem to be driving India and Am...

The 25th Amendment permits the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet to declare a President unable to discharge the duties and powers of his office and replace him. Should Vice President Pence and the cabinet remove President Trump in the last 13 days of his term which expires January 20, 2021 ? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

The Covid 19 Pandemic was a Black Swan event unleashed on the world in early 2020. A Black Swan event is an extreme outlier occurrence with a huge impact which is only explainable after the fact. Do any Black Swans lurk in our future for 2021 ? By nature they are unpredictable and unknowable beforehand, but we will attempt to predict some areas that could produce black swans in the next twelve months. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

DNA genealogical testing is dominated by Ancestry.com and 23 and Me. MIT's Technology Review estimates that 26 million such test kits have been sold by these two companies. While their growth has been explosive, privacy concerns are growing. The sale of genetic data to 3rd parties is especially sensitive. And the open source genealogy website GEDMatch has even fewer privacy safeguards than the Direct To Customer testers. Is your genetic data safe ? Where is the industry headed ? --- Send in a...

In 2019 87,00 Californians relocated to Texas. And in 2020 we lost several iconic Bay Area tech companies to the Lone Star state such as Oracle, Hewlett Packard and Palantir. Podcast celebrity Joe Rogan moved to Austin and Tesla founder Elon Musk did likewise. The cost of living in Houston is 65% lower than San Francisco while salaries are 17% less. Can California stem the flow of this exodus ? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message

When Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on January 20, 2021 he will become the 23rd President in history to have Irish roots. 50% of our Presidents have an ancestral link to Ireland - that's quite a high concentration and the story behind it is even more fascinating. Since 1945, 9 of the 13 Presidents have Irish roots along with 35 million fellow Americans. Talk about punching above your weight for the Fighting Irish ! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor....

Governor Gavin Newsom, California's 40th Governor could be facing a recall election in the Spring of 2021 in the midst of the Pandemic. Recall signature gatherers have 850,000 of the 1,500,000 qualified signatures they need to trigger a statewide election. They have 90 days to collect the remaining 650,000 signatures. If he loses, Newsom would be terminated as Governor and a fresh election would be held simultaneous to the recall. Interest in the race has now gone national with Republican leader...

Chesa Boudin, the 40 year old District Attorney of San Francisco was elected November 2019. He has spent his first 11 months in office radically transforming the criminal justice prosecution priorities for our City. But none of the changes is more controversial than his criminal prosecution of three current and former SF police officers on charges as varied as manslaughter, felony battery and assault. The Police Union has locked horns with the DA whom they opposed when he ran for election. Meanw...

As the 49 year old's net worth surged to $152 billion last week based on the success of his California companies, Tesla and SpaceEx, he announced he was decamping for Texas. Seriously ? Texas ? California has its' fair share of problems, no doubt, but isn't Musk being an ingrate ? Looks like he is biting the hand that has fed him for the last 25 years becoming the second richest man in America, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. But like they say, it's complicated ! --- Send in a v...

FaceBook will launch a new cryptocurrency the Diem and a financial wallet the Novi to complement it. Target date is early 2021. It will be backed by the US dollar so it will not be digital in the way that Bitcoin is digital. Further, it will have a governing board and the Diem Association which will include FB and other investors will be based in Switzerland. The strategic objective is to create a global consumer finance company based on FB's 2 billion users in 192 countries. Financial transacti...

With two new vaccines and their 94% effective rates against Covid 19 pending FDA approval, light is at the end of the tunnel for the Pandemic. But will Americans accept them enthusiastically ? Or will they protest like rejecting the mask mandates and social distancing rules ? The Anti Vaxxer Movement and Vaccine Hesitant Groups are gearing up for a fight. They have shrewdly allied themselves with Church Groups, civil liberties organizations and civil rights associations to fight mandatory vaccin...

Not even a once in a century global pandemic seems to be able to slow down the rise in California's robust residential real estate market. The median price for a home hit $712,000 and shows little sign of slowing down. Low interest rates and limited supply of new homes seems to be fueling the price rise. At the same time over 650,000 Californians left the state in 2019 because of unaffordable housing and a heavy tax burden. Yet San Francisco for example, struggles to keep city streets clean and ...

Governor Gavin Newsom will get to name a new US Senator to fill the vacancy left when Kamala Harris becomes Vice President. The Governor appears to be in no rush to name a successor. While he wants to make an historic appointment, he knows that it is fraught with risk. In the last 56 years, two California Governors appointed successors to fill vacant US Senate seats in 1964 and 1990 and in both cases the appointees went down to historic defeats. There are five frontrunners for the post with one ...

Twitter, Facebook and the other big social media companies moved toward a curated speech, censorship model during the 2020 campaign. As a result an Alt Tech social media ecosystem has grown up emphasizing the importance of Free Speech in social media. There are now a host of social media companies like Parler that are Free Speech oriented. While they are far smaller than the established players it remains to be seen if they can scale up and compete. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm...

November 22, 2020 marks 57 years since the assassination of the 35th President, John F. Kennedy. Yet key documents remain hidden from the public including 300 pages of files on George Joannides, a CIA operative who managed the Cuban student group DRE that Oswald tried to join. And most historians and scholars are reluctant to write the history as so many of the facts of the assassination are as murky as they were over 50 years ago. The passage of time has not cleared up the morass of the Kennedy...

A popular conspiracy theory in right wing circles is that Vice President elect Kamala Harris will soon take over from an incapacitated President elect Joe Biden. When you repeat such a theory you are giving it oxygen some argue, even if your intent is to dismantle and reject it. In today's podcast I will explain how this myth has materialized, its roots in American History and why it is never likely to come to pass. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-herlihy/message