Episodes
Recall Fever: I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.
Feb. 21, 2021
California voters are especially testy these days as we enter our 12 th month of Covid lockdown. Not only is the Governor threatened with Recall over his handling of the crisis, but the San Francisco District Attorney is too, for being soft on crime and hostile to police as well as School Boards. …
Black History Month: In conversation with Jonathan Speed
Feb. 18, 2021
February is Black History Month when we celebrate and acknowledge the many accomplishments of African Americans throughout the history of the United States. In today's episode, successful Venture Capitalist Jonathan Speed, and a US military historian by avocation, walks us through the sweeping expe…
Age Discrimination and Telehealth : A Conversation with Andrew Broderick
Feb. 13, 2021
The Medical profession has aggressively adopted the video call and the Zoom meeting during the Covid lockdown. Over 25 million video doctor visits have taken place in 2020. But as this digital health revolution got underway, seniors have often been left behind because of digital illiteracy, no acce…
Ambassador Ric Grenell and the California Recall
Feb. 8, 2021
Ambassador Ric Grenell served as US Ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020. Subsequently he served as Acting Director of National Intelligence in 2020, a cabinet level post. A favorite of Donald Trump for his blunt and forthright speaking style, Sean Hannity and Representative Matt Gaetz were pus…
Governor Newsom's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week.
Feb. 6, 2021
The first week of February 2021 was not very good to the Governor of California. First, the Recall signature campaign was closing in on 1.4 million signatures with six weeks left before the deadline. Then two Republican candidates announced they would run against him in the Recall and a third one, …
Labyrinth of the Wind (2)
Feb. 5, 2021
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 …
Labyrinth of the Wind
Feb. 3, 2021
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 seve…
San Francisco Noir: America's Bad Dream
Feb. 1, 2021
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 …
Governor George Clooney
Jan. 27, 2021
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 reca…
A peaceful transfer of power.
Jan. 22, 2021
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 do…
Was 2020 or 1968 the worst year ever ? The Past is Prologue.
Jan. 20, 2021
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 segr…
The Crosstown Trail: America's most beautiful urban hike.
Jan. 15, 2021
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 …
Militarization of Politics must Stop
Jan. 13, 2021
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 2…
San Francisco and Bangalore: Is India the new China ?
Jan. 10, 2021
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…
25th Amendment: Removal of the President from Office
Jan. 7, 2021
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, 20…
The Black Swan and Predictions for 2021
Jan. 7, 2021
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 befor…
DNA, Ancestry, Roots, Databases: The Darkside to your Christmas present.
Jan. 2, 2021
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 sen…
The Relocation Dilemma: San Francisco or Houston ?
Dec. 30, 2020
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% l…