The Nutshell Podcast

In this election season, there's a lot of talk about the United States going into decline. Well on the show today, we discuss- what if that's what's happening? And not just the loud noises coming from this particular political cycle. But what if there's something big going on here, something historic. A turning point that forces the United States to choose one of two paths: That of the British, who gave up their empire and preserved their democracy, or that of the Romans- who didn't. On the show today, Ryan spoke with John, who introduces us to a book called Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. Author Chalmers Johnson was a former CIA consultant, and in the 80's favored a strong military buildup against the Soviet Union. But now, he warns that American democracy is deeply threatened by its foreign interventions and extensive military footprint, including 800 foreign bases & military installations worldwide. The Romans overreached, and their Republic went from a democracy to a dictatorship. Could it happen to the American Republic?

If you're like most of us, you go to sleep when conditions allow, and you get up when you have to get up. We all do it. When there's a time crunch, when there's stress, when the demands on our time require superhuman response - sleep is what gets the squeeze. In fact, we could be in the midst of a crisis of sleep deprivation. And it's impacting our health, our work, our relationships and even our happiness. This week, John spoke with Ryan about The Sleep Revolution, by Arianna Huffington of the well-known Huffington Post news site. She argues especially in today's fast-paced, always-on world, we dismiss the importance of good sleep at our peril. Stay tuned to learn how technology is affecting our sleep, whether naps really are good for you, and how cherry juice - yea, cherry juice - is a possible sleep elixir.

Think back to the last sales call you received. Maybe not the highlight of your day, right? But what if the person on the other end of the line valued your time, deeply understood your problems, and challenged you to make your business better? Yeah, it's still a sales call, and yea, it'll never be the best moment of your day. But what if it were possible to take these conversations, and make them more constructive, better for everyone involved? What if we took sales, and reimagined it? This week, Ryan spoke with Glen Cornell, who tells us how the sales world is undergoing a shift with the potential to improve the experience for everyone. We discussed a book called The Challenger Sale, by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. If you're in sales, this book might just revolutionize your understanding of what it means to connect with customers. And even if you're not in the world of business, get ready for a rare peek behind the curtain, inside the mind of a salesperson.

In the United States, before the law, each one of us should be equals. As the saying goes, justice is blind. But, for a while now, especially since the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, we've challenged, and at times, doubted, the reality of that ideal. More and more, it seems that legal punishments depend more on who you are than the crime you commit, if you even get punished at all. So, what's the nature of this divide in our legal system? And how does our society's most recent plague, inequality, help decide which laws are enforced and which ones aren't, and who gets prosecuted and who doesn't? This week John spoke to Ryan about "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap" by favorite author of the show, Matt Taibbi. In the book, Taibbi explains the links between mass incarceration, wealth inequality, and our increasingly monetized political system. He argues that, more or less, our basic rights as U.S. Americans are now determined by our wealth or poverty; that our system looks away as banks launder drug money, while, at the same time, it goes out if its way to lock up the most vulnerable of us all.

Privatized parking meters owned by foreign oil sheiks, skyrocketing gas prices that have nothing to do with real oil, handouts to for-profit insurance companies masked in ostensibly populist healthcare reform, and of course, last but not least, the bubble machine making vampire squid behind it all, Goldman Sachs. What could these seemingly disparate topics have in common? And how does the link between all of them demonstrate the true colors of our political system- not red, not blue, but puke green? This week John spoke to Ryan about the second half of Matt Taibbi's book "Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History". The last four chapters of the book cover the speculation induced spike in gas prices in the late 2000s, the fire-sale of public goods that came in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the failure of Obamacare to be true healthcare reform, and the not-so-invisible hand of Goldman Sachs that seems to find its way into almost every money-making grifter scheme of the past few decades.

It's an election year in the United States, and things are getting a little crazy. If you're part of the Washington establishment now, if you're involved in the foreign policy decision making, or, even if you're just a general appreciator of the status quo, you may be starting to sweat a little. So, when we received the latest issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine, where they suggested three articles we should read to understand the 2016 election, we decided to apply a little Nutshell analysis to them. This week, Ryan spoke to John about three articles appearing in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine, articles that could give us some clues as to how Washington and the foreign policy establishment are reacting to a boisterous election year.

These days, it's almost a political platitude to claim that the system is rigged, that it's all a sham, and that none of the elections we obsess over really matter. But, even though it'd be a tough pill to swallow, what if it were true? What if our political and economic systems really were corrupted beyond repair? What if the wealthy and powerful really did control the government, rig the economy, and leave the rest of us to fight for the crumbs? And what if someone could explain the complex, intricate, and insidious ways that they do so while, at the same time, making us laugh uncontrollably to help alleviate the pain that the truth brings with it? This week John spoke with Ryan about the first half of Matt Taibbi's book "Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History". The first three chapters of the book cover the lack of importance that our current elections hold, the way in which former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, helped to create a bubble economy, and the ca uses of the 2008 financial crisis. Taibbi's book reads like a true crime story of the utmost importance, but one that will make you laugh out loud while learning about the myriad ways that our government seems to be working to make the rich richer and the rest of us too bedazzled by complexity to start a revolution.

Here in the U.S., we love our animals: we love to watch them on YouTube, to post pictures of them on Facebook, even to treat them as if they were our own kids. But, we also love to eat them, more so than any other country on Earth. To some, this is just a part of life, as humans have been killing animals to eat for millennia. To others, our meat industry is more than just a means of turning animals into meat, it's a method of torture. So how do we reconcile our love for animals with the current state of our factory farming system? What's the true cost to all animals, both human and not, of the mass produced meat at we tend to find at the grocery store? This week John spoke to Ryan about Jonathan Safran Foer's book, "Eating Animals", which takes a somewhat philosophical approach to exploring our meat-eating habits, all the way from the farm to the table. Foer's book shies away from judging, from militantly advocating for veganism and vegetarianism, and instead tries to understand, to get to the center of our relationship with animals and meat. Along the way, he keeps his attention focused on a single question, one that encompasses thousands of smaller questions: what should we serve on Thanksgiving?

When you hear the word "politics", your brain likely conjures up images of sharply pressed suits, of polished people shaking hands and kissing babies, of impossible-to-keep promises, and of course, of money. Money's always been a part of politics in the United States, but over the past forty years, primarily pushed by a handful of extremely wealthy donors, its influence has become less direct, more subtle, and a whole lot darker, which has reshaped the limits of our national political conversation and has both literally and figuratively redrawn the electoral map. So who are the people behind this avalanche of dark money? How has this small group had such a large impact on our political systems? And, at the end of the day, what do they really want? This week I read "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right" by investigative journalist and New Yorker feature writer Jane Mayer. Her book not only tells the origin stories of dark money in U.S. politics, but also explores how our current political landscape is dominated by big donors with vested interests. Without reservations, Mayer's investigation takes us into the deepest, darkest corners of the political system, shining a light on the blueprints of the great push to the right that we've seen become a reality since the 1980s.

In life, there are certain conversations we tend to shy away from, and reasons for avoiding thinking about and discussing our mortality abound: some people are young and healthy, and death, to them, probably seems like an abstract concept; on the other hand, others are not so young and not so healthy, and the immediacy of life's end may scare them into silence. But what's the cost of that silence, especially for people facing terminal illnesses or those at the end of their lives? What would happen if these patients, their doctors, and their families began to look at the end of life in terms of quality instead of quantity? This week Phil spoke to Ryan about "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" by Dr. Atul Gawande. In the book, the author argues that end-of-life care should focus on how fullfilling a doctor can make a patient's final days, rather than how many more days she can give him. Dr. Gawande details how other doctors and patients have already had success with qualitative end-of-life care, and points out that the way we practice medicine at the end of patients' lives could be much more effective and beneficial if we shifted our focus away from extending the length their lives to maximizing the quality of them.

We don't mean to scare you, but no matter where you're listening to this, whether it's in your room, in a car, or walking outside, there's a good chance that some unknown substance, something microscopic, something with an obscure, technical name, is causing irreparable damage to you right now. It could be in your clothes, or in the air, or even in the carpet or beneath your feet- basically, it could be anywhere, and more than likely, it's in the things we come into contact with on a daily basis. So, given the omnipresence of these toxic bullets, how do we, as regular consumers, people without advanced degrees, figure out how to stay healthy in our industrialized world? And is this stuff such a big deal anyways? This week John spoke to Phil, who read "Dodging the Toxic Bullet" by David R. Boyd, who is an environmental lawyer and expert on public health and environmental policy. Boyd's book not only identifies the most harmful chemicals that we encounter in our daily lives, but it also provides some actionable steps that we can take to mitigate our exposure to them. Boyd paints somewhat of a frightening picture about the regulation of these toxic bullets in North America, but, at the same time, explains how we, as consumers, can pick up the slack and protect ourselves.

If the Western, industrialized world had an economic mantra for the past forty years, it'd go something like this: "we're all neoliberal capitalists now". In other words, for almost half a century , we've let the market rule our economic world, and we've let that world become dominated almost entirely by one idea, the central tenet of capitalism itself : the profit-motive. But what happens when that profit motive comes into direct conflict with our ability to survive as human beings? Is our way of life destroying our ability to sustain life on the only planet we call home? This week, John spoke to Ryan about Naomi Klein's latest book, "This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus The Climate", in which the author not only traces the history of the climate movement and discusses the current conversation around climate policy, but attempts to change our perspective on the way to combat climate change. Mainly, Klein argues that if we want to contain runaway global warming and mitigate the disastrous consequences of climate change, we need to reinvent not only our energy system, but our political and economic systems as well.

Every election year, there always seems to be one or two topics that dominate our political imagination, like Iraq and terrorism in 2004, and like the financial crisis in 2008. This time around, even though we’re still in the primaries, the topic of the year seems to have already been chosen for us: inequality. But how unequal of a society are we anyways? How did we get to this state of inequality? And really, is it such a bad thing after-all? This week John spoke to Ryan about Joseph Stiglitz's seminal work, “The Price of Inequality”, which seeks to answer those questions and more. Along with recounting the narrative of how inequality has invaded American society, Stiglitz describes its far reaching negative impacts. Along the way, he dispels some myths, too, and his overall analysis is that inequality isn’t just bad, it’s a cancer, and it’s one that must be cured before we, the people, have a fair shot at prosperity.

Marie Kondo has been called Japan's preeminent guru of tidiness. She wrote a book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, that spent most of 2015 at the top of the best seller charts. For some, her book seems to tap into our primal need to impose order on our lives, lives that, these days, just seem too busy, and out of our control. Marie Kondo offers a solution, and it starts in your sock drawer. This week, our very own Phil Son dived head first in applying the famed KonMari method to his own life.

According to Steve Fraser, author of "The Age of Acquiescence", There are "striking similarities" between the current period of American history and the one that spanned just before the turn of 19th century until the Great Depression, what historians have named the Gilded Age. These similarities include "the rise to power of crony capitalism, the staggering growth of inequality, the exiling of democracy, and the spread of Darwinian rationales to justify and camouflage the embedding of plutocracy at the heights of our world.” But, despite these similar societal developments, Fraser argues that Americans have been reluctant to resist the rule of wealth and power at this point in American history, a time period increasingly known as the second Gilded Age. For the most part, in spite of rampant inequality, decreases in household wages, falling economic indicators, and the general decline of quality of life in the country, Americans have acquiesced. But, it wasn't always like that. In the first Gilded Age, a time the period of time after the Civil War, up through the Great Depression, the masses of workers "managed to mount a kind of sustained economic, political, and cultural resistance to plutocratic rule that is simply unimaginable today." The working masses of America used to be rabble rousing Marxists who protested, organized, and struck, often times risking and giving their lives to do so, all to fight for economic justice. And so, given our history, our epochs of uproar, what explains our current age of acquiescence?

No matter the party and no matter the year, it seems the one thing politicians can always agree on is the American Dream. But as our economy drags itself out of one of the greatest recessions in a century, and as our society becomes more and more equal every year, what’s the state of the American Dream in 2015? And more importantly, is the American Dream just that- a dream? This week John spoke with Ryan about “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis” by Robert Putnam, who decided to examine the state of the American Dream through the eyes of our youngest citizens, our kids. In the book, Putnam questions the veracity of the American Dream, and his findings don’t provide too much comfort for an already tired, weary, and hungry population of dreamers.

For fans of the University of North Carolina, it’s been a though few years. A legendary university sports program that has produced greats like Michael Jordan, James Worthy, and Mia Hamm, is now in the spotlight for alleged athletic fraud. The questions at play are big: what does it mean to be a student athlete? Does the NCAA have the athletes’ best interest at heart? Are our public universities failing to education the students who most need help? In "Cheated: the UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big Time College Sports", Mary Willingham and Jay M. Smith show how high profile college athletics, that’s to say men’s basketball and football, got to the point of corruption at one of the nation’s most recognized universities, and how this is indicative of the flaws at the national level. At UNC and other big name schools, athletics and academics departments concerns for the student athletes is based around one thing: winning games.

What would happen if college, the way most everyone has experienced up to now, was fundamentally changed by the Internet? What if credentials earned online came to be seen by employers, by society, as just as valid as on campus learning? And could something as obvious as online learning stem the huge increase in tuition costs, open college education to the masses, and even help colleges recruit the brightest minds from untapped places like a high school in Mongolia? Despite new advances in online learning, the traditional image of college- brick paths, big lecture halls, grassy quads full of oak trees- still dominate the U.S. Imagination. But, as college costs soar, and as the value of the college degree becomes more and more measured by its value in the workplace, could more targeted, more accessible, and, most importantly, cheaper methods of delivery come to replace our notion of what the college experience could be? Kevin Carey imagines this future for us in "The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere". Starting from the first university in Bologna, Italy and ending at the seemingly limitless educational institutions that exist today, Carey traces the evolution of the college experience, its reasons for existing, and how its inefficiencies can be correct with already existing technologies and arrangements.

Over the past few years, happiness has dominated the discussion of well-being in our society, up to the point that, in 2011, the United Nations declared March 20th as International Happiness Day. But really, what does happiness even mean? And does the constant pursuit of it really make us happy? And, if not, what should we pursue? In The Antidote, Oliver Burkeman shows us how the relentless pursuit of happiness can make us miserable, and, contrary to what you may believe, how meditating on unhappiness could actually free us from it.

Over the past decade, socialism has been gaining ground in Latin America. From Ecuador to Venezuela to Bolivia and beyond, people have been demanding more inclusion in their government, motivated by the idea that they should be part of their societal experiments. And one man, above all, seems to be the figurehead for this new shift to the left: Hugo Chavez. How could a kid from such a humble beginning grow up to be the leader of a continental movement, the unifier of Latin America, the new face of the political left as well as public enemy number one (or maybe four or five) of the world’s superpower, the United States of America? In this episode, John discusses Latin America's Turbulent Transitions by Roger Burbach, Michael Fox and Federico Fuentes.