Wavemaker Conversations: A Podcast For The Insanely Curious

A Charlottesville, VA jury today convicted a white supremacist of first-degree murder for killing Heather Heyer. He intentionally drove his car into a crowd of counter-protestors at the “Unite the Right” rally for neo-Nazis and white nationalists. A week after that rally, in August 2017, I visited Charlottesville to speak with Henry Abraham. Abraham, now 97, spent his Jewish boyhood in Nazi Germany. He tells stories of anti-Semitism and how his mother made his survival and life in the United States possible. Armed with her optimism and his love of teaching, he became a scholar of the U.S. Constitution and an esteemed professor at the University of Virginia. We spoke about his life’s journey and the déjà vu he experienced during the rally. He has much to teach us.

America is hungry for the voice of an honorable leader. So Wavemaker brings you the voice of Retired Admiral William McRaven, former Navy SEAL and Commander of all U.S. Special Operations Forces. He was the architect of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. This episode features McRaven’s viral University of Texas commencement address: 10 memorable lessons from Navy SEAL training for those “who want to change the world” – aka the “Make Your Bed” speech. It’s 20 minutes of uninterrupted inspiration that parents can be proud to share with our children. My thanks to the Texas Exes, the University of Texas alumni association, for permission to post the speech.

Environmentalists don’t vote. At least not nearly as much as the general population. They have a turnout problem. By Nathaniel Stinnett’s estimate, 10.1 million registered voters who consider climate change or the environment as one of their top two priorities, sat out the 2016 presidential election. An even larger number stayed home for the 2014 midterms. But for Stinnett, those big numbers mean a big opportunity. Right now, his Environmental Voter Project is targeting 2.4 million environmentalists in Georgia, Florida, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Pennsylvania – registered voters who are considered unlikely to vote. Stinnett employs an unusual messaging strategy to get them to the polls– which he explains in our conversation. If he succeeds, he believes no candidate will be able to get their name on a ballot without talking about the environment.

Jane Alexander’s illustrious acting career was launched in 1968 by her breakthrough performance in the Pulitzer Prize winning play (and later movie) The Great White Hope. She then took the political stage as Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts, when the NEA was on the political right’s hit list. She and her husband had virtually all their money stolen by an accountant who did a convincing job acting like their friend. And now, after dozens of movies and TV shows, including Kramer vs. Kramer and All the President’s Men, and some one hundred plays, she puts the spotlight on the men and women leading the conservation battle in her book Wild Things, Wild Places. So much fascinating ground to cover in this conversation, which was recorded live at the 2018 Nantucket Book Festival, courtesy of @NCTV17. We begin with an angry outburst…

Standup comic Pete Dominick joins me to dissect Michelle Wolf’s routine at the recent White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Why now? Because this Sunday, May 27th, Wolf’s new series, The Break, debuts on Netflix. That’s just as good an excuse as any. Dominick, with Wolf as a launching point, helps make us all more astute observers of the art of comedy. Among the issues we discuss: using the P word, punching up versus punching down, and what it was like being in the room during Wolf’s speech. Pete also takes a swing at my tennis coach in Georgia, who didn’t like Wolf’s routine. I gave Coach Ross air time to swing back. Is that punching up or down? Warning: contains some explicit language.

Here is Michelle Wolf’s entire performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.  Most people have only heard clips.  Here is all of it – 19 minutes and roughly 50 jokes – unedited.  This is the beginning of a broader mission on Wavemaker: exploring the deeper significance of comedy – from ancient Greece to the 2018 mid-term elections and beyond.  What’s funny?  Why?  Can comedy enable Americans of divergent political perspectives to laugh – together?  Should that even be its goal?  Those are just a few of the questions I’ll be pursuing with future guests (one of whom you’ll get to sample at the end of this episode) from my perspective as both a journalist and the son of a standup comic.  Warning: the language in this routine gets very explicit.

There’s a new surge of military veterans running for Congress.  And they’re split about evenly between Democrats and Republicans.  Do veterans have a competitive edge over those who have not served in the military?  Are they better equipped for the job?  Can they help bridge the hyper-partisan divide?  This Wavemaker episode begins looking for answers with Jeremy Teigen, veteran, professor, and author of the new book Why Veterans Run: Military Service in American Presidential Elections, 1789-2016.

Some people recognize potential threats to our democracy before others.  My guest, Barbara Simons, is one of those people.  15 years ago, not long after the infamous “hanging chads” threw the Bush v Gore vote count into turmoil and computerized voting became the new rage, Simons, a computer scientist, and some of her colleagues, concluded that in order to protect the integrity of the vote count, we would have to move to paper ballots – everywhere.  Simons became a co-founder of VerifiedVoting.Org, which is racing to inoculate America’s voting systems against hackers.  In the beginning, Simons got nowhere.  But she persisted.  With 228 days until the mid-term elections, her voice and message need to be urgently spread.  And for those of you who may not find your calling early in life, Simons will share her journey from college dropout to Ph.D.

Introducing former Army Sergeant Matt Martin, author of “I’ve Been Shot In Combat.  And As A Veteran, I’m Telling You: Allowing Teachers To Be Armed Is An Asinine Idea.”   Since writing it two weeks ago for his new hometown’s website, CharlotteFive.com, Martin’s story has been viewed more than 2-million times on Facebook. “When I saw the news flash of another school shooting,” he said of the Parkland massacre, “I couldn’t help but think of the firefights I had been involved in and how these students and teachers just encountered their own version of Afghanistan.”  Listen to Matt Martin share the insights he drew from those firefights in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and why he believes they’re so relevant as Americans assess how to move forward after Parkland, Florida.    

Introducing Saru Jayaraman.  Millions of Americans caught a glimpse of her at this year’s Golden Globes, where she was Amy Poehler’s guest – recognized for her role in the battle against sexual harassment in the restaurant industry.  Jayaraman, who was accepted to Harvard at the age of 16 and said no thanks, is the co-founder and President of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United.  Her organization's extensive research into the restaurant industry has documented pervasive sexual harassment.   It often begins with managers insisting waitresses show more cleavage.  As you’ll hear, it often does not end there.  Saru’s solution?  Listen on.

Lois Jenson is a historic figure in the battle against sexual harassment – the lead plaintiff in the field’s first class action lawsuit.  As one of the first four women miners in a northern Minnesota mine, Jenson shares what one judge called the “record of human indecency” that she and the other female miners endured for many years – extreme harassment, including one miner grabbing her crotch while other miners watched and laughed.  As you’ll hear, it would get even worse than that.  The company failed to act.  Jenson decided it had to stop, so she took it to court.  The years of harassment and seemingly endless legal battles left Jenson physically ill and suffering from PTSD.  Yet, still, she recalls the good guys, who, she says, outnumbered the bad.  How she regained her health is an inspiring story near the end of our conversation that can inspire so many others who are suffering.

Astrophysicist Sara Seager joins me for a conversation about her leading role in the search for earth-like planets outside our solar system.  When she began her search as a graduate student – not just for any “exoplanets” as they’re called, but planets that may have just the right atmosphere to support life – she was greeted with plenty of “no’s.”  Not anymore.  Our conversation about her search led to insights on creativity, resilience, parenting, and the importance of sleep and free time doing nothing as key ingredients of success.  Seager, a Professor of Planetary Science and Physics at MIT and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, also shares the details of a side project that could, one day, change the nature of space exploration: mining asteroids for precious metals.  Her thrilling journey began as a child, when she noticed something in the night sky for the first time and asked herself: “Why hadn’t anyone told me about this?”

Mary Koss has been on a 40-year quest for justice – “to understand why women are hurt and how we can stop it.” As a young professor, with a PhD in clinical psychology, Koss was asked by a more senior male colleague to join him on a study that proposed “to have women that he employed sit and wear different sizes of padded bras, while they interacted with male college students.”  What that colleague proposed to do afterwards, which you’ll hear at the beginning of this episode, would have made some women run in the other direction.  Not Mary Koss.  Koss has never run from controversy.  That helps explain why, during her own personal battle against sexual harassment, which she shares in this episode, she was willing to withstand “an entire year when no one spoke to me.”  And it helps explain why this University of Arizona Professor is pursuing a mission to spread an approach to justice that, instead of fighting in the criminal court system, has victim and perpetrator come to an understanding about the wrong that

Professor Louise Fitzgerald is a pioneer in sexual harassment research. At this moment, when women who have broken their silence have led to the downfall of so many prominent men, I speak with Fitzgerald about how to assess the continuum of acts – ranging from bad to horrific – that have made the headlines. She also shares stories of harassment happening under the radar, including the extreme vulnerability of women in low-income housing to predatory landlords, and a case she is working on in which every new woman hired to work in a particular factory was greeted by chants of “fresh meat.” And, as usual on Wavemaker Conversations, we’ll hear our guest’s personal journey to success – which, for Fitzgerald, meant transforming from a college dropout with a 1.2 GPA to a university professor with a PhD. This is the first in a series of reports from the front lines of sexual harassment and assault – stories that don’t make the headlines.

This conversation will help make your children (and you, too) better writers. Last time Jack Gantos was on Wavemaker Conversations, he shared his unforgettable journey to a terrifying prison sentence in a federal penitentiary and then to a prolific writing career. Now, with his new book, Writing Radar: Using Your Journal to Snoop Out and Craft Great Stories, his goal is to help young writers who find the blank page terrifying. The book is written for 3rd grade and up. That includes all of us. All you need to begin is a blank journal, 15 minutes a day, and the willingness to “dump” some lines on a page. It’s that easy to start. The structure will come. How? Allow this Newbery Award-winning master raconteur to be your guide. And make sure to stick around for the end – when his mom realized he was hanging out with the wrong kids after discovering chicken-wire-shaped burn marks on the seat of his white underwear.

Author Will Schwalbe is one of the funniest serious readers you’ll ever hear.  In our conversation, before a packed house at The Nantucket Book Festival, Will and I talk about his latest work, Books for Living, in which he treats us to a tour of books we might love to read – but may have missed – and shares his perspective-changing takeaways for how to live a more meaningful life.  Imagine: the hero Odysseus taught Schwalbe about the importance of mediocrity, exemplified by his story of getting a C on a high school paper and the unusually clever response from his teacher when Will objected; and the book Wonder taught him about how to increase his kindness quotient.  Schwalbe also shares his unique insight on resilience, based on his conversations about books with his mother when she was dying of cancer, which led to his NY Times Bestseller The End of Your Life Book Club.  He recommends a book that made it impossible for him to feel sorry for himself when he was at his worst, and explains why he’s “the last ga

When Ruth Reichl became the restaurant critic for The New York Times, she learned there was a bounty on her – $1,000 for any worker who recognized this make-or-break critic when she sat down to eat.  Reichl shares the backstory of her elaborate, yet necessary, disguise; her courageous first review of how New York’s most heralded restaurant treated her when they didn’t have a clue who she was; and what changed once they realized.  Reichl also explores the connection between food and social justice, and how the act of cooking saved her (and could benefit us all) when she was at her lowest point in life.  Plus the moving story of how her mother learned to live a meaningful life at age 80.  The former Critic in Disguise engages in a thoroughly transparent conversation with Michael before a large audience at The Nantucket Book Festival.

New York Times bestselling author Julie Lythcott-Haims says she is “so American it hurts.”  Why so much pain in this American success story? How did this daughter of a prominent black physician and white teacher come to loathe herself despite her academic success as an undergraduate at Stanford and a law student at Harvard, followed by her professional accomplishments as Stanford’s Dean of Freshmen and a best-selling author? In our conversation about her new memoir, “Real American,” Lythcott-Haims reveals, with powerfully poetic transparency, how she came to internalize the often shocking stories of the racial prejudice she experienced growing up as a biracial black woman – how they became embedded in her, and how she, ultimately, became comfortable in her own skin. Featuring a conversation about “The Talk” that Lythcott-Haims and so many black parents  give their children – the one designed to keep them safe without crushing their self-esteem.  

Michael visits one of the most influential and beloved figures in the field of psychotherapy on the eve of the release of his memoir:  Becoming Myself.  At 86, after a recent health scare, The Atlantic magazine wrote:  "As a psychotherapist, Irvin Yalom has helped others grapple with their mortality. Now he is preparing for his own end."  Not quite.  Yalom's legions of fans will be gratified to hear his impassioned response to that analysis in this intimate Wavemaker Conversation.  He is still actively creating ripples, a therapeutic concept he explains here and which any of us can apply to our lives. He also shares a never-before-heard story about a recent patient who believed she was "beyond repair."  In Dr. Yalom's orbit, it's hard to imagine that anyone is beyond repair. 

6’2” Carey Kauffman, a March Madness veteran of the Duke University Blue Devils, couples her insights from a life in basketball with her experience as the mother of two children born with rare diseases.  Kauffman, the daughter of an NBA all-star. will help make you one of the most insightful people in the room during the Final Four – and help give your kids an edge if they play the game.  But it’s her mission in life, which she pursues through her company WellSelf 360, that will inspire you.  She applies what she learned on the court to empowering those who suffer from rare and chronic health conditions.  If you listen to the entire episode, I think you’ll find Carey Kauffman’s resilience is contagious.