Talk Cocktail

We’re not one nation split by politics — we’re 11 regional cultures that have been at war since the colonies. And now the divisions are life and death. What if the America we think we know has never actually existed? The divisions tearing us apart aren’t new — they’re four centuries old, rooted in the very founding of

When billionaires mock the Pope with memes and fund “cheating apps,” something’s gone seriously wrong. The collapse of tech idealism; betting takes its place. Silicon Valley used to sell itself as the future. Today it often feels more like a funhouse mirror of the culture — loud, aggrieved, addicted to posting, increas

Arkansas legally whipped prisoners until 1968. Today, U.S. officials celebrate images from El Salvador’s concentration camp-style prisons while federal courts abandon “evolving standards of decency” for 1790s baselines. Yale Law Professor Judith Resnik, author of book Impermissible Punishments, talks to me about how pr

On this recent California Sun podcast Roddy Bottum, a founder of the alternative metal band Faith No More, talks with me about 1980s and ’90s San Francisco — a dark, overlooked era between the Summer of Love and the tech boom. His memoir, “The Royal We” recalls a vanished city of bicycle messengers and punk rock in the

In this recent California Sun podcast I talk with Dina Gilio-Whitaker, author of the new book “Who Gets to Be Indian?“ She explores how California became ground zero for Native American identity fraud — from Hollywood’s early film lots to today’s casino capitalism and tribal disenrollment crisis. All of it created the

Families who voted for Trump now carry passports to prove they belong here. Inside the fear, resistance, and betrayal reshaping Latino communities. Something remarkable is unfolding in American politics, and most people are missing it. The Latino voters who handed Donald Trump a historic victory less than a year ago ar