Recently, Susan Stoner, my co-host, and I taped a few book discussions with our guests for the next season of Just Read It. (Click)  Our shows are 10 minutes long, as we know people are busy.  But after the camera stops rolling, conversation continues, especially if we had differing

As I wrote in an earlier blog, (Blog 5/26/16) the world is awash in personal savings accounts, what Ben Bernanke calls a “global savings glut.” (“Private Desires, by Geoff Colvin, Fortune, June, 2016, pg. 54.)  In a recent essay, Geoff Colvin points out this sea of cash is chan

If you break out in a rash at the thought of genetically modified foods (GMO), read on.  A sweeping study  released by the National Academy of Science has concluded that GMO’s are as safe as any other food.  (“GMO’s: Safe to eat, says science,” The Week, June 3, 2016, p

Much has been said about Hillary Clinton’s support for the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.  Some say she supported the action because she is “hawkish.”  But why overthrow a leader who’d started to cooperate with Europe and the United States?  On the surface, the poli

I have a confession. Since I joined the retirement center, I’ve gained 6 lbs.  My doctor didn’t seem alarmed.  “A little extra weight as a person gets older is good,” she shrugged. Easy for her to say.  She doesn’t have to fit into my jeans.  Some extra pounds might be t

The central question for the upcoming election is: “How would the candidate, as President, bring our country together around a common vision for where we need to go as a nation and how we can get there?”  (“Stop Fighting, Start Fixing,” by Jon Huntsman Jr. and Joe Lieberman,

Thinking about Artificial Intelligence, Stephen Hawking warns, “One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand.” (“The End of Code,” by Jason Tanz,

A friend of mine was driving along a freeway one  dark and stormy night when she was overcome by a fear that forced her off the highway.  Except for the pounding rain, nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Still she was so upset, she asked the friend with her  to drive them hom

As technology shrinks our world, rubbing differing cultures together with the force of colliding tectonic plates, human beings are facing an overwhelming question: Is it better “to give wide freedoms to differing subcultures to live as they wish, or to assert a universal standard of

I sometimes marvel at the subjects some authors choose to explore.   Take, Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing by Matthew Kirschbaum.  (“Word Perfect,” by Josephine Livingstone, New Republic, June 2016, pgs. 71-73.)   How large, I wonder, is the audience that