Professor and Egyptologist Kara Cooney

The Good Kings
Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World

Dr. Kara Cooney returns to discuss her new and provocative book The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World. The book covers five Egyptian pharaohs – or kings, if you will – and discusses the concepts surrounding power: how is it earned, who controls it, and why the many often give up power to the few.  Oh… and does any of that correlate to our modern life?

Dr. Cooney tells us how authoritarianism starts, how that power is maintained, and if she is seeing signs of it in the world today. Plus what people gain from aligning with corrupt people in power and why cognitive dissonance is important to allow  corrupt leadership to continue.

We also discuss how in the past women had equal power to men in some areas (would you believe Los Angeles, 300 years ago?!)  And why we are starting to ask what is power, what is value, and why is there so much sexual abuse.

So. Much. Fascinating. Conversation.  Dr. Cooney will give you lots to think about, I promise.

Click on the player below to hear the chat with Kara Cooney and Pam

About Kara Cooney

Dr. Kathlyn (Kara) Cooney is a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA. Specializing in craft production, coffin studies, and economies in the ancient world, Cooney received her PhD in Egyptology from Johns Hopkins University. In 2005, she was co-curator of Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Cooney produced a comparative archaeology television series, entitled Out of Egypt, which aired in 2009 on the Discovery Channel and is available online via Netflix and Amazon.

Her latest book, The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World, Kara turns to five ancient Egyptian pharaohs–Khufu, Senwosret III, Akenhaten, Ramses II, and Taharqa–to understand why many so often give up power to the few, and what it can mean for our future. Published by National Geographic Press, this book will be released in late 2021.

Her book When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt explores the lives of six remarkable female pharaohs, from Hatshepsut to Cleopatra, and shines a light on our own perceptions of women in power today. Published by National Geographic Press, the book was released in 2018.

The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt was Cooney’s first trade book, and it benefits from her immense knowledge of Egypt’s ancient history to craft an illuminating biography of its least well-known female king. As an archaeologist who spent years at various excavations in Egypt, Cooney draws from the latest field research to fill in the gaps in the physical record of Hatshepsut. Published by Crown Publishing Group, the book was released in 2014.

Cooney’s current research in coffin reuse, primarily focusing on the 21st Dynasty, is ongoing. Her research investigates the socioeconomic and political turmoil that have plagued the period, ultimately affecting funerary and burial practices in ancient Egypt. This project has taken her around the world over the span of five to six years to study and document more than 300 coffins in collections, including those in Cairo, London, Paris, Berlin, and Vatican City.

She currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband Remy Hiramoto.

For her book, The Good Kings: Click here
For more from Kara: Click Here
Follow her on Twitter: @KaraCooney
Instagram @KaraCooney

National Geographic Editor in Chief Susan Goldberg on The 21st Century


The 21st Century: Photographs from the
National Geographic Image Collection

Celebrating the first 21 years of the century
with Nat Geo Editor in Chief Susan Goldberg

Can you believe we are already 21 years into the new century? National Geographic is celebrating that with a beautiful new coffee table book – The 21st Century: Photographs from the Image Collection. We chat with NatGeo Editor in Chief Susan Goldberg about this fabulous book that is set up chronologically with 250 photos in 400 pages. We talk about some of the amazing photographs that are products not only of traditional photography, but also images from the innovations of digital, drone and smartphone photography. The book also answers our questions about what the photographer was thinking when he shot the photo and what the backstory is.

We find out how Susan chose only 250 photos from almost 65 million images in the national Geographic Image Collection, and what makes an image iconic. Plus, we also talk about the NatGeo Instagram account – that has over 190 MILLION followers! (they are the largest brand on Instagram)

In addition, Susan shares how the book helps engender compassion and empathy, and how it reminds us that we all are more alike than we are different.

It’s a wonderful book to share with friends and family – to rediscover the past 21 years, and to find new things to inspire us!

Click on the player below to hear the chat with
Susan Goldberg and Pam

About Susan Goldberg

Susan Goldberg is Editor in Chief of National Geographic and editorial director of National Geographic Partners.

As editorial director, she leads all journalism across platforms, including digital journalism, magazines, podcasts, maps, newsletters, and Instagram. She was named editorial director in October 2015 and editor in chief of National Geographic magazine in April 2014.

Susan is the 10th editor and first female editor of the magazine since it was first published in October 1888.

For her book, The 21st Century: Photographs from the Image Collection: Click here
Follow her on Twitter: @susanbgoldberg

Author and Historical Curator John Rhodehamel


Author and Historical Curator John Rhodehamel

When it comes to the Lincoln assassination, we’ve all heard that John Wilkes Booth was insane orthat  he was an alcoholic. But what if the real motivation behind his actions was white supremacy?

John Rhodehamel is the former Archivist of Mount Vernon and the curator of American Historical Manuscripts at the Huntington Library. He’s written several books about George Washington and about Booth. And now he brings us a well researched book called “America’s Original Sin: White Supremacy, John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Assassination. It’s the first book to explicitly name white supremacy as the motivation for Lincoln’s assassination.

What brought him to that conclusion? How common  was white supremacy back in the day? Does he see any parallels to today’s world? Plus why was Booth so pro-slavery and Lincoln so anti-slavery, and what was the final straw for Booth?

We had a few technical difficulties with the audio of this chat with John Rhodehamel,  so we offer you a transcript
of the interview instead. See below.

About John Rhodehamel

John Rhodehamel is the former archivist of Mount Vernon and curator of American historical manuscripts at the Huntington Library. He is editor of George Washington: Writings and the American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence, 1775-1783. He lives in Newport Beach, California.

For his book, America’s Original Sin: Click here

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pam Atherton
John, so very glad to have you with us.

John Rhodehamel
Well, thank you for having me, Pam.

PA
So I guess the first thing is, what is America’s original sin? Where did that phrase come from?

JR
I got it from James Madison, you know, the father of the constitution. In the letter to Lafayette he mentioned, “The dreadful fruitfulness of the Original Sin of the African trade.”  But it is by no means an original notion. People have called slavery and white supremacy our republic’s original sin for a long time, since James Madison. And it’s still used. People still refer to it today as America’s original sin. And of course, we’ve had a lot of discussion of that in the news. The 1619 project, of course, naming white supremacy as the leading characteristic of American civilization. I don’t know if I would go that far, but certainly it goes back four hundred years, from the time of the founding.

PA
So when we think about white supremacy, I don’t know that I ever thought of it is any of the reason behind John Wilkes Booth. I mean, of course, we had heard about his alcoholism. And as we find people say, when assassinations or murders happen, “well, he had mental problems. He had mental issues.” And I think, of course, we go that direction. But I’ve heard you say that when it comes to political assassinations, that rarely is it mental illness, that it’s often politically motivated.

JR
Well, I think it’s very true. Most attacks on presidents and presidential candidates take place for political motives. Booth set the pattern when he was the first to assassinate a president, and he was quite explicit in his writing, some of which were published at the time, that his motivation was to preserve white supremacy. He saw Lincoln as a traitor to the white race. He thought emancipation could lead to what they call race-mixing, and a pollution of the so-called white race. Of course, the whole concept of race is completely unscientific, but it’s been an important one and continues to be important.

PA
Right. So give us a little background on John Wilkes Booth. Tell us a little bit about him, how he grew up, and then eventually how he came into his strong beliefs on being pro-slavery and white supremacist.

JR
Lincoln – I think we can say he hated slavery for so long, he couldn’t remember what he didn’t hate it. I think Booth was the same way. It was the same way in that he was for slavery and loved it for so long, he probably couldn’t remember when that started either. It started in childhood.  He grew up in slave country. His father, Junius Brutus Booth, was the greatest tragic actor in America, preeminent tragedian for more than 30 years. They lived on a farm in Bel Air, Maryland. That was a slave state. And when he was exposed to a lot of people, most of the people he encountered were enslaved, were oppressed.

From a pretty early age he hated abolitionism. He called abolitionism, the movement to end slavery, treason, and that it would really be a disaster. And as early as when he was 20 years old, he wrote a long 5000 word political statement, in the form of speech. He was explicit in saying this country was formed for the white people, it wasn’t for blacks. Blacks are inferior, slavery is benign, and an important institution in which slaves are well-off, and they’re happy in slavery. None of that was true, of course, but many people believed it.

Booth was not an outsider. Most white Americans in the north as well as the south, 160 years ago WERE white supremacists. I think today, when we speak of white supremacy, it calls to mind extremists, radicals, with nazi views and rifles and body armor and all that kind of stuff. It’s an ideology that I believe, and I hope, Americans today abhor. But 160 years ago, not only was it very common, but the civil science of the time had presumably proven that people of color were inferior to Northern Europeans. And the belief was shared by politicians, clergy, journalists, scientists. It was a consensus that was based on the idea of white supremacy.

PA
So, white supremacy at the time, was a very normal thought process. I mean, it was, in a sense, almost even respected. Versus now where of course we abhor that, hopefully, as you said. But at the time, it was a very normal thought process. So John Wilkes Booth wasn’t crazy in that thought, right?

JR
Not at all. His father, Junius Booth, was an alcoholic, and was authentically nuts, even though he did great things. So that’s part of the reason it was easy to put in a charge of insanity and alcoholism on his son.  I think there’s a tendency in American society to deny the importance of politics in assassination, to believe it’s a bolt out of the pathological blue. So yeah, that’s comforting to us. But almost all American assassins except for the guy that killed Garfield, (whose name I can’t pronounce, but he was genuinely crazy), but all the others were acting for political motives, including Lee Harvey Oswald. Booth acted for political motives. He thought he was acting for the white race. And he was astonished, at all the stops for Lincoln’s funeral train, and during the 12 days he was on the run, that in all the newspaper accounts, that most people condemned the assassination. He had thought it would be triumphant. And it’s certainly true that there were hundreds of other men in 1865 who would have been glad to kill Lincoln. It’s just that Booth was the only one who did it. Lincoln was the most detested, most controversial, most hated man in history. Yet the assassination changed that.

PA
So the feeling I got was that if Booth had not assassinated Lincoln, somebody else was going do it.  It was just a matter of time. Was that the feeling at the time?

JR
Oh, certainly. Some people around Lincoln felt that he was in very great danger. But they feared he didn’t take them seriously enough. For 19th century men, sort of a cultural thing, the greatest disgrace was cowardice. And of course Lincoln was not a coward. He had been champion brawler of the Indiana and Illinois frontier. He was a champion wrestler, he could beat anyone. And he was very reluctant to take out precautions because he feared it might make him appear cowardly. And he was also fearless. So despite the efforts of some of his friends and subordinates, he did not take the kind of precautions that he should have. So it’s not unlikely that Booth, or someone like him, would find him.

PA
So how did you come to this conclusion now? How did we miss it over all the years? Was it just easier to assume Booth was crazy and an alcoholic?

JR
I think it’s comforting to believe that assassinations are for those reasons. I would say in the historical profession, it hadn’t been missed. And I’m not claiming that this is an original idea. It’s consensus opinion that white supremacy was one of the main motivations. But there’s never been a book that has supported it to the extent that I have. My book is a dual biography of both Lincoln and Booth. And it’s also an analysis and interpretation of white supremacy as it existed in 1865, as well as the history of the Civil War.

PA
Talk about your research because it is a dual biography. And I was fascinated! We grew up learning about Lincoln, we thought we learned everything there was to know. We knew he was poor. But the abject poverty that he lived in was beyond comprehension to me. I had no idea how absolutely poor he was, and how abandoned he was. So what kind of research did you do that brought you all of this wealth of information?

JR
Well, I’ve been working on this for long time.  We did a big exhibit –  “The Last Best Hope of Earth” – at the Huntington Library in 1993. And I was the sole curator of that exhibition. It was the biography of Lincoln with original documents and manuscripts,  some of which were handwritten. And the Huntington had hundreds of manuscripts. And so I’ve been working on this for quite a while. In terms of Lincoln’s impoverished childhood, again, so much of this has been known to people, but none of it was really emphasized.

PA
Well, it’s fascinating to me to learn both and then to realize that Booth was only 26 when all this happened, when he died. Which is really fairly young.

JR
It certainly is. And he achieved success at a very young age. He was one of the most successful actors of his day. He was critically a brilliant actor, as his father had been and his brother Edward was a brilliant actor. He was an action hero, a star. He was a master of stagecraft. He put on very, very exciting performances. And by the time he was in his early 20s, he was making about twenty thousand dollars a year. Over three quarters of a million today, I suppose. He was making good money at a very young age. He was one of the most successful actors. Yeah, he was an action hero. And boy, he was a great ladies man. He was irresistible to women.  Things were going very well for him. And he knew that the conspiracy he undertook could end up costing him his life, which it did. He said explicitly that he was willing to die for the south, for the white race, and that’s exactly what he ended up doing.

PA
Wasn’t there like 10 kids in his family? How much of this was his need for attention? Perhaps this was how he was going to make his mark?

JR
Well, I don’t know that it had to do with the size of his family. But he was obsessed with fame. He says, from a very young age, that he had to have fame.  And the point is, he wanted major fame, not theatrical celebrity, which he already had. He wanted to go down in history, to be remembered. And he made it clear that even infamy would be acceptable to him. Lasting remembrance. And he certainly did achieve that. Everybody knows his name

PA
An interesting thing I found was at the very end of the book, you’re talking about how one of the things that Booth wanted to do was to destroy Lincoln, and to destroy everything he’d ever done, and make him a footnote of history. When in reality, he did the opposite. Where Lincoln had been unliked, even hated, at that period of time and considered to be a race traitor and not very good at handling what was going on with the country, by his assassination,  he made Lincoln this huge martyr.

JR
It is very ironic.  Lincoln, too, desired fame, but for doing good things. And ironically, Booth, who is this terrible tyrant, had a lot to do with Lincoln’s canonization. Lincoln was killed on Good Friday. That Easter was called the Black Easter. And many, many sermons preached in the north on Sunday talked about him shedding his blood for the country.

PA
So let’s do that contrast of white supremacy then and white supremacy now. With time did those feelings lessen? Is that why for a long period of time, we didn’t hear quite as much about it? Or has it just taken a different form?

JR
Well, I think it’s greatly diminished in force, and numbers of adherence. There have been a series of enlightenments over the last 160 years, some of which are scientific. Anthropologists have demonstrated that there is just a single human species and that blacks and whites just have different ancestries. So, I think I think part of it is simply people becoming more enlightened with the passage of time. But white supremacy 160 years ago was a majority position. Today, it is very much a minority position with a much small percentage of the population having that ideology..

PA
Although I will say, every day in the news, you’re starting to hear more and more people and politicians talking about supremacy and replacement theory, some not even well-veiled. People have become a little bit more emboldened, I think, to talk about it.  I think it’s something that certainly is causing people fear.

JR
Yes it is, And I think we should remember, the Confederacy was specifically founded on white supremacy, and white supremacists today often fly the confederate flag. Surprise, surprise.

PA
The book is called “America’s Original Sin: White Supremacy, John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Assassination.” It’s by John Rhodehamel  You can find it at bookstores anywhere. And of course, we’ll have a link to it on our website. If you want to find out more about John, you can go to his author’s page on Amazon and we’ll have a link to that as well. John, this is really a deeply researched book. How long did it take you to put it all together?

JR
Well writing the book, which is 420 pages, took a year. But I think I’ve been writing on the assassination one way or the other for more than 30 years,

PA
So it was just kind of the accumulation of all this learning you’ve done over the years.

JR
And I felt this made a contribution. There were a lot of good books on the assassination. And I’ve read most of them. No one had really emphasized the white supremacy before. So I thought of trying to do that,

PA
Right, to draw that that line, that connection. Because I think it is easy for us. We hear this all the time, after mass shootings. “Well, they were mentally ill.” And, you know, maybe that’s not it. And we need to stop using that as a convenient way to place the blame. Maybe we need to look a little deeper. And that’s what you did with this book where you said, “You know what? His white supremacy was deep, and he really believed in it.”

JR
He certainly did. And said so, in his writings.  He said, this country was formed for white people and not for black people. They are completely secondary to us. And they are better off in slavery.

 PA
I’m so glad that most of us are passed believing any of that kind of stuff. What a detrimental thing that has been to humanity. John, this is really an amazing book, it really helps us to understand, and actually puts us there, with Booth being there with Lincoln. As you said, it’s a dual biography of the two of them. And it helps us to understand them better and to understand the times better,  We can’t take their personalities and put them in today’s time, as we understand them. We have to understand what things were like at the time. And you did that for us. So thank you.

JR
Oh, thank you very much, Pam.

Pioneer in the LGBTQ+ Community Arlene Goldberg on Simple Human Dignity


LGBT Pioneer Arlene Goldberg on Simple Human Dignity
A snapshot in time before Rainbow Flags and Pride Parades

A pioneer in the LGBT community, and lead plaintiff in a groundbreaking ACLU Federal lawsuit for gay marriage rights in Florida, Arlene Goldberg shares her story from her book Simple Human Dignity, a personal and touching memoir.

We hear firsthand about growing up gay in the late 50s and 60s, having to lie to the people most important in her life, and how she felt she let her parents down.

Arlene shares what areas we still need to work on, the surprising issues facing older LGBT Americans, and what allies can do to help the LGBT community.

Click on the player below to hear the chat with Arlene Goldberg and Pam

About Arlene Goldberg

Arlene Goldberg is a leader and pioneer in the LGBTQ+ community, and the recipient of Equality Florida’s 2014 Voice for Equality Award. She was one of the plaintiffs in the groundbreaking ACLU class-action lawsuit related to same-sex marriage laws in Florida. History was made when she and her wife, Carol, became the first same-sex couple to have their New York marriage officially and legally recognized by the State of Florida. Arlene cofounded Visuality in 2011 in Southwest Florida, and Southwest Florida Pride, Inc. created the Goldberg Award in her honor, to recognize outstanding individuals that have contributed to the cultural, social and economic fabric of the LGBTQ+ Community in Southwest Florida.

For her book, Simple Human Dignity: Click here
Follow her on Twitter: @agoldberg32
Follow her facebook business page (you can always message her there:)

Bestselling Author Michael Farquhar Shares More Bad Days in History!

Think You’ve had a Bad Day?
Michael Farquhar Delves into the Day-to-Day Saga of
Ignominy, Idiocy, and Incompetence in History

I can’t remember the last time I laughed this much in an interview – especially one that included carbuncles, cannibalism, and Thomas Jefferson’s rear end. Bestselling author Michael Farquhar shares More Bad Days in History and reminds us that history is not all black and white – that complexities exist – and that we are all pretty much the same.

Michael tells us how General Patton’s widow put a Hawaiian curse on her husband’s mistress, how Joe DiMaggio gave Florence Kotz a doozy of a day, and how Colonial Massachusetts had some terminal consequences for disobedient children.

Having a bad day? You won’t feel so bad after listening to our chat!

Click on the player below to hear the chat with Michael Farquhar and Pam

About Michael Farquhar

A former writer and editor at The Washington Post, Michael Farquhar is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the critically acclaimed Behind the Palace Doors and Secret Lives of the Tsars, as well as the popular Penguin “Treasury” series: A Treasury of Royal Scandals, A Treasury of Great American Scandals, A Treasury of Deception, A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans. His latest titles are Bad Days in History: A Gleefully Grim Chronicle of Misfortune, Mayhem, and Misery for Every Day of the Year, and its sequel More Bad Days in History: The Delightfully Dismal, Day-by-Day Saga of Ignominy, Idiocy, and Incompetence Continues. He lives in Washington, D.C.

For more from Michael Farquhar: Click here

Becoming Superhuman – David Broyles on AI, Genetic Engineering and Bio-Tech


Are we on the way to becoming Superhumans?
Artificial Intelligence, Genetic Engineering and Bio-Technology

At one time or another, we’ve all wished that somehow we could change our human capabilities,  whether it be ways to make the blind see again, get rid of diseases like cystic fibrosis, or simply just be taller or more athletic.

Those wild and crazy science fiction ideas may not be that far away. We could, in effect, become superhuman – and in the near future! At least so says David Broyles!

David Broyles is the Director of Special Activities and Intelligence Teams at CNA – the Center for Naval Analyses – a non-profit research and analysis organization in Washington, DC, charged with analyzing national security and public policy problems. He’s also the co-host of a weekly podcast called AI with AI.

David put out a study in December called “Superhumans: Implications of Genetic Engineering and human-centered Bio-Engineering”  about recent advances in those fields and how they may affect the military – as well as regular shmoes like us.

We talk about how far we’ve come, how close we are, and what we can expect in the next 4-5 years.  Plus – how Crispr is more than a knob on your toaster, and how ethics plays into all of this. If you are a Sci-Fi fan, or just have a fascination with the future – this is the interview for you!

Click on the player below to hear the chat with David Broyles and Pam

About David Broyles

David Broyles, Director, Special Activities & Intelligence Operations for the Center for Naval Analyses at CNA Corporation. He and his team focus on special operations, cyber operations, and intelligence, to include artificial intelligence and autonomy. He co-hosts a weekly podcast, AI with AI thaexplores the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and autonomy and discusses the technological and military implications.

For more about David Broyles: Click here
For the report, SuperhumansClick here
CNA.org on Twitter: @CNA_org

Epidemiologist and Author Dr. Seema Yasmin talks Viral BS


Epidemiologist and Author Dr. Seema Yasmin talks Viral BS

We all have questions.  You know, like, does the Covid-19 vaccine alter our DNA? When we have medical questions, we go to the doctor who wrote the book on Viral BSDr. Seema Yasmin.

In our chat with Dr. Seema Yasmin, we learn the difference between mis-information and dis-information, why people believe crazy medical ideas, and why facts DON’T change our mind. We learn about cognitive biases, why education level isn’t a good measure of who might believe false information, and how group-think figures in.

Plus, how a little bit of truth can be a bad thing, how communication is key, and how social media plays into the spread of bad information.  Oh – and no – the covid-19 vaccine won’t change your DNA.

Click on the player below to hear the chat with Dr. Yasmin and Pam

About Seema Yasmin

Seema Yasmin is an Emmy Award–winning health reporter, epidemiologist, and medical doctor. The director of the Stanford Center for Health Communication and a clinical assistant professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, she is the author of Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure and The Impatient Dr. Lange: One Man’s Fight to End the Global HIV Epidemic.

For more about Seema Yasmin: Click here
For the book, Viral BSClick here
Follow her on Twitter: @DoctorYasmin
Follow her on Instagram: @DoctorSeemaYasmin

One Step Further: The Story of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson


Katherine Moore, Daughter of NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, talks about their children’s book One Step Further

If you’ve seen the inspirational film Hidden Figures, you know a little of how women, especially black women, were treated during the 50s and  60s,  especially in male-dominated industries. The stories of  Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughn, and  Katherine Johnson helped us to understand what challenges women faced.  Katherine was the NASA mathematician whose calculations were critical to manned space flights, from Project Mercury with John Glenn, all the way up to the moon flights and space shuttles.

Before she passed away at 101 in February of 2020, Katherine and her two daughters – Joylette Hylick and Katherine Moore — wrote a children’s book about her life and the racism and misogyny she faced.  Published by National Geographic, One Step Further: My Story of Math, the Moon, and a Lifelong Mission is a deeply personal portrayal of female empowerment, women in STEM, and the breaking down of racial barriers across generations.

It’s a wonderful book that will inspire little girls for generations to come!

We talked to Katherine’s daughter Katherine Moore, and got some insight into their lives. We talked about growing up in the 50s and 60s with Jim Crow in full swing, what kind of an impact her mother had on the space program, and what she hopes children will take from this remarkable book.

Click on the player below to hear the chat with Katherine and Pam


About Katherine Moore

After attending Bennett College and Hampton University, and receiving a Masters of Science in Information Systems from Montclair State University (formerly Montclair State College), Katherine Moore spent 33 years working in public education as an educator and guidance counselor in New Jersey. She currently resides in Greensboro, North Carolina.

For more about Katherine Johnson: Click here
For the book, One Step FurtherClick here

Award-Winning Author David Giffels on Barnstorming Ohio


Barnstorming Ohio to Understand America
David Giffels gives us insight into America and Americans in his new book

Ohio has picked the winner of the presidential election 29 out of 31 times since 1896… so they must be on to something. David Giffels traversed the state to find out what the people of Ohio were thinking about the election and what challenges they were facing. He put his discoveries down in his book Barnstorming Ohio, To Understand America.

There are 5 distinct different areas of Ohio, which makes it the cross-section of America, and gives us some insight into what the people of our country are thinking. In our chat, David explains what issues each area deals with, how Amazon is changing the landscape of Ohio, AND America, by taking over decaying malls, and how farmers are trying to survive despite the trade wars and bad weather.

Will Ohio get the presidential election right this time? No matter if they do or not, we’ll have a better understanding of America and Americans, by Barnstorming Ohio with David Giffels.

Click on the player below to hear the chat with David and Pam


About David Giffels

Barnstorming Ohio author David Giffels has written six books of nonfiction, including the critically acclaimed memoir, Furnishing Eternity: A Father, a Son, a Coffin, and a Measure of Life, published by Scribner in 2018. The book has been hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “tender, witty and … painstakingly and subtly wrought,” and by Kirkus Reviews as “a heartfelt memoir about the connection between a father and son.” It was a Book of the Month pick by Amazon and Powell’s and a New York Times Book Review “Editors’ Choice.”

His previous books include The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches From the Rust Belt (Scribner 2014), a New York Times Book Review “Editors’ Choice” and nominee for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the memoir All the Way Home (William Morrow/HarperCollins 2008), winner of the Ohioana Book Award.

​Giffels is the coauthor, with Jade Dellinger, of the rock biography Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! and, with Steve Love, Wheels of Fortune: The Story of Rubber in Akron.

A former Akron Beacon Journal columnist, his writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic.com, Parade, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire.com, Grantland.com, The Iowa Review, and many other publications. He also wrote for the MTV series Beavis and Butt-Head.

His awards include the Cleveland Arts Prize for literature, the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and a General Excellence award from National Society of Newspaper Columnists. He was selected as the Cuyahoga County Public Library Writer in Residence for 2018-2019.

Giffels is a professor of English at the University of Akron, where he teaches creative nonfiction in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program.

For more about David: Click here
For his book, Barnstorming OhioClick here
Follow him on twitter: Click here
For his Facebook: Click Here

Global Sustainable Enterprise Expert and Author Chris Marquis Explains B Corps


Global Sustainable Enterprise Expert and Author Chris Marquis

Most of us in society today are pretty fed-up with how a lot of businesses are operating. Is there a way for companies to be more socially responsible and not be so focused on shareholder profits? Dr. Christopher Marquis says there IS and it’s called a B Corp.

A professor at Cornell and the author of Better Business: How the B Corp Movement Is Remaking Capitalism, Dr. Marquis explains what a B Corp is and what it means to businesses and consumers.  What are the benefits and what are the motivations for a business to become socially responsible?

We learn which companies are already on board as B Corps, how it has affected their profits, what open hiring is, and what greenwashing is.

Click on the player below to hear the chat with Chris and Pam

About Chris Marquis

Chris Marquis is the Samuel C. Johnson Professor in Sustainable Global Enterprise and Professor of Management at the Cornell University Johnson College of Business. Prior to joining Cornell, he worked for 10 years at Harvard Business School and has held visiting positions at Harvard Kennedy School, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Peking University, Fudan University, and Shanghai Jiaotong University. Marquis received a PhD in sociology and business administration from the University of Michigan.

Marquis’ current teaching and research is broadly focused on the two areas of social innovation and change and doing business in China. Under these themes he has examined entrepreneurship in China, the triple-bottom line and building sustainable businesses globally, and business competition in emerging markets. These research projects build on Marquis’ earlier research on how business can have a positive impact on society and in particular how historical and geographical processes have shaped firms’ and entrepreneurs’ social and environmental strategies and activities. His latest book, Better Business: How the B Corp Movement Is Remaking Capitalism, focuses on the potential for stakeholder governance models to reform capitalism.

Marquis’s research has won a number of national and international awards, including the 2006 William H. Newman Award for best dissertation across the entire the Academy of Management, the 2006 Louis R. Pondy award for best dissertation in organizational theory from the Academy of Management, the 2003 James D. Thompson Award for best graduate student paper from the American Sociological Association, and the 2005 State Farm Doctoral Dissertation Award. He was a finalist for the 2010 and 2013 Aspen Institute Faculty Pioneer Award, a runner-up in the Academy of Management’s Best Published Paper in Organization and Management Theory in 2009, and a finalist in the 2004 INFORMS/Organization Science Dissertation Proposal Competition. In 2018 he was given the International Educator Award, from China’s State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs.

Marquis has published in Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Strategic Management Journal, as well as a number of edited collections. From 2014-2020 he was an Associate Editor at Administrative Science Quarterly and he has served as an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management and of the International Association of Chinese Management Research (IACMR). Before his academic career, Marquis worked for six years in the financial services industry, most recently as vice president and technology manager for a business unit of J.P. Morgan Chase.

For more about Chris: Click here
For his book, Better BusinessClick here
Follow him on twitter: Click here
For his LinkedIn: Click Here