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“What I clearly remember from my first to my last encounter with Richard was the fluency with which he presented ideas and information on a whole host of subjects.”

If we have learned anything over the past six years, and certainly after January 6th and the midterm elections, it is that the Social Compact is real and serves as the bedrock for a civilized society.

“Ah death, a change of clothes.”–The 14thDalai Lama

The endless fields of amber grain. Valhalla so far in the distance it is, we are sure, just shy of eternity. Mortality, we have decided, is not for us. “Heaven can wait.”

“I want to be remembered as a woman…who dared to be a catalyst of change.”– Shirley Chisholm

The first presidential campaign I remember was 1968 when Vice President Hubert Humphrey ran. He suffered from a very late start—too late to participate in the Democratic primaries—due to President Lyndon Johnson’s shocking March 31 announcement that, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” From the start, Humphrey would have had to pull off a near miracle just to be nominated.

“Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate.And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward,I tell you – it’s born with us the day that we are born.”– Homer, The Iliad

This is the story of three journeys—two remarkable women on very different paths and the one we are all taking together.

What makes great societies and religions so strikingly powerful is the slowness with which they change. We may not agree with everything they stand for but we know they are built upon a foundation of beliefs and principles. Solid stone. They do occasionally metamorphosize but usually stop short of revolution and give us time to catch our collective breath.

When there is a lack of honor in government,the morals of the whole people are poisoned.”– Herbert Hoover

In honor of Independence Day and our 500th podcast we dedicate it to the memory of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the three Freedom Summer organizers murdered, June 1964.

“My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’ ‘We’re not raising grass,’ Dad would reply. ‘We’re raising boys’.”– Harmon Killebrew

“Ah death. A change of clothes.”– The Dalai Lama

What we remember are the stories. It is what holds us together. Families. Communities. Countries.

I am a child of “The Great Society,” President Lyndon Johnson’s call to use the country’s post–World War II prosperity to “enrich and elevate our national life.” With an overwhelming majority in Congress, he was able to sign into law 84 pieces of legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the antipoverty Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the Food Stamp Act, the establishment of Head Start, and The Higher Education Act of 1965, which, among other things, provided low-interest loans to students.

We are an over-polled society, a fact which subsequently influences politicians to prefer to follow rather than lead. Yet, how is it possible that up until U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked, only 20% of Americans thought Roe v. Wade was in danger of being overturned? It is like looking at a Monopoly game board and not recognizing that it is a square.

The problem with infidelity is not so much the act but the loss of trust.

The leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s first draft of Dobbs v. Jackson Health Organization is an act of unfaithfulness to the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic norms and is one more destructive blow to a country based on a voluntary experiment known as democracy.

After being falsely blamed for King Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church and of infidelity, incest and seduction by witchcraft, Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded. It was, of course, powerful gaslighting, gleefully engaged in not just by the King, but by the insiders of the Royal Court. Sensing her weakness, they piled on and, among other things, referred to the Queen as “the concubine.” The King had eyes for Jane Seymore.

CRISIS. The word strikes fear in the hearts of executives and board rooms. It seems there’s a crisis every day in 2022 and the current seismic events are not one-day wonders, but rolling, long-term landscape changes.

What’s enough? When are we satisfied? The brilliance of capitalism is that it keeps us motivated—ever creating, ever expanding. Its fatal flaw is that, for many of us, we are never satisfied. There is always more. Just one more thing to make us fulfilled and happy. We even need to hire therapists to confirm that we are content with being content.

As Clint Eastwood said, “Tomorrow is promised to no one.” The world is anything but static. Perhaps we should eliminate our generational demarcations—Z, Millennials, X, Baby Boomers—and just refer to us all as the “Whiplash Generation.”

We have now, all of us, looked into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eyes and we are troubled by what we see.

I have a special relationship with China, developed over a quarter century of business travel. At one point, my multiple annual visits to Beijing gave me a ringside seat to a metropolis, once known as a “bicycle city,” transforming into a city of eight lane highways and gleaming new Chinese-built automobiles. It is a remarkable country, with Americans still trying to figure out, “How do we compete? How do we co-exist?”