Talk Cocktail

The Wine Industry In Crisis

Esther Mobley, the senior wine critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, joins me on the California Sun podcast to talk about California and the world’s wine industry crisis — In California alone, nearly 5,000 wineries competing for declining demand, 38,000 vineyard acres removed in 2025, mounting closures. She discusses why younger generations aren’t drinking wine, what happens to tourism-dependent communities when vineyards close, and whether wine’s romance can survive its greatest challenge yet. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe

From Ocean to Bloodstream: The Truth About Plastic

Two garbage trucks of plastic hit the ocean every minute. Microplastics are in your brain. Recycling doesn’t work. What the plastic industry never told you.In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, former EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck pulls back the curtain on an industry built on deception. Her new book, The Problem with Plastic, connects dots most people miss — between fracking booms and plastic floods, between what you’re told to recycle and what actually happens, between industry promises and courtroom battles that reveal decades of lies.You think you know about plastic pollution. You’ve heard about ocean gyres, you recycle diligently, maybe you switched to a reusable water bottle. But here’s what they haven’t told you: Two garbage trucks worth of plastic enter the ocean every minute. Recycling? It’s a lie — only 5-6 percent of plastic actually gets recycled, and the industry has known this since the 1970s.Chemical recycling, the new salvation, doesn’t work. And those microplastics aren’t just in fish anymore — they’re in your brain, your heart arteries, your kidneys, with no known way to get them out. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe

Tom Freston reflects on how MTV changed our music, our culture, and even California

Last week, MTV officially shut down, ending an era that revolutionized music, video, and shaped California’s youth culture. Tom Freston co-founded the television channel 44 years ago, building a creative empire on principles that seem impossible today: hiring people with no experience, protecting creatives from corporate pressure, valuing disorientation over data, and treating loyalty as strategy. He joins me on the California Sun podcast to discuss his memoir “Unplugged.” Freston chronicles how adventure became business, and what we lost when Silicon Valley replaced joy with efficiency. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe

The Technophobia Trap: How America Lost Its Nerve in the Age of AI

Why is America uniquely terrified of AI while the world races ahead? The arguments driving that fear often collapse under scrutiny—real concerns go unaddressed.In this Talk Cocktail podcast, economist and author of the Noahopinion Substack, Noah Smith helps us understand what happened to American optimism—and why our fear may be built on foundations far shakier than we realize.Somewhere between our childhood dreams of robot friends and today’s reality of having them in our pockets, America lost its nerve.While China, India, South Korea, and even traditionally cautious Europe race toward artificial intelligence with enthusiasm, the United States stands alone—the most terrified nation on earth about a technology we’re simultaneously pioneering. The disconnect is as profound as it is puzzling: the same country that wired itself for the internet faster than anyone else, that sent people to the moon when computers had less power than a modern toaster, now trembles at the prospect of tools that could democratize knowledge itself. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe

Fired by Email: What It Felt Like To Be Targeted by DOGE’s Federal Purge

Eleven federal workers reveal what it felt like to be fired by Musk’s DOGE — the emails, the trauma, and the institutional destruction we’ve never heard about.On this recentWhoWhatWhy podcast I talked with journalist Sasha Abramsky, the author of American Carnage: How Trump, Musk and DOGE Butchered the US Government. Abramsky spent six months embedded with 11 fired federal workers from eight different agencies, documenting their lives as they unraveled in real time.They were fired with an afternoon email. Denied their pensions. Told their health care ended immediately. One worker got the termination notice an hour outside her new duty station after driving cross-country for five days. Another was ordered to stay home with full pay — psychological warfare designed to inflict maximum humiliation.This is what it felt like from the inside when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency took a chainsaw to the federal workforce. And we’ve never heard these stories — until now. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe