
The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle between the White House and the Media from the Founding Fathers to Fake News by Harold Holzer
The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle between the White House and the Media from the Founding Fathers to Fake News by Harold Holzer An award-winning presidential historian offers an authoritative account of American presidents' attacks on our freedom of the press. “The FAKE NEWS media,” Donald Trump has tweeted, “is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Has our free press ever faced as great a threat? Perhaps not—but the tension between presidents and journalists is as old as the republic itself. Every president has been convinced of his own honesty and transparency; every reporter who has covered the White House beat has believed with equal fervency that his or her journalistic rigor protects the country from danger. Our first president, George Washington, was also the first to grouse about his treatment in the newspapers, although he kept his complaints private. Subsequent chiefs like John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Barack Obama were not so reticent, going so far as to wield executive power to overturn press freedoms, and even to prosecute journalists. Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to actively manage the stable of reporters who followed him, doling out information, steering coverage, and squashing stories that interfered with his agenda. It was a strategy that galvanized TR’s public support, but the lesson was lost on Woodrow Wilson, who never accepted reporters into his inner circle. Franklin Roosevelt transformed media relations forever, holding more than a thousand presidential press conferences and harnessing the new power of radio, at times bypassing the press altogether. John F. Kennedy excelled on television and charmed reporters to hide his personal life, while Richard Nixon was the first to cast the press as a public enemy. From the days of newsprint and pamphlets to the rise of Facebook and Twitter, each president has harnessed the media, whether intentional or not, to imprint his own character on the office. In this remarkable new history, acclaimed scholar Harold Holzer examines the dual rise of the American presidency and the media that shaped it. From Washington to Trump, he chronicles the disputes and distrust between these core institutions that define the United States of America, revealing that the essence of their confrontation is built into the fabric of the nation. About Harold Holzer Harold Holzer, one of the country's leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era, serves as chairman of the Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation. He has authored, co-authored, and edited forty-two books, including Emancipating Lincoln, Lincoln at Cooper Union, and three award-winning books for young readers: Father Abraham: Lincoln and His Sons, The President Is Shot!, and Abraham Lincoln, the Writer. His awards include the Lincoln Prize and the National Humanities Medal. He lives in New York City.
4 Okt 202053min

The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Didn’t See That Coming: Putting Life Back Together When Your World Falls Apart by Rachel Hollis
Didn't See That Coming: Putting Life Back Together When Your World Falls Apart by Rachel Hollis msrachelhollis.com Fear. Grief. Loss. Betrayal. Rachel Hollis has felt all those things, and she knows you have too. Now, she takes you to the other side. With her signature humor, heartfelt honesty, and intimate true-life stories, number one New York Times best-selling author Rachel Hollis shows listeners how to seize difficult moments for the learning experiences they are and the value and growth they provide. Rachel Hollis sees you. As the millions who read her number one New York Times best sellers Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing, attend her RISE conferences and follow her on social media know, she also wants to see you transform. When it comes to the “hard seasons” of life - the death of a loved one, divorce, loss of a job - transformation seems impossible when grief and uncertainty dominate your days. Especially when, as Didn’t See that Coming reveals, no one asks to have their future completely rearranged for them. But, as Rachel writes, it is up to you how you come through your pain - you can come through changed for the better, having learned and grown, or stuck in place where your identity becomes rooted in what hurt you. To Rachel, a life well-lived is one of purpose, focused only on the essentials. This is a small book about big feelings: Inspirational, aspirational, and an anchor that shows that darkness can co-exist with the beautiful.
3 Okt 202047min

The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy by Victoria De Grazia
The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy by Victoria De Grazia Victoriadegrazia.com “As Fellini did in film, The Perfect Fascist takes us into the dark and complicated heart of Italian fascism…It is an extraordinary story that illuminates the ways in which the all-consuming nature of fascism distorted Italian society and destroyed the lives of individuals. I could not put it down.” ―Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919 “With lyrical precision, The Perfect Fascist reveals how ideology corrupts the truth, how untrammeled ambition destroys the soul, and how the vanity of white male supremacy distorts emotion, making even love a matter of state.” ―Sonia Purnell, author of A Woman of No Importance Through the story of one exemplary fascist―a war hero turned commander of Mussolini’s Black Shirts―the award-winning author of How Fascism Ruled Women reveals how the personal became political in the fascist quest for manhood and power. When Attilio Teruzzi, Mussolini’s handsome political enforcer, married a rising young American opera star, his good fortune seemed settled. The wedding was a carefully stage-managed affair, capped with a blessing by Mussolini himself. Yet only three years later, after being promoted to commander of the Black Shirts, Teruzzi renounced his wife. In fascist Italy, a Catholic country with no divorce law, he could only dissolve the marriage by filing for an annulment through the medieval procedures of the Church Court. The proceedings took an ominous turn when Mussolini joined Hitler: Lilliana Teruzzi was Jewish, and fascist Italy would soon introduce its first race laws. The Perfect Fascist pivots from the intimate story of a tempestuous seduction and inconvenient marriage―brilliantly reconstructed through family letters and court records―to a riveting account of Mussolini’s rise and fall. It invites us to see in the vain, loyal, lecherous, and impetuous Attilio Teruzzi, a decorated military officer, an exemplar of fascism’s New Man. Why did he abruptly discard the woman he had so eagerly courted? And why, when the time came to find another partner, did he choose another Jewish woman as his would-be wife? In Victoria de Grazia’s engrossing account, we see him vacillating between the will of his Duce and the dictates of his heart. De Grazia’s landmark history captures the seductive appeal of fascism and shows us how, in his moral pieties and intimate betrayals, his violence and opportunism, Teruzzi is a forefather of the illiberal politicians of today.
2 Okt 202043min

The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dr. Jason Fung Interview The Obesity Code & The Complete Guide To Fasting Books
Dr. Jason Fung Interview The Obesity Code & The Complete Guide To Fasting Books , The landmark book from New York Times-bestselling author Dr. Jason Fung, one of the world's leading experts on intermittent fasting for weight-loss and longevity, whose 5-step plan has helped thousands of people lose weight and achieve lasting health. “Not only full of insights but also surprisingly funny. Read it to understand why the world became fat, how to reverse the epidemic—and how to stay thin yourself.” —Andreas Eenfeldt, MD, Founder of dietdoctor.com Everything you believe about how to lose weight is wrong. Weight gain and obesity are driven by hormones—in everyone—and only by understanding the effects of insulin and insulin resistance can we achieve lasting weight loss. In this highly readable and provocative book, Dr. Jason Fung sets out an original, robust theory of obesity that provides startling insights into proper nutrition. In addition to his five basic steps, a set of lifelong habits that will improve your health and control your insulin levels, Dr. Fung explains how to use intermittent fasting to break the cycle of insulin resistance and reach a healthy weight—for good. Author of the international bestsellers The Diabetes Code and The Obesity Code Dr. Jason Fung returns with an eye-opening biography of cancer in which he offers a radical new paradigm for understanding cancer—and issues a call to action for reducing risk moving forward. Our understanding of cancer is slowly undergoing a revolution, allowing for the development of more effective treatments. For the first time ever, the death rate from cancer is showing a steady decline . . . but the “War on Cancer” has hardly been won. In The Cancer Code, Dr. Jason Fung offers a revolutionary new understanding of this invasive, often fatal disease—what it is, how it manifests, and why it is so challenging to treat. In this rousing narrative, Dr. Fung identifies the medical community’s many missteps in cancer research—in particular, its focus on genetics, or what he terms the “seed” of cancer, at the expense of examining the “soil,” or the conditions under which cancer flourishes. Dr. Fung—whose groundbreaking work in the treatment of obesity and diabetes has won him international acclaim—suggests that the primary disease pathway of cancer is caused by the dysregulation of insulin. In fact, obesity and type 2 diabetes significantly increase an individual’s risk of cancer. In this accessible read, Dr. Fung provides a new paradigm for dealing with cancer, with recommendations for what we can do to create a hostile soil for this dangerous seed. One such strategy is intermittent fasting, which reduces blood glucose, lowering insulin levels. Another, eliminating intake of insulin-stimulating foods, such as sugar and refined carbohydrates. For hundreds of years, cancer has been portrayed as a foreign invader we’ve been powerless to stop. By reshaping our view of cancer as an internal uprising of our own healthy cells, we can begin to take back control. The seed of cancer may exist in all of us, but the power to change the soil is in our hands.
1 Okt 20201h 9min

The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, from Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit by Ian Buruma
The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, from Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit by Ian Buruma Bard.edu From one of its keenest observers, a brilliant, witty journey through the "Special Relationship" between Britain and America that has done so much to shape the world, from World War II to Brexit. It's impossible to understand the last 75 years of American history, through to Trump and Brexit, without understanding the Anglo-American relationship, and specifically the bonds between presidents and prime ministers. FDR of course had Churchill; JFK famously had Macmillan, his consigliere during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Reagan found his ideological soul mate in Thatcher, and George W. Bush found his fellow believer, in religion and in war, in Tony Blair. And now, of course, it is impossible to understand the populist uprising in either country, from 2016 to the present, without reference to Trump and Boris Johnson, though ironically, they are also the key to understanding the special relationship's demise. There are few things more certain in politics than that at some point, facing a threat to national security, a leader will evoke Winston Churchill to stand for brave leadership (and Neville Chamberlain to represent craven weakness). As Ian Buruma shows, in his dazzling short tour de force of storytelling and analysis, the mantle has in fact only grown more oppressive as nuanced historical understanding fades and is replaced by shallow myth. Absurd as it is to presume to say what Churchill would have thought about any current event, it's relatively certain he would have been horrified by the Iraq War and Brexit, to name two episodes dense with "Finest Hour" analogizing. But The Churchill Complex is much more than a reflection on the weight of Churchill's legacy and its misuses. At its heart is a series of shrewd and absorbing character studies of the president-prime minster dyads, which in Ian Buruma's gifted hands serve as a master class in politics, diplomacy and abnormal psychology. It's never been a relationship of equals: from Churchill's desperate cajoling and conniving to keep FDR on side in the war on, British prime ministers have put much more stock in the relationship than their US counterparts did. For England, resigned to the loss of its once-great empire and the diminishment of its power, its close kinship to the world's greatest superpower would give it continued relevance, and serve as leverage to keep continental Europe in its place. As Buruma shows, this was almost always fool's gold. And now, even as the links between the Brexit vote and the 2016 US election are coming into sharper focus, the Anglo-American alliance has floundered on the rocks of the isolationism that is one of 2016's signal legacies. The Churchill Complex may not have a happy ending, but as with Ian Buruma's other works, piercing lucidity and elegant prose is its own form of lasting comfort.
30 Sep 202044min

The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes by Elizabeth Lesser
Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes by Elizabeth Lesser What story would Eve have told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her? What if women had been the storytellers? Elizabeth Lesser believes that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history, humankind would have followed different hero myths and guiding stories—stories that value caretaking, champion compassion, and elevate communication over vengeance and violence. Cassandra Speaks is about the stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values we live by. Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity. We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about what happens when women are the storytellers too—when we speak from our authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the tales we tell about what it means to be human. Lesser has walked two main paths in her life—the spiritual path and the feminist one—paths that sometimes cross but sometimes feel at cross-purposes. Cassandra Speaks is her extraordinary merging of the two. The bestselling author of Broken Open and Marrow, Lesser is a beloved spiritual writer, as well as a leading feminist thinker. In this book she gives equal voice to the cool water of her meditative self and the fire of her feminist self. With her trademark gifts of both humor and insight, she offers a vision that transcends the either/or ideologies on both sides of the gender debate. Brilliantly structured into three distinct parts, Part One explores how history is carried forward through the stories a culture tells and values, and what we can do to balance the scales. Part Two looks at women and power and expands what it means to be courageous, daring, and strong. And Part Three offers “A Toolbox for Inner Strength.” Lesser argues that change in the culture starts with inner change, and that no one—woman or man—is immune to the corrupting influence of power. She provides inner tools to help us be both strong-willed and kind-hearted. Cassandra Speaks is a beautifully balanced synthesis of storytelling, memoir, and cultural observation. Women, men and all people will find themselves in the pages of this book, and will come away strengthened, opened, and ready to work together to create a better world for all people. ELIZABETH LESSER is the author of several bestselling books, including Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow and Marrow: Love, Loss & What Matters Most. Her newest book Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes will be released September 15th. She is the cofounder of Omega Institute, recognized internationally for its workshops and conferences in wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change. She has given two popular TED talks, and is one of Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul 100, a collection of a hundred leaders who are using their voices and talent to elevate humanity.
29 Sep 202050min

The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Pelosi by Molly Ball Interview
Pelosi by Molly Ball Interview Time.com/author/molly-ball NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An intimate, fresh perspective on the most powerful woman in American political history, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by award-winning political journalist Molly Ball She’s the iconic leader who puts Donald Trump in his place, the woman with the toughness to take on a lawless president and defend American democracy. Ever since the Democrats took back the House in the 2018 midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi has led the opposition with strategic mastery and inimitable elan. It’s a remarkable comeback for the veteran politician who for years was demonized by the right and taken for granted by many in her own party―even though, as speaker under President Barack Obama, she deserves much of the credit for epochal liberal accomplishments from universal access to health care to saving the US economy from collapse, from reforming Wall Street to allowing gay people to serve openly in the military. How did an Italian grandmother in four-inch heels become the greatest legislator since LBJ? Ball’s nuanced, page-turning portrait takes readers inside the life and times of this historic and underappreciated figure. Based on exclusive interviews with the Speaker and deep background reporting, Ball shows Pelosi through a thoroughly modern lens to explain how this extraordinary woman has met her moment. Molly Ball was a staff writer for The Atlantic, where she was a leading voice in the magazine’s coverage of U.S. politics, and a CNN political analyst. Ball has been awarded the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award, the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism, and the Lee Walczak Award for Political Analysis for her coverage of political campaigns and issues. Ball previously reported for Politico, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the Las Vegas Sun. She has worked for newspapers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia, as well as the New York Times and the Washington Post. She is a graduate of Yale University and was a 2009 recipient of the Knight-Wallace journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan. In 2007, she won $100,000 on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." Ball grew up in Idaho and Colorado. She lives in Virginia with her husband and three children.
28 Sep 20201h

The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right by Anne Nelson
Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right by Anne Nelson Anne-nelson.com In 1981, emboldened by Ronald Reagan's election, a group of some fifty Republican operatives, evangelicals, oil barons, and gun lobbyists met in a Washington suburb to coordinate their attack on civil liberties and the social safety net. These men and women called their coalition the Council for National Policy. Over four decades, this elite club has become a strategic nerve center for channeling money and mobilizing votes behind the scenes. Its secretive membership rolls represent a high-powered roster of fundamentalists, oligarchs, and their allies, from Oliver North, Ed Meese, and Tim LaHaye in the Council's early days to Kellyanne Conway, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, and the DeVos and Mercer families today. In Shadow Network, award-winning author and media analyst Anne Nelson chronicles this astonishing history and illuminates the coalition's key figures and their tactics. She traces how the collapse of American local journalism laid the foundation for the Council for National Policy's information war and listens in on the hardline broadcasting its members control. And she reveals how the group has collaborated with the Koch brothers to outfit Radical Right organizations with state-of-the-art apps and a shared pool of captured voter data - outmaneuvering the Democratic Party in a digital arms race whose result has yet to be decided. In a time of stark and growing threats to our most valued institutions and democratic freedoms, Shadow Network is essential reading Anne Nelson is an award-winning author and playwright who has written extensively about human rights and the defiance of totalitarian regimes. Her most recent work is "Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right." Her previous book, "Suzanne's Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris", a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, was published in eight countries. "Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler" (2009) was named Editor's Choice by the New York Times Book Review. She is also the author of "Murder Under Two Flags: The US, Puerto Rico, and the Cerro Maravilla Cover-up." Her play "The Guys," which premiered in 2001 with Sigourney Weaver and Bill Murray, has been produced in all 50 states and 15 countries. Her screenplay of "The Guys" was produced as a feature film starring Sigourney Weaver and Anthony LaPaglia. Her play "Savages," an exploration of military occupation, was described by the New Yorker as a work of "lacerating beauty." Nelson's writing has been published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Harper's, and she has appeared on CBS "Sunday Morning" and The PBS "Newshour," as well as the BBC, CBC and NPR. She has received the Livingston Award for International Journalism, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Bellagio Fellowship. Nelson is a graduate of Yale University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a research fellow at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs in New York City. Nelson lectures frequently on human rights, authoritarian regimes, and the role of the media. She is represented by Ethan Bassoff of the Ross Yoon Agency, and Authors Unbound speaker agency.
27 Sep 20201h 3min