The Brian Lehrer Show

Mayoral candidate John Liu has a new proposal to fund CUNY scholarships through legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. What do you think? How do you view recreational marijuana use in 2013? Call 212-433-9692 or post your comment here.

Gov. Christie says he'll decide today about medical marijuana in New Jersey. Listeners, what are your stories of using pot as medicine?  

Polls indicate an easy victory for Newark Mayor Cory Booker in October's special election for NJ's open US Senate seat. But win or lose, Booker is not running for reelection in Newark's mayoral race, and the post-Booker era appears imminent. NJ Today correspondent David Cruz discusses Booker's legacy, and takes a look at what's next for New Jersey's largest city, including the tricky business of determining a successor.

Stephen Schwarzman, Chairman and CEO of the financial services corporation, The Blackstone Group L.P., talks about directing $300 million to an international scholarship program in China, and his views on the state of the US economy. In the studio, @Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwartzman. #WNYC pic.twitter.com/evRpv4YpIz — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) August 15, 2013

Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and the author of The Trauma of Everyday Life (Penguin Press, 2013), talks about the prevalence of trauma, from crises to loneliness, and its central role in human development. 

The death toll in the recent wave of violence in Egypt has risen above 500, as the military moves against pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters. Jonathan Tepperman, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, discusses the latest news out of Egypt and more regional news. President Obama is expected to speak about the violence from Martha's Vineyard at 10:15am this morning.

Young Jean Lee, playwright, performer, and artistic director of Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, talks about "We're Gonna Die," the Obie-winning live show of songs and stories in performance through Saturday at LCT3, and the new album. 

It's time for another installment in our open-phones series "The Explanatarium" -- where you get one minute to explain something to your fellow WNYC listeners. Do you just "get" something most other people find complicated? Have you done the research and figured things out? If you think you can explain something complicated or often misunderstood - in 60 seconds or less - call in. In previous installments (listen below) listeners have explained the difference between incandescent and halogen light bulbs; why altruism has an evolutionary purpose; and the origin of the phrase "break a leg." If you can explain something - anything - clearly and simply, call 212-433-9692 or post below. No heavy opinion, no political rants, just compelling information and succinct clarification.

Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, talks about the shockingly low standardized test scores for the new Common Core focus and how those scores should be interpreted. This new push to Common Core will change the paradigm of testing. For a decade testing has been driving instruction and curriculum...this obsession with "drill and kill" has been driving what kids are exposed to in the classroom and how classroom time is used. If we start to focus on critical thinking and the development of critical thinking, I believe that instruction and curriculum and best practice will drive the test. That is a paradigm shift, and that is why we are taking this on. -- Merryl Tisch

After exploring self-delusion in his book and blog "You Are Not So Smart," David McRaney, journalist and self-described "psychology nerd," focuses on how to get past ourselves and outsmart our own minds in You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself.     The Common Belief Fallacy Excerpted from YOU ARE NOW LESS DUMB by David McRaney   Back when Shakespeare said you were the paragon of animals, both noble in reason and infinite in faculties, he did so during a time when physicians believed the body was filled with black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood, and all sickness and health depended on the interaction of those fluids. Lethargic and lazy? Well, that’s because you are full of phlegm. Feeling sick? Maybe you’ve got too much blood and should go see a barber to get drained. Yes, the creator of some of the greatest works of the English language believed you could cure a fever with a knife.  It’s easy to laugh at the very wrong things that people once believed, but try not to feel too superior. My friend Susannah Gregg was living in South Korea and working there as an English teacher when she first learned about fan death, a common belief among people in that country that oscillating desk fans are among the most deadly inventions known to man. She was stepping out for a beer with a friend when he noticed, to his horror, she had left her fan running with her pet rabbit still inside her house. Her friend, a twenty-eight-year-old college graduate, refused to leave until she turned off the fan. He explained to her that everyone knows you can’t leave a fan running inside a room with the windows shut. That would mean certain death. It was shocking to him that she was unaware of something so simple and potentially life-threatening. Susannah thought he was kidding. It took several conversations to convince him it wasn’t true and that in her country, in most countries, no one believed such a thing. She successfully avoided absorbing the common belief not because she was smarter than her friend but because she had already done the experiments necessary to disprove the myth. She had slept in a house with a fan running many times and lived to tell about it. Since then, she has asked many friends and coworkers there about fans, and the response has been mixed. Some people think it is silly, and some think fan death is real. In 2013, despite the debunking power of a few Google searches, the belief that you shouldn’t fall asleep or spend too much time in a room with a running electric fan is so pervasive in South Korea that Susannah told me you can’t buy one within their borders without a safety device that turns it off after a set amount of time. The common belief is so deep and strong that fan manufacturers must include a safety switch to soothe the irrational fears of most consumers. Your ancestors may not have had the toolset you do when it came to avoiding mental stumbling blocks or your immense cultural inheritance, but their minds worked in much the same way. The people who thought the world rested on the back of a great tortoise or who thought dancing would make it rain - they had the same brain as you; that is to say, they had the same blueprint in their DNA for making brains. So a baby born into their world was about the same as one born into yours. Evolution is so slow that not enough has changed in the way brains are made to tell much of a difference between you and a person from ten thousand years ago. That means that from gods in burning chariots to elves making cookies in trees, people long ago believed in all sorts of silly things thanks to the same faulty reasoning you deal with today. They, too, were fueled by a desire to make sense of reality and to answer the age-old question: “What, exactly, is happening here?” Instead of letting that question hang in the air, your distant relatives tended to go ahead and answer it, and they kept answering it

After months of mayoral "forums" last night saw the first major television debate between the Democratic candidates for mayor. Bill Ritter, Eyewitness News co-anchor, and Mariela Salgado, reporter for Noticias 41 Univision -- who both helped moderate last night's debate -- recap the highlights, from attacks on Speaker Quinn's economic policy to Bloomberg's education record. .@BillRitter7 points out that candidates were attacking Quinn last night because, with runoff likely, 2nd place is most vulnerable position. — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) August 14, 2013

The expected low turnout led to the expected results in yesterday's primary election: Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) will face Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan (R) in the special election to fill US Senator Frank Lautenberg's seat. Nancy Solomon, New Jersey Public Radio's managing editor, discusses the results and the general election showdown ahead.  "A lot of New Jersey towns are ghost towns this time of year..." @NancySolomon2 on yesterday's super-low turnout in the #NJSen primary. — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) August 14, 2013

Dan Balz, Washington Post chief correspondent and author of Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America, offers the behind-the-scenes story of the 2012 presidential race, from the long slog through the Republican primaries through election night.   Excerpt from COLLISION by Dan Balz “There are so many things you could point to as being decisive,” Mitt Romney said. “For instance, I had a lousy September; I had a great October.”  Romney sat in an arm chair at his home in Belmont, Mass., dressed in blue jeans and a checked shirt. It was late January 2013, almost three months after voters rejected his bid for the White House, and the next hour and a half marked the first time he had talked to a reporter about the campaign…. His great October began in Denver, at his first debate with Obama. Not surprisingly, he remembered that night as the high point of the year. After months of Romney being pounded in ads, voters finally saw him stand face to face with Obama. “People would get a chance to see that I was not the person that President Obama had been portraying me as being, and the things he was saying about me and my positions were wrong. I mean, his ads were not accurate. His ads were just pillorying me, saying things that were simply not true, and so I recognized this as a chance for people to see who I really am, and understand what I really believe.” When I said he seemed to reappear in that debate as “moderate Mitt,” he offered this interpretation of what happened: “People saw the entire me as opposed to an eight-second clip of me. . .  . And if people watched me on the campaign trail and heard my stump speech, what I said in my stump speech was the same thing I said in that debate. I’m the same guy. But in the debate, they saw the whole thing.” Romney believed the debates produced a fundamental change in his relationship with the party’s rank and file. “What had begun as people watching me with an interested eye had become instead more of a movement with energy and passion,” he said. “The rallies we’d had with larger and larger numbers and people not just agreeing with me on issues, but passionate about the election and about our campaign — that was something that had become palpable.” As a result, he woke up on Election Day thinking he would win. “I can’t say 90 percent confident or something like that, but I felt we were going to win. . . . The campaign had changed from being clinical to being emotional. And that was very promising.” His last hours on the trail, especially the arrival at the Pittsburgh airport on the afternoon of the election, where he was greeted by a spontaneous crowd of supporters, gave him added confidence. “We were looking at our own poll numbers and there were two things that we believed,” he said. “We believed that some of the polls that showed me not winning were just simply wrong, because they showed there was going to be more turnout from African American voters, for instance, than had existed in 2008. We said no way, absolutely no way. That can’t be, because this was the first time an African American president had run. Two thousand eight — that had to be the high point. . . . We saw independent voters in Ohio breaking for me by double digits. And as a number said, you can’t lose Ohio if you win independent voters. You’re winning Republicans solidly, you’re winning independents, and enthusiasm is overwhelmingly on your side. . . . So those things said, okay, we have a real good chance of winning. Nothing’s certain. Don’t measure the drapes. But I had written an acceptance speech and spent some time on the acceptance speech. I had not written a concession speech.” …. When Romney had mentioned his “lousy September,” it was an evident reference to what may have been the low point of his campaign: the “47 percent” video. He was in California and said at first he couldn’t get a look at the video. His advisers were pushing him to respond as quickly as he could. “As I underst

The military trial of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan underway at Ft. Hood in Texas has given rise to controversies beyond establishing guilt or innocence. Richard Rosen, Texas Tech law professor and former staff judge advocate at Fort Hood, discusses the implications of the crime not being designated an act of terrorism and of Major Hasan's self-representation when his aim may be less self-defense than martyrdom via the death penalty.

Miki Agrawal, Social entrepreneur and author of Do Cool Sh*t, offers advice on how to start a fulfilling business with limited capital. Event: Miki Agrawal will read from Do Cool Sh*t and sign books on September 17 at 7 p.m. at WILD NYC, 535 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014   In the studio: @TwinMiki talking about "Doing Cool Sh*t" Audio now up: http://t.co/EiOZzC2e1D pic.twitter.com/3jvcf4XhAH — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) August 13, 2013 EXCERPT: Do Cool Sh*t: Quit Your Day Job, Start Your Own Business, and Live Happily Ever After ( Preface) To ensure that this book has found its way into your hands for the right reasons, please ask yourself, “Do I fall into one or more of these following categories?” • I don’t want to work a day job in a “respectable industry” just to make a buck. • I want to have the social life I always dreamed about. • I want to get the blessing of my parents/significant others to chase my real passion. • I actually don’t know what my real passion is yet, and I really want to figure it out. • I have a really great idea and want to start a business but I have no clue where to begin. • The books that do teach me how to start a business put me to sleep after page three. • I want to raise money for my business, but I have never raised money before. • I’m sick of feeling self-conscious when I walk into a room full of strangers, and I want to know how to break into a new circle with sparkle and confidence. • I’m done going to bars and watching football for ten hours on weekends with my college friends who drink their faces off, and I want more. • I want to build a new community of friends who challenge, support, and inspire me. • I realize that there are people in my life who aren’t helping me be my best; they may even be holding me back. I want to surround myself with the right people. If you nodded your head to any one of those statements, buckle up and get ready to do the coolest shit you’ve ever done. From now on, you will no longer feel envious of others who “have the perfect life” or intimidated by anyone trying to keep you from your perfect life. You will have the courage, clarity, and confidence to become authentic, empowered, and actualized—the best version of yourself you could ever imagine.