Jack & Jill Politics

One week ago, I joined the always-fun and intellectually engaging “Beer Diplomacy TV” for a conversation produced by Stuart Tracte and moderated (to some degree) by Owen JJ Stone (aka @ohdoctah). The show was set up as a bit of a re-match between me and Brian Brushwood, a fellow good-natured geek and libertarian. Brian and I had it out (in a respectful way) about net neutrality a few weeks prior, and this was to be round two.

We ended up spending a lot of time talking about the gulf oil spill, and I thought I’d share the entire show (71 minutes!) because

a) I’m too lazy to cut it up
b) the conversation was truly interesting
c) we both maintained a respectful tone throughout even though we have very different ideas about the role of government in overseeing and preventing this sort of catastrophe.

The conversation also gave me a chance to return to one of my most passionate areas of concern which is the overlap of our climate-energy-food crises. I spent a solid 18 months reading everything I could on the subject a few years ago, and the information left me forever changed with respect to how all of us bear collective responsibility for the full cost of our energy way of life.

Hopefully, you’ll enjoy and learn something from the exchange. As a reminder, this was recorded a week ago, before we knew the outcome of the attempted top kill and before the president’s press conference.

here’s a direct link:
http://beerdiplomacytv.com/2010/05/25/baratunde-thurston-brian-brushwood/