Gao Xiqing, Part 1 – Growing up during the Cultural Revolution

Gao Xiqing is a lawyer, investor, father and husband. He helped found China’s stock market and was modern China’s first person to pass the New York State bar. Our conversation was so extraordinary I divided it into two parts. In this first part, hear him describe what it was like to grow up in China shortly after the 1949 revolution and live through the Cultural Revolution and then, miraculously, make it to law school. If you don’t know much about China this will open your mind. 

Dr. Iskander Enikeev – on watching your country collapse and “double thinking”

Dr. Enikeev is a Russian psychiatrist who grew up in a country that no longer exists and now runs a US practice with over 40 psychiatrists. He describes what it was like to grow up in the Soviet Union, how rock ‘n’ roll weakened the system, “double thinking” and the peculiar anxiety of freedom. 

Paul Cooke – Brown University Men’s Crew Coach on Sports and Psychology

Paul, the Head Coach of Brown University Men’s Crew team, talks about how sports force us to be “in the moment,” teamwork, what it takes to be a great athlete and what role sports played in his life as he processed, as a kid, his father’s suicide.  Paul has coached Olympians and won the Ivy League in 2008, 2009 and 2012 as well as placing in many other highly competitive events. 

Greg Taylor, teacher, on the intersection of race, mental health and parent advocacy and the classroom

Greg is a friend, a parent, an educator and a Minority Achievement Coordinator and a Facilitator of Courageous Conversations about Race and Equity in Classrooms. In this episode, he reflects on the racial divide in 1980s Washington, D.C., managing his own mental health and that of his students and the importance of parents advocating for their own children. 

Alex Shahidi and Damien Bisserier – On Balance in Investment Decisions and Life

Alex and Damien are two friends who co-founded Advanced Research Investment Solutions and in this episode share some of their practical but profound advice about how to save and the parallels between good investment practices and life practices. 

Dr. James Levine, author and psychologist.

I speak with my dear friend, psychologist Jim Levine. Jim has a Ph.D. from Simmons University, founded and has directs a multidisciplinary 30-clinician group in Western Massachusetts that provides outpatient therapy, psychological testing and mental health, behavioral and trauma-focused consultation to more than 40 school districts and is an award-winning author of Learning from Behavior. His next book, to be published in 2021, is called Children Gripped by Trauma.

Interview with Sonya, from Raising a Thief

Hear how Sonya, my daughter, reacted to reading Raising a Thief.