Chutzpah and Soul: In Memory of Lenny Bruce

Johnny interviews Barney Frank, member of Congress from Massachusetts 1980-2012, now retired in Maine, but as vibrant and opinionated as ever. He's writing a book on the legacy of John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who rescued the world and the U.S. from The Great Depression by stimulating economic growth via government intervention. Barney argues that Keynes' economic mantra is now counterproductive because the emphasis on growth is accelerating economic inequality worldwide. He advocates that addressing economic fairness is as critical as growth. And in a bow in the direction of new economic measurements, he concurs with Johnny that the World Happiness Index, in which the U.S. scores a pathetic 39th, is relevant. Barney is truly an eminence grise of the Democratic Party as well as of progressive and gay politics, and a prominent informal Jewish leader, with an international reputation. But this frank discussion is not an echo chamber as Johnny advances the prophetic warnings of Yale History Professor Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny (2017) and The Road to Unfreedom (2018), a leading expert of fascism. These NY Times bestsellers, were the intellectual opening shot in the Resistance to Trumpism, but Barney has not read them and doesn't feel that Trump's frontal assaults on democracy, attacks on the press, and destruction of the English language, including the famous quote "alternative truth" does not equal 1984 (George Orwell, 1949), because Kelly Anne Conway was totally ridiculed for that. Johnny counters, citing Professor Snyder, that the institutions of democracy are extremely vulnerable and many professionals have already been compromised, as they were on the road to Nazism in Germany.But Barney is particularly convinced by the 2018 mid-term elections which flipped the House back to the Democrats, that Americans have successfully resisted fascism and authoritarianism. As for Trump's demagoguery against the press, he feels that our press has been comprehensive and unafraid in revealing Trump's doings. Johnny cites some of the most blatant fascist actions of Trump in real time, live on TV, during the House Impeachment Trial, as evidence that we're not safe by any means. And so on.On a more positive note, the famous Boston legend, told and retold countless times, is the 1968 story of how the City of Boston averted the African American riots post MLK assassination partly by arranging a scheduled JAMES BROWN concert at Boston Garden to be broadcast on WGBH-TV. Then community leaders and the Mayor urged Boston's youth to stay home and watch the free concert. Barney, who was chief of staff for then Mayor Kevin White, reveals some details never heard before by Johnny or Steve Folsom, both of whom have heard this story many times.Finally, despite the fact that famous local Cambridge legend, Tip O'Neill, House Speaker (1977-1987), wanted him to become the first Jewish Speaker of the House, and it never happened, Barney has no regrets and feels the glass is half full...that he achieved much more success than he could ever have imagined.We end the episode with No Regrets, by Tom Rush, singer-songwriter.Support the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

On February 29, 2020 Leap Year Day, three days before Super Tuesday, we joined thousands of citizens on Boston Commons for a Rally for Bernie Sanders for President.We interviewed a range of citizens to understand their profiles, motivations, demographics, and personalities. Our intent was to go way beyond the mass media's generic, boring, stereotyping, and lumping together of who Bernie supporters are. Let's face it, the mass media often mis-characterizes events to fit their pre-existing narrative.The dominant narrative about Bernie supporters, has been that "Bernie Bros" are disruptive, uncivilized, and playing a negative role in the Democratic Party. Finding Bernie supporters who defy the stereotypes was as easy as A-B-C even on a cold windy day in Boston. Take this young man, "Q" in the above photo , who is a "traveling nurse", and a very active Bernie supporter, whose demographic is beyond unique: an American Muslim, born in South Africa of Ugandan parents, family moved to Newton, Mass at age six, had lots of Jewish friends, and is proud to be a supporter of Bernie as potentially the first Jewish President.I call that a Demographic of One!BARNEY FRANK next episode full length interview focused on Capitalism has Changed!Support the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

Johnny berates the Democratic Party for not halting the Presidential campaigning for ONE DAY and focus collective energies on TRUMP REMOVAL...to THE DONALD on STEROIDS rally in Iowa where he threatens the MAGA MUFFINS that if they don't win big there in November, "your farms are going to hell." onto "banana republic" example of Colombia, NARCOS the Netflix series on Pablo Escobar... to the wisdom of Timothy Snyder, Yale History Professor author of ON TYRANNY warning institutions are VULNERABLE... thus we are heading to THE TWILIGHT ZONE called STOCKHOLM SYNDROME...born Stockholm, Sweden, 1973, became infamous with PATTY HEARST, Berkeley CA 1974...finally the eradication of language by Trumpism a la George Orwell's dystopian novels 1984 and Animal Farm... (Happy Endings not required, sorry!)So Johnny issues a valiant call to direct non-violent action..STAND ON THE BARRICADES FOR CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY be arrested oppose TRUMPISM and it's media mouthpiece...FOX 'REALITY SHOW' NEWS! Save the English LanguageSupport the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

Johnny Goldin and Lio Speigler continue the dialectic search for common ground.Two guys who really care about the past present and future of the Jewish People and how Jews interact with the world.Johnny makes a pitch for making Judaism "user friendly" to attract converts providing new DNA and preventing demographic erasure; while Lio speaks of a mythical purpose for Jews as an essential spark to keep the world in balance. He seems to believe that if Jews embrace that spark, Anti-Semitism will turn into Philo-Semitism (love and respect of the Jews).Johnny sharply disagrees as his sense of History is grounded in social and natural sciences, while Lio's is grounded in religious mysticism and deep spirituality. Lio wants Jews to be messengers of LOVE; Johnny says, "Who could argue against "love"?Johnny celebrates the memory of 25,000 Jews at the March across the Brooklyn Bridge on January 5, 2020 and says, "It felt like being in Israel, only in English."Support the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

On the Bridge: Brooklyn Bridge January 5, 2020 two Jewish activists/ podcasters meet in the midst of the March of 25,000 against Anti-Semitism on a windy cold but bright skies Sunday. Johnny meets Lio Speigler, Israeli born video and podcasting guy who is interviewing random folks on the Bridge. We meet and hit it off and the rest is history!Two Jews three opinions as they say...we engage in intense verbal and historical jiu jitsuvia phone and neither one's opinion is changed. Despite Lio's mystical and metaphysical approach to Jewish history, I discover that he's a Romanian Jew, whose parents came to Israel in the 1980s to Tel Aviv, and since my paternal Grandfather was a Romanian Jewish immigrant to the US (never met him), there is a fraternal feeling. I can also appreciate that his parents fled the extreme Ceausescu Regime, the Communist system in Romania connected to the Soviet Union, and thus his search for roots via Kabbalah and his uncompromising demands of Jews to follow what he considers their destiny, I understand, even as I vehemently disagree. To be continued in following episode as we wrestle with anti-semitism, Zionism, the and the relationship between Diaspora and Zion.Support the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

This fifty minute tour de force of Johnny "Soul" Goldin, Host/ Producer, comes smack in the middle of the Senate Impeachment Trial of President Donald J Trump. Improvised oral essay, diatribe, rant, appeals to logic, and cathartic invocations of the need for sanity in an insane world, ON THE BARRICADES takes the listener on a journey from the existential demand that the Democratic Party organize mass ralies, and finally drops you right into the front two-seater Jaguar driven by Austin Powers (Mike Meyers, 1997); imagining that he died in 1974, right after President Nixon resigned, and.... returns now!!! Ultimately we leave you hanging and hungry for more, as we "fly off in a Jaguar with Austin Powers". ( With musical selections that are rousing and sublime as always.)Support the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

Into Johnny voice over By The Rivers of Bablyon Sound Bite: Allen Sinai- I understood the greed that motivates Wall Street...Intro of Allen Sinai by Johnny who says "we'll cover the waterfront"Section One: Bad Habits, Bailouts and This Magic Moment (The Drifters) Section Two: The Fundamentals of the MarketSection Three: Even the upper middle class are getting screwedSection Four: Recession Predictions and the World EconomySection Five: Lehman Brothers Crashes and Burns - Allen is there (Warren Zevon) Section Six: The Recovery, The Anxiety, and Information ParalysisSection Seven: "Send lawyers guns and money":((Warren Zevon)Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and crisis time on Capitol HillSection Eight: The Fall (skiing Aspen) and Rise of Allen: Flies to DC wheelchairsto Capitol Hill for Take Two Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, more crisis time on Capitol HillSection Nine: Donald Trump addresses the NY Economic Club (11/12/2019) and Allen warns the Democratic Party--he won't be easy to defeatSection Ten: Jewish Consciousness in the Time of Trump from a guy from the streets of DetroitSection Eleven: The Future of Allen Sinai: Artificial Intelligence or finding a successor? Support the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

CHUTZPAH and SOUL: STAYING SANE in an INSANE WORLD Standing up to Power with Rants, irony, satire, parody, sarcasm, and outrage• Channeling ethnic energy of Jewish, Latin, African American, Italians, and all othersSupport the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

Section One: STAYING SANE in an INSANE WORLD!: My Intro and Overview Section Two: Johnny's Fantasy National Democratic Party TicketSection Three: Jay Kaufman: Former State Representative and Passionate JewSection Four: Jeff Ross: LBGTQ Activist running non-stop for Boston City CouncilSupport the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

Section One: The Flight, Boston-Miami-Cali-BogotaSection Two: Dancing with the ColombiansSection Three: Cartagena and Tour of Mangrove ForestSupport the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

Segment One: My Dream contains the kernel of a true story of an actual dream at age ten about Mary, my fourth grade classmate and cute smart girl with a previously disclosed crush on me. This dream is recounted within the context of a childrens' chapter book autiobigraphical fiction of the early years of the narrator. Themes reach way beyond into the story of The American Dream, circa early 1960s Montgomery County, Maryland next to Washington, DC, one of the best and successful epitome's of the post WWII suburban American Dream. The story and the story of the story, culminate in the assassination of JFK November 22, 1963, as experienced by Johnny and Mary in their seventh grade of Junior High. Segment Two: The American Dream into the next generation. Thirty three years later, in the summer of 1996, Johnny has tracked down the real Mary, sent her the story book, and wants to see her after all these years but instead meets her daughter Jessica, age ten, visiting her Aunt in Takoma Park, Maryland, and loaded with questions to ask our narrator as they meet at a local cafe. Johnny finds sees Jessica's eyes and suddenly there is no distance from the past...Segment Three: The Ultimate Betrayal told in the present includes the narrator's reaction to the utter decimation of the "middle class" over the past forty plus years, and to the abandonment of fairness and justice in numerous venues. But Congressional Testimony in June, by Jon Stewart, Comedy Central's former Daily Show host, channeling the best of the Hebrew Prophets, attempted to wake up the nation about loyalty, and to whom it is owed. And one more thing about "the ultimate betrayal" : some of the people who've abandoned respect for those men and women, in the FDNY and NYPD and other rescuers, who leaped through fire and ash to fulfill a mission on 9/11, include those mental midgets who can't seem to respect MEN no matter what, or use the term "white men" as a knee-jerk label of denigration. Hello! It was almost Father's Day and the Congressional room was filled with HEROIC MEN--mostly Caucasian in fact, but who couldn't give a damn about that label!Support the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

Three Paisanos of three different generations, points of view, professions, and values.Introduced by a visit from Uncle Sal, the Italian Uncle, who asked me to make sure to have some Italian American representation and it just so happens that...Segment One: Chris B. Howard Beach, Queens, New York City to 9/11 tragedy to trying to ascertain the motivations of one unique Millennial with deep philosophical mind.Segment Two: Paul C. Quits suburbia and corporate life ex-Army too, for urban entrepreneurial idealistic start up world of refugee women and building community and non-Catholic spiritualismSegment Three: Arthur G. becomes a Jew at mid-life and deeply identifies; becomes an attorney in his mid 60s; does criminal defense and non-compensated "social work" at "the dark end of the street". Support the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

Section One: Radio Free American shmooze with Paul JimersonSection Two: Kiddie Land Inspired Disney L.A. memories of Robert BerendSection Three: Toll Booth Operator Extraordinare Latish Wade and Ghetto Survival Section Four: "Lenny Bruce Saved My Life" Johnny Goldin & Tenth Grade Gym Teacher Support the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

Section One: An Iconic Chinese American GuySection Two: DIY on SteroidsSection Three: The Soul of MemphisSupport the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

Section One: Shmoozing with my sound tech.Section Two: Latisha Part 1: A Strong Black WomanSection Three: Zacuto: The Spanish InquisitionSection Four: Latisha Part 2: Personality Type and TemperamentSection Five: Journey Versus Roadmap: A Beat PoemSection Six: The Ice Cube Theory Of Economic DevelopmentSupport the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)

Intro overview of Chutzpah and Soul with musicSegment One: Italian Uncle- Uncle Sal from Brooklyn is the Angel of Interventions and a returning and Iconic figure of my Podcast Universe. The Ultimate Realist and fountain of common sense wisdomSegment Two: American Cowardice, American Trauma, and the Magic of Chinatown- how Jews and Chinese intersect and how Chinatown is the only place to be for ChristmasSegment Three: I Learned all about Love from Motown-original poem that captures the images of early 1960sSegment Four: Like a Canary in the Mine Shaft- A prophet before one's time is not an easy thing to be..But you better listen!Support the show (https://www.gofundme.com/f/podcast-chutzpah-and-soul-in-memory-of-lenny-bruce?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link-tip&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet)