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Shaping Opinion

By: Tim O'Brien
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  • Summary

  • The Shaping Opinion podcast helps you see through the spin. It reveals things you may not know, and it exposes other things some may want to keep hidden. Its focus is on how your thoughts and attitudes are influenced to create change in the culture, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Host Tim O’Brien – author, senior media advisor and veteran damage control expert – empowers you with a fresh perspective. He comfortably takes you inside trending issues, stories and to the people who unravel it all through deep-dive conversations. After decades in handling high stakes and complex crisis management situations, Tim probes to uncover what’s real and what matters, and what will shape the future. Watch or listen every Monday wherever you get your podcasts.
    O'Brien Communications, 2024
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Episodes
  • Encore: What They Won’t Tell You About Socialism

    Encore: What They Won’t Tell You About Socialism
    Apr 22 2024
    Economist, professor and author Paul Rubin joins Tim to talk about the impact of socialism on the future, particularly among young people who tend to be the most supportive of it, but who stand to lose the most because of it. This is the focus of his new book called, “A Student’s Guide to Socialism: How it will trash your lives.” This episode was first released January 4, 2021. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/shapingopinion/157_-_What_They_Wont_Tell_You_About_Socialism.mp3 If you want to see where socialism has been tried and failed, you don’t have to look far. Venezuela is one current-day example. The country sits on one of the world’s largest deposits of oil, yet people in that country have to wait in long lines for gas, the prices for gas are high and the quality of life is among the lowest in the world. Or, you could look toward history, from the Soviet Union, to Cuba, to countries from Eastern Europe to South America and Africa. The examples of socialist failure are many. But if you look for examples of where socialism has been successful, you can look, but you won’t find many if any. The effects of socialism aren’t just a poor standard of living, but massive human misery, that history has shown, has led to the establishment of dictators and small rich oligarchies who rule the masses under the thumb of socialism. At the same time, the concepts of socialism have long had a certain appeal to young people and oppressed peoples. Socialism has a certain seductive quality for some. Paul Rubin has spent decades teaching young generations about basic economic principles, and has spent no small amount of time educating young people on the risks of socialism. Links A Student’s Guide to Socialism: How it will trash your lives, by Paul Rubin (Amazon) Paul Rubin, The Independent Institute How are socialism and communism different?, History.com Capitalism v. Socialism, PragerU.com About this Episode’s Guest Paul Rubin Paul H. Rubin is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Economics Emeritus in the Economics Department of Emory University and a former Professor of Law and Economics at the School of Law. He served as editor-in-chief of Managerial and Decision Economics. In addition, he is associated with the Mont Peleron Society, the Independent Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute, and a Fellow of the Public Choice Society and former President of the Southern Economics Association. Professor Rubin was Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, Chief Economist at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Director of Advertising Economics at the Federal Trade Commission, and Vice-President of Glassman-Oliver Economic Consultants, Inc., a litigation consulting firm in Washington. He has taught economics at the University of Georgia, City University of New York, VPI, and law and economics at George Washington University Law School. Professor Rubin has written or edited several books, and has published over one hundred articles and chapters on economics, law, and regulation. Much of Professor Rubin’s writing is in law and economics, with a focus on tort, crime and contract issues. His areas of research interest include law and economics, industrial organization, transaction cost economics, government and business, public choice, regulation and price theory, and evolution and economics. His work has been cited in the professional literature over 11,100 times. He has consulted widely on litigation related matters, and has addressed numerous business, professional, policy and academic audiences. He has testified three times before Congress, and has served as an advisor on tort issues to the Congressional Budget Office. Professor Rubin is the author of the well-known paper “Why Is the Common Law efficient?” Journal of Legal Studies, 1977, which has been reprinted eight times, in English, Spanish and French. B.A. 1963,
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    33 mins
  • 1979: City of Champions

    1979: City of Champions
    Apr 15 2024
    This is a Special Edition of the Shaping Opinion Podcast called “1979: City of Champions.” In this extended episode (90 minutes), we take you to when Pittsburgh became the “City of Champions,” and how its impact went well beyond the field, or just baseball or football fans. In the end, it’s about what sports can do to bolster an entire people who are going through hard times. Guests include: Kent Tekulve, Joe Gordon, Lanny Frattare, Michael MacCambridge, John Steigerwald and Walter Iooss, Jr. This is the story of Pittsburgh, City of Champions, like you've never heard it before. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/shapingopinion/Full_Episode_-_City_of_Champions_auphonic.mp3 In this episode, we start with a group of Pittsburgh steelworkers who are standing around waiting for the arrival of two Pittsburgh sports icons. They stand in the cold and drafty Jones and Laughlin steel mill along the banks of the Monongahela River. The smoke stack above their building belches out thick black smoke. The stack next to it literally belches out fire. The air around the mill is thick with the smell of burning sulfur. If you’re one of the kids at the playground on the bluff above that mill in South Oakland, you’re at eye level with the top of those stacks and you can see that fire. You can see that smoke pouring out, and the air smells like rotten eggs. You can’t avoid it. Down below, the guests of honor have arrived. They are both co-honorees - named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsmen of the Year. Willie Stargell of the World Series Champion Pittsburgh Pirates and Terry Bradshaw, of the three-time Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. About 15 steelworkers, clad in their green and gray mill uniforms, where hard hats and safety glasses, and they crowd around Stargell and Bradshaw, who are in their own work uniforms. Instantly, these tough and grizzled veterans of the mill become boyish football fans when the two baseball and football stars come in. Not much is getting done around the mill right now. With them is another legend. The photographer. But not just any photographer. He’s a GOAT in his own right. Walter Iooss, Jr. is Sports Illustrated’s best ever. Ever see that photo of Joe Namath predicting a Jets Super Bowl win at pool side? That was Walter. What about the shot of Joe Montana throwing to Dwight Clark in the 1981 NFC Championship game, the one they called, “The Catch?” That was Walter, too. From Tiger Woods to Michael Jordan, to the iconic Swimsuit editions. If you can conjure up an iconic sports or swimsuit image in your mind, there’s a good chance Walter captured it for you. And here he is, lighting the floor of a steel mill to take a shot that would soon become iconic in its own right. Willie Stargell in his World Series champion uniform. Gold shirt with black pants. Next to him, Terry Bradshaw in his Super Bowl champion uniform, that classic black shirt with boxed numbers and gold pants. Surrounding them are those steelworkers. Walter told me there really wasn’t much to setting up the shot, but what it stood for, well, that was something else. Welcome to 1979 and Pittsburgh, The City of Champions. In this episode we take you through, chronologically, the year Pittsburgh became the City of Champions, along with stories, insights, and what it all came to mean. Guests Lanny Frattare Joe Gordon Walter Iooss, Jr. John Steigerwald Kent Tekulve Michael MacCambridge Photo Credit: Sports Illustrated and Walter Iooss, Jr. Links Two Champs from the “City of Champions,” Sports Illustrated 1979 Pittsburgh Steelers, NFL.com 1979 World Series, MLB.com Kent Tekulve, MLB.com Steelers PR Maven Honored by Pro Football Hall of Fame, Jewish Chronicle Rise of the Steelers, American Football Database Lanny Frattare, Waynesburg University The John Steigerwald Show, AM1250 “The Answer” Walter Iooss, Jr., His Website Michael MacCambridge, His Author Website
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    1 hr and 27 mins
  • Encore: She Spied on the Germans in WWII

    Encore: She Spied on the Germans in WWII
    Apr 8 2024
    Julia Parsons joins Tim to talk about her role as a code-breaker during World War II. Julia was part of a a team of Navy women stationed in Washington, D.C. during World War II who worked to decipher German submarine messages that were sent in secret code using the Enigma machine. Her work relied on the now legendary Bombe machine invented by Alan Turing. This episode was originally released on July 22, 2019. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/shapingopinion/339_-_WWII_-_Cracking_the_Enigma_Code.mp3 If you’ve ever seen the motion picture The Imitation Game, you would be familiar with the story of Alan Turing and his highly secretive and revolutionary work during World War II. If you have seen that movie, it may give you a greater sense of what Julia Parsons, this episode’s guest, did in her own way to help the Allies defeat the Nazis. Not long after the war started, German submarines were sinking more ships than the United States could replace. During 1942, German subs patrolled just off America’s Atlantic coast. Under the cover of darkness, they would torpedo ships that were silhouetted against the city lights in the background. In the open water, German U-boats would operate in packs and sink entire convoys in coordinated attacks. If a U-boat spotted a convoy, the German skipper would communicate with other U-boats nearby using a complex machine that sent coded messages that only other U-boats could decipher using the same machine. Then they would converge like a pack of wolves and attack allied ships. The goal was to cut off England’s supply line from the United States. The machine that the German military used to create that secret code was called the Enigma. Enigma was so sophisticated it was thought impossible to crack. The entire secret language the machine used changed completely every 24 hours. So, even if you were to crack the code of the machine today, you would have to start all over again tomorrow. Both the Americans and the British were working hard on both sides of the Atlantic to crack the German military’s secret code. In England, British Intelligence put together a team of their greatest minds and set about trying to solve the Enigma code. Alan Turing, young a mathematical genius, ran his own group as part of that effort, which would somehow find a way to crack the Enigma code. In the process, he and his team created a new machine. Turing had realized that human beings alone could not analyze the vast amounts of data required every 24 hours to solve the Enigma problem each day. They needed a machine that was equally sophisticated at unlocking the Enigma code. The machine Turing’s team invented was known as the Bombe, and not only would it crack the Enigma code, shortening World War II by two or three years and saving countless lives, but it would also launch the modern era of computing. Thanks to the Bombe machine, the Allies could read German communications and gain a strategic military advantage in the field. German U-boats were neutralized. Allied ships were steered away from U-boats and kept safe. In December 1942, Turing went to the United States to share what he knew about Enigma, along with his own solutions, with the U.S. military. Meanwhile, the U.S. had its own code-cracking team. Within that larger U.S. effort, Julia Parsons was on a team of Navy women who worked to decipher German U-boat messages sent by the Enigma machine. In the Naval Communications Annex on Nebraska Avenue, thousands of WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Services) worked in three shifts to break the codes the Germans used in Europe and on the Atlantic, and by the Japanese in the Pacific. Links How Alan Turing Cracked the Enigma Code, The Imperial War Museums Overlooked No More: Alan Turing, Condemned Code Breaker and Computer Visionary, New York Times Germans Unleash U-boats, History.com How Did the Enigma Machine Work? The Guardian
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    27 mins
Politics & Government Social Sciences
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