Newsweek August 19, 2022

2018 “Critics and allies alike began asking: What happened to Elon Musk, the hero of Silicon Valley, the high-tech visionary who was going to save the planet with electric vehicles?” Newsweek wrote, citing the Tesla CEO’s Twitter rampages against journalists and others who spoke critically of the company. Since then, Musk has used his account to comment on the platform itself, questioning its position on free speech. This year, the billionaire struck a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter—one he is now trying to back out of. A Musk-Twitter trial is set for October. 1976 “Behind them lay a very real threat that the Republican ultras, if they didn’t get a ticket to their liking, would split off into a rightwing third party,” Newsweek wrote. Now, some might say “Trumpism” has done just…

FEATURED EPISODE Declassified With Naveed Jamali Former FBI double agent talks national security COMIC RELIEF ON BASE ▸ At the commissary? In a Facebook group for military spouses? Air Force wife and comedian Ashley Gutermuth dishes about the best place to score joke material. Plus: That time at the international spouses club when she shared American culture by demonstrating how to make s’mores with a blowtorch and explained Groundhog Day through a translator. HOST ▸ Naveed Jamali, author of How to Catch a Russian Spy IN THEIR WORDS ▸ “I’m not calling my husband by his rank unless I’m married to Cap’n Crunch. We respect cereal in this house.” THE LEISURE CLASS Dire Straits’ Jack Sonni gathers an eclectic group of creatives ‘I Want My MTV’ ▸ Ever notice that Sting’s cameo in Dire Straits’ hit “Money for…

HAZARD, KENTUCKY In Safe Hands Sergeant Thorin Brant of the Kentucky National Guard carries two children from a helicopter at the Wendell H. Ford Regional Airport on July 30 after they were airlifted from nearby South Fork during a reconnaissance and rescue mission. Since July 26, the eastern part of the state has faced massive flash flooding, landslides and mudslides, which have left 37 people dead and hundreds homeless. Flood waters have receded but still surround much of the area, requiring the rescue of more than 1,300 people.…

ALMOST EXACTLY A YEAR AGO, THE LAST AMER-ican troops left Afghanistan and the Taliban regained full control of the country. Since then, Afghanistan has descended into worsening poverty, repression, particularly of women and girls, and international isolation, underscored by the killing last week of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri by an American drone strike in Kabul. Azra Jafari, an Afghan politician and human rights activist, who was the sole woman co-author of the country’s 2003 constitution and in 2008 became her nation’s first female mayor, has watched all this from exile in the U.S. with growing despair. “We were a working democracy for 20 years and during this 20 years we were hopeful,” she tells Newsweek. “Now, we have nothing. What we worked on for 20 years is reduced to nothing.” Despite…

Today’s world is becoming increasingly fractured. Confirmation bias abounds where people stay within safe circles of friends and colleagues who agree with them, and the opinions they hear mirror their own rather than confront opposing views and invite controversy. But what if there’s a better way? What if thinking about things as “both/and” rather than “either/or” could allow people to truly talk to one another and expand their minds to new possibilities? In their new book from Harvard Business Review Press, paradox experts Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis explain how to apply “both/and” thinking to today’s most vexing issues—from navigating life, work and leadership in the post-pandemic era to curbing political polarization. In the excerpt below from BOTH/AND THINKING: EMBRACING CREATIVE TENSIONS TO SOLVE YOUR TOUGHEST PROBLEMS, they discuss how…

What is both/and thinking? How does it compare to either/or thinking? Smith _ As parents, partners, employees and leaders, we’re caught in tug-of-wars. Do we prioritize work or family, current targets or learning new skills, social or financial needs? Facing a dilemma, we typically make a choice: A or B. We then stick with that choice. This either/or thinking can be helpful in the short run. Yet it limits our options. Worse, it can lead us down a rabbit hole, overemphasizing one side until we’re stuck. Both/and thinking starts with recognizing paradoxes within our dilemmas. Think yin-yang. Interwoven contradictions reinforce each other. Light defines dark and vice versa. In life, beneath work/life dilemmas lie paradoxes of self/other, short-term/long-term, giving/taking. Caring for ourselves creates energy and resources to care for others. Caring for…