TOCS – Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!)

First, some odds and ends from last week. I should have posted a formal message after the Martin Sherman show, which was arguably the best TOCS yet and is available for download. I didn’t get to it so let’s take care of the formalities here. Prof. Sherman’s a former Shamir adviser, a military intelligence specialist, a widely-cited academic, and – unarguably – among the most careful scholars on the Israeli right. If you make a point of coming at US and Israeli issues from the conservative side of the spectrum – and Google Analytics says you do – you’ll have a tough time finding a more exacting account of regional and global geopolitics.

The interview topics ranged from the Middle East peace process to Israeli/Indian relations to Israeli public diplomacy, touching down for specifics and anecdotes in between. The segments I played on the show dealt largely with public diplomacy, which Sherman outlined as Israel’s single most significant strategic failing. That plus the rest of last week’s show – news, commentary, and the usual brilliance of Dan Diker – can be found on the podcast. The full Sherman interview – which has all the highlights from the show plus 20 more minutes of in-depth Q+A – will be on the One Jerusalem audio page. Obviously you should avail yourself of both.

Now the part about changing up the show. We’ve been getting feedback from listeners, some quite laudatory some containing note of frustration. TOCS will definitely be changing up after Thanksgiving, though we’re still deciding how. Nothing drastic – it’ll still be mostly me sounding off, it’ll still have interventions of sanity and analysis from Diker, there will still be a weekly interview more often than not, etc. But expect some combination of a new format, a new time slot, and a new show length.

The actual form the combination will take – still an open question. I’ve embedded a poll so you can sound off about what changes you’d most appreciate. The goal is to get people involved in the live broadcasts instead of channeling all of you to the podcast. Chat room participation has been sedentary and call volume has been positively anemic, creating a situation where we’re in Month 2 and I have yet to hang up on a listener. Obviously this will not do.