The first talk show I ever appeared on was our supper table when I was growing up. My dad was the host. In a casual manner, he’d offer up a question. Actually it was more than a question, it was a thought puzzle. We were to mull the proposition, give our opinion, and participate in discussion.
   My older brother’s solution was generally akin to that of Tony Soprano. My two older sisters respectfully feigned interest. I was the kid, and I found the sessions fascinating although I rarely said much. I just took it all in, absorbing the magic that occurs when the mind is stimulated by questions with corners.
   Dad’s premises were usually based on something he read in the paper that day or heard on the radio. It only served as a lynch pin for a question in a broader, deeper context.
   For example, I remember him laying out a scenario in which a parent in the Holocaust must decide whether to ransom his son from certain death knowing that the guard will seize another boy whose parents are unable to pay. “What is the right thing to do?” I remember my father asking.
   How I loved those soul-boggling questions, those Talmudic exercises co-mingling practicality with mind and spirit.
   Dad’s supper table manifested when I became a broadcaster. For instance, The O. J. Simpson trial, where his lawyers had to know he was guilty but yet played every card to get an acquittal, was a perfect example of ethics put to a test. The Terry Schivo right to die case also presented unique ethical twists. Stem cell research is another. And the issue of preemptive or “just war” is ripe with possibilities.
   My biggest rap against many of today’s popular talk shows is that they tell you what to think rather than get you to think, they invalidate a point of view different from their own, and they strive for confrontation instead of inclusion. Today’s bill of talk show fare seek to close minds rather than open them—like I learned at the supper table.