Free Forum with Terrence McNally
637 episodes - English - Latest episode: 25 days ago - ★★★★★ - 28 ratingsFeatures conversations with people who offer pieces of the puzzle of “a world that just might work” -- provocative approaches to business, environment, health, science, politics, media and culture. Guests have included Michael Lewis, Ken Burns, Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman, Temple Grandin, Bill Maher, Cornel West, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Norman Lear. [http://terrencemcnally.net]
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Episodes
Episode 538: Who was Jesus? REZA ASLAN, ZEALOT: The Life & Times of Jesus of Nazareth
December 25, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBI wish you and your loved ones a deeply renewing holiday season. This week, you’ll hear my 2014 conversation with REZA ASLAN about his best-selling book, ZEALOT: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. He examines Jesus the man through the lens of the time and place in which he lived, first-century Palestine, and labels him a zealot – a radical political opponent of the Roman occupation. Since Jesus was crucified without overthrowing Roman rule, he is one of many "failed messiahs."...
Episode 537: Happy Holidays-SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY-THE MYTHS OF HAPPINESS
December 18, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.3 MBAs another difficult year comes to an end and we find ourselves wishing others – and ourselves – Happy Holidays, here’s my 2013 conversation with SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY about the provocative findings in her book, THE MYTHS OF HAPPINESS: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t; What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does. She draws on the latest scientific research to show that believing in certain happiness myths can have toxic consequences. We’ll talk about how to take advantage of this re...
Episode 536: The Struggling Class-CELINE-MARIE PASCALE-Millions Who Live Paycheck to Paycheck
December 15, 2021 00:00 - 58 minutes - 40.5 MBCELINE-MARIE PASCALE, professor of sociology at American University, is a leader in examining how deep inequalities can be normalized through the language we use to describe them. Her book LIVING ON THE EDGE: When Hard Times Become a Way of Life offers the voices of people who struggle to make ends meet, reveals a system that profits from their struggles, and presents a vision for change from the working people who know that the economy we have is unsustainable for most of the U.S. ...
Episode 535: LINDA GREENHOUSE - JUSTICE ON THE BRINK - 12 months that transformed the Supreme Court.
December 04, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBThe current Supreme Court is the achieved goal of a decades long project on the Right and in the Republican party. Though the 6-3 conservative majority refused to help Trump steal the election, they consistently aid and abet GOP voter suppression and minority rule. Arguments in the Mississippi abortion case indicate their readiness to overrule Roe v Wade. LINDA GREENHOUSE begins her new book, JUSTICE ON THE BRINK, in July 2020, shortly before Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, covers McCo...
Episode 534: NAOMI KLEIN: NO IS NOT ENOUGH: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need (2017).
December 04, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBIt’s over a year since the defeat of Trump and five years since his electoral college victory. Here’s my 2017 conversation with NAOMI KLEIN (No Logo; Shock Doctrine) about her book NO IS NOT ENOUGH, written largely in response to his election. Klein makes clear that even successful resistance will not be enough. We must seize this moment to pursue nothing less than the world we long for - successfully confronting climate change and inequality while rebuilding our sense of human comm...
Episode 533: GUSTAVE SPETH-THEY KNEW: The US Governments 50-Year Role in Causing the Climate Crisis
November 11, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.4 MBGUSTAVE SPETH served as Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Carter Administration, was Administrator of the UN Development Programme for 6 years, Dean of the Yale School of the Environment for 10, and is a co-founder of the World Resources Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Speth believes that a meaningful response to the climate crisis is impossible if we simply focus on climate or energy or emissions. It calls for a new system of political econom...
Episode 532: PAUL HAWKEN-REGENERATION: Ending The Climate Crisis In One Generation…by placing life at the center of all we do
November 04, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 41.1 MBPAUL HAWKEN has produced a new book, REGENERATION: ENDING THE CLIMATE CRISIS IN ONE GENERATION, and created an organization dedicated to making that a reality. We talk about the state of the climate crisis as well as how to effectively confront it and how to overcome the obstacles to doing so. As an approach, regeneration expands the scope of our response to the challenge of climate change by linking and weaving it with other critical challenges we face - economic inequality, social...
Episode 531: FRANCES MOORE LAPPE-50 Years Since DIET FOR A SMALL PLANET introduced a plant-based diet to most Americans
October 26, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 40.5 MBFifty years ago, FRANCES MOORE LAPPE shared a booklet about global hunger with friends in Berkeley. That booklet became DIET FOR A SMALL PLANET, brought plant-based food to the mainstream, and sold over 3M copies. Fifty years later, we know that the food system is responsible for 37% of greenhouse gases - cattle alone for 14%; we understand the costly and deadly health impacts of diet and obesity; and we’re aware that Ag and food employ more lobbyists than the fossil fuel industry. ...
Episode 530: DON BARLETT & JIM STEELE-The BETRAYAL of the AMERICAN DREAM (2012)
October 22, 2021 00:00 - 58 minutes - 40.2 MBWe watch as two Senators oppose policies America needs and their constituents support. Several of these policies are needed to begin to repair the damage the government has done by by enriching a small number of people and undermining America’s greatest asset — its middle class. Good time to hear my 2012 conversation with DON BARLETT & JIM STEELE, who won a Pulitzer in 1992 for articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer, which led to their #1 best-seller, America: What Went Wrong.Twenty ...
Episode 529: BILL McKIBBEN-Time to Mobilize Boomers vs Climate Change
October 15, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 40.8 MBWildfires, droughts, heat waves, floods. Climate demands our attention. The next global meeting on the crisis, Cop26, opens October 31st in Glasgow, Scotland. This week I speak with BILL McKIBBEN, author, co-founder of the global climate campaign 350.org, and a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, where he recently announced a shift of focus back to organizing – specifically of Boomers and the Silent Generation. Young people are engaged with climate but those over 60 are not yet ...
Episode 528: Facebook Doesn’t Care-SHERRY TURKLE(2011)-ALONE TOGETHER: Why We expect More from Technology, Less from Each other
October 08, 2021 00:00 - 55 minutes - 38.2 MBFrances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, could not have been clearer. “Time and again I saw conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests… if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, Facebook will make less money.” Sounds like a good time to listen to my 2011 conversation with Sherry Turkle, Professor...
Episode 527: Legal lightning rounds: ERWIN CHEMERINSKY - Supreme Court, abortion, voter suppression, Covid mandates, police accountability
September 30, 2021 00:00 - 57 minutes - 39.3 MBI turn to ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, Dean of Berkeley Law School, for commentary and analysis re justice, our legal system, and the courts – especially the Supreme Court. Here are two such conversations. In the first half hour, one newly recorded on current issues and his latest book PRESUMED GUILTY: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil RIghts. In the second half, a 2018 conversation on the Trump White House and the book, WE THE PEOPLE: A Progressive Reading of th...
Episode 526: Let’s listen to vets’ stories-PAULA CAPLAN (2011) WHEN JOHNNY & JANE COME MARCHING HOME
September 25, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBThis week’s conversation recorded in 2011 is both timely and untimely. Timely - as we exit from Afghanistan - because in her book When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home, Paula Caplan asks why it’s a mental illness to be devastated by war and urges us to connect with veterans and listen to their stories, one-on-one. And untimely, because Paula died of cancer July 21st. She was both one of the warmest, most generous people I’ve known, and at the same time, a consistently fierce and p...
Episode 525: A Clean Energy Jobs Plan for California-Economist ROBERT POLLIN & Union leader DAVE CAMPBELL
September 14, 2021 00:00 - 58 minutes - 40.2 MBNeed some good news about climate? I’m excited to speak with economist ROBERT POLLIN and union leader DAVE CAMPBELL, Secretary-Treasurer of United Steelworkers Local 675 in Carson CA, about the California Climate Jobs Plan. Initiated and paid for by labor unions, written by Pollin and others, it pursues the state’s clean energy goals through 2030, by creating a million new jobs and offering a fair transition for those who will lose theirs. You can learn more at californiaclimatejobs...
Episode 525: JEREMY SCAHILL-DIRTY WARS (2013)-Out of Afghanistan. What about the rest of the world?
September 06, 2021 00:00 - 56 minutes - 77.6 MBAs the US deals with its exit from Afghanistan, at least some are questioning the role of our military in the world. Here’s my 2013 conversation with JEREMY SCAHILL about his book and Oscar-nominated documentary, DIRTY WARS:The World is a Battlefield. Scahill reveals lethal covert operations unknown to the public, being done on your dime and in your name. How much has our military presence changed since 2013? I found articles published in 2021 that count up to 700 US bases in up to ...
Episode 524: JULIE BATTILANA-POWER FOR ALL-What is it? How do we obtain and use it to change the world?
September 03, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.6 MBI’m excited to talk with JULIE BATTILANA, professor at Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School, and founder of its Social Innovation and Change Initiative, about her new book POWER FOR ALL. It's nothing less than a call for individuals not only to understand and assert power in their own lives, but also to collectively use this power to remake society by rebalancing existing power relationships - including racial, gender, financial and political. To learn more, go to...
Episode 523: MARK DANNER (2017)-Our tragic failure in Afghanistan-SPIRAL: Trapped in Forever War
August 28, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.3 MBAfter 20 years, Biden’s pullout of US troops from Afghanistan is inevitably followed by the chaotic evacuations of our desperate Afghan allies and the self-serving blame games of our all-knowing US pundits. Here’s my 2017 conversation with MARK DANNER, a voice of conscience and reason concerning war and terrorism since at least 9/11, about his book, SPIRAL: Trapped in the Forever War.
Episode 522: GEORGE PACKER-Four naratives of America that divide us-LAST BEST HOPE
August 18, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBIn Last Best Hope, GEORGE PACKER explores four narratives that he says now dominate American (political) life: Free America, a nation of separate individuals that serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley, the Clintons, and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which sees citizens as members of identity groups who either inflict or suffer oppression. Though...
Episode 521: The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science CHRIS MOONEY (2011) author, The Republican War on Science
August 14, 2021 00:00 - 58 minutes - 39.8 MBThe UN’s latest report paints a frightening picture of the time we’ve wasted and the urgency with which we must act to avert the worst of climate change. The daily news tells us that the unvaccinated are welcome hosts for the deadly evolution of Covid19 - though they may not believe in either. Journalist and author CHRIS MOONEY has been tracking the costs of science denial for years - long before Trumps presidence. Here’s our 2011 conversation re his articles, THE SCIENCE OF WHY WE ...
Episode 520: DAVID KAISER-How predictable were today’s crises? What happens when we forget history?
August 06, 2021 00:00 - 58 minutes - 40 MBI talk with historian DAVID KAISER about two books. His own A LIFE IN HISTORY talks about how the study of history has changed. Fields like African-American History and Women’s History deal with evidence nobody had bothered to look at before. But as these focused areas have developed, Kaiser says we look less today at history’s broader sweep. Might this increase our tendency to repeat the past? THE FOURTH TURNING: An American Prophesy (Straus & Howe) holds that history is not linear...
Episode 519: In need of a nudge toward mindfulness? JON KABAT ZINN and TRUDY GOODMAN (2010)
July 30, 2021 23:58 - 57 minutes - 39.2 MBThe virus takes advantage of our divisions to infect and kill us. Fires and floods ravage Europe, China, and the US. Police tell of the blood thirsty mob that attacked them as they defended Congress. Anxious? Here’s my 2010 conversation with Jon Kabat Zinn and Trudy Goodman, leading lights in the teaching of mindfulness in America. Kabat Zinn has written many books including Wherever You Go, There You Are and is responsible for bringing mindfulness to many mainstream institutions. G...
Episode 518: Can we dare to think humans are kind? RUTGER BREGMAN, HUMANKIND: A Hopeful History
July 21, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 41 MBThat human beings are by nature selfish and driven by self-interest is accepted by Western psychologists, philosophers, and historians. It drives our headlines as well as our laws. But what if it’s not true? RUTGER BREGMAN’s done the research: “Civilisation has become synonymous with peace and progress; wilderness with war and decline. In reality for most of human existence it was the other way around…It’s an idea that might just start a revolution...once you grasp what it really me...
Episode 517: ARI BERMAN (2017)-GIVE US THE BALLOT: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America
July 13, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 41.1 MBAs Democratic legislators flee Texas to stop the Republicans’ latest voter suppression bill, after the Supreme Court with three Trump appointees guts the Federal Voting RIghts Act with their final two decisions of 2021, and Joe Biden speaks out against "the greatest threat to the right to vote and the integrity of our elections since the Civil War,” here’s my 2017 conversation with Ari Berman, who's been covering this beat for year, about his book, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Str...
Episode 516: Federal Judge JED RAKOFF-WHY THE INNOCENT PLEAD GUILTY AND THE GUILTY GO FREE
July 09, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 40.6 MBIn WHY THE INNOCENT PLEAD GUILTY AND THE GUILTY GO FREE, Federal Judge JED RAKOFF of the Southern District of NY, makes clear that the US justice system bears little relationship to what the founding fathers contemplated, what the media portrays, or what the average American believes.The US accounts for about 5% of the world’s population yet houses nearly 25% of its prisoners, with one in nine serving a life sentence, and 500K incarcerated for lack of bail. 40% are Black males and a...
Episode 515: WINNER-TAKE-ALL POLITICS-JACOB HACKER & PAUL PIERSON (2011) Best book on How DC Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
July 03, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 82.4 MBAs Congress struggles to accomplish anything beyond pandemic rescue packages, aware that the only chance the Dems have of retaining power in the ’22 midterms is to actually give the American people some of what they desperately need - here’s my 2011 conversation with JACOB HACKER & PAUL PIERSON, authors of WINNER-TAKE-ALL POLITICS: How Washington Made the Rich Richer - and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class - the best book I know re what went wrong, how DC fed inequality paving the...
Episode 514: ALEC MacGILLIS - How is Amazon changing us? FULFILLMENT: Winning and Losing in One-Click America
June 23, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 82.1 MBDuring the pandemic, Amazon added 425K workers and 50% more warehouse space, the stock price rose 80%, and the personal fortune of Jeff Bezos increased by $58B. In this country, 100M subscribe to Prime and Amazon reaps half of every dollar people spend online. In FULFILLMENT: Winning and Losing in One-Click America, ALEC MacGILLIS looks beyond the numbers to reveal the consequences its online commerce + immediate delivery revolution is having throughout American society.
Episode 513: DANIEL ELLSBERG (2009) - Pentagon Papers published 50 years ago this month
June 19, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBFifty years ago this month, publication of the Pentagon Papers led to one of the proudest moments for the Supreme Court when they upheld the right of the press to publish and the right of the public to know. Here’s my 2009 interview with DANIEL ELLSBERG, whose courageous civil disobedience exposed years of government lies about the war in Vietnam.
Episode 512: ANDREW BACEVICH-AFTER THE APOCALYPSE - How can “national security” deal with climate change, pandemics, racism, democracy?
June 07, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBWhen was the last time the US won a war or solved a big problem? ANDREW BACEVICH served in the U.S. Army for 23 years, graduated from both West Point and Princeton, and writes for both The Nation and American Conservative. His lastest book AFTER THE APOCALYPSE: America’s Role in a World Transformed is only 172 pages but asks big, blunt questions. Will the dangers and disasters we have been facing finally move us to abandon a set of beliefs about America, its identity, and its securit...
Episode 511: Neuroscientist ANTONIO DAMASIO - SELF COMES TO MIND - Why did the mind evolve? How did the self emerge?
June 05, 2021 00:00 - 58 minutes - 39.8 MBANTONIO DAMASIO has spent the past 30 years -- with his wife Hanna -- studying how the brain operates and written about it in award-winning and best-selling books that readers understand. In Descartes' Error, he took on the enlightenment’s vision of mind over body and elevated the role that emotion and feelings play in the experience of human rationality. This 2010 conversation focuses on the research, ideas and questions in the book, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Br...
Episode 510: CHUCK COLLINS, co-editor, Inequality.org, THE WEALTH HOARDERS: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions
May 27, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 40.9 MBA couple of weeks ago Americans filed their income taxes. Well, some of them did anyway. In the last decade, the United States has become the premiere global destination for hidden wealth. It is now the world’s second largest tax haven, moving ahead of Switzerland, and trailing only the Cayman Islands. I dig into this with CHUCK COLLINS, who directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-edits Inequality.org. We talk about his latest ...
Episode 509: EMAD BURNAT (Palestinian) & GUY DAVIDI (Israeli) co-directors, Oscar-nominated doc, 5 BROKEN CAMERAS (2013)
May 20, 2021 00:00 - 15 seconds - 39.1 MBThis week, as blood is shed yet again between Israel and Hamas, and both sides are willing to kill civilians in pursuit of their domestic political agendas, listen to my conversation with Palestinian EMAD BURNAT and Israeli GUY DAVIDI, co-directors of the Academy Award-nominated documentary, 5 BROKEN CAMERAS. It tells the story of Burnat, a Palestinian farmer, his wife, and four small children in the West Bank village of Bil’in. Tracking the destruction of each of his cameras, we wit...
Episode 508: NATHAN BOMEY - stories of BRIDGE BUILDERS - bringing people together in our polarized age
May 13, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 82.1 MBI believe human beings want more than anything to feel seen and heard. From clergy fighting racism in Charlottesville to a former GOP congressman engaging conservatives on climate change and Appalachian journalists restoring social trust with the public, USA Today reporter NATHAN BOMEY shares stories from his new book, BRIDGE BUILDERS: Bringing People Together in a Polarized Age. Mostly under the radar, heroic citizens and organizations pursue reconciliation, reject misinformation, a...
Episode 507: AFGHANISTAN (2009) 1) MATHEW HOH, resigned Foreign Service, 2) MALALAI JOYA, expelled from Parliament
May 08, 2021 00:00 - 56 minutes - 77.5 MBPresident Biden will remove all troops from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years, the longest war in our nation’s history. Here are two interviews from 2009: First, MATHEW HOH, a former Marine who resigned from the foreign service in protest. "American families must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a worthy purpose…and I have lost confidence such assurances can be made." Second, MALALAI JOYA, youngest member elected to Afghan parliament in 2005, expelled in 2007. “The fact th...
Episode 506: MARK BITTMAN-Animal, Vegetable, Junk-A history of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal
April 30, 2021 00:00 - 58 minutes - 40.4 MBWhen a guy who’s written 30,000 recipes, 30 books, and spent decades with the New York Times writes a book with the title – ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, JUNK: A History of Food from Sustainable to Suicidal - I take notice. What drove him to write this? What does someone who clearly knows and loves food have to say about how badly things have gotten - and what we need to do to turn things around before it’s too late?
Episode 505: LUIS RODRIGUEZ-Native roots, Latinx experience, and a sage call for reconnection
April 16, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBI sought out LUIS RODRIGUEZ, writer in many genres, activist, and the former poet laureate of Los Angeles, for his sage take on the city, the state, the nation, and the experience of Latinx people in all three as we emerge from the Trump presidency. I got even more than I’d expected. Grounded in his native roots, his latest book, FROM OUR LAND TO OUR LAND: Essays, Journeys, and Imaginings from A Native Xicanx Writer, calls on humanity to reconcile with nature and to reconnect with ou...
Episode 504: AMY BACH (2009) Why Justice Loses on a Daily Basis in America’s Courts
April 09, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.3 MBAttorney AMY BACH spent eight years investigating the chronic lapses in courts across America. Lawyers sleep through trials. False confessions and mistaken eye-witnesses convict the innocent. The rich walk, the poor go to prison. Her book, ORDINARY INJUSTICE, reveals a culture of complicity among prosecutors, defenders, and judges that rewards shoddiness and sacrifices defendants and victims to keep the court calendar moving.
Episode 503: DAVID DALEY-Fighting minority rule-RATF**KED: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count; UNRIGGED: Americans Battling Back
April 01, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 40.9 MBThe US holds one national popular vote and Republicans have only won that vote once since 1988. Yet they have held the presidency nearly 12 of those years, and as a result, they dominate the Supreme Court. They hold 50 Senate seats though they’ve received millions fewer votes than Democrats in Senate elections. DAVID DALEY charted the worst of the Republicans’ efforts in his best-seller on gerrymandering, RATF**KED: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count, but he also draws hope from the citizen...
Episode 502: FOR SAMA (2019) Oscar-nominated documentary shot during the siege of Aleppo, Syria
March 27, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.8 MB10 years ago last week pro-democracy protests began in Syria as the latest front in the - at the time still hopeful - Arab Spring. Here’s my 2019 conversation with directors Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts of the Oscar-nominated documentary, For Sama, and with Dr. Hamza al-Kateab, who ran the last hospital in East Aleppo. The film takes us inside Aleppo during the long siege by al Assad and the Russians. In the course of the film, Waad al-Kateab falls in love, gets married, and has a...
Episode 501: NOREENA HERTZ-THE LONELY CENTURY - How do we restore human connection?
March 19, 2021 00:00 - 58 minutes - 40.4 MBI believe human beings want more than anything to feel seen and heard. That’s why I wanted to talk again with NOREENA HERTZ economist, journalist, and author most recently of THE LONELY CENTURY: How to Restore Human Connection in a World That’s Pulling Apart. One of the things I appreciate about Hertz’s approach here is that she broadly defines loneliness as a lack of connection, which opens us up to consider all the ways and all the spheres of our lives where we are lacking or losin...
Episode 500: DAVID KIRP (2011), KIDS FIRST: Five Big Ideas for Transforming Children's Lives and America's Future
March 11, 2021 00:00 - 56 minutes - 38.8 MBIncreased tax credits contained in the $1.9 trillion Covid relief package signed this week could lower child poverty more In 2021 than any other year In U.S. history. That is a really big deal. It turns Naomi Klein’s notion of “shock doctrine” on its head - enacting policies in response to a crisis that promise to make things better than before the crisis began. So what else could we do for children? Here’s my 2011 conversation with David Kirp about his book, Kids First: Five Big Ide...
Episode 499: SHERRY TURKLE turns the conversation on herself-THE EMPATHY DIARIES: A Memoir
March 05, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBSHERRY TURKLE mourned the loss of conversation in ALONE TOGETHER: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other and called for its restoration in RECLAIMING CONVERSATION: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. In THE EMPATHY DIARIES: A Memoir, she turns the conversation on herself, and weaves together her very personal story and her evolving insights on technology, empathy, and ethics. Among her questions: How did her role in keeping family secrets influence her as a resea...
Episode 498: STEVEN GREENHOUSE, Can Unions Make a Comeback? - Beaten Down Worked Up: The Past Present and Future of American Labor
February 23, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.3 MBSTEVEN GREENHOUSE covered labor for the New ¥ork Times for 19 years. Unions played a key role when the American economy created the greatest middle class the world had ever seen. Given how clearly unions improved the lives of hundreds of millions of laborers, why did workers allow corporations and government to weaken and shrink those unions? What can we do about it? Can our shared vulnerability to the pandemic and its destruction of the economy help us recreate the post-war experien...
Episode 497: WADE DAVIS (2002), NatGeo Explorer-in-Residence-Let’s take a break from the news-The Light at the Edge of the World
February 20, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBImpeachment #2 is over, Trump is still off Twitter, vaccines are on the rise, and Biden is committed to relief for American families. Let’s take a breath - and listen to my remarkable 2002 conversation with National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence WADE DAVIS, about his wild path to the corners of the earth from the Amazon to the Arctic, his experiences with psychotropic plants, the pluses and minuses of Western progress, and the threats to indigenous peoples as told in his book The ...
Episode 496: MICHAEL MANN, THE NEW CLIMATE WAR-Climate scientist was attacked for “hockey stick” graph
February 10, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 41.2 MBIn 1999, MICHAEL MANN co-authored a scientific paper that included a graph that tracked temperatures over the last 1000 years. Known as “the hockey stick,” it showed that climate change was real. His integrity attacked, he learned the strategies and methods of those who would postpone and disable our efforts to deal with climate change. In his latest book, The New Climate War, Mann debunks false narratives and argues that all is not lost. He believes Biden is on the right track, but ...
Episode 495: DANIEL GOLEMAN, Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence - The critical skill of attention
February 06, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBBiden’s pitching unity, but he seems determined to go big and the Dems sound serious about accountability. Pandemic numbers are easing and vaccines increasing, but we fear the unknown of virus variants. Normal is not around the corner. How will we come out of this - as a society and as individuals? Here’s my 2014 conversation with DANIEL GOLEMAN. In his book, FOCUS: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, he cites the latest neuroscience to make the case for the power and impact of where we...
Episode 494: At 28, CHLOE MAXMIN defeated the minority leader of Maine's State Senate. Her secret? She listens.
January 29, 2021 00:00 - 57 minutes - 39.5 MBIn college, CHLOE MAXMIN co-founded the Divest Harvard campaign calling on the university to divest from fossil fuels. After graduating in 2015, she returned home to rural Maine, and In 2018 was elected to Maine’s House of Representatives, in a district that had voted Republican by a 16-point margin over the past three elections. In November, at 28 and after one term in the House, she defeated the incumbent minority leader to move to the State Senate. Chloe Maxmin bucks the obstacles...
Episode 493: My 2018 conversation w/ARLIE HOCHSCHILD (Strangers in Their Own Land) - listening to our alienated fellow Americans
January 21, 2021 00:00 - 1 hour - 41.2 MBLast week I spoke with ARLIE HOCHSCHILD, author of STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND: Anger & Mourning on the American Right, about the Trump years, the insrrection, and the future. Given the inauguratiopn of Biden and Harris and the several immense crises we face, nothing may be more important at this moment than understanding our neighbors with whom we disagree. So here’s my 2018 conversation with Hochschild, in which we learn about her path to her current work and the lessons she learne...
Episode 492: ARLIE HOCHSCHILD-Strangers in Their Own Land-She’s been talking with “Trumpers” since 2011 - and since election day
January 14, 2021 00:00 - 58 minutes - 40.3 MBI last spoke with Berkeley sociologist ARLIE HOCHSCHILD in 2018 about her book, STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND: Anger & Mourning on the American Right, in which she shares what she learned in five years talking to Tea Partiers turned Trumpers in Southern Louisiana. Turns out she's continued to talk with the folks she met researching her book. I call on her again to try to make some sense of my fellow Americans and find a path back from the chaos and breakdown that seems possible in the ...
Episode 491: HEDRICK SMITH-WHO STOLE THE AMERICAN DREAM? (2012) We need more than Obama 2.0 in 2021.
January 09, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 41.2 MBIt is a significant achievement and an enormous relief that the White House and both Houses of Congress are out of the hands of the anti-social and anti-democratic Republicans. To remind us, however, what made Trump not just possible but likely, here’s my 2012 conversation with HEDRICK SMITH, about his book, WHO STOLE THE AMERICAN DREAM? It makes clear we need more than Obama 2.0 in 2021. Smith keeps the book’s themes alive online at hedricksmith.com.
Episode 490: THOMAS HOMER-DIXON - for the new year - COMMANDING HOPE: The Power to Renew a World in Peril
January 01, 2021 00:00 - 59 minutes - 40.9 MBTHOMAS HOMER-DIXON correctly predicted a lot of the crises we face. But, as we leave 2020 behind and give birth to 2021, i talk with him about his new book, COMMANDING HOPE: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril. Sample “To keep our hope from being vague and naive, it must have a clear vision of a positive future. Then, to keep it from being false, we must avoid wishful thinking about the likelihood of that future.” Learn more at commandinghope.com