Free Forum with Terrence McNally

Biden’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...

In 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...

Last 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...

I 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 fe...

It 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 ke...

THOMAS 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 li...

Too often when we read about immigrant children, they are being torn from their parents’ arms or blamed for lawlessness. Sisters Constance Touey and Jeannette Lucey met in 1984 when they were both assigned to a parish K-8 school in inner city Philadelphia. In DO IT BETTER: How the Kids of St. Francis de Sales Exceeded Everyone’s Expectations, they tell the remarkable stories of their as principal...

Planetary health is by definition big picture, but it’s made immediate by the pandemic. I see our environmental goals as an effective reckoning with climate change and a healthy relationship with the rest of nature. I’ll talk about that relationship with SAM MYERS, Research Scientist at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health and the Founding Director of the Planetary Health Alliance (planetaryheal...

Today we face several crises that have either grown out of the distortion of our economy and our politics or are unsolvable because of them – including inequality, climate change, social division, crippled government, and endangered democracy. In her book, REIMAGINING CAPITALISM, REBECCA HENDERSON calls for us to abandon two ideas from the 1970s at the root of our troubles: First, that business sh...

I talk with ELIE MYSTAL, Justice Correspondent at The Nation magazine. We look through a legal lens at Trump’s fraud claims and his obstruction of an effective transition, at the question of what it will take for Biden to reverse Trump’s executive orders and rules, and finally we talk about the Supreme Court. You can learn more at thenation.com

More than 72 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. 72 million voted for his incompetence, racism, ignorance, cruelty, criminality, and for his disastrous handling of the pandemic. Here’s my 2018 conversation with MILTON BENNETT, an expert on culting behavior. He spells out the methods Trump uses – consciously or unconsciously - to turn his followers into a cult, impervious to contrary influenc...

It lookls as if Joe Biden will win a very tight electoral college victory against arguably the worst president in history in the midst of a deadly pandemic and crippled economy the incumbent has bungled disastrously. How could this election even be close? ROB JOHNSON, Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), and I talk about how we got here and what it’s going to take...

JON WIENER'S 2006 book, Conspiracy in the Streets: the Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Eight has been re-released to sync with release of the film, The Trial of the Chicago Seven. Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, its ensemble includes Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman, Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden, and Frank Langella as Judge Julius Hoffman. Jon and I will talk about the film. We'll talk...

It’s a little over 3 weeks till the final day to turn in your ballot. Here’s my 2018 conversation with BILLY WIMSATT, founder and executive director of Movement Voter Project, one of the most effective election fundraising organizations I know of. In a clear break from the beltway strategy of big donors, big consultants, and big TV ad buys, MVP helps progressive donors move their money instead to...

The US hold only one national popular vote – for President and Vice President – and The Republican party has won that national vote only once since 1988, that’s 32 years. Yet they've held the presidency 12 of those years. Under the two most recent popular vote losers / electoral college winners, we’ve suffered 9/11, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2008 recession, the monstrously failed response...

Even folks who live here, as I have since 1975, may have little idea of the central role Los Angeles played in the culture and politics of the 1960s. Too often LA is portrayed as surfing, Hollywood, and gogo dancing - think Gidget, Beach Boys, 77 Sunset Strip. Wiener and co-author, Mike Davis (City of Quartz) offer a “movement history” featuring early Black Power, the Watts uprising, the Chicano M...

It’s now less than 50 days from what we usually call election day. This year we call it the day the polls close. On January 28th 2017 the week Trump took officee I recorded this conversation with Mark Hertsgaard of The Nation, Richard Eskow of The Zero Hour, and Drew Dellinger of Planetize the Movement. Here’s what I wrote then: "Friday Donald Trump was inaugurated with dark talk of American carna...

We often think social contagion yields negative consequences - teens smoke because other teens smoke, for example. However, in his latest book, UNDER THE INFLUENCE: Putting Peer Pressure to Work, ROBERT FRANK makes the optimistic case that the economics of social contagion could solve our most critical problems — from climate change to income inequality – as well as the Covid-19 pandemic. There’s...

In a normal year, children would to be starting back to school. This year, some will, some won’t, and parents, teachers, and school systems all face tough choices. What do know about what works to help kids whether they’re in school or not? Here’s my 2019 conversation with DAVID KIRP, Professor at UC Berkeley. His books include THE SANDBOX INVESTMENT and KIDS FIRST, and we talk about innovative pr...

The Trump-Barr Justice Department is actively working for the President and his election campaign. The militarization of local police over the past decade mixed with a population that owns a lot of guns and a culture of systemic racism and anti-immigrant passion has produced a dangerous brew. I talk with ELIE MYSTAL, justice correspondent at The Nation magazine about the movement for racial justic...

Who is DAVID BOHM? A physicist who reconciled Einstein’s theory of general relativity and Neils Bohr’s quantum theory. A seeker whose scientific insight of implicate order and cosmic wholeness echoes the consciousness of oneness in Eastern philosophy. Welcome when a virus has forced us to acknowledge our shared vulnerability I talk with PAUL HOWARD, Producer/director of the new documentary, INFINI...

Who is Stephen Miller? Though officially chief speechwriter, he's also the architect of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies - travel bans, family separations, refugees in cages during a pandemic. How did he achieve such power so soon? How did the anger and resentment of a young nerd in the early 2000s end up twisting the ideals of a nation and fueling the suffering of thousands of v...

Inequality is getting worse. Most of us know that the Covid-19 pandemic has devastated the US economy. Between March 18 and June 25, over 46 million people filed for unemployment. In that same period, however, U.S. billionaire wealth surged over $600 billion. At least eight billionaires have seen their wealth grow by more than $1 billion this year. I talk about this with CHUCK COLLINS, who directs...

At a moment when Black Lives Matter protests - the largest, most sustained mass demonstrations in US history - are still taking place and Donald Trump is sending federal secret police to incite disorder in Portland, here’s my 2017 conversation with JODIE EVANS. A tireless activist, advocate, and communicator for peace, justice and the planet, this interview was recorded as Code Pink, one of the or...

Election Day is less than four months away. Between closing poll sites, purging voter rolls, manipulating voting machines, and putting obstacles in the way of voting by mail, the Trump administation and many state governments want to keep you from voting. Investigative reporter GREG PALAST has been working this beat since 2000. His latest book is a warning: HOW TRUMP STOLE 2020: The Hunt For Ameri...