Free Forum with Terrence McNally

I 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 Je...

In 1964, the original 7 UP - in which children talked about their hopes and dreams - was broadcast as a one-off special in the UK. Michael Apted (Coal Miner’s Daughter; Gorillas in the Mist), took over as director on 14 UP and has returned to interview these same 14 individuals every seven years since. Roger Ebert, A few months before his death, wrote of the series, “It is a mystery, this business...

Here's my conversation with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates on his 2004 television project America Behind the Color Line. Since the late 60's, two distinct classes emerged within Black America: a Black middle class and what some argue is a self-perpetuating Black underclass. One glaring example: the percentage of black children in poverty was about the same as the day Martin Luther King was as...

Here's my 2003 conversation with Nobel-prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on his book The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century. He was one of few in the mainstream media to accuse George Bush of lying to to sell a tax cut and a war. He saw in the Bush-Cheney administration a radical group that rejects the legitimacy of key elements of the system itself...

My 20-minute commentary calls for Millennials and Boomers with shared values to forge a movement large enough, creative enough, diverse enough, and powerful enough to successfully confront the critical problems we face. 60s.2.0 - 21st century tech in the service of the best of ‘60s values - meets OK Boomer - the impatience of the young with the failures of the old. “If the challenges we face are b...

In his latest book, THEY DON’T REPRESENT US: Reclaiming Our Democracy, Harvard Law School professor LAWRENCE LESSIG points out big problems the U.S. is NOT solving, and adds, “The crisis in America is not its president. Its president is the consequence of a crisis much more fundamental…The core problem with our democracy today is that it is essentially unrepresentative. We should secure, finally,...

The impeachment hearings have started and we're a year away from the 2020 election. Who better to talk to about how to get impeachment right and how to beat Trump in the Rust Belt states next year than JOHN NICHOLS. He's National Affairs correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. Not only that, he also wrote the book, THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: Th...

The documentary FOR SAMA - airing on PBS Tuesday 11/19 - takes us inside Aleppo during the brutal siege by al Assad and the Russians. Waad al-Kateab began shooting graffiti on university walls and a revolution rose around her - followed by an overwhelming response. Best Doc, Cannes Film Festival, Doc Grand Jury Prize, SXSW. I talk with directors Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts, and with Dr. Hamza...

I talk with EMMANUEL SAEZ, UC Berkeley economist, about his newest book, THE TRIUMPH OF INJUSTICE: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay - co-authored with Gabriel Zucman. The pair grabbed headlines when their book reported that in 2018, for the first time in history, America’s richest billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than the working class. Their solutions include a wealth...

I talk with JEREMY RIFKIN, advisor to China and the European Union, and author of 20 books about the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, society, and the environment. In his newest book, THE GREEN NEW DEAL: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth, he draws on successful lessons from bold initiatives in Euro...

Whistleblowers are in the news. And Trump’s not the first to attack them. Here’s my 2013 show on the documentary, WAR ON WHISTLEBLOWERS: Free Press and the National Security State. I speak with producer/director, ROBERT GREENWALD, and with THOMAS TAMM and FRANZ GAYL, two of the four whistleblowers in the film, punished under Bush and Obama for standing up to demand accountability and defend the co...

In his documentary SEX, DRUGS & BICYCLES, high-tech entrepreneur JONATHAN BLANK asks, “How scary is life in a social democracy?” Beyond windmills, cannabis “coffeeshops”, and the red light district, Holland has one of the best economies in the world, is top 5 in almost every quality of life index, #1 for work-life balance. Dutch kids are the happiest in the world, the healthcare system is #3,...

With impeachment hearings starting, let’s listen to a couple of past heroes, men of principle, including one whose electoral opponent resigned rather than face his own impeachment. In the first half, I talk with longtime Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate, GEORGE MCGOVERN, followed by my conversation with HOWARD ZINN, a leader of the anti-Vietnam War movement and author of A People...

Episode Summary:   Welcome to Free Forum, a show that features 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.    In this episode, Terrence welcomes Emmy-nominated filmmaker, speaker and Webby Awards Founder Tiffany Shlain to the podcast. Terrence and Tiffany...

As soon as I picked up and started reading LESSONS FROM A DARK TIME, I wanted to have this conversation with ADAM HOCHSCHILD. As a writer, he doesn’t waste your time. He brings an artist’s touch and a moralist’s conscience to the issues and events he grapples with. He’s one of the founders of Mother Jones Magazine, and threaded through his journalism and his books - King Leopold’s Ghost, Spain in...

I offer a commentary on what I call 60s2.0 - generations with shared values coming together to create the sort of fundamental change we need in order to improve the daily lives of millions and to solve the enormous problems we've created for ourselves.

Life expectancy has grown 30 years in the U.S. since 1900—from 47 to 77. Meanwhile the rapid pace of new technology is changing the nature of work, so that you may struggle to keep up. 40% now have a boss who is younger than they are. After 24 years as CEO, CHIP CONLEY sold Joie de Vivre, the second largest boutique hotel brand in America. Four years later, the young founders of Airbnb hired him a...

June 25th NYTimes headline: “2019 might be the year of the protest” - mass demonstrations in Prague, Hong Kong, Russia, Kazakhstan, and the UK. The President of Algeria, the President of Sudan, and Governor of Puerto Rico leave office after protests. What’s going on? Why are nonviolent protests working? And what might that mean for us here in the US where the global climate movement has called for...

CNN did their best to turn presidential debates into Wrestlemania, pitting moderates against progressives, pushing the story that their policies are too bold and will elect Trump. Tuesday night Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren held their ground. With that in mind, here's my 2012 interview with Ralph Nader about his book, The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future, recorded at t...

The documentary FOR SAMA takes us inside the heartbreaking suffering of the people of Aleppo during the long and brutal siege by al Assad and the Russians. Waad al-Kateab began shooting students spraying revolutionary graffiti on university walls. The revolution rises around her – as does the overwhelming response. Best Doc, 2019 Cannes Film Festival and Doc Grand Jury Prize, 2019 SXSW Film Festiv...

In the US today, we see how even one person willing to oppose the popular consensus can dictate our nation’s response to climate change. Meanwhile China has leapt into the vacuum created by our retreat. In her provocative new book, Will China Save the Planet?, BARBARA FINAMORE, Senior Attorney and Asia Senior Strategic Director, Natural Resources Defense Council, explores China’s big picture, long...

We go deep into the archives to bring you my 2002 conversation with THOMAS HOMER DIXON on his insightful and provocative book THE INGENUITY GAP, in which he asks whether we’re going to be able to generate and implement useful ideas fast enough to solve the problems we ourselves are creating. Problems like the surveillance capitalism of Facebook and Google, the jobs we’re losing to robots, and the...

When the three richest Americans have more wealth than the lowest 50%, shareholder capitalism is not working. In EVERYTHING FOR EVERYONE: The Radical Tradition that is Shaping the Next Economy, NATHAN SCHNEIDER reminds us of a hopeful alternative – cooperatives - jointly owned, democratically controlled enterprises that advance the economic, social, and cultural interests of their members. Schneid...

As the Democratic candidate debates begin, here's my March 2018 conversation with ARLIE HOCHSCHILD. In her book, STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND, based on five years research in Southern Louisiana, she asks, why residents of the nation's second poorest state vote for candidates who resist federal help? Why, when corporations devastate their lives and their land, do they most hate the government? And I...

I’m always interested in what the US can learn from other countries. So I was immediately attracted to JOSHUA GOLDSTEIN’s new book A BRIGHT FUTURE: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow. When Goldstein (and co-author Staffan Qvist) did the research and the math on what it was going to take to reduce carbon emissions enough to avoid the worst of climate change, they...