Free Forum with Terrence McNally

This 2003 interview traces the evolution of Dr. Weil’s work and thinking from his earliest understandings of health and healing to his ongoing commitment to train a new generation of physicians. Weil’s definition of integrative medicine: rooted in the connection of medicine with nature and the natural healing potential of the organism, it utilizes the magic of the doctor/patient relationship to tr...

The idea of the frontier has been central to American identity. Its image of endless promise fostered our belief in the US as exceptional. Today America has a new symbol: the border wall. As GREG GRANDIN sees it, America’s constant expansion helped deflect domestic political and economic conflicts outward. But the 2008 financial crash and unwinnable wars in the Middle East turned Americans inward,...

As the confrontation between House investigators and Donald Trump drags on, as he ignores subpoenas of his financial and tax records, what is he hiding? Here’s my June 2017 conversation with Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist DAVID CAY JOHNSTON. He’s been covering Trump off and on for 28 years, and his book THE MAKING OF DONALD TRUMP profiles how Trump has gotten wealthy bilking others, colluding w...

The Republican party games the political system with gerrymandering, voter suppression, and election manipulation. In VOTE FOR US, JOSHUA DOUGLAS writes about the many positive initiatives through which Americans are taking back their democracy, one community at a time - expanding voter eligibility, easing voter registration rules, making voting more convenient, giving redistricting back to the vo...

As the Trump White House claims executive privilege gives them the right to hide the full Mueller report - let’s listen to my 2009 interview with Daniel Ellsberg, whose courageous civil disobedience stood up to Richard Nixon, and led to one of the proudest moments for the Supreme Court, when they declared the first amendment gave the press the right to publish the Pentagon Papers. Will we be so lu...

How is that humans can be both the nicest and the nastiest of species? Biological anthropologist RICHARD WRANGHAM wrestles with that question in The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution. Though our capacity for coolly planned and devastating violence remains unrivaled, Wrangham offers a strikingly original theory that capital punishment has been...

Thirty years ago, BILL McKIBBEN’s THE END of NATURE was the first popular book about climate change. Since then the effects have exceeded our expectations, while our response has lagged what’s needed. Bill has done his part - with books, articles, and as co-founder of the climate movement 350.org, which has held 20,000 rallies in 182 countries and spearheaded the fight against the XL pipeline and...

(1) Ohio Congressman TIM RYAN entered the race last week for the Dems’ 2020 nomination. Here’s our 2012 interview on his book, A MINDFUL NATION: How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance, and Recapture the American Spirit. (2) In 2009’s RAPT: Attention and the Focused Life, WINIFRED GALLAGHER argues that the quality of your life largely depends on what you choose to pay...

I have complete freedom booking guests, driven by the pursuit of what I term “a world that just might work.” Still, I know that recognizable names mean more clicks, listens, downloads, and shares. This week I defy that knowledge. Over the last 35 years, GEORGE SCIALABBA has written nearly 400 essays and book reviews for everyone from The American Conservative to The Nation. Praised by his peers, i...

As the college admissions scandal emphasizes once again the gulf between the wealthy and the rest of us, and the deficit skyrockets due to Trump’s GOP tax cuts for the rich and corporations, here’s my January 2010 conversation with Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett about their groundbreaking book, The Spirit Level. Based on 30 years of research, it makes clear that the more unequal a society is...

Here’s a radical idea: Have we become too focused on climate change? In CLIMATE - A New Story, CHARLES EISENSTEIN calls for a reimagining of the framing, tactics, and goals we employ to reverse climate change and heal ecological destruction. If we begin from an understanding that rivers, forests, and creatures are sacred and valuable in their own right, not simply for carbon credits, he believes w...

Too often today facts and reality are less important than which narrative you embrace or which stories you believe. My December 2012 conversation with JONAH SACHS, Co-Founder of Free Range - the folks behind The Story of Stuff - and author of UNSAFE THINKING and WINNING THE STORY WARS, offers you a better understanding of how this works and how to use it to your advantage.

In WHY RELIGION? A Personal Story, ELAINE PAGELS weaves what she's learned about religion with her own experience responding to dual tragedies that took place 25 years ago – the death of her young son, followed a year later by the death of her husband. She asks, Why is religion still around in the twenty-first century? How do traditions still shape the way people - whether religious or not - exper...

Too often when we read about immigrant children, they are being torn from their parents' arms or blamed for lawlessness. Sisters Constance Touey & Jeannette Lucey met in 1984 when they were both assigned to a parish K-8 school in inner city Philadelphia. DO IT BETTER: How the Kids of St. Francis de Sales Exceeded Everyone's Expectations tells remarkable stories of their 30+ years as principal...

How are we doing by our kids? School and college budgets shrink. Teacher strikes are on the rise. College debt is crippling. Children are separated from their parents. I check in with DAVID KIRP, Professor at UC Berkeley. His books include THE SANDBOX INVESTMENT and KIDS FIRST. We talk about innovative programs that work and could make a big difference. If only we cared.

CORY DOCTOROW, has a lot to say about human nature, society, and technology. He writes speculative fiction - YA best-seller LITTLE BROTHER, and most recently the novel, WALKAWAY and graphic novel IN REAL LIFE. As a technology expert and activist, he’s co-editor of Boing Boing.net, a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate. Learn more at cra...

As the government shutdown continues and 800,000 federal workers suffer along with asylum seekers caught by the President’s anti-immigrant actions, listen to my interview from last February with ALI NOORANI, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum and author of THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration. You can learn...

BILLY WIMSATT, is the founder and executive director of Movement Voter Project, which offers a clear break from the tired and true strategy of electoral politics - big donors, big consultants, and big TV ad buys. MVP helps progressive donors move some of their money to support the best local community-based organizations in key states - organizations alive on the ground 365 days a year, whether th...

In his newest book, We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the 21st Century, ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, Dean of Berkeley Law, makes the case that the right has since the 1970s developed and enacted a clear vision of constitutional interpretation. He calls on progressives to fight back with an alternative vision based on fulfilling the Constitution’s promise of liberty and justice for...

Investigative reporter GREG PALAST (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) has been exposing GOP dirty tricks and voter suppression since 2000. Listen for the latest in the mid-terms in Georgia, Florida, and elsewhere - and how to fight back.

As Trump cronies are caught up in Mueller’s dragnet, let’s look at how justice works for regular folks. 2006 documentary AFTER INNOCENCE tells the stories of wrongly convicted prisoners exonerated and freed by DNA evidence. My guests include: JESSICA SANDERS, Director, Producer, Writer; MARC SIMON, Producer, Writer, and a former attorney with the Innocence Project; HERMAN ATKINS, exonerated and re...

While elections matter, a vital society demands much more. In How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don't, LESLIE CRUTCHFIELD examines some movements that have succeeded — from tobacco control and gun rights expansion, to marriage equality and acid rain reduction — as well as recent campaigns that haven’t - like Occupy Wall Street, controlling C02 emissions, and gun vi...

Midterms are over, Sessions has been fired, Trump has two months till the new House arrives. I’m on vacation and can’t respond to any of that. This week you’ll hear my April 2010 conversation with Father Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries. We’re joined by Luiz Perez, one of the senior staff at Homeboy. My guests and their work run absolutely counter to the kinds of prejudice and ugliness...

DAVID CORN wrote the Mother Jones cover story - The Most Important Election of Our Lives, declared that "The Russia scandal is the most important scandal in the history of the United States", and co-authored with Michael Isikoff, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. Who better to talk to at this moment...less than two weeks till the midterm...

JOHN NICHOLS, Nation magazine’s national affairs correspondent, reports from Texas on Beto O’Rourke’s insurgent campaign against Senator Ted Cruz. We place today’s political and societal crises in context - How are things broken? How did they get broken? How do we fix them? With a nod to new blood and new passion on the campaign trail.