Free Forum with Terrence McNally

Aired 04/01/12 Too often problems are not solved, solutions are not found or implemented, and money, lives and moments of opportunity are wasted. CONNIE RICE has taken on school and bus systems, Death Row, the states of Mississippi and California, and the LAPD - and won. Not just in court but also on the streets and in prisons, where she has spearheaded campaigns to reduce gang violence. She has l...

Aired 03/25/12 Recently the annual TED conference took place in Long Beach California. I have long recommended its famous 18 minute TED talks. Check out TED.com/talks, they cover a wide range of topics including science, technology, design, business, global issues and they have recurring themes of inspiration, challenge, and optimism. Not unlike what I try to do with this radio show. On opening da...

Aired 03/18/12 Among the things that most people agree are in big trouble these days are the European Union and democracy in the US. I will talk with today's guest, STEVEN HILL, about both. We have been hearing for two years about the trouble Europe is in. The debt crisis in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and beyond is challenging this federation of nations and economies to share the solutions t...

Aired 03/11/12 RICHARD DAVIDSON, author, The Emotional Life of Your Brain DAVID EAGLEMAN, author, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain PETER BAUMANN, convener, BEING HUMAN 2012 In 1989 I addressed the 20th reunion of my Harvard class. In 1969, we'd spearheaded student protests that led to a month long strike of the University. Our demands included removing ROTC from campus, creation of an Afri...

Aired 03/02/12 The stock market's roaring, and applications for unemployment are down, but there was disappointing news in Thursday's economic data. In January manufacturing growth slowed, construction spending dipped, and Americans' after-tax income fell, leading to a fourth straight month of weak consumer spending. Guest host Terrence McNally explores the continued gap between Wall Street and Ma...

Aired 03/02/12 Iranians went to the polls in parliamentary elections today. With many reformists and opposition leaders not participating, the vote is a contest between hard-line supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Pressure from the West over Iran's nuclear program has been a central issue. Barbara Slavin is Washington correspondent for AL-Monitor...

Aired 03/04/12 In the early 1960s, MARSHALL GANZ dropped out of Harvard to join the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. He then spent 16 years working with César Chávez and the United Farm Workers. He returned to Harvard in the 1990's, graduated, earned his Ph. D., and now teaches organizing and the power of public narrative at the Kennedy School. During Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign...

Aired 02/05/12 How did the Egyptian people overthrow longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak and are the people of Egypt better off today? I am very excited to speak with WAEL GHONIM, the Egyptian web exec who played a leading role in last year's Tahrir Square protests. With the first anniversary of those protests and the recent elections in Egypt, we have a lot to talk about. WAEL GHONIM was a little-known...

Aired 01/29/12 HAPPY. Are you happy? What makes you happy? Does money make you happy? Kids and family? Your work? Do you live in an environment that values and promotes happiness and well-being? Do you expect you're going to get happier? How? ROKO BELIC'S documentary HAPPY explores these sorts of questions. It weaves the latest scientific research from the field of "positive psychology" with stori...

Aired 01/29/12 Though change has never been as rapid as it is today, adapting to new circumstance is so crucial to our survival that "love of the new" is hardwired into our brains at the deepest levels. The number of new things we confront - from products to information - has quadrupled in the last thirty years with no signs of slowing. In NEW: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change, WINIFR...

Aired 01/20/12 There are 183 million active video gamers in the US, and the average young person will spend 10,000 hours gaming by the age of 21. There are now more than five million "extreme" gamers" in the US who play an average of 45 hours a week. According to game designer JANE McGONIGAL, this is because videogames are increasingly fulfilling genuine human needs. But she goes way beyond that,...

Aired 01/15/12 Guests: David De Graw, one of the central figures in the leaderless and horizontal Occupy/99% movement and Dr Ben Chavis, longtime civil rights leader, from his youthful days with King, to his leadership of the Million Man March, to his current role in the Hip Hop Summit Action Network. We talk about the alliance between African American faith leaders and the Occupy movement -- Occu...

Aired 01/15/12 In the winter of 1417, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties plucked a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. The man was Poggio Braccionlini, the greatest book hunter of the Renaissance. His discovery was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature...

Aired 01/08/12 This will be a conversation about the state of things as we embark on 2012. I will be joined by TOM FRANK (What's the Matter with Kansas?) and EDGAR CAHN (founder of Legal Services and Time Dollars). We will talk about their passions and projects. http://www.tcfrank.com/ In his new book, PITY THE BILLIONAIRE, Frank examines how the crash that has hurt so many millions of Americans h...

Aired 01/01/12 I'll be joined by writer-director STEVE STOCKMAN whose new book HOW TO SHOOT VIDEO THAT DOESN'T SUCK has a great deal of smart things to say - not just about shooting videos of your kids' parties or your company's new products, but also about the essential role of story in the movies you see in theatres. Stick around. I believe you'll learn something no matter who you are. http://ww...

Aired 12/25/11 As an activist, presidential advisor, cofounder of the Enough Project, and the author of ten books on Africa, including his most recent, The Enough Moment, John is passionate about ending genocide and raising awareness about human rights issues in Africa. But the not-so-public face of John Prendergast is the life he’s led as a Big Brother to Michael Mattocks. As an emotionally wound...

Aired 11/07/11 From a small town in Northern Michigan to the mountains of Afghanistan and back, a raw and powerful documentary WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM follows the four-year journey of childhood friends, their families, and their town. At its heart a story about growing up, the film is an intimate look at the young men who fight our wars, where they come from, and their struggles when they return...

Aired 12/11/11 Economists, politicians, and pundits insist recovery is at hand, yet unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments face record deficits. Today's guest, RICHARD HEINBERG has a new book, The End of Growth, in which he proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in its economic history. He talks about the new normal...

Aired 12/04/11 ELISE WHITAKER, Action Committee, OccupyLA DAVID DeGRAW, OWSnews.org, AmpedStatus.com TODD GITLIN, The Sixties; Letters to a Young Activist SARAH VAN GELDER, YES magazine, editor, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING I have invited four guests to have a conversation about the movement referred to as the Occcupy movement, the Occupy Wall Street movement, or the 99% movement. From a group of peopl...

Aired 11/27/11 At a time when social media is being utilized to coordinate protests against the domination of our economy, our government, and our society by corporations and the very wealthy individuals who profit most from them, SIMON MAINWARING sees a hopeful path to save society from capitalism's worst excesses. http://wefirstseminar.com/ A social media expert with global experience with brand...

11/20/11 This week's show is about a Los Angeles institution and source of local pride, nurtured to greatness as a family-owned business, purchased by someone from out-of-town who knew little about the business, put up little of his own money, and ran the property into the ground so that it is now a shell of its former self. And many customers have reacted by not buying the product. No, we're not...

Aired 11/13/11 Some bad news: In 2008 more than 50% of all US harvested cropland grew only two crops - corn and soybeans and more than 40% of the food calories consumed worldwide came from just three crops: wheat, corn and rice. 30% of Detroit residents receive food stamps, but 92% of Detroit's food stamp retailers offer few or no fresh fruit or vegetables. The average plate of food eaten in our h...

Aired 10/16/11 Both Ira Glass and Malcolm Gladwell say today's guest is their favorite storyteller. In his books and magazine articles, Lewis writes about sports, business, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, political campaigns, fatherhood. Stuff that matters to a lot of people. He's smart and he has a sense of humor. Lewis was a trader at Salomon Brothers before he wrote his first best-seller, LIAR'S P...

Aired 10/09/11 Politics and the media have for the most part shown themselves impotent, indifferent, or in cahoots when it comes to confronting and rolling back the takeover of the United States by the super-rich and the super-corporations. Since the days of Clinton, we've been reminding ourselves of the words of FDR to progressives pressing for the New Deal -- "Make me do it." Envying the attenti...

Aired 10/02/11 This radio show aims for "pieces of the puzzle of a world that just might work." Many of those pieces arise out of a vision that reality is not dead, mechanical, or separate, but rather alive, evolving, and composed of interdependent systems. I believe this worldview has been shared by indigenous peoples for millennia, revealed by science since early in the 20th century, and obvious...