Free Forum with Terrence McNally

The self-regulated market cannot respond effectively to the most critical challenges we face – inequality, climate change, an unhealthy relationship with rest of nature, pandemics and public health, social and racial division and tribalism, crippled government, and endangered democracy. So how did this notion dominate for 35+ years? And why is it crashing now? I talk with GARY GERSTLE, Professor o...

As schools open around the country, here’s my 2013 converation with RAFE ESQUITH, who for 30 years taught 5th grade at LA’s Hobart Elementary public school. In 2005, PBS aired the documentary, THE HOBART SHAKESPEARIANS, about the full folio Shakespeare productions that his students perform each year. “I don't want my students to be ordinary; I want them to be extraordinary because I know that they...

Both born 100 years ago this summer, HOWARD ZINN (08/24/1922) and GEORGE McGOVERN (07/19/1922) were men of wisdom and principle who fought for their beliefs and the common good in the public square. Zinn taught at historically Black Spelman College from 1956-63 and Boston University 1964-88. An anti-Vietnam War leader, he wrote 20 books including A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. McGovern w...

Republicans have won the national vote for President only once since 1988, yet they’ve held the White House for 12 of those years and appointed 6 of 9 Supreme Court justices, who have just ruled against the majority of Americans on religion, guns, climate, and women’s rights. Here’s my new conversaiton with STEVEN HILL, author of 10 STEPS TO REPAIR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY and co-founder of FairVote abo...

The greatest winner in the history of team sports, BILL RUSSELL died this week at 88. Russell’s Celtics won 11 NBA championships in his 13 years. He was voted MVP 5 times by his peers, was the first Black head coach in a major US sport, and his legacy as a man of principle may be even greater than as an athlete. Here’s my 2010 conversation with ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN on his book, KING OF THE COURT: BILL...

Former 60s radical and longtime editor of Dissent , MICHAEL KAZIN, has written a history of the Democratic Party. Acknowledging their challenging mix of constituencies and their messaging and policy failures, he believes they are at their best – and the US is the better for it – when they articulate and deliver on what he terms “moral capitalism” - an economy and a society that works for working a...

When the American electoral system was created, over 95% of Americans lived in rural communities. Today fewer than 20% do. The 20 senators from the 10 most populous states - home to half the US population - make up only a fifth of the US Senate. When, the solution to minority rule, exemplified by the Senate filibuster and the radical 6-3 Supreme Court, is to vote  - then finding a successful way t...

When the news is fast, furious, and stressful - radically destructive Supreme Court rulings, mass murders, Omicron variants, Russia’s war on Ukraine, inflation, climate crisis, etc. -  here’s my 2005 conversation with JON KABAT ZINN, best-selling author of WHEREVER YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE about his book, COMING TO OUR SENSES: HEALING OURSELVES AND THE WORLD THROUGH MINDFULNESS. Kabat-Zinn is as resp...

1973 looms large as we live out the 50th anniversary of the Watergate Hearings and Roe v Wade. Let’s look at the fears and forces in response to ‘60s changes that fueled the long Christo-Authoritarian march to a Supreme Court forcing minority rule on America. In my recent conversation with KEVIN BOYLE about his book THE SHATTERING: America in the ‘60s , he reminds us how generations who’d lived th...

As we witness Russia's targeting of civilians in Ukraine, 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 the long siege by al Assad and the Russians. In the course of the film, Waad al-Kateab falls in love, marries, and has a bab...

Five weeks ago my wife suffered a stroke. She’s fine physically, but has language challenges and some processing issues. She improves every day and our connection is stronger than ever. Daily life is punctuated by moments of joy and others of crushing frustration. I share with you my recent conversation with JILL BOLTE TAYLOR, a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist, who in 1996 at the age of 37, experie...

Here’s part 2 my 2013 conversation with HAZEL HENDERSON – who as a mom in the 70’s who’d never been to college got upset about pollution threatening her young child, became a local NYC activist, and developed into a global expert on economics and sustainability. She’s creator of the television show and website Ethical Markets , and author of 10 books, including Beyond Globalization and Building a...

Here’s part 1 my 2013 conversation with HAZEL HENDERSON – who as a mom in the 70’s who’d never been to college got upset about pollution threatening her young child, became a local activist, and developed into a global expert on economics and sustainability. She’s creator of the television show and website Ethical Markets , and author of 10 books, including Beyond Globalization and Building a Win-...

Our homes are full of stuff. Our minds are full of information. Our economies are built on never-ending growth while our planet chokes on pollution. In his book, SUBTRACT: The Untapped Science of Less , LEIDY KLOTZ reminds us that across challenges big and small, we neglect a basic way to make things better: we don’t subtract. What is it in our biology, our psychology, or our culture that leads us...

After the latest one-two gut punch of Buffalo NY and Laguna Woods CA, we’ll replay my 2017 conversation with the author of Right Wing Populism in America, CHIP BERLET, who’s been on the domestic hate beat for decades. Congressman Ted Lieu: “Of course we need common sense gun safety measures enacted but we also need to address the misinformation and stoking of grievances that is pushing people to t...

In 2019, about 1.27M people died directly due to antimicrobial resistance - significantly more than from Covid in two years. When we lose antibiotics, we will be in a different world. Joint and organ replacement and many other surgeries will be a thing of the past. I talk about the growing dangers of antibiotic resistance and the lack of new drugs with DAVID HYUN, MD, who directs the Antibiotic Re...

I realize this conversation with LINDA GREENHOUSE first posted only 6 months ago, but there’s no bigger domestic story right now than the rightwing Supreme Court majority’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade and do away with a woman’s right to an abortion. GREENHOUSE begins her book, JUSTICE ON THE BRINK, shortly before Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, covers McConnell’s cynical and unethical rush to con...

I’m excited to replay for you my late 2021 conversation with BILL McKIBBEN, author, and co-founder of the global climate campaign 350.org . In it which he  introduces Third Act, the new activist organization he’s founded. While millions of young people are effectively engaging to confront climate change, those over 60 are not yet delivering what the crisis demands, and Third Act is dedicated to ch...

ELIE MYSTAL, Justice Correspondent for The Nation magazine and a contributor to MSNBC, opens his first book, ALLOW ME TO RETORT: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution , with the following words: “Our Constitution is not good. It is a document designed to create a society of enduring white male dominance, hastily edited in the margins to allow for what basic political rights white men could be co...

As we confront Russia’s war on Ukraine - What is the role of the press or international law? How can either stand up to those who defy and ignore them? MARIA ARMOUDIAN has written three books on the possibilities and limitations of “soft power”: KILL THE MESSENGER: The Media’s Role in the Fate of the World; REPORTING FROM THE DANGER ZONE, and LAWYERS BEYOND BORDERS: Advancing International Human R...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may be failing, but it is also devastating and cruel. The US is unwilling to impose a No Fly zone because Putin has nuclear weapons and no one is certain that he won’t use them. How did we get here? Who else has nukes? Why haven’t we taken steps toward nuclear sanity? I turn to JOSEPH CIRINCIONE, Distinguished Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft a...

DAVE PELL, the “Internet’s Managing Editor,”  has been writing about news, technology, and media since 1999. He just released his first book, PLEASE SCREAM INSIDE YOUR HEART: Breaking News and Nervous Breakdowns in the Year that Wouldn't End, a rollercoaster ride through 2020, leavened with humor and a good dose of perspective taken from the experience of his parents, who survived the Holocaust. Y...

LARRY KOPALD, Co-Founder and President of The Carbon Underground, wants you to know that to successfully confront the climate crisis, it’s not enough to reduce or even halt carbon emissions. We also need to draw down accumulated carbon from the atmosphere. Nothing does that better or more simply than Regenerative Agriculture, by rebuilding soil organic matter. I don’t like talking about “the envir...

“Change the story to change the world.” If story actually has that power - and I believe it does - then it can change for better or worse. In his new book, THE STORY PARADOX, JONATHAN GOTTSCHALL declares storytelling the best method we’ve ever devised for manipulating each other by circumventing rational thought. As new technologies amplify the effects of disinformation campaigns, conspiracy theor...

In the words of today’s guest, TIM JACKSON, Director of the UK's Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity, "The finite planet we call home is being altered perhaps irreversibly by the massive human activity that parades under the seductive banner of progress.” But how do we replace the current model of not just commerce - but almost of reality - with a new one that is at least as inv...