Free Forum with Terrence McNally

We can always use stories of redemption. Ira Glass says the best story form is the one used in sermons: stories with lessons. Father GREGORY BOYLE has made a point of collecting uniquely powerful stories of life and death, and his work has supplied him with more of those than anyone should know. As of 2010, he had buried 168 of his homies, and filled his first book TATTOOS ON THE HEART with their...

Biden has been President for just over a year. I last spoke with ROB JOHNSON of the Institute for New Economic Thinking November 5th 2020, two days after the polls closed, though the Presidential race had yet to be called. We’ll talk not so much about how the administration is doing – though that matters and we’ll touch on it – but even more about how society is doing? The US as a society seems br...

In BY THE LIGHT OF BURNING DREAMS, brother and sister, DAVID & MARGARET TALBOT, tell the story of the 1960s, an era they call the Second American Revolution, through the individual stories of movement leaders, including Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Russell Means of the American Indian Movement, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers, Heath...

Anxiously entering the third year of a pandemic, and facing other huge challenges - inequality, injustice, endangered democracy, climate change, etc. we need to take care of ourselves. Here’s my 2013 conversation with neuropsychologist RICK HANSON, author of the best-seller BUDDHA’S BRAIN, about his book, HARDWIRING HAPPINESS, where he brings together mindfulness and neuroscience and offers pro-ac...

Hello, this is Terrence McNally.  As we begin the new year, declaring resolutions and setting goals, here’s  my 2012 conversation with Charles Duhigg about the ideas in his book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. We also talk about his 2012 NYT Investigative series re Apple's Labor Practices.

I’m curious about the meanings and lesson of the ‘60s. Questions and values that emerged in the 1960s are alive in Millennials and younger today, and I believe they stand a chance to build something deeper and more sustainable this time. This week I speak with EDWARD MORGAN. His 2010 book, WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO THE 1960’s?: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy seeks to explain both w...

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 J...

As another difficult year comes to an end and we find ourselves wishing others – and ourselves – Happy Holidays,  here’s my 2013 conversation with SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY about the provocative findings in her book, THE MYTHS OF HAPPINESS: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t; What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does. She draws on the latest scientific research to show that believing in certain happine...

CELINE-MARIE PASCALE, professor of sociology at American University, is a leader in examining how deep inequalities can be normalized through the language we use to describe them. Her book LIVING ON THE EDGE: When Hard Times Become a Way of Life offers the voices of people who struggle to make ends meet, reveals a system that profits from their struggles, and presents a vision for change from the...

The current Supreme Court is the achieved goal of a decades long project on the Right and in the Republican party. Though the 6-3 conservative majority refused to help Trump steal the election, they consistently aid and abet GOP voter suppression and minority rule. Arguments in the Mississippi abortion case indicate their readiness to overrule Roe v Wade. LINDA GREENHOUSE begins her new book, JUST...

It’s over a year since the defeat of Trump and five years since his electoral college victory. Here’s my 2017 conversation with NAOMI KLEIN ( No Logo; Shock Doctrine ) about her book NO IS NOT ENOUGH, written largely in response to his election. Klein makes clear that even successful resistance will not be enough. We must seize this moment to pursue nothing less than the world we long for - succes...

GUSTAVE SPETH served as Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Carter Administration, was Administrator of the UN Development Programme for 6 years, Dean of the Yale School of the Environment for 10, and is a co-founder of the World Resources Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Speth believes that a meaningful response to the climate crisis is impossible if we simply...

PAUL HAWKEN has produced a new book, REGENERATION: ENDING THE CLIMATE CRISIS IN ONE GENERATION, and created an organization dedicated to making that a reality. We talk about the state of the climate crisis as well as how to effectively confront it and how to overcome the obstacles to doing so. As an approach, regeneration expands the scope of our response to the challenge of climate change by link...

Fifty years ago, FRANCES MOORE LAPPE shared a booklet about global hunger with friends in Berkeley. That booklet became DIET FOR A SMALL PLANET, brought plant-based food to the mainstream, and sold over 3M copies. Fifty years later, we know that the food system is responsible for 37% of greenhouse gases - cattle alone for 14%; we understand the costly and deadly health impacts of diet and obesity;...

We watch as two Senators oppose policies America needs and their constituents support. Several of these policies are needed to begin to repair the damage the government has done by by enriching a small number of people and undermining America’s greatest asset — its middle class. Good time to hear my 2012 conversation with DON BARLETT & JIM STEELE, who won a Pulitzer in 1992 for articles in the...

Wildfires, droughts, heat waves, floods. Climate demands our attention. The next global meeting on the crisis, Cop26, opens October 31st in Glasgow, Scotland. This week I speak with BILL McKIBBEN, author, co-founder of the global climate campaign 350.org , and a frequent contributor to the New Yorker , where he recently announced a shift of focus back to organizing – specifically of Boomers and th...

Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, could not have been clearer. “Time and again I saw conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests… if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, Facebook will make less money.”...

I turn to ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, Dean of Berkeley Law School, for commentary and analysis re justice, our legal system, and the courts – especially the Supreme Court. Here are two such conversations. In the first half hour, one newly recorded on current issues and his latest book PRESUMED GUILTY: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil RIghts. In the second half, a 2018 conversa...

This week’s conversation recorded in 2011 is both timely and untimely. Timely - as we exit from Afghanistan - because in her book When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home, Paula Caplan asks why it’s a mental illness to be devastated by war and urges us to connect with veterans and listen to their stories, one-on-one. And untimely, because Paula died of cancer July 21st. She was both one of the warm...

Need some good news about climate? I’m excited to speak with economist ROBERT POLLIN and union leader DAVE CAMPBELL, Secretary-Treasurer of United Steelworkers Local 675 in Carson CA, about the California Climate Jobs Plan. Initiated and paid for by labor unions, written by Pollin and others, it pursues the state’s clean energy goals through 2030, by creating a million new jobs and offering a fair...

As the US deals with its exit from Afghanistan, at least some are questioning the role of our military in the world. Here’s my 2013 conversation with JEREMY SCAHILL about his book and Oscar-nominated documentary, DIRTY WARS: The World is a Battlefield . Scahill reveals lethal covert operations unknown to the public, being done on your dime and in your name. How much has our military presence chang...

I’m excited to talk with JULIE BATTILANA, professor at Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School, and founder of its  Social Innovation and Change Initiative, about her new book POWER FOR ALL. It's nothing less than a call for individuals not only to understand and assert power in their own lives, but also to collectively use this power to remake society by rebalancing existing power...

After 20 years, Biden’s pullout of US troops from Afghanistan is inevitably followed by the chaotic evacuations of our desperate Afghan allies and the self-serving blame games of our all-knowing US pundits. Here’s my 2017 conversation with MARK DANNER, a voice of conscience and reason concerning war and terrorism since at least 9/11, about his book, SPIRAL: Trapped in the Forever War.

In Last Best Hope , GEORGE PACKER explores four narratives that he says now dominate American (political) life: Free America, a nation of separate individuals that serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley, the Clintons, and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which see...

The UN’s latest report paints a frightening picture of the time we’ve wasted and the urgency with which we must act to avert the worst of climate change. The daily news tells us that the unvaccinated are welcome hosts for the deadly evolution of Covid19 - though they may not believe in either. Journalist and author CHRIS MOONEY has been tracking the costs of science denial for years - long before...