Terrence Mcnally Podcast

Aired 01/10/10 JIM WALLIS Founder/President, Sojourners; editor, Sojourners magazine; Author, GOD'S POLITICS; THE GREAT AWAKENING; and his newest, REDISCOVERING VALUES on Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street: A Moral Compass for the New Economy. In REDISCOVERING VALUES, JIM WALLIS argues that the worst thing we can do now is to go back to normal. Normal is what got us into this mess. We need a new normal, and this economic crisis is an invitation to discover what that means. Some of the principles he offers for a new normal are... · Spending money we don't have for things we don't need is a bad foundation for an economy or a family. · Care for the poor is not just a moral duty, but is critical for the common good. · A healthy society is a balanced society in which markets, the government, and our communities all play a role.

Aired 01/03/09 MARION BLANK PhD is an accomplished children's therapist with over thirty years of practical experience in helping children with reading and learning challenges. In addition to producing books, articles, tests and software programs, BLANK is currently the director of the A Light on Literacy program at Columbia University in New York and serves as a consultant to a wide range of school districts in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Her latest book, THE READING REMEDY, and her new reading system, PHONICS PLUS FIVE, now makes her ideas available to every parent. http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/literacy/blank_2.htm

Aired 01/03/10 TEMPLE GRANDIN, who believes her autism allowed her to see the world more as an animal might, and led her to design enormous improvements in how we treat livestock. Her latest book is ANIMALS MAKE US HUMAN. TEMPLE GRANDIN, Ph.D., now a designer of livestock handling facilities and a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, Dr. Grandin didn't speak until she was three and a half years old. Labeled "autistic," her parents were told she should be institutionalized. Roughly 50% of the beef that shows up on your plate came through improvements that she has made to the process of livestock management. Grandin has become a prominent author, speaker and advocate on the issues of Autism and Asperger's Syndrome because she has made a career of overcoming obstacles that have been placed in her path. She tells her story in the book EMERGENCE: LABELED AUTISTIC, and is also the author of ANIMALS IN TRANSLATION, THINKING IN PICTURES AND OTHER REPORTS FROM MY LIFE WITH AUTISM, THE WAY I SEE

Aired 12/27/09 There’s been a lot of talk about the battle between science and religion the last few years. At the same time, there’s been some fascinating and powerful work bringing science and spirituality closer together. Recent developments in psychology and the neurosciences have led to insights about how our brains work and how these neurological functions shape our experiences of the world. Turns out some of what we’re learning fits very well with the wisdom developed over thousands of years in contemplative practices. RICK HANSON has been meditating since 1974 the same year he graduated summa cum laude from UCLA. In his new book, written with Richard Mendius MD, BUDDHA’S BRAIN, he pulls a lot of information together to reach all of us from the most scientific to the most spiritual. After all we’ve all got brains and we all seek happiness. Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist, co-founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom (http://www.wisebrain.org/), and ed

Aired 12/20/09 A fellow of The Open Society Institute and The Nation's environment correspondent, MARK HERTSGAARD also covers climate change for Vanity Fair, TIME and Die Zeit and has written for many of the world's leading newspapers and magazines. He is the author of the highly acclaimed study of the media during the Reagan years, On Bended Knee, as well as Earth Odyssey; A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles; The Eagle's Shadow; and the forthcoming Generation Hot: Living Through the Storm of Climate Change. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100104/hertsgaard

Aired 12/13/09 REBECCA SOLNIT is the author by my count of 10 books, and a co-author of at least 15 more. She is a journalist, essayist, environmentalist, historian, and art critic; a contributing editor to Harper's, a columnist for Orion, and a regular contributor to Tomdispatch.com and the Nation. She appeals to a wide spectrum of readers. As evidence, RIVER OF SHADOWS: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West - her 2003 book on the history of photography, the dawn of the cinematic West, and the annihilation of space and time-won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, a prize from the Society for the History of Technology, and WIRED Magazine's Rave Award for Book of the Year. Her latest books are STORMING THE GATES OF PARADISE: Landscapes for Politics; A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster; and THE BATTLE OF THE STORY OF THE BATTLE OF SEATTLE, with her brother David.

Aired 12/06/09 This past week marked the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Organization's confrontation in Seattle with 50,000 protestors against corporate globalization. We look back at Seattle and at the ten years in between with two guests who played important roles. First, we talk with NORM STAMPER -- who oversaw the police response -- about those events and about his life and work in the decade since. Now retired, Stamper wrote the book, BREAKING RANK and has become a prominent spokesman for LEAP, Law Enforcement Against (Drug) Prohibition. NORM STAMPER, former Seattle Police Chief author BREAKING RANK: A TOP COP'S EXPOSE OF THE DARK SIDE OF AMERICAN POLICING http://www.normstamper.com/ http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php Second, KEVIN DANAHER, who was centrally involved in organizing the Seattle WTO protests. His goals remain the same but his focus has evolved. His latest books are THE GREEN FESTIVAL READER: Fresh Ideas from Agents of Change, and BUILDING THE GREEN ECONOMY: Success Stories from

Aired 12/12/09 Attorney AMY BACH spent eight years investigating the chronic lapses in courts across America. Lawyers sleep through trials. False confessions and mistaken eye-witness identifications convict the innocent. The rich walk, the poor go to prison. ORDINARY INJUSTICE goes beyond one particular injustice, one specific court, or one aspect of the legal system. Bach rejects the easy explanations of bad apples and meager funding to show how in the name of expedience legal professionals routinely choose to collaborate rather than face off as adversaries. Her investigation -- from small-town Georgia to upstate New York, from Chicago to Mississippi --reveals a culture of complicity among prosecutors, defenders, and judges that rewards shoddiness and sacrifices defendants and victims to keep the court calendar moving. http://www.slate.com/id/2234594/ http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Sullivan_v._Florida

Aired 11/22/09 NICHOLAS KRISTOF, oped columnist at the New York Times, and author with his wife, former Times editor Sheryl WuDunn, of HALF THE SKY: From Oppression to Opportunity for Women Worldwide." Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and then studied law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, graduating with first class honors. He joined the NY Times in 1984. In 1990 Mr. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, then also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Mr. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called "his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world." In his column, NICHOLAS KRISTOF was an early opponent of the Iraq war, and among

Aired 11/15/09 Malalai Joya is an Afghan politician who has been called "the bravest woman in Afghanistan." As an elected member of the Wolesi Jirga from Farah province, she has publicly denounced the presence of what she considers warlords and war criminals in the parliament. The daughter of a former medical student who lost a foot while fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Malalai Joya was 4 years old when her family fled Afghanistan in 1982 to the refugee camps of Iran and later Pakistan. After the Soviet withdrawal, Malalai Joya returned to Afghanistan in 1998 during the Taliban's reign. As a young woman she worked as a social activist and was named a director of the non-governmental group, Organisation of Promoting Afghan Women's Capabilities (OPAWC) in the western provinces of Herat and Farah Title of Joya's autobiography "Raising My Voice", which was published in the US/Canada under the title of "A Woman Among Warlords" was published in October 2009 Noam Chomsky writes: "Perhaps the most r

Aired 11/15/09 A former Marine captain with combat experience in Iraq, Matthew Hoh, also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. This summer he was the senior US civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed. In September Hoh became the first US official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war. His four page letter of resignation explains that he became convinced that our war in that country will not only inevitably fail, but is fueling the very insurgency we are trying to defeat. He points out that "next fall, the United States' occupation will equal in length the Soviet Union's own physical involvement in Afghanistan." "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end." The Pentagon’s own 2004 report concluded: "Negative attitudes and the conditions that create them are the underlying sources of threats to America's nat

Aired 11/08/09 STEWART BRAND's Whole Earth Catalog introduced millions to new ways of thinking and doing and probably contributed to the birth of environmentalism in the US. Confronting today's challenges to global civilization in his new book, Brand questions environmental positions against GMO foods, Geo-engineering, and nuclear power. In 1968 a totally original cultural item appeared. It owed something to old time catalogs perhaps akin to the Farmers almanac. Its style was funkily low-fi while its content had one foot in a simpler past and the other in a high tech sci-fi future. It was called the Whole Earth Catalog and subtitled "Access to Tools." STEWART BRAND was its founder, editor and publisher, and Brand has been at the founding of several other cultural entities, events, and movements. Today, in his '70s, STEWART BRAND is no less curious, no less purposeful, and no less forward looking. His new book, WHOLE EARTH DISCIPLINE: An EcoPragmatist Manifesto, confronts the challenges we face as a global

Aired 11/01/09 ZACHARY KARABELL argues that the economies of China and the US have melded over the past 20 years, as billions of dollars flow east from the US for Chinese-made goods and return to this country from China in exchange for IOUs. "This mega-economy is hiding in plain sight, unrecognized, unacknowledged, and unwanted by many millions whose lives are being reshaped by it." Karabell's not suggesting this is an unalloyed good thing, "but it's a fact. And it's better to deal with reality than live in a fantasy land." ZACHARY KARABELL is President of River Twice Research, where he analyzes economic and political trends. He is also a senior advisor for Business for Social Responsibility, which develops sustainable business strategies. Previously, he was president of Fred Alger and Company; and portfolio manager of the award-winning China-U.S. Growth Fund, and launched the $30 million Spectra Green Fund, linking profit and sustainability. Educated at Columbia, Oxford and Harvard, his previous books i

Aired 10/20/09 In Lester Brown's new book, PLAN B 4.0: MOBILIZING TO SAVE CIVILIZATION, Brown lays out the symptoms, the diagnosis, and the cure. He estimates that we could solve all the world's greatest problems for $200 billion a year - less than half the US defense budget. PLAN B 4.0 is a comprehensive plan for reversing the trends that are undermining our future. Its four overriding goals are to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth's damaged ecosystems. Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well.

Aired 10/13/09 JODIE EVANS is the co-founder the International Occupation Watch Center in Iraq, and of CODE PINK, with, among others, Medea Benjamin. Jodie's Baghdad Journals are at the center of the book, Twilight of Empire, and she is co-editor with Benjamin of Stop The Next War Now. JODIE - "I am just returning from my 10-day trip to Afghanistan. As we left, a farm was bombed and eight members of a family were killed. Eight U.S. soldiers also lost their lives in an insurgent raid on their outpost. And today marks the 8th anniversary of the US Invasion of that war torn country. We have spent a quarter of a trillion dollars in those 8 years and what have we got for all that time, money, and suffering? Most of the country is in worse condition, the Taliban have been growing in strength and number, the bordering countries are more unstable and death fills the air." Watch Video: http://codepink4peace.org/blog/2009/10/afghan-women-speak-out-dr-roshnak-wardak/

Aired 10/13/09 More than just a reflection on his life, Cornel West says his new memoir Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud is "an intensified dance with mortality." Following West's diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer -- now in remission -- he decided to write about his life in a way that might touch other souls. West calls the memoir his "most unique, delicate and difficult book to write," requiring him to "examine the dark corners of [his] soul...It is a life-transforming experience to write about your life." Cornel West, Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University, has won numerous awards, including the American Book Award, and has received more than 20 honorary degrees. He's produced 3 CDs of music and spoken word, offers commentary weekly on The Tavis Smiley Show, and is the author of several books, including Race Matters; Democracy Matters; Hope on a Tightrope; and his latest, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud.

ìSpontaneous Evolution introduces the notion that a miraculous healing awaits this planet once we accept our new responsibility to collectively tend the Garden rather than fight over the turf. When a critical mass of people truly own this belief in their hearts and minds and actually begin living from this truth, our world will emerge from the darkness in what will amount to a spontaneous evolution.î In Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (And A Way To Get There From Here), pioneering biologist Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. and political philosopher Steve Bhaerman team up to offer an insightful, playful, and hopeful look at the unfolding destiny of our speciesóand how you can play an active role in birthing the evolution of civilization. http://wakeuplaughing.com/ http://www.brucelipton.com/

Aired 09/08/09 Daniel Ellsberg is an American hero. September 23rd is the 40th anniversary of the first night of copying the Pentagon Papers, which he took from his safe at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica. America was embroiled in a dirty war based on lies. A president was abusing the power of his office, ignoring the will of the people, Congress and the courts. He promised peace while planning war without end. Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst, leaded the truth about the Vietnam war to the New York Times. He risked life in prison to end a war he helped plan. Henry Kissinger called Daniel Ellsberg, "the most dangerous man in America." He's still at it. This week Ellsberg begins the online publication of The American Doomsday Machine, his memoir of the nuclear era. INFO http://www.ellsberg.net/

Aired 08/01/09 "You don't have to choose between making money and making sense.... Green business practices are good for business and for the world. They can increase profits, lower costs, and attract customers." Those are the words of Gil Friend. Gil and I met in 1973 when I directed a video documentary of a Buckminster Fuller World Game Workshop. Each in our own ways, we've been plugging away at that game ever since. Gil Friend, President & CEO of Natural Logic Inc, is a systems ecologist and business strategist with nearly 40 years experience in communications, business, and environmental innovation. Clients include Agilent Technologies, Coca-Cola, Dean Foods, Hewlett Packard, Levi Straus & Co, Nike and Sun MicroSystems. Friend is the author of the upcoming Risk, Fiduciary Responsibility and the Laws of Nature, and just published, The Truth About Green Business. http://www.worldchanging.com/

Aired 08/25/09 Michael Lind is a Senior Research Fellow and Policy Director of New America's Economic Growth Program. Lind's first three books of political journalism and history, The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution; Up From Conservatism: Why the Right Is Wrong for America; and Vietnam: The Necessary War were all selected as New York Times Notable Books. Other books include Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American; What Lincoln Believed, and with Ted Halstead, of The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics. Lind has been an editor or staff writer for The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and The New Republic, and writes frequently at Salon.com. http://www.newamerica.net/people/michael_lind