Free Forum with Terrence McNally

These are dark times in the United States, and due to this country’s power and influence, dark times for the planet. This show is about a world that just might work – so we talk a lot about problems and crises as we look for solutions. I’m always on the lookout for good news and inspirations. MARTIN GOODMAN has written a book, MY HEAD FOR A TREE, about the Bishnoi, an Indian religion whose 3+ million members are willing to sacrifice their lives to save and protect nature, whether it be wildlife or trees. By the way, once it’s clear you’re willing to take such measures, you can achieve a lot without having to actually take them.Martin Goodman 10-03-2025 Transcript

Here’s my 2017 conversation with ROBERT WRIGHT on his best-seller WHY BUDDHISM IS TRUE. Wright has been asking big questions for nearly four decades in books like THE MORAL ANIMAL, NON-ZERO, and THE  EVOLUTION OF GOD. On Substack, he’s persuasively critical  of much of what happens in Washington under either party. Why in the fall of Trump’s first year, first term, did he put out WHY BUDDHISM IS TRUE: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment? We talk evolutionary psychology, cognitive delusions, tribalism, and Trump. We asked then, what can mindfulness offer people trying to make sense and justice of contemporary politics? Almost exactly 8 years later, the question now, how can mindfulness help us deal with a dictator? 

In 1969, my senior year at Harvard, anti-war activists took over University Hall and their brutal removal by state troopers led to a month-long strike. Today’s guest, longtime activist and organizer, MICHAEL ANSARA, was chair of the strike committee. We’ll talk about his new memoir, THE HARD WORK OF HOPE, the parallels between the late ‘60s and the current day, and lessons learned that might help this time around. You can learn more at michaelansara.org 

Here’s my 2020 conversation with psychiatrist & author ROBERT JAY LIFTON whose work led him into some of history’s darkest corners - Hiroshima survivors, Nazi doctors, torture at Abu Ghraib. I turned to him as the pandemic raged and the BLM  protests were in full bloom. We talk about his book LOSING REALITY: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry. Lifton wrote the foreword to The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump:  27 Psychiatrists & Mental Health Experts Assess a President. He died September 4th at the age of 99. Learn more at robertjaylifton.com

I talk with BILL McKIBBEN (The New Yorker), co-founder of both the global climate campaign, 350.org, and, in 2021, ThirdAct for folks 60 & above. In these dark times, his new book, HERE COMES THE SUN offers hope – not with happy talk but with a clear declaration of facts: Solar and wind are no longer alternative fuels. They are the cheapest as well as the cleanest. (So cheapest also in external costs, health, for example.) Experience has taught Bill that winning on the science and now the economics is not enough. It will take the power of the people to fight the power of the fossil fuel industry. In the book - and in our conversation - Bill offers marching orders for action. billmckibben.com, thirdact.org McKibben-08-28-2025-Transcript

First half: This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Here’s my 2006 conversation with Douglas Brinkley about his book The Great Deluge, in which he investigates the failures of government at every level, and traces the character flaws, inexperience, and ulterior motives that allowed the disaster to devastate the Gulf Coast. Second half: As school year begins, here’s my 2005 conversation with National Teacher of the Year, Rafe Esquith, on a PBS documentary celebrating his Hobart Shakespearians. Esquith leads fifth graders at LA’s Hobart Elementary, one of the nation's largest inner-city grade schools, through a challenging curriculum of English, math, geography, and literature. At semester’s end, students - few for whom English is their first language - perform a full-length Shakespeare play. Brinkley, Douglas (2006) - TranscriptEsquith (2005) - Transcript

What happens when the President plays mob boss - “How much can I get away with? Who’s going to stop me?” I talk with American legal scholar ROBERT POST of Yale Law School about the rule of law, the American legal system, free speech, academic freedom, public morality, and the Supreme Court’s weakness in the age of Trump. You can learn more at law.yale.edu/robert-c-post Robert Post 2025 Transcript

A bittersweet truth about having recorded these conversations for 25 years is how many of my guests are no longer with us. I went back through my files and found at least 60 - Sixty human beings worthy, willing, and able to share an hour with me. Here’s my 2003 conversation with ROBERT FULLER, who crusaded for the dignity of all and against what he defined as “rankism” - the dismissal of society’s unknowns and underachievers as “nobodies.” We talk about his first book, Somebodies and Nobodies. Fuller died July 15th at the age of 88.Fuller-05-20-2003 transcript.2.doc

In just the last two decades, we’ve experienced a global financial crash, a pandemic, multiple wars, and a climate crisis with repeated natural disasters. I talk with LIZZIE WADE about the ideas in APOCALYPSE: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures. If a society enters a cataclysm - climate crisis, war, plague, etc. - behaving one way and emerges behaving another, she defines that as an apocalypse. Looking at these situations over time reveals they need not end badly. In fact, such transformation have often nudged us forward. Faced with today’s news, we could all use a dose of hope. You can learn more at lizziewade.com 

A couple of weeks ago I recorded myself reading a speech I originally gave June 9, 1989 -  36 years ago - at my 20th college reunion, Harvard class of 1969. Ours was the year of the University Hall takeover and the campus strike. In ’89, I was fully involved in the entertainment industry. In the speech, I asked how we were living up to our youthful ideals. I don’t know if my words affected anyone else, but I came back home and got much more involved in causes, setting me on the path on which I found this show 7 years later. Today I find my words prescient, hopeful and - given today’s reality - a bit tragic.FF_TM 1989 Harvard Speech_Transcript