Free Forum with Terrence McNally

The destructive pace and scale of Trump2.0 makes it hard to know what deserves and demands our attention. This week we step back from daily news to focus on climate with award-winning journalist ALEXANDER KAUFMAN. We look at the toll of climate related disasters and migration; the latest on the science, what have we learned over the last year or so: the actions of the Trump administration to take us backwards; and the global picture of energy and technology. What's working? What do we need more of? You can learn more and subscribe to his personal newsletter at kaufman.substack.com. 

The headlines are full of the cruel, unjust, illegal, unconstitutional, and costly treatment of immigrants by the Trump administration. Here’s my 2019 conversation with SISTERS CONSTANCE TOUEY and JEANNETTE LUCEY. They met in 1984 when both were assigned to a parish K-8 school in inner city Philadelphia. Their book, DO IT BETTER: How the Kids of St. Francis de Sales Exceeded Everyone’s Expectations tells the stories of their 30+ years as principal and 8th grade teacher as they educate and transform the lives of wave after wave of poor immigrant children. I’m proud to have written the book with them.

It’s up to us. Political parties, political players, and the media promote and profit from our division. We the people have ultimate responsibility for healing our politics and our society. In her book, REMAKING THE SPACE BETWEEN US: How Citizens Can Work Together to Build a Better Future for All, DIANA McLAIN SMITH has good news. The media doesn’t report it, but hundreds of organizations and millions of people are already actively engaged in developing relationships and alliances that can work together in the service of our better angels.Learn more at remakingthespace.orgDiana McLain Smith, 2025 - Transcript

Feeling pissed, panicked, powerless? That’s what they want. How do we turn things around? Here’s my refreshing 2021 conversation with JULIE BATTILANA, Harvard professor and founder of its Social Innovation and Change Initiative about her book POWER FOR ALL. It's a call not only to understand and assert power in our own lives, but also to collectively use this power to remake society by rebalancing existing power relationships - including racial, gender, financial and political. To learn more, go to Powerforallbook.com

When Trump sits in the White House dispensing pardons to other convicted felons - and an ambassadorship or two, when he was able to run out the clock on justice with his political donors paying most of his legal bills, when so many actions this administration has taken in the first month serve to eliminate or disable accountability or oversight… Here’s my 2009 conversation with Amy Bach about how the legal system systematically fails regular people every day. The rich walk, the poor go to prison. Her book ORDINARY INJUSTICE shows how - in the name of expedience - legal professionals collaborate rather than face off, sacrificing defendants and victims to keep the court calendar moving.

I’m honored to talk with JAMES STEELE, of the investigative reporting team, Barlett & Steele. He and DON BARLETT worked together for over 50 years, won journalism’s highest awards, wrote nine books. Don Barlett died this past fall. Their 1991 Philadelphia Inquirer series America: What Went Wrong? showed how Wall Street and Washington were squeezing the middle class and fueling income inequality and led to a best-selling book. That was 1991 B.C. Before Clinton. They have been on that beat ever since. We did an episode in 2012 on their Betrayal of the American Dream. Jim and I talk about their partnership, about how we got here, and what it feels like to have your warnings ignored. Learn more: barlettandsteele.com 

Jean Guerrero, an LA and New York Times opinion writer and author of "Hate Monger," discusses Stephen Miller's crucial role in shaping Donald Trump's anti-immigrant policies. She dives into Miller’s troubling transformation from progressive roots to promoting white nationalist ideologies. Guerrero examines the harmful impact of their rhetoric on vulnerable communities, especially during the pandemic. The conversation also highlights the weaponization of Homeland Security against social justice movements, advocating for unity and open dialogue in a divided America.

A week into Trump 2.0, the cruelty and overreach are on full display, and the media and the Democrats are not up to the challenge. I turn to longtime Republican strategist, STEVE SCHMIDT, who abandoned the GOP in 2018 and co-founded the Lincoln Project. He’s now perhaps the most articulate, full-throated and damning critic of his former party and the inadequate opposition. You can learn more at steveschmidt.substack.com or The Warning with Steve Schmidt on YouTube.

TERRENCE McNALLY is my guest this week. In February 2014, I took a hiatus from this show after 17 years. I thought it might be the end of the line, and before signing off, turned to journalist and best-selling author, SARA DAVIDSON, to interview me.  I returned to these conversations In 2017 after Trump’s election. So here we are - 11 years after that hiatus and this conversation, 8 years after my return, and a few days after Trump’s second inauguration. How did things look to me then as I reflected both backward and forward?McNally, Davidson 2025 - Transcript

STEVE WASSERMAN has spent half a century in the world of books, newspapers, and ideas, as an opinion editor at the LA Times, editor of the LA Times Book Review; and as an editor at several major publishers. We’ll talk about that lifetime of work, how publishing and the press have changed, and about his first book, a memoir, TELL ME SOMETHING. TELL ME ANYTHING. EVEN IF IT’S A LIE - with cameos from Susan Sontag, Orson Welles, Jackie Kennedy, Robert Scheer, Gore Vidal. He’s now the publisher at Heyday Books, a fifty-year old independent publisher in Berkeley. Learn more at heydaybooks.com