Free Forum with Terrence McNally

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 happiness myths can have toxic consequences. We’ll talk about how to take advantage of this research to actually make our lives more happy and fulfilling.

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 working people who know that the economy we have is unsustainable for most of the U.S. population. You can learn more at cmpascale.org.

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, JUSTICE ON THE BRINK, in July 2020, shortly before Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, covers McConnell’s unseemly rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, and then reports and analyzes each month through the end of the term in June 2021 - providing history and context along the way, gathered in her 30 years covering the Court for the New York Times. We talk about that term and the beginning of the highly consequential new one.Linda Greenhouse - New York Timeshttps://www.nytimes.com/by/linda-greenhouseLinda Greenhouse - Yale Lawhttps://law.yale.edu/linda-greenhouse

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 - successfully confronting climate change and inequality while rebuilding our sense of human community. In addition to No, we need to offer a compelling, inviting, and just Yes. 

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 focus on climate or energy or emissions. It calls for a new system of political economy to replace the current system which is not up to the challenge. Speth has released two books this year: THE NEW SYSTEMS READER: Alternatives for a Failed Economy and THEY KNEW: The US Federal Governments Fifty-Year Role in Causing the Climate Crisis

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 linking and weaving it with other critical challenges we face - economic inequality, social injustice, and endangered democracy - and placing love of life at the center of all we do.

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; and we’re aware that Ag and food employ more lobbyists than the fossil fuel industry. The book - now in a 50th Anniversary edition with a new introduction and new recipes - has never been more needed. Learn more at dietforasmallplanet.org and democracymovement.us

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 Philadelphia Inquirer, which led to their #1 best-seller, America: What Went Wrong.Twenty years later, they update the story in THE BETRAYAL OF THE AMERICAN DREAM.

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 the Silent Generation. Young people are engaged with climate but those over 60 are not yet delivering what the crisis demands of them, and he’s co-founding an entity called Third Act dedicated to changing that.

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.” Sounds like a good time to listen to my 2011 conversation with Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, about her book ALONE TOGETHER Why We Expect More from Technology, Less from Each Other.