Free Forum with Terrence McNally

This week's guest is DAVE ZIRIN. Dave is the first sports editor for The Nation magazine. He has for years in books, columns, and commentaries examined both the politics of sports as well as the intersection of the two. Howard Cosell said "rule number one of the jockocracy" was that sports and politics don't mix. In his newest book, Game Over, Zirin asserts that modern professional athletes are breaking that rule like never before. From the NFL lockout and the role of soccer in the Arab Spring to the Penn State sexual abuse scandals and Tim Tebow's on-field genuflections, Dave reveals how our most important debates about class, race, religion, sex, and political power are being played out both on and off the field.I've left my overzealous interest in sports out of the studio for years, but this week -- a couple of weeks after the Super Bowl, not long after Lance Armstrong finally admits to doping, and a few hours before the NBA All Star game - I break that barrier. Dave Zirin and I will talk about specific events and athletes, but we'll also examine the role sports plays in our individual lives and in society.

The Academy Awards will be given out in two weeks and we are lucky to have the co-directors of one of the nominated films with us today. 5 BROKEN CAMERAS, one of five nominees for best documentary, tells the story of a Palestinian farmer who lives with his wife and four small children in the village of Bil'in, in the central West Bank.EMAD BURNAT got his first camera in 2005, when his youngest son, Gibreel, was born. Almost simultaneously, the Israeli army began building a separation wall between Bil'in and a nearby Israeli settlement, separating residents from the olive tree groves that are their livelihood. Burnat turned his camera on his fellow villagers as they responded with nonviolent protests, including marches to the wall every Friday. I am joined in the studio today by Burnat and his Israeli co-director, GUY DAVIDI. Structured in chapters around the destruction of each one of Burnat's cameras, we witness Gibreel grow from a newborn baby into a young boy, as from behind the lens Burnat watches as olive trees are bulldozed and protests intensify in this cinematic diary of life in the West Bank. Upon hearing of the Oscar nomination for their film, EMAD BURNAT stated, "The truth is powerful, it can heal. I hope this film can help heal misunderstanding about us. A filmmaker's dream is winning an Oscars® however my dream is freedom for Palestine, we all have lots of work to do."And the words of Co-director GUY DAVIDI, "I am hopeful this will be a milestone on the road to ending the occupation and securing a brighter and more just future for Palestinians and Israelis."

Aired: 02/03/13This week, my guest is DAVID GOLDHILL. After the death of his father, Goldhill, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. His September 2009 Atlantic cover story rocked the health-care world, and Goldhill has written a book expanding on the topic, Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father-And How We Can Fix It. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. He asserts Obamacare will not fix it, and offers his own radical solution. * As a nation, we now spend almost 18% of our GDP on health care. * In 1966, Medicare and Medicaid made up 1% of total government spending; now that figure is 20%.* The federal government spends - 8 times as much on health care as it does on education-- 12 times what it spends on food aid to children and families-- 30 times what it spends on law enforcement-- 78 times what it spends on land management and conservation-- 87 times the spending on water supply-- 830 times the spending on energy conservation.* For every two doctors in the U.S., there is now one health-insurance employee-more than 470,000 in total. In 2006, it cost almost $500 per person just to administer health insurance.* Of the 52 industries represented on Fortune's 2007 list, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment ranked third and fourth, respectively, in terms of profits as a share of revenue. From 2000 to 2007, the annual profits of America's top 15 health-insurance companies increased from $3.5 billion to $15 billion.

We hear a lot these days about Armageddon, the Apocalypse, the Rapture, End Times. More than a current cultural phenomenon, they appear to be a persuasive motivating force for millions of Americans. These words are now part of our vocabulary, and as metaphors, they show up all over the map -- Carmageddon as the nickname for the I-405's weekend closure in July 2011.But, where do they come from? As many of you may know, they come from the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian New Testament. But how did they get there? Who wrote this? What does it mean?This week's guest, religious scholar ELAINE PAGELS, author of The Gnostic Gospels, considers the Book of Revelation to be wartime literature. She points out that it was written by a Jew following Rome's resounding defeat of a Jewish uprising, and interprets it as an attack on the decadence of the Empire. Soon, however, a new sect known as "Christians" seized on it as a weapon against heresy and infidels of all kinds. I believe that weapon is still active today in American culture and politics. We'll talk about Revelations, and we'll talk a bit about the Gnostic Gospels and the over 50 texts discovered hidden and preserved in Nag Hammadi Egypt in 1945. And about the impact of politics and culture on religion, highlighted by the moment when Constantine converted to the Church of Rome. Christianity went from being the religion of outsiders and freethinkers, to being the religion of the Empire. And we'll talk about how all of this plays out today in the US and around the world.

Aired: 1/20/13HOWARD BLOOM has been called “next in a lineage of seminal thinkers that includes Newton, Darwin, Einstein,[and] Freud,” by Britain’s Channel4 TV , and “the next Stephen Hawking” by Gear Magazine. His books include The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History; Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century; The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism; and his latest, THE GOD PROBLEM: How a Godless Cosmos Creates. Heavy stuff, sure, but his biography is a lot quirkier than that list might suggest. From 1968 to 1988, Bloom made his mark in the music business, founding and running its biggest PR firm, working with Michael Jackson, Prince, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, Queen, Simon & Garfunkel, Peter Gabriel, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, among many others. He helped launch Farm Aid and Amnesty International’s American presence, and put together the first public service radio campaign for solar power.Bloom launched a successful kickstarter campaign to raise money for PR for THE GOD PROBLEM because changing a paradigm doesn’t just happen. A lot of people have given glowing blurbs to this book, but let me quote one by Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, “If Howard Bloom is only 10 percent right, we’ll have to drastically revise our notions of the universe. There’s no mysticism in The God Problem—no God, no religion, no incommunicable spiritual insights – just the contagious joy of a great mind set loose on the biggest intellectual puzzles humans have ever faced. Whether you’re a scientist or a hyper-curious layperson, Bloom’s argument will rock your world.”

In her 18th book, ECOMIND: CHANGING THE WAY WE THINK, TO CREATE THE WORLD WE WANT, Frances Moore Lappé argues that much of what is wrong with the world, from eroding soil to eroding democracies, results from ways of thinking that are out of sync with human nature and nature's rhythms. Humans are doers, she says. But our capacity for doing is undermined by seven "thought traps" that leave us mired in fear, guilt, and despair -- none of which are motivators to action.Drawing on the latest research in climate studies, anthropology, and neuroscience, she weaves her analysis together with stories of real people the world over, who, having shifted some basic thought patterns, now shift the balance of power in our world. Chapter-by-chapter, Lappé takes us from "thought trap" to "thought leap," and with each shift, challenges become opportunities.

Aired: 1/13/13My guest this week is JONAH SACHS, author of WINNING THE STORY WARS: Why Those Who Tell and Live the Best Stories Will Rule the Future. He is also Creative Director at Free Range Studios, who are responsible for many wonderful campaigns, two of which - The Meatrix and The Story of Stuff - are among the most successful videos ever in terms of viral circulation to millions. On their home page, you'll see this quote: "Great stories make great change possible. Your world-changing message deserves to be heard - really heard. But that only happens when you learn to tell a great story."

Aired: 12/23/12Recorded: 10/17/12When gas prices were at or near record highs a few months ago in the US, that got people's attention. What about food prices? Have you noticed them rising? Are you making different choices in the supermarket? If not, it might be because of two things.One, in America so much of our food is processed, packaged and marketed, that raw commodity prices make up only a fraction of the price of the food we buy. In other countries, especially the less developed ones, an increase in the price of rice or corn can have a major effect on how much a family can afford to eat. Two, Americans spend only 9% percent of their income on food, while millions around the world spend 50-70%. Millions of households now routinely schedule foodless days each week-days when they will not eat at all. A recent survey by Save the Children shows that 14% of families in Peru now have foodless days. India, 24%. Nigeria, 27%.In his newest book, FULL PLANET, EMPTY PLATES, LESTER BROWN writes, "The U.S. Great Drought of 2012 has raised corn prices to the highest level in history. The world price of food, which has already doubled over the last decade, is slated to climb higher, ushering in a new wave of food unrest. This year's corn crop shortfall will accelerate the transition from the era of abundance and surpluses to an era of chronic scarcity. As food prices climb, the worldwide competition for control of land and water is intensifying. In this new world, access to food is replacing access to oil as an overriding concern of governments. Food is the new oil, land is the new gold. Welcome to the new geopolitics of food."

Aired 1/6/13In the year 2000, Germany got 6% of its energy from renewables. That's about what we get in the US today. But today Germany gets 25% of its electricity from solar, wind and biomass. And Germany is not exactly the American Southwest. Perhaps just as impressive and important, 65% of the country's renewable power capacity is owned by individuals, cooperatives and communities. Clean and decentralized. I'll be talking with Osha Gray Davidson about how they did it and what we can learn from their story. Osha is new to me, but I contacted him immediately as soon as I saw his new book CLEAN BREAK: The Story of Germany's Energy Transformation and What Americans Can Learn from It. As anyone who listens to this show knows, I feel one of the crucial elements in America's sluggish response to many of our biggest challenges is our ignorance about what other countries do well.

Aired 01/06/13 - I'll be talking with longtime anti-nuke activist Harvey Wasserman. I'll ask Harvey Wasserman about where things stand today in terms of nuclear power. What's going on in the US -- are new plants being built, are old ones shutting down? We'll get an update on Fukushima. And finally, we'll address the temporary shutdown at San Onofre near San Diego, and the opportunity to shut it down permanently. Harvey Wasserman is a teacher, author, and activist, focusing primarily on election protection and nuclear power. With Bob Fitrakis, Harvey helped break many of the major stories surrounding the 2004 presidential election in Ohio. In 1973 Wasserman helped pioneer the global grassroots movement against atomic reactors, then helped organize mass demonstrations at Seabrook, N.H., as well as New York City's 1979 "No Nukes" concerts and rally, featuring Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, CSN, James Taylor. He edits the NukeFree.org web site, and is senior editor of www.freepress.org. Wasserman is author or co-author of a dozen books including What Happened in Ohio?, co-authored with Bob Fitrakis and Steve Rosenfeld, Harvey Wasserman's History of the U.S.and SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030.