Free Forum with Terrence McNally

Aired 03/11/12RICHARD DAVIDSON, author,The Emotional Life of Your BrainDAVID EAGLEMAN, author,Incognito: The Secret Lives of the BrainPETER BAUMANN, convener,BEING HUMAN 2012In 1989 I addressed the 20th reunion of my Harvard class. In 1969, we'd spearheaded student protests that led to a month long strike of the University. Our demands included removing ROTC from campus, creation of an African-American studies program, and reforming Harvard's behavior as a landlord. Twenty years later, I encouraged my classmates to live up to our youthful ideals. I recall focusing on environmental challenges, including the mounting evidence of man-made contributions to climate change. But when asked where we needed to focus our attention to turn things around, I pointed to the environment within our own minds.Now, over twenty years later, my conversations about politics, economics, technology, ecology, etc. focus more and more on the need to tinker with the human software that drives or interprets everything we do. As we use the tools of science to explore the nature of humanity, we are learning more and more about how our brains function and what motivates our behavior, built-in biases and blind spots. I find myself paying a lot of attention to the fields of behavioral economics, cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, social anthropology, philosophy - that promise to overthrow long-held biases and stories about what it means to be human. http://thebaumannfoundation.orghttp://eagleman.comhttp://richardjdavidson.com

Aired 03/02/12The stock market's roaring, and applications for unemployment are down, but there was disappointing news in Thursday's economic data. In January manufacturing growth slowed, construction spending dipped, and Americans' after-tax income fell, leading to a fourth straight month of weak consumer spending. Guest host Terrence McNally explores the continued gap between Wall Street and Main Street, and what we can do about it.Although it's down a bit today, the Dow hit 13,000 this week for the first time since May, 2008. NASDAQ flirted with 3000. One US company, Apple, is now valued at over $500 billion, higher than the gross domestic product of Poland, Belgium, Sweden, Saudi Arabia or Taiwan. Yet manufacturing growth has slowed, construction spending has slipped, and consumer spending remains weak. Both housing construction and Americans' after-tax income actually fell in January. What accounts for the disparity? How important is it? What can be done about it? And how will all this play out in this year's elections?Guests: * Daniel Gross: Yahoo! Finance, @grossdm * Robert H. Frank: Cornell University * Tom Donlan: Barron's National Business and Financial Weekly * Dean Baker: Center for Economic and Policy Research, @DeanBaker13Links: * Gross' 'Better, Stronger, Faster: The Myth of American Economic Decline' * Frank's 'The Darwin Economy: Liberty Competition and the Common Good' * Baker's 'The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive'

Aired 03/02/12Iranians went to the polls in parliamentary elections today. With many reformists and opposition leaders not participating, the vote is a contest between hard-line supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Pressure from the West over Iran's nuclear program has been a central issue. Barbara Slavin is Washington correspondent for AL-Monitor.com, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and the author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US and the Twisted Path to Confrontation.Guests: Barbara Slavin: AL-Monitor.com, @barbaraslavin1Also Vladamir Putin is almost certain to regain the presidency in elections in Russia on Sunday, but that victory may be more a reflection of voters' resignation than broad support for his twelve-year rule. Putin, who has been suggesting Russia could walk away from the Start II treaty and is accusing Hillary Clinton of funding protests in his country, is heavily favored. Matthew Rojansky is Deputy Director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Guests: Matthew Rojansky: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, @MatthewRojansky

Aired 03/04/12In the early 1960s, MARSHALL GANZ dropped out of Harvard to join the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. He then spent 16 years working with César Chávez and the United Farm Workers. He returned to Harvard in the 1990's, graduated, earned his Ph.D., and now teaches organizing and the power of public narrative at the Kennedy School. During Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, he was lead organizer of the grassroots for the former community organizer. GANZ offers a valuable perspective on the Occupy/99% movement. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/organizing/?utm_source=03-04-2012-Marshall+Ganz&utm_campaign=Mardhall+Ganz-03-04-2012&utm_medium=emailhttp://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k2139&utm_source=03-04-2012-Marshall+Ganz&utm_campaign=Mardhall+Ganz-03-04-2012&utm_medium=email

Aired 02/05/12How did the Egyptian people overthrow longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak and are the people of Egypt better off today?I am very excited to speak with WAEL GHONIM, the Egyptian web exec who played a leading role in last year's Tahrir Square protests. With the first anniversary of those protests and the recent elections in Egypt, we have a lot to talk about. WAEL GHONIM was a little-known 30-year-old Google manager, unwilling to publicly criticize the Egyptian regime -- silenced like many by resignation and the fear of reprisals -- until he anonymously launched a Facebook campaign to protest the death of one particular Egyptian man at the hands of security forces. In his new memoir, he tells us - from his experience -- why and how the Egyptian people finally rejected 30 years of oppression and found their voice. Let me read two quotes from WAEL GHONIM: "Social media allow ideas to be shared. They are places where people can unite, Revolutions can begin. A new type of Revolution - Revolution 2.0"and finally -- "People have called me a hero, but that is ridiculous - this has not been a revolution of heroic individuals, but about people coming together to overcome dictatorship.https://www.facebook.com/WaelGhonimhttp://hmhbooks.com/hmh/site/hmhbooks/bookdetails?isbn=9780547773988&srch=true&utm_source=02-05-2012-GHONIM&utm_campaign=Wael+Ghonim-02-06-2012&utm_medium=email

Aired 01/29/12HAPPY. Are you happy? What makes you happy? Does money make you happy? Kids and family? Your work? Do you live in an environment that values and promotes happiness and well-being? Do you expect you're going to get happier? How? ROKO BELIC'S documentary HAPPY explores these sorts of questions. It weaves the latest scientific research from the field of "positive psychology" with stories from around the world of people whose lives illustrate what we're learning. The basic approach to the pursuit of happiness taken by many of us and by society in general isn't delivering. We know more than we ever have about what science can tell us about happiness. And we have access to more diverse models and worldviews than ever before. This is a good time to ask some basic questions.http://www.worldhappyday.com/

Aired 01/29/12Though change has never been as rapid as it is today, adapting to new circumstance is so crucial to our survival that "love of the new" is hardwired into our brains at the deepest levels. The number of new things we confront - from products to information - has quadrupled in the last thirty years with no signs of slowing. In NEW: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change, WINIFRED GALLAGHER points out that 15% of us are "neophiliacs," biologically predisposed to passionately pursue new experiences. Another 15% are "neophobes" who resist change. Most of us fall in the middle. WINIFRED GALLAGHER has written for magazines from The Atlantic Monthly to Rolling Stone. Her books include Just the Way You Are: How Heredity and Experience Create the Individual, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, The Power of Place: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Thoughts, Emotions, and Actions; and Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life.

Aired 01/20/12There are 183 million active video gamers in the US, and the average young person will spend 10,000 hours gaming by the age of 21. There are now more than five million "extreme" gamers" in the US who play an average of 45 hours a week.According to game designer JANE McGONIGAL, this is because videogames are increasingly fulfilling genuine human needs. But she goes way beyond that, in her first book, REALITY IS BROKEN -- just out in paperback - she suggests we can use the lessons of game design to fix what is wrong with the real world. Drawing on positive psychology, cognitive science, and sociology, she shows how game designers have hit on core truths about what makes us happy so that videogames consistently provide the exhilarating rewards, stimulating challenges, and epic victories that are so often lacking in the real world.I recommend Reality Is Broken to people who have no interest in games. Separate from what it says about the current reality and possible future of games, the book is an excellent primer on what we have learned - and most people don't know - about happiness, learning, productivity and growth. http://janemcgonigal.com/

Aired 01/15/12Guests: David De Graw, one of the central figures in the leaderless and horizontal Occupy/99% movement and Dr Ben Chavis, longtime civil rights leader, from his youthful days with King, to his leadership of the Million Man March, to his current role in the Hip Hop Summit Action Network. We talk about the alliance between African American faith leaders and the Occupy movement -- Occupy the Dream. The coalition called a National Day of Action for January 16, 2012, Martin Luther King Day, with demonstrations in multiple cities nationwide, focusing attention on the injustice visited upon the 99% by a financial elite. You can learn more at occupy the dream.org.DAVID DeGRAW is founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com, as well as OWSnews.org, formerly editorial director of MediaChannel.org, and author of The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States.In 1965, while a college freshman, BENJAMIN CHAVIS became a statewide youth coordinator in North Carolina for the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As a chemist, he was a founder of the environmental justice movement, then an organizer of the Million Man March, and since he has been CEO and Co-Chairman of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, in New York City which he cofounded with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons.

Aired 01/15/12In the winter of 1417, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties plucked a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. The man was Poggio Braccionlini, the greatest book hunter of the Renaissance. His discovery was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions.The copying and translation of this ancient book fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.Stephen Greenblatt is John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. Among his books are Will of the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, a Finalist for the 2004 National Book Award in Nonfiction and a New York Times best seller, and Hamlet in Purgatory. He holds honorary degrees from Queen Mary College of the University of London and the University of Bucharest.