Free Forum with Terrence McNally

Aired 07/25/10VALERIE PLAME, CIA agent outed by Bush White House Her focus: non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. She's featured in the filmCOUNTDOWN TO ZERO, playing in NY and DC opening in LA July 30th. http://www.globalzero.org/How big a threat is North Korea? Will Iran go nuclear? Will Israel attack Iran? Are nukes safe in Pakistan? Are they safe in the former Soviet Union? Will Obama move seriously toward disarmament?The globalization of the 21st century has produced positive and peaceful exchanges between peoples and nations, and it has given birth to global terrorism. Today a nuclear attack caused by accident, miscalculation or madness is a real possibility. The film COUNTDOWN TO ZERO (playing in NY and Washington and opening July 30th in LA) makes clear the nuclear threat and calls on us to commit to their abolition.COUNTDOWN TO ZERO traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present, where nine nations possess nuclear weapons capabilities, and others race to join them. The world lives in a delicate balance that could be obliterated by an act of terrorism, failed diplomacy, or a simple accident.The film, which includes Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pervez Musharraf and Tony Blair, was written and directed by Lucy Walker (Devil's Playground, Blindsight), produced by Lawrence Bender (Inglourious Basterds, An Inconvenient Truth) and developed, financed and executive produced by Participant Media, together with World Security Institute.

Aired 07/18/10RAGHURAM RAJAN former chief economist at the IMF author, FAULT LINES: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy Rajan predicted trouble in 2005 and sees income inequality as a root cause.

Aired 07/11/10MALOU INNOCENT is a Foreign Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute, and her primary research interests include Middle East and Persian Gulf security issues and U.S. foreign policy toward Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China. Following dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Mass Communications and Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master of Arts degree in International Relations from the University of Chicago, she has appeared as a guest analyst on CNN, BBC News, Fox News, Al Jazeera, CNBC Asia, and Reuters, and has published in journals such as Foreign Policy, Wall Street Journal, Asia, Christian Science Monitor, Armed Forces Journal, the Guardian, and the Huffington Post.Join us as we talk about Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, the Middle East, the cost of foreign adventures to domestic well-being, and hopefully some issues and areas that I haven't even thought of yet. http://www.cato.org/people/malou-innocent

Aired 05/30/10We're hearing a lot about the trouble Europe is in. The debt crisis in Greece, and perhaps Spain, Portugal, and Italy, is threatening the Euro and the European Union. What's really going on? How did it happen? How bad is it? How will they deal with it? And what does it mean for the rest of the world and for the US in particular?We'll deal with those issues this Sunday, but that's not all. While the bad news of this Euro crisis makes headlines in the US, a quiet and successful revolution taking place in Europe does not. Europe seems to be finding a way to make capitalism and democracy work for people, not just for corporations. I think this is a critical unreported story in terms of its potential impact. Here's just a few things you may not have heard about.The European Union, 27 member nations with a half billion people, has become the largest, wealthiest trading bloc in the world, producing nearly a third of the world's economy - nearly as large as the U.S. and China combined. Europe has more Fortune 500 companies than either the US, China or Japan.European nations are rated by the World Health Organization as having the best health care systems in the world. Yet they spend far less than the United States for universal coverage, even as U.S. health care is ranked 37th.Europe leads in confronting global climate change with renewable energy technologies like solar and wind power, conservation and "green design," creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the process. Consequently, Europe's ecological "footprint" (the amount of the earth's capacity that a population consumes) is about half that of the United States for the same standard of living.http://www.europespromise.org/

Aired 05/23/10JACK KORNFIELD is co-founder of two major meditation centers in the US and author of several books including After the Ecstasy the Laundry, and Buddha's Little Instruction Book. Kornfield makes a rare appearance in Southern California to offer a 3 hour workshop Saturday May 29th as a benefit for InsightLA, a local meditation center in Santa Monica. http://www.jackkornfield.org/index/homehttp://www.insightla.org/

Aired 05/16/10I'll be joined by GRANT DAVIS DENNY, a knowledgeable expert and advocate for public financing of elections. Among other things, we'll talk about the recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United vs FEC and Prop 15, a clean money pilot program on the California ballot June 8th.http://www.caclean.org/http://www.commoncause.org/http://www.yesfairelections.org/

Aired 04/25/10 LIVE FROM the LA TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS at the UCLA CAMPUS with REZA ASLAN, author, NO GOD BUT GOD andBEYOND FUNDAMENTALISM and TERRY McDERMOTT longtime LA Times reporter, author, PERFECT SOLDIERS: The 9/11 Hijackers, and his latest, 101 THEORY DRIVE: A Neuroscientist's Quest for Memoryhttp://www.rezaaslan.com/index.htmlhttp://tmcdermott.com/default.aspx

Aired 04/25/10LIVE FROM the LA TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS at the UCLA CAMPUS with SEAN CARROLL Caltech Physicist, author, FROM ETERNITY TO HERE and D.T. MAX New Yorker writer, author, THE FAMILY THAT COULDN'T SLEEPhttp://preposterousuniverse.com/eternitytohere/http://preposterousuniverse.com/self.htmlhttp://dtmax.com/

Aired 04/18/10SIMON JOHNSON, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is currently Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. He is the co-author of STARTING OVER IN EASTERN EUROPE and co-founder of the blog site THE BASELINE SCENARIO with James Kwak, with whom he also co-authored the new book, 13 BANKERS: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.http://baselinescenario.com/http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04162010/profile.html

Aired 04/11/10Father Boyle has made a point of collecting and telling uniquely powerful stories of life and death, and his work has supplied him with more than anyone should know.He has so far buried 168 of his homies, and fills his first book TATTOOS ON THE HEART with their stories. I read it cover to cover on a plane flight Chicago to LA, and cried at least a dozen times. Boyle's compassion is boundless, his work is courageous, and his example is a profound challenge.Father GREGORY BOYLE was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1982. He received his Master of Divinity from the Weston School of Theology; and a Sacred Theology Masters degree from the Jesuit School of Theology. Since 1986, Father Gregory has been the pastor of Dolores Mission in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The church sits between two large public housing projects, Pico Gardens and Aliso Village, known for decades as the gang capital of the world. In 1988, Father Boyle began what would become Homeboy Industries, now located in downtown Los Angeles. His first book is TATTOOS ON THE HEART.http://www.homeboy-industries.org/