Free Forum with Terrence McNally

Aired 11/08/09STEWART BRAND's Whole Earth Catalog introduced millions to new ways of thinking and doing and probably contributed to the birth of environmentalism in the US. Confronting today's challenges to global civilization in his new book, Brand questions environmental positions against GMO foods, Geo-engineering, and nuclear power. In 1968 a totally original cultural item appeared. It owed something to old time catalogs perhaps akin to the Farmers almanac. Its style was funkily low-fi while its content had one foot in a simpler past and the other in a high tech sci-fi future. It was called the Whole Earth Catalog and subtitled "Access to Tools."STEWART BRAND was its founder, editor and publisher, and Brand has been at the founding of several other cultural entities, events, and movements. Today, in his '70s, STEWART BRAND is no less curious, no less purposeful, and no less forward looking. His new book, WHOLE EARTH DISCIPLINE: An EcoPragmatist Manifesto, confronts the challenges we face as a global civilization - population, urbanization, resource depletion, peak oil, and most profoundly climate change, by issuing challenges of his own to what has passed for years as environmental orthodoxy. Brand characterizes many in a movement he helped to create and inspire as being anti-science, and anti-intellectual in their opposition to GMO foods, Geo-engineering, and nuclear power.Forty years ago, Brand could say in the Whole Earth Catalog, "We are as gods, we might as well get good at it". Today in WHOLE EARTH DISCIPLINE, he says, "We are as gods and have to get good at it."http://current.com/items/90416515_stewart-brand-proclaims-4-environmental-heresies.htmhttp://web.me.com/stewartbrand/DISCIPLINE_footnotes/Recommended_Reading.html

Aired 11/01/09ZACHARY KARABELL argues that the economies of China and the US have melded over the past 20 years, as billions of dollars flow east from the US for Chinese-made goods and return to this country from China in exchange for IOUs."This mega-economy is hiding in plain sight, unrecognized, unacknowledged, and unwanted by many millions whose lives are being reshaped by it." Karabell's not suggesting this is an unalloyed good thing, "but it's a fact. And it's better to deal with reality than live in a fantasy land." ZACHARY KARABELL is President of River Twice Research, where he analyzes economic and political trends. He is also a senior advisor for Business for Social Responsibility, which develops sustainable business strategies. Previously, he was president of Fred Alger and Company; and portfolio manager of the award-winning China-U.S. Growth Fund, and launched the $30 million Spectra Green Fund, linking profit and sustainability.Educated at Columbia, Oxford and Harvard, his previous books include A Visionary Nation: Four Centuries of American Dreams and What Lies Ahead, The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election, and Peace Be Upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian and Jewish Coexistence. http://www.rivertwice.com/http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=15081

Aired 10/20/09In Lester Brown's new book, PLAN B 4.0: MOBILIZING TO SAVE CIVILIZATION, Brown lays out the symptoms, the diagnosis, and the cure. He estimates that we could solve all the world's greatest problems for $200 billion a year - less than half the US defense budget. PLAN B 4.0 is a comprehensive plan for reversing the trends that are undermining our future. Its four overriding goals are to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth's damaged ecosystems. Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well.

Aired 10/13/09JODIE EVANS is the co-founder the International Occupation Watch Center in Iraq, and of CODE PINK, with, among others, Medea Benjamin. Jodie's Baghdad Journals are at the center of the book, Twilight of Empire, and she is co-editor with Benjamin of Stop The Next War Now. JODIE - "I am just returning from my 10-day trip to Afghanistan. As we left, a farm was bombed and eight members of a family were killed. Eight U.S. soldiers also lost their lives in an insurgent raid on their outpost. And today marks the 8th anniversary of the US Invasion of that war torn country.We have spent a quarter of a trillion dollars in those 8 years and what have we got for all that time, money, and suffering? Most of the country is in worse condition, the Taliban have been growing in strength and number, the bordering countries are more unstable and death fills the air."Watch Video: http://codepink4peace.org/blog/2009/10/afghan-women-speak-out-dr-roshnak-wardak/

Aired 10/13/09More than just a reflection on his life, Cornel West says his new memoir Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud is "an intensified dance with mortality." Following West's diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer -- now in remission -- he decided to write about his life in a way that might touch other souls. West calls the memoir his "most unique, delicate and difficult book to write," requiring him to "examine the dark corners of [his] soul...It is a life-transforming experience to write about your life."Cornel West, Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University, has won numerous awards, including the American Book Award, and has received more than 20 honorary degrees. He's produced 3 CDs of music and spoken word, offers commentary weekly on The Tavis Smiley Show, and is the author of several books, including Race Matters; Democracy Matters; Hope on a Tightrope; and his latest, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud.

ìSpontaneous Evolution introduces the notion that a miraculous healing awaits this planet once we accept our new responsibility to collectively tend the Garden rather than fight over the turf. When a critical mass of people truly own this belief in their hearts and minds and actually begin living from this truth, our world will emerge from the darkness in what will amount to a spontaneous evolution.îIn Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (And A Way To Get There From Here), pioneering biologist Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. and political philosopher Steve Bhaerman team up to offer an insightful, playful, and hopeful look at the unfolding destiny of our speciesóand how you can play an active role in birthing the evolution of civilization.http://wakeuplaughing.com/http://www.brucelipton.com/

Aired 09/08/09Daniel Ellsberg is an American hero. September 23rd is the 40th anniversary of the first night of copying the Pentagon Papers, which he took from his safe at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica.America was embroiled in a dirty war based on lies. A president was abusing the power of his office, ignoring the will of the people, Congress and the courts. He promised peace while planning war without end. Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst, leaded the truth about the Vietnam war to the New York Times. He risked life in prison to end a war he helped plan. Henry Kissinger called Daniel Ellsberg, "the most dangerous man in America."He's still at it. This week Ellsberg begins the online publication of The American Doomsday Machine, his memoir of the nuclear era.INFO http://www.ellsberg.net/

Aired 08/01/09"You don't have to choose between making money and making sense.... Green business practices are good for business and for the world. They can increase profits, lower costs, and attract customers."Those are the words of Gil Friend. Gil and I met in 1973 when I directed a video documentary of a Buckminster Fuller World Game Workshop. Each in our own ways, we've been plugging away at that game ever since.Gil Friend, President & CEO of Natural Logic Inc, is a systems ecologist and business strategist with nearly 40 years experience in communications, business, and environmental innovation. Clients include Agilent Technologies, Coca-Cola, Dean Foods, Hewlett Packard, Levi Straus & Co, Nike and Sun MicroSystems. Friend is the author of the upcoming Risk, Fiduciary Responsibility and the Laws of Nature, and just published, The Truth About Green Business. http://www.worldchanging.com/

Aired 08/25/09Michael Lind is a Senior Research Fellow and Policy Director of New America's Economic Growth Program. Lind's first three books of political journalism and history, The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution; Up From Conservatism: Why the Right Is Wrong for America; and Vietnam: The Necessary War were all selected as New York Times Notable Books. Other books include Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American; What Lincoln Believed, and with Ted Halstead, of The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics. Lind has been an editor or staff writer for The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and The New Republic, and writes frequently at Salon.com.http://www.newamerica.net/people/michael_lind

Aired 08/11/09It is my privilege to have Latin America's most acclaimed writers, EDUARDO GALEANO. I confess I was not aware of him until Hugo Chavez presented Barack Obama with one of his books. For that introduction, I thank the Venzuelan President. GALEANO's works are a unique blend of history, fiction, journalism and political analysis, and his life is so much more than that.Born in Uruguay in 1940, EDUARDO GALEANO began writing newspaper articles as a teenager, by the age of 20 he became Editor-in-Chief of LaMarcha. A few years later, he took the top post at Montevideo's daily newspaper Epocha. At 31, he wrote his most famous book - Chavez gift -- The Open Veins Of Latin America: Five Centuries Of The Pillage Of A Continent.After the 1973 military coup in Uruguay, GALEANO was imprisoned and forced to leave the country. He settled in Argentina where he founded and edited a cultural magazine, Crisis. After the 1976 military coup there, he moved to Spain where he began his classic work Memory of Fire, a three-volume narrative of the history of America, North and South. He eventually returned home to his native Uruguay where he now lives. http://www.sigloxxieditores.com/http://www.progressive.org/galeano