Free Forum with Terrence McNally

To remind us what has to heal to put MAGA behind us, here’s my 2020 conversation with Pulitzer Prize winning husband-wife team, NICHOLAS KRISTOF & SHERYL WuDUNN. Their book, TIGHTROPE, tells how Nick’s childhood home - Yamhill, Oregon - was devastated by the loss of well-paying jobs and policy failures in education, healthcare, and justice that led to his childhood friends’ deaths of despair - and how we can end this crisis. We recorded this episode in the final year of Trump’s first term, a few weeks before the pandemic exploded.

I talk with TROY BRENNAN, professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and former Chief Medical Officer at CVS Health about his latest book, WONDERFUL AND BROKEN: The Complex Reality of Primary Care in the US. The US accounts for roughly half of total global health care spending, even though it's only 4% of world population. The World Health Organization ranks US healthcare 37th overall compared to other Western countries. Primary care physicians play a pivotal role in both preventing disease and lowering healthcare costs but they are overworked, underpaid, and incentivized to move into higher-paying specialties while patients face provider shortages.

For Oscar week, two half hour film-linked episodes from the archives. First my 2006 conversation with ROGER EBERT, following that year’s Oscars, where CRASH beat BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN for Best Picture. The vote was controversial in the film world and the fact that a gay cowboy movie came close riled the homophobic hearts of the Christian Right. So lots to talk about. In the second half, my 2007 episode with television trailblazer, PHIL DONAHUE, who died in 2024 at the age of 88. We talk about some of his courageous choices over the years and about Body of War, the documentary he co-directed about a severely disabled Iraq War veteran. His condemnations of the Iraq War and its beginnings are sadly and infuriatingly ripped from today’s news.FF_Roger Ebert_Transcript

TRILLION DOLLAR WAR MACHINE - the title of the new book BILL HARTUNG & BEN FREEMAN wrote together - is about a trillion dollar a year machine for waging wars and for creating them. Donald Trump has discovered he likes using it. We spend more than we did in 1985 for a military half the size. Hartung & Freeman talk about a military-lobbyist-newsmedia-entertainment-sports-industrial complex. The tech bro’s want in on the gravy train and see AI as their ticket. I assume we don’t talk about defense spending because no one expects anything to change. We’re about to find out once again how crazy that is. We recorded this conversation 2/26 - one day before the war on Iran. Learn more about Bill & Ben at the Quincy Institute - quincyinst.org/

Here’s my 2017 conversation with CHIP BERLET, investigative journalist, research analyst, activist - and friend - who died January 30, 2026. Over the last 50 years, Chip was one of a handful of folks who consistently tracked and organized against right-wing extremism. As MAGA grew and metastasized from its roots in the Silent Majority and the Tea Party, Chip was on the beat. Can’t say he didn’t warn us. Berlet was part of a team at the National Lawyers Guild who revealed the COINTELPRO program, in which US security and military forces disrupted left-wing movements for years, and co-authored (with Matthew N. Lyons) Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort a year before 9/11. We recorded this conversation two months into Trump One and five months before Tiki Torches in Charlottesville.

How we “talk” to each other has changed dramatically since 1990 when Georgetown linguistics professor DEBORAH TANNEN brought gender differences in communication style to public awareness in her phenomenal best-seller, YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND. Personal interactions now include email, texting, What’s App, Slack, emojis, and AI. Over the years, Tannen has explored everyday conversation between men and women, parents and children, family members, at work, in argument, etc. We look back together at what she’s learned over those 35 years, and you can learn more at deborahtannen.com 

I believe we need compelling visions of life after the current horror is over. What if we loved our children? How would things be different? Here’s my 2011 conversation with DAVID KIRP about his book, KIDS FIRST: Five Big Ideas for Transforming Children's Lives and America's Future. These innovative programs have all been tried. They work and they deserve to be invested in and expanded nationally. I believe they could change so many things - for children, families, communities, and could even soften our political divisions.

In her 1997 book, BIOMIMICRY: Innovation Inspired by Nature, JANINE BENYUS - biologist, author, and innovation consultant - coined a term and invented a field. After 3.8 billion years of R&D on this planet, failures are fossils. What surrounds us in the natural world has succeeded and survived. Animals, plants, and microbes have found what works, what’s appropriate, and what lasts here on Earth. So why not learn as much as we can from them? Janine and I recorded our first conversation in 1999. In this one we look back together at the birth of biomimicry and its growth and impact over the years.Benyus-12-08-25-Transcript

Here’s my 2002 conversation with SHARON SALZBERG, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society on her book, FAITH: TRUSTING YOUR OWN DEEPEST EXPERIENCE. Sharon is a New Yorker, and the book is her response to the experience of 9/11. Seems like it might be helpful in our current dark time. Faith in what? Where do we place our faith when the US is beset by cruel authoritarianism and the world by multiple wars and climate driven disasters? Is faith today painfully naive or absolutely necessary in order to fight on?Sharon Salzberg 07-16-2002 Transcript

I speak with journalist and best-selling author, GEORGE PACKER (THE UNWINDING, LAST BEST HOPE) about his first novel in decades, THE EMERGENCY. He felt facts were no longer hitting home. It’s an allegory - not unlike those of his hero, George Orwell - in an unknown time or place with plenty of resonances with our current moment. What happens to society when the established order falls? …to families? to our moral creed? …to our sense of self? Packer-12-03-2025-transcript