Free Forum with Terrence McNally

In BY THE LIGHT OF BURNING DREAMS, brother and sister, DAVID & MARGARET TALBOT, tell the story of the 1960s, an era they call the Second American Revolution, through the individual stories of movement leaders, including Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Russell Means of the American Indian Movement, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers, Heather Booth and the women behind the (pre-Roe v Wade) Jane Collective abortion network. David founded Salon.com and has written six books. Margaret is a staff writer at The New Yorker. 

Anxiously entering the third year of a pandemic, and facing other huge challenges - inequality, injustice, endangered democracy, climate change, etc. we need to take care of ourselves. Here’s my 2013 conversation with neuropsychologist RICK HANSON, author of the best-seller BUDDHA’S BRAIN, about his book, HARDWIRING HAPPINESS, where he brings together mindfulness and neuroscience and offers pro-active practices to actually shift your brain’s neural structure – the hardwiring - toward calm, contentment, and confidence. 

Hello, this is Terrence McNally.  As we begin the new year, declaring resolutions and setting goals, here’s  my 2012 conversation with Charles Duhigg about the ideas in his book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. We also talk about his 2012 NYT Investigative series re Apple's Labor Practices.

I’m curious about the meanings and lesson of the ‘60s. Questions and values that emerged in the 1960s are alive in Millennials and younger today, and I believe they stand a chance to build something deeper and more sustainable this time. This week I speak with EDWARD MORGAN. His 2010 book, WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO THE 1960’s?: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy seeks to explain both what actually happened and what happened to how we remember it, how the mass media shaped the popular image, meaning and value of that political and cultural decade -  caricaturing what was a genuine small-d democratic movement of movements challenging the status quo  as a generational rebellion of indulgence. Best forgotten. You can learn more at tedmorgan.blogspot.com

I wish you and your loved ones a deeply renewing holiday season. This week, you’ll hear my 2014 conversation with REZA ASLAN about his best-selling book, ZEALOT: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. He examines Jesus the man through the lens of the time and place in which he lived, first-century Palestine, and labels him a zealot – a radical political opponent of the Roman occupation. Since Jesus was crucified without overthrowing Roman rule, he is one of many "failed messiahs." But only he among them become the starting point of one of the world’s great religions. This approach offers a Jesus more human, if no less heroic.

As another difficult year comes to an end and we find ourselves wishing others – and ourselves – Happy Holidays,  here’s my 2013 conversation with SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY about the provocative findings in her book, THE MYTHS OF HAPPINESS: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t; What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does. She draws on the latest scientific research to show that believing in certain happiness myths can have toxic consequences. We’ll talk about how to take advantage of this research to actually make our lives more happy and fulfilling.

CELINE-MARIE PASCALE, professor of sociology at American University, is a leader in examining how deep inequalities can be normalized through the language we use to describe them. Her book LIVING ON THE EDGE: When Hard Times Become a Way of Life offers the voices of people who struggle to make ends meet, reveals a system that profits from their struggles, and presents a vision for change from the working people who know that the economy we have is unsustainable for most of the U.S. population. You can learn more at cmpascale.org.

The current Supreme Court is the achieved goal of a decades long project on the Right and in the Republican party. Though the 6-3 conservative majority refused to help Trump steal the election, they consistently aid and abet GOP voter suppression and minority rule. Arguments in the Mississippi abortion case indicate their readiness to overrule Roe v Wade. LINDA GREENHOUSE begins her new book, JUSTICE ON THE BRINK, in July 2020, shortly before Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, covers McConnell’s unseemly rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, and then reports and analyzes each month through the end of the term in June 2021 - providing history and context along the way, gathered in her 30 years covering the Court for the New York Times. We talk about that term and the beginning of the highly consequential new one.Linda Greenhouse - New York Timeshttps://www.nytimes.com/by/linda-greenhouseLinda Greenhouse - Yale Lawhttps://law.yale.edu/linda-greenhouse

It’s over a year since the defeat of Trump and five years since his electoral college victory. Here’s my 2017 conversation with NAOMI KLEIN (No Logo; Shock Doctrine) about her book NO IS NOT ENOUGH, written largely in response to his election. Klein makes clear that even successful resistance will not be enough. We must seize this moment to pursue nothing less than the world we long for - successfully confronting climate change and inequality while rebuilding our sense of human community. In addition to No, we need to offer a compelling, inviting, and just Yes. 

GUSTAVE SPETH served as Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Carter Administration, was Administrator of the UN Development Programme for 6 years, Dean of the Yale School of the Environment for 10, and is a co-founder of the World Resources Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Speth believes that a meaningful response to the climate crisis is impossible if we simply focus on climate or energy or emissions. It calls for a new system of political economy to replace the current system which is not up to the challenge. Speth has released two books this year: THE NEW SYSTEMS READER: Alternatives for a Failed Economy and THEY KNEW: The US Federal Governments Fifty-Year Role in Causing the Climate Crisis