Free Forum with Terrence McNally

Last week I spoke with ARLIE HOCHSCHILD, author of STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND: Anger & Mourning on the American Right, about the Trump years, the insrrection, and the future. Given the inauguratiopn of Biden and Harris and the several immense crises we face, nothing may be more important at this moment than understanding our neighbors with whom we disagree. So here’s my 2018 conversation with Hochschild, in which we learn about her path to her current work and the lessons she learned from the folks she listend to. Finally we ask each other what new story might inspire more Americans to yearn for the future rather than the past.

I last spoke with Berkeley sociologist ARLIE HOCHSCHILD in 2018 about her book, STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND: Anger & Mourning on the American Right, in which she shares what she learned in five years talking to Tea Partiers turned Trumpers in Southern Louisiana. Turns out she's continued to talk with the folks she met researching her book. I call on her again to try to make some sense of my fellow Americans and find a path back from the chaos and breakdown that seems possible in the days and weeks ahead.

It is a significant achievement and an enormous relief that the White House and both Houses of Congress are out of the hands of the anti-social and anti-democratic Republicans. To remind us, however, what made Trump not just possible but likely, here’s my 2012 conversation with HEDRICK SMITH, about his book, WHO STOLE THE AMERICAN DREAM? It makes clear we need more than Obama 2.0 in 2021. Smith keeps the book’s themes alive online at hedricksmith.com.

THOMAS HOMER-DIXON correctly predicted a lot of the crises we face. But, as we leave 2020 behind and give birth to 2021, i talk with him about his new book, COMMANDING HOPE: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril. Sample “To keep our hope from being vague and naive, it must have a clear vision of a positive future. Then, to keep it from being false, we must avoid wishful thinking about the likelihood of that future.” Learn more at commandinghope.com

Too often when we read about immigrant children, they are being torn from their parents’ arms or blamed for lawlessness. Sisters Constance Touey and Jeannette Lucey met in 1984 when they were both assigned to a parish K-8 school in inner city Philadelphia. In DO IT BETTER: How the Kids of St. Francis de Sales Exceeded Everyone’s Expectations, they tell the remarkable stories of their as principal and 8th grade teacher as they worked to educate and transform the lives of wave after wave of poor immigrant children. I’m proud to have written it with them.

Planetary health is by definition big picture, but it’s made immediate by the pandemic. I see our environmental goals as an effective reckoning with climate change and a healthy relationship with the rest of nature. I’ll talk about that relationship with SAM MYERS, Research Scientist at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health and the Founding Director of the Planetary Health Alliance (planetaryhealthalliance.org). Myers is one of the editors of PLANETARY HEALTH: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves, which explores the impacts of environmental change on human health and offers solutions by reimagining our cities, our food and energy systems, and even our economics and ethics.

Today we face several crises that have either grown out of the distortion of our economy and our politics or are unsolvable because of them – including inequality, climate change, social division, crippled government, and endangered democracy. In her book, REIMAGINING CAPITALISM, REBECCA HENDERSON calls for us to abandon two ideas from the 1970s at the root of our troubles: First, that business should dominate politics and write its own rules; and second, that the sole purpose of corporate behavior is to enhance shareholder value. You can learn more at reimaginingcapitalism.org

I talk with ELIE MYSTAL, Justice Correspondent at The Nation magazine. We look through a legal lens at Trump’s fraud claims and his obstruction of an effective transition, at the question of what it will take for Biden to reverse Trump’s executive orders and rules, and finally we talk about the Supreme Court. You can learn more at thenation.com

More than 72 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. 72 million voted for his incompetence, racism, ignorance, cruelty, criminality, and for his disastrous handling of the pandemic. Here’s my 2018 conversation with MILTON BENNETT, an expert on culting behavior. He spells out the methods Trump uses – consciously or unconsciously - to turn his followers into a cult, impervious to contrary influence and united in defense of their aims and their leader.

It lookls as if Joe Biden will win a very tight electoral college victory against arguably the worst president in history in the midst of a deadly pandemic and crippled economy the incumbent has bungled disastrously. How could this election even be close? ROB JOHNSON, Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), and I talk about how we got here and what it’s going to take to move forward. As long as both parties depend on Wall Street and the 1% for funding, our real challenges - climate change, restoring the middle class, healthcare, systemic racism, etc.- will never truly be dealt with.