Free Forum with Terrence McNally

Originally Aired September 2011"It is the American Dream that the GOP's "slash and burn" agenda is killing off. We need a movement dedicated to renewing the idea that hard work pays in our country; that you can make it if you try; that America remains a land committed to dignity, justice and opportunity for all. Right now, this very idea is on the GOP chopping block. And we must rescue it now -- or risk losing it forever."Van Jones - Rebuild the DreamVAN JONES, a CNN political contributor, is Co-Founder and President of REBUILD THE DREAM, and a co-founder of three other successful non-profit organizations: the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change and Green For All. Formerly green jobs advisor to President Obama and currently a fellow at the MIT Media Lab, he is the author of The Green Collar Economy and Rebuild the Dream.

Originally Aierd May 2010We hear a lot about Europe's troubles - overrun by migrants, the debt crisis in Greece, threats to the Euro and the European Union. We seldom hear that Europe is also making capitalism and democracy work for people, not just corporations. The European Union, 27 nations with a half billion people, is the largest, wealthiest trading bloc in the world, nearly as large as the U.S. and China combined. According to the World Health Organization, Europe has the best health care systems in the world. Europe leads the world in confronting global climate change and the EU'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.

Originally November 20101. The world's people have never have been so connected - in terms of communication, commerce, and culture - yes or no? 2. The world's people have never been more in conflict or threatened - in terms of war, violence, inequity, environmental harms and climate change - yes or no? 3. When confronting the challenges of this globalizing and threatened world, the human race seems continually to come up short - yes or no? Did you answer yes to all three? Jeremy Rifkin agrees. That led him to write THE EMPATHIC CIVILIZATION and ask question #4: Can a new, more empathic consciousness emerge and assert power soon enough? If it can, Rifkin believes that shift will likely be as profound as when Enlightenment philosophers replaced faith-based consciousness with reason.

Originally aired: November 2013JARON LANIER writes: "At the height of its power, Kodak employed more than 140,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. Today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography is Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?"He believes the emerging business model in which companies with relatively few employees profit off the participation of all of us, could doom any hope of a rebirth of the middle class. Lanier wants to solve a problem not many are talking about, and he envisions a radical solution -- "a highly humanistic economy - one that will reward people for the valuable information they share with networks and the companies that control and profit from them."JARON LANIER either coined or popularized the term 'Virtual Reality', founded the first company to sell VR products, and developed cutting-edge medical imaging and surgical techniques. He is also the author of You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto.Also a musician and composer, Lanier has performed with Yoko Ono, Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, George Clinton, and Ozomatli.

Welcome to the second episode of my new monthly podcast series produced with Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.DISRUPTIVE: BIO-INSPIRED ROBOTICS features three separate interviews with (1) RADHIKA NAGPAL, (2) ROBERT WOOD, and (3) CONOR WALSH. From insects in your backyard, to creatures in the sea, to what you see in the mirror, engineers and scientists at Wyss are drawing inspiration to design a whole new class of smart robotic devicesIn this one, CONOR WALSH discusses how a wearable robotic exosuit or soft robotic glove can assist people with mobility impairments, as well as how the goal to create real-world applications drives his research approach.In part one, RADHIKA NAGPAL talks about her work Inspired by social insects and multicellular systems, including the TERMES robots for collective construction of 3D structures, and the KILOBOT thousand-robot swarm. She also speaks candidly about the challenges faced by women in the engineering and computer science fields.In part two, ROBERT WOOD discusses new manufacturing techniques that are enabling popup and soft robots. His team’s ROBO-BEE is the first insect-sized winged robot to demonstrate controlled flight.The mission of the Wyss Institute is to: Transform healthcare, industry, and the environment by emulating the way nature builds, with a focus on technology development and its translation into products and therapies that will have an impact on the world in which we live. Their work is disruptive not only in terms of science but also in how they stretch the usual boundaries of academia.http://wyss.harvard.edu/- See more at: DISRUPTIVE: BIO-INSPIRED ROBOTICS Radhika Nagpal Interviewhttp://temcnally.podomatic.com/entry/2015-07-30T21_32_52-07_00DISRUPTIVE: BIO-INSPIRED ROBOTICS Robert Wood Interview http://temcnally.podomatic.com/entry/2015-07-30T21_37_41-07_00Conor Walsh's interview transcripthttp://aworldthatjustmightwork.com/2015/07/auto-draft-18/

Welcome to the second episode of my new monthly podcast series produced with Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.DISRUPTIVE: BIO-INSPIRED ROBOTICS features three separate interviews with (1) RADHIKA NAGPAL, (2) ROBERT WOOD, and (3) CONOR WALSH. From insects in your backyard, to creatures in the sea, to what you see in the mirror, engineers and scientists at Wyss are drawing inspiration to design a whole new class of smart robotic devicesIn this one, ROBERT WOOD discusses new manufacturing techniques that are enabling popup and soft robots. His team’s ROBO-BEE is the first insect-sized winged robot to demonstrate controlled flight.In part one, RADHIKA NAGPAL talks about her work Inspired by social insects and multicellular systems, including the TERMES robots for collective construction of 3D structures, and the KILOBOT thousand-robot swarm. She also speaks candidly about the challenges faced by women in the engineering and computer science fields.In part three, CONOR WALSH discusses how a wearable robotic exosuit or soft robotic glove could assist people with mobility impairments, as well as how the goal to create real-world applications drives his research approach.The mission of the Wyss Institute is to: Transform healthcare, industry, and the environment by emulating the way nature builds, with a focus on technology development and its translation into products and therapies that will have an impact on the world in which we live. Their work is disruptive not only in terms of science but also in how they stretch the usual boundaries of academia.http://wyss.harvard.edu/- See more at: DISRUPTIVE: BIO-INSPIRED ROBOTICS Radhika Nagpal Interviewhttp://temcnally.podomatic.com/entry/2015-07-30T21_32_52-07_00DISRUPTIVE: BIO-INSPIRED ROBOTICS Conor Walsh Interview http://temcnally.podomatic.com/entry/2015-07-30T22_01_42-07_00Robert Wood's interview transcripthttp://aworldthatjustmightwork.com/2015/07/auto-draft-17/

Welcome to the second episode of my new monthly podcast series produced with Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.DISRUPTIVE: BIO-INSPIRED ROBOTICS features three separate interviews with (1) RADHIKA NAGPAL, (2) ROBERT WOOD, and (3) CONOR WALSH. From insects in your backyard, to creatures in the sea, to what you see in the mirror, engineers and scientists at Wyss are drawing inspiration to design a whole new class of smart robotic devicesIn this one, RADHIKA NAGPAL talks about her work Inspired by social insects and multicellular systems, including the TERMES robots for collective construction of 3D structures, and the KILOBOT thousand-robot swarm. She also speaks candidly about the challenges faced by women in the engineering and computer science fields.In part two, ROBERT WOOD discusses new manufacturing techniques that are enabling popup and soft robots. His team’s ROBO-BEE is the first insect-sized winged robot to demonstrate controlled flight.In part three, CONOR WALSH discusses how a wearable robotic exosuit or soft robotic glove could assist people with mobility impairments, as well as how the goal to create real-world applications drives his research approach.The mission of the Wyss Institute is to: Transform healthcare, industry, and the environment by emulating the way nature builds, with a focus on technology development and its translation into products and therapies that will have an impact on the world in which we live. Their work is disruptive not only in terms of science but also in how they stretch the usual boundaries of academia.http://wyss.harvard.edu/-See more at: DISRUPTIVE: BIO-INSPIRED ROBOTICS Robert Wood's Interview http://temcnally.podomatic.com/entry/2015-07-30T21_37_41-07_00DISRUPTIVE: BIO-INSPIRED ROBOTICS Conor Walsh's Interviewhttp://temcnally.podomatic.com/entry/2015-07-30T22_01_42-07_00Radhika Nagpal's interview transcripthttp://aworldthatjustmightwork.com/2015/07/auto-draft-16/

Originally aired October 2011As the two countries play a high stakes game of chicken, it's a good time to see what Greece and Germany looked like in the aftermath of the global crash. Who better to be our tour guide than best-selling author MICHAEL LEWIS?Lewis's book, BOOMERANG: Travels in the New Third World is made up of articles originally published in Vanity Fair and picks up where 2010's THE BIG SHORT left off. Governments are the focus of this book. Mostly because they have taken on the bad debts of the too-big-to-fail banks, so now they are themselves at risk. Now politics and culture become much more important as to how they will deal with that risk. The book also profiles Ireland, Iceland, and California. Both Ira Glass and Malcolm Gladwell say today's guest is their favorite storyteller. In his books and magazine articles, Lewis writes about sports, business, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, political campaigns, fatherhood. Stuff that matters to a lot of people. He's smart and he has a sense of humor. Once a trader at Salomon Brothers, he wrote his first best-seller, LIAR'S POKER about the excesses of Wall Street during the 1980s. He continues to write about that world with his last two books, a column for Bloomberg, and articles in Vanity Fair. We also talk about the twisted path taken to get MONEYBALL into movie theatres.

Roko Belic (Originally aired January 2012) Rafe Esquith (Originally aired September 2007)Do you want to feel better? Listen to this week's show. In the first half hour, I talk with Academy-Award-nominated filmmaker ROKO BELIC about his documentary, HAPPY, and in the second half with award-winning LA school teacher and author, RAFE ESQUITH about his book, TEACH LIKE YOUR HAIR'S ON FIRE. Are you happy? How often are you happy? What makes you happy? Does money make you happy? Kids and family? Your work? Do you live in an environment that values and promotes happiness and well-being? Do you expect you're going to get happier? How?ROKO BELIC'S HAPPY, a documentary that I think deserves to widely seen, explores these sorts of questions. It weaves the latest scientific research from the field of "positive psychology" with stories from around the world of people whose lives illustrate what we're learning.When the basic approach to the pursuit of happiness that's been taken by many of us and by society in general isn't delivering, this is a good time to ask some basic questions. It's also a good time to do so because we know more than we ever have about what science can tell us about happiness. And we have access to more diverse models and worldviews than ever before.What's getting lost in your daily shuffle? What toll is stress taking on your body? How could you lead a fuller, happier life?Teaching in Los Angeles at one of the nation's largest inner-city grade schools, Hobart Elementary, RAFE ESQUITH leads fifth graders through an uncompromising curriculum of English, mathematics, geography and literature. At the end of the semester, every student performs in a full-length Shakespeare play. Despite language barriers and poverty, many of these Hobart Shakespeareans move on to attend outstanding colleges.

Originally aired September 2010You startle awake to a rude alarm clock. Nothing you'd rather do than sleep a bit more. Coffee gets you going enough to make it out the door. On your morning commute you zone out, oblivious to radio reports of weather disasters or war casualties. At work, juggling your cell phone, landline, and email, you speak to countless faceless people without leaving your desk. You grab lunch over a pile of paperwork. Driving home, you look up to notice what must have been a beautiful sunset. At day's end, you're back where you started. What's getting lost in your daily shuffle? What toll is stress taking on your body? How could you lead a fuller, happier life?JON KABAT-ZINN says the answer may be "living life moment by moment as if it really mattered." He believes that by practicing mindfulness, we can literally and metaphorically come to our senses - as individuals and as a society. And there's growing scientific evidence to back him up. TRUDY GOODMAN has done a lot to make that practice accessible here in LA, with the InsightLA center in Santa Monica.