Free Forum with Terrence McNally

Aired 08/05/12I am joined by Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, who offers a radical solution to the stresses and problems that face Americans today -- radical in its original meaning of having to do with roots of things. He has written a book, A MINDFUL NATION: How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance, and Recapture the American Spirit. Ryan has a daily practice of meditation and now he's advocating that the spread of similar practices could help heal us, not just as individuals but as a nation. His book is filled with examples of how mindfulness is already being successfully applied in education, healthcare, even the military.

Aired 07/29/12I'll be joined by DOUG FINE to talk about his new book,TOO HIGH TO FAIL: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution. As the economy continues to limp along for most Americans and California cities declare bankruptcy, one action -- the legalization of marijuana -- would save government billions per year while raising huge sums in taxes. According to TIME, the legal medicinal cannabis economy already generates $200M annually in taxable proceeds from a mere 500,000 registered medical users in just 16 states. 51% of Americans support full legalization (cannabis regulated for adults like alcohol), and 80% support medicinal cannabis legalization.In the last few minutes, DON DUNCAN, CA director of Americans for Safe Access will give us a brief report on the LA City Council's recent vote to ban all cannabis dispensaries within city limits.

Aired 07/22/12Did you know that LSD is being tested as a treatment for alcoholism? Or that psilocybin is being taken to ease the anxiety of late stage cancer patients? In government-sanctioned studies.Psychedelic substances have been used for ceremony and as medicine for millennia. Such properties were being cultivated and studied in the US in the 60s and early 70s until widespread and careless use of psychedelics and sensational media reports produced a backlash. I will talk with CHARLES GROB MD about the latest scientific research, including his own ground-breaking studies. And with JAMES FADIMAN about the vision, ideas and advice in his book, PSYCHEDELIC EXPLORERS: Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys. CHARLES S. GROB, M.D, Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine, conducted the first government approved psychobiological research study of MDMA, was the principal investigator on a research project in the Amazon studying the visionary plant brew, ayahuasca, and investigated the efficacy of psilocybin to treat anxiety in terminally ill patients. A founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute, devoted to fostering research on psychedelics, he is the editor of Hallucinogens: A Reader and co-editor with Roger Walsh of Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics.JAMES FADIMAN did his undergraduate work at Harvard and his graduate work at Stanford, doing pioneering research with the Harvard Group, the West Coast Research Group in Menlo Park, and Ken Kesey. A former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a professor of psychology, he currently teaches at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA, which he helped found in 1975. He is the author of PSYCHEDELIC EXPLORERS: Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys.

Aired 07/08/12My guest will be NORA BATESON, and we'll talk about AN ECOLOGY OF MIND, the wonderful documentary she's made about her father, the late anthropologist GREGORY BATESON. He saw reality as made up of relationships and systems and had a big impact on a lot of people's worldview in the late 60s and early 70s, myself included. NORA BATESON is a media producer and educator. Her work includes documentaries, multimedia productions, magazine columns, and developing curriculum for elementary and high school students. Central to all her pursuits is the idea of utilizing media and storytelling to encourage cultural understanding, social justice, and environmental awareness.http://anecologyofmind.com/

Aired 07/08/12I seldom interview writers of fiction, but the debut novel THE AGE OF MIRACLES got my attention. It's being heavily promoted as one of THE books of the summer. Enough so that I read the first couple of pages and I really like the writing. It's about how one family in Southern California responds to a global crisis, the slowing of the earth, and the lengthening of days and nights. The writer, KAREN THOMPSON WALKER joins me for a delightful interview.http://www.theageofmiraclesbook.com/

Aired 06/24/12JOHN FULLERTON has spent a career at the highest reaches of the financial world, including as chief investment officer of a division of JP Morgan. He is the founder and director of Capital Institute, which describes itself as "a non-partisan, transdisciplinary collaborative space, whose mission is to explore and effect economic transition to a more just, resilient, and sustainable way of living on this earth through the transformation of finance." That's a big, bold, and daunting mission and I'm eager to learn how they plan to do that and a sense of their progress so far. JOHN FULLERTON is also principal of Level 3 Capital Advisors, LLC. whose investments are primarily focused on sustainable, regenerative land use, and food, and water issues. Fullerton is the creator of the weekly Blog, "The Future of Finance" on the Capital Institutehttp://capitalinstitute.org

Aired 06/17/12DAVID DeGRAW, who a year ago was among a handful who called for the 99% to rise up. On June 14th, Flag Day, last year, Anonymous and the 99% Movement launched a collaborative effort to announce the birth of a "decentralized non-violent resistance movement to end the system of political bribery and break up the big banks centered at the Federal Reserve." This morphed into Occupy Wall Street, and we will talk about one of the newest incarnations of that effort.DAVID DeGRAW. David is founder and editor of http://ampedstatus.com/, formerly editorial director of http://mediachannel.org/, and author of The Economic Elite Vs The People of the United States. He is one of the early leaders of the the Occupy/99% movement and one of the founders of http://moneyoutpack.org/

Aired 06/17/12This week's show will deal with the Occupy/99% movement from two different perspectives. For most of the hour I'll be joined by renowned scholar and activist, NOAM CHOMSKY. His newest book, a collection of interviews and speeches on the movement, is entitled simply OCCUPY. NOAM CHOMSKY is Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where has taught for over 50 years. He is also a renowned political activist and writer. His scores of books on linguistics, human rights, economics and politics, include Manufacturing Consent, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, 9/11, and his latest, OCCUPY.http://chomsky.info/about.htm

Aired 06/10/12PAUL GILDING says it's time to stop worrying about climate change. We need instead to brace for impact because global crisis is no longer avoidable. He believes this Great Disruption started in 2008, with spiking food and oil prices and melting ice caps. It is not simply about fossil fuels and carbon footprints. We have come to the end of Economic Growth, Version 1.0, a world economy based on consumption and waste, where we lived beyond the means of our planet's ecosystems and resourcesAccording to Gilding, the coming decades will see loss, suffering, and conflict as our planetary overdraft is paid; however, they will also bring out the best humanity can offer: compassion, innovation, resilience, and adaptability. Gilding says we must fight-and win-what he calls The One Degree War to prevent catastrophic warming of the earth. He believes the crisis offers us a chance to replace our addiction to growth with an ethic of sustainability, and an unmatched business opportunity as old industries collapse and new companies reshape our economy. In the aftermath of the Great Disruption, we will measure "growth" not by quantity of stuff but quality of life. PAUL GILDING is an independent writer, advisor and advocate for action on climate change and sustainability. He has been involved with and led activist campaigns on a wide variety of social and environmental issues and served as Executive Director, Greenpeace Australia and Greenpeace International. Gilding founded Ecos Corporation in 1995, consulting to some of the world's largest corporations on issues of sustainability until its sale in 2008. His first book is THE GREAT DISRUPTION: Why the Climate Crisis will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World. http://paulgilding.com

Aired 05/16/12Crazy though it may be, I assume many have accepted the fact that the Republican party has a problem with science and ultimately with evidence facts -- reality. It is now a matter of politics for them to deny science. Among their presidential primary candidates, only Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney accept that warming is happening and humans are a contributing factor.CHRIS MOONEY has been on this trail for years. In 2005, he wrote the best-selling THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON SCIENCE. By the time their anti-science, anti-reality bias was established, MOONEY was asking a deeper question. Did science have anything to teach us about why? And it turns out, recently, science does. That brings us to Chris's new book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality. According to Mooney, from climate change to evolution, the rejection of mainstream science among Republicans is growing. Not only that, so is denial of expert consensus on the economy, American history, foreign policy, and much more. Why won't Republicans accept things that most experts agree on? Why do they fight facts? He writes that the political parties reflect personality traits and psychological needs -Republicans wedded to certainty, Democrats to novelty - and this is the root of our divide over reality. Hopefully, understanding how or why Republicans deny science and facts should suggest ways to interact and work with that "reality" differently in order to be more effective moving forward. http://scienceprogressaction.orgrepublicanbrain.com