Free Forum with Terrence McNally

Aired 05/30/10We're hearing a lot about the trouble Europe is in. The debt crisis in Greece, and perhaps Spain, Portugal, and Italy, is threatening the Euro and the European Union. What's really going on? How did it happen? How bad is it? How will they deal with it? And what does it mean for the rest of the world and for the US in particular?We'll deal with those issues this Sunday, but that's not all. While the bad news of this Euro crisis makes headlines in the US, a quiet and successful revolution taking place in Europe does not. Europe seems to be finding a way to make capitalism and democracy work for people, not just for corporations. I think this is a critical unreported story in terms of its potential impact. Here's just a few things you may not have heard about.The European Union, 27 member nations with a half billion people, has become the largest, wealthiest trading bloc in the world, producing nearly a third of the world's economy - nearly as large as the U.S. and China combined. Europe has more Fortune 500 companies than either the US, China or Japan.European nations are rated by the World Health Organization as having the best health care systems in the world. Yet they spend far less than the United States for universal coverage, even as U.S. health care is ranked 37th.Europe leads in confronting global climate change with renewable energy technologies like solar and wind power, conservation and "green design," creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the process. Consequently, Europe'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.http://www.europespromise.org/

Aired 05/23/10JACK KORNFIELD is co-founder of two major meditation centers in the US and author of several books including After the Ecstasy the Laundry, and Buddha's Little Instruction Book. Kornfield makes a rare appearance in Southern California to offer a 3 hour workshop Saturday May 29th as a benefit for InsightLA, a local meditation center in Santa Monica. http://www.jackkornfield.org/index/homehttp://www.insightla.org/

Aired 05/16/10I'll be joined by GRANT DAVIS DENNY, a knowledgeable expert and advocate for public financing of elections. Among other things, we'll talk about the recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United vs FEC and Prop 15, a clean money pilot program on the California ballot June 8th.http://www.caclean.org/http://www.commoncause.org/http://www.yesfairelections.org/

Aired 04/25/10 LIVE FROM the LA TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS at the UCLA CAMPUS with REZA ASLAN, author, NO GOD BUT GOD andBEYOND FUNDAMENTALISM and TERRY McDERMOTT longtime LA Times reporter, author, PERFECT SOLDIERS: The 9/11 Hijackers, and his latest, 101 THEORY DRIVE: A Neuroscientist's Quest for Memoryhttp://www.rezaaslan.com/index.htmlhttp://tmcdermott.com/default.aspx

Aired 04/25/10LIVE FROM the LA TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS at the UCLA CAMPUS with SEAN CARROLL Caltech Physicist, author, FROM ETERNITY TO HERE and D.T. MAX New Yorker writer, author, THE FAMILY THAT COULDN'T SLEEPhttp://preposterousuniverse.com/eternitytohere/http://preposterousuniverse.com/self.htmlhttp://dtmax.com/

Aired 04/18/10SIMON JOHNSON, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is currently Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. He is the co-author of STARTING OVER IN EASTERN EUROPE and co-founder of the blog site THE BASELINE SCENARIO with James Kwak, with whom he also co-authored the new book, 13 BANKERS: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.http://baselinescenario.com/http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04162010/profile.html

Aired 04/11/10Father Boyle has made a point of collecting and telling uniquely powerful stories of life and death, and his work has supplied him with more than anyone should know.He has so far buried 168 of his homies, and fills his first book TATTOOS ON THE HEART with their stories. I read it cover to cover on a plane flight Chicago to LA, and cried at least a dozen times. Boyle's compassion is boundless, his work is courageous, and his example is a profound challenge.Father GREGORY BOYLE was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1982. He received his Master of Divinity from the Weston School of Theology; and a Sacred Theology Masters degree from the Jesuit School of Theology. Since 1986, Father Gregory has been the pastor of Dolores Mission in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The church sits between two large public housing projects, Pico Gardens and Aliso Village, known for decades as the gang capital of the world. In 1988, Father Boyle began what would become Homeboy Industries, now located in downtown Los Angeles. His first book is TATTOOS ON THE HEART.http://www.homeboy-industries.org/

Aired 04/04/10Michael Lewis received a BA in art history from Princeton University and an Masters in economics from the London School of Economics. He worked as an investment banker for Salomon Brothers in the 80s before leaving to write LIAR'S POKER. Other books include MONEYBALL, on the Oakland A's, Billy Beane, and baseball's new wave of Ivy League general managers; PANIC: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity; HOME GAME: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood; and THE BLIND SIDE.http://moveyourmoney.info/

Aired 03/28/10JOHN WEST has been the managing partner and owner of two law firms, practiced civil rights and employment law, and worked as a public defender. John is currently in the process of preparing an intense lobbying effort in various state legislatures where issues of patients' rights, especially Death With Dignity, are being debated and decided. The Last Goodnights Organization is the support arm for his efforts in this regard. The Last Goodnights is his first book.In the memoir, The Last Goodnights, John West revealed for the first time a secret, which he'd kept from everyone, including his two sisters, for ten years. West helped each of his terminally ill parents commit suicide, a crime in the state of California, where the deaths took place. http://www.thelastgoodnights.com/

Aired 03/21/10I've been trying to book William Greider ever since I read an article of his last August about restructuring the Federal Reserve. For some, the Fed is the at the center of all that ails us. For others, it is the right place to house any new financial regulatory powers we might gain as a result of the current crisis.There are now 32 co-sponsors for S604 in the Senate and 317 for HR1207 in the House for bills to audit the Federal Reserve, and 95,000 have signed a petition at http://www.auditthefed.com/Just yesterday The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled the Federal Reserve must disclose the names of banks that could have collapsed if they had not received emergency loans.Greider wrote perhaps the finest book on the Federal Reserve and always seems to keep an eye on its secretive and too powerful ways. He challenged Greenspan and Paulson long before it was fashionable. And he was right.We'll focus on the Fed and deal with other economic and political issues if we have time.