When many believe HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - lacking in scientific, medical or public health training - is giving alternative medicine a bad name, here’s my 2003 conversation with Andrew Weil MD. We trace the evolution of Dr. Weil’s work and thinking from his earliest understandings of health and healing to his ongoing commitment to train a new generation of physicians. Weil’s definition of integrative medicine: rooted in the connection of medicine with nature and the natural healing potential of the organism, it utilizes the magic of the doctor/patient relationship to treat the whole person. On this episode, Weil, Spontaneous HealingHyla Cass MD joins the conversation.

Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah lost his brother to Israeli authorities in the second Intifada. Israeli Jew Maoz Inon lost both his parents to Hamas on October 7th. In their book,The Future Is Peace, these two travel guides to Israel/Palestine and lifelong peace activists, take readers on a journey across their holy bloodstained land. They share the mythic, political, and personal history that divides but also binds them and their peoples. This episode, recorded in front of an audience at a LiveTalksLA event in April, punctuated often by laughter, makes clear their love for each other and the land they share as well as their absolute conviction that dialogue and peace must and will prevail. You can learn more at thefutureispeace.com

Plato cautions that democracy inevitably leads to tyranny because the rich always want to get richer and the poor will follow a demagogue who promises to overthrow the rich. I first learned of Plato’s critique in this 2020 conversation with ASTRA TAYLOR, about her documentary WHAT IS DEMOCRACY? and companion book, Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone. We explore democracy’s early roots as well as its current embattled state, and ask: Will we ever replace our current American rule of the wealthy with our never-quite-qchieved rule of the people?

I speak with former federal prosecutor BRENDAN BALLOU about a number of things. His first book was PLUNDER: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America and we get an update. He’s founder and CEO of the Public Integrity Project, which sues those who seek to bribe government officials, as well as officials who seek to be bribed. We check in on that. Ballou was among those who prosecuted the attackers of January 6th so we talk about Trump’s corruption & pardoning practices. Finally, we dig into his  latest book, WHEN COMPANIES RUN THE COURTS: Forced Arbitration and America’s Secret Justice System. You can learn more at PublicIntegrityProject.org

1) History-making entrepreneurial scientist CRAIG VENTER, died last week at the age of 79. The New York Times obituary leads with these words, “A risk-taking outsider, he brought speed, competition, and controversy to one of science’s biggest races.” In 2000, his team published the first sequence of the human genome – earlier and for far less money than the government-sponsored Human Genome Project. Here’s our 2008 conversation, on the release of his memoir, A LIFE DECODED: MY GENOME: MY LIFE. Learn more at jcvi.org 2) In the second half, my 2008 conversation with MacArthur Award winning evolutionary biologist STUART KAUFFMAN about his book, REINVENTING THE SACRED: A NEW VIEW OF SCIENCE, REASON, AND RELIGION. The two of us get excited as we work our way toward his notion that the ceaseless creativity of the universe may be the best way yet to think about God. Learn more at stuartkauffman.com

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Climate scientist MICHAEL MANN (The New Climate War) has been a target of threatening abuse ever since he led the team that produced the “hockey stick graph” making clear the extreme rise in temperatures since the Industrial Revolution. PETER HOTEZ (Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism) has likewise been targeted since his highly visible role in vaccine development and public heath communication during the Covid 19 pandemic. Together they’ve written SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World, in which they name those forces - plutocrats, professionals, petro-states, propagandists, and the press; and offer a path to repel their attacks so that we may effectively confront critical challenges. Learn more at michaelmann.net & peterhotez.org

In “even-a-broken-clock …” news this week, Donald Trump did something I applaud. He signed an executive order to accelerate research and access to psychedelic drugs for medical use, particularly to treat serious mental illness. Psychedelic substances have been used for ceremony and as medicine for millennia. Such properties were being cultivated and studied in the US in the 1960s and early ‘70s till widespread and careless use of psychedelics - think Timothy Leary -  and sensational media reports produced a backlash. Here’s my 2012 episode in which I talk first with CHARLES GROB MD about the scientific research, including his own ground-breaking studies. And then with JAMES FADIMAN about the ideas, the vision, and the advice in his book, PSYCHEDELIC EXPLORERS: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys.

When tech billionaires make nice with authoritarians and AI challenges are everywhere, I check in with JONATHAN TAPLIN, Director Emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, a former tour manager for Bob Dylan & The Band, a producer of films including Martin Scorsese’s MEAN STREETS, and the author of MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy and THE END OF REALITY: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto. We talk about the relationships of AI, democracy, authoritarianism, inequality, billionaires, the arts, and the military. You can learn more at jontaplin.com

When tech billionaires seem okay with authoritarianism and AI may be today’s existential challenge, here’s my 2013 conversation with Jaron Lanier about his book, WHO OWNS THE FUTURE? Lanier envisions a radical solution to surveillance capitalism that he believes could restore the American middle class: we all get paid for our data - which is, after all, the source of the value of networks like Facebook, Yelp, YouTube, etc. We talk about a lot more than that and it’s wild to realize this took place 13 years ago.

Let’s get down to basics. Does your life have a purpose? Can you justify your existence? I talk with REBECCA GOLDSTEIN, philosopher, novelist, and MacArthur Fellow, about THE MATTERING INSTINCT: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us. Goldstein asserts we are “creatures of matter who long to matter” - physical beings governed by the laws of nature, yet obsessed with our own significance. She and I talk about the implications of this perspective on our understanding of what it means to be human, and about how we can put this understanding to use to help us turn things around in this challenging time of tribalism and social and political regression. Learn more at rebeccagoldstein.com/