I was a virtual attendee last week at an inspiring and humbling memorial for the late EDGAR CAHN, on what would have been his 88th birthday. Cahn, an unsung hero of 20th century America, authored articles and books that intentionally led to national policy, including The War on Poverty (1964) which led to the establishment of Legal Aid, Hunger, U.S.A (1968), Our Brother's Keeper: The Indian in White America (1969), and Time Dollars (1992). He and his late wife, Jean Camper, co-founded Antioch School of Law, now the District of Columbia Law School. Here’s my 2012 conversation with Edgar and THOMAS FRANK, influential social critic and author of What's the Matter with Kansas? and One Market Under God.

Though most people now accept that genes influence our height, weight, heart health, etc., many get nervous when we apply that same perspective to things like our mental health, intelligence, or educational attainment. Here’s my conversation with KATHRYN PAIGE HARDEN, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, about the ideas in her first book, THE GENETIC LOTTERY: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality, which attempts to reconcile the findings of behavior genetics with her commitment to social justice. You can learn more at kpharden.com.

Recently China led negotiations to end longstanding hostilities between Iran and Saudi Arabia. In the US, we’ve seen how even one person willing to oppose the popular consensus can dictate our nation’s response to climate change. Here’s my 2019 conversation with BARBARA FINAMORE about her provocative book, Will China Save the Planet?, which explores China’s big picture, long-term strategy to reap the technological, economic, and political benefits of seizing leadership of the global response to climate.    

10K people a day pass the 60-year mark. There’s no way to make the changes needed to protect our planet and society unless we bring our power into play. Here’s my conversation with BOB FULKERSON, Lead National Organizer for THIRD ACT, the year-old organization founded by BILL McKIBBEN to mobilize Boomers and older to defend democracy and confront the Climate Crisis. Learn more at thirdact.org and join a National Day of Action 3/21/23. Deliver a message to big banks who fund fossil fuels & climate destruction.

The world is a crazy place and the battle for our attention has never been more fierce. (1) In 2009’s RAPT: Attention and the Focused Life, WINIFRED GALLAGHER argues that the quality of your life largely depends on what you choose to pay attention to and how you choose to do it. Worth paying attention to. (2) Former Ohio Congressman TIM RYAN - lost 2022 Senate race to Hillbilly Elegy author, election denier J.D.Vance - urges the practice  of meditation in A MINDFUL NATION: How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance, and Recapture the American Spirit.  

The countries, conflicts, and causes change, but has military action and defense spending become the one huge thing that unites both political tribes and parties?  So that when one challenges leaders to be more more respectful of other ways of dealing with conflict and more realistic about our goals and how to achieve them  - decision-makers and the media assign such common sense thinking to the fringe. We talk today with ANDREW BACEVICH, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, about Ukraine, defense spending, and the ideas in his newest book, ON SHEDDING AN OBSOLETE PAST: Bidding Farewell to the American Century. 

I’m calling this conversation with economist ROBERT POLLIN, INFLATION 101. What’s really going on? The current bout of inflation is global, not domestic. It’s higher in other economies than in the US. It’s primarily due to the global pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And it may already be over. Yet the Fed seems intent on risking recession to fight it with tools that ignore its real causes.

In his new book, THE FIFTIES: An Underground History, JAMES GAINES asks: Who laid the groundwork for the ’60s - and then celebrates a few solitary, brave, stubborn individuals who pioneered the radical gay rights, feminist, civil rights, and environmental movements. Their courage and genius changed what it was possible to imagine. As early as the mid-1940s, Harry Hay said “Gay is good.” Pauli Murray laid legal paths for Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Black vets of WWII and Korea said enough is enough. Silent Spring’s Rachel Carson and MIT’s Norbert Wiener warned of potential manmade environmental destruction. You’ll be inspired and you’ll learn a lot. I did.

In the first two years of the pandemic, globally the top 1% captured nearly double the amount of new wealth as the other 99%. In Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World, BRANKO MILANOVIC says we’re all capitalists now. Liberal capitalism delivers rampant inequality and excess as it fights for hearts and minds with political capitalism, as practiced by China. What are the prospects for a fairer world now that capitalism is the only game in town? 

Since 1988, the GOP has won only one national popular vote but has named 11 of 15 Supreme Court justices. The current 6-3 court is a uniquely powerful tool of Minority rule. Their radical decisions last summer went against the majority of Americans on church and state, guns, environmental protection, the climate crisis, and women’s rights. I talk with DAHLIA LITHWICK - senior legal correspondent at Slate and host of Slate’s Amicus podcast - about that eventful term and some of the big cases of the current term. We examine how this court operates in order to achieve their extreme agenda. And we talk about her new book, LADY JUSTICE - stories of courageous and principled women lawyers who worked to hold the line against the Trump administration.