Terrence Mcnally Podcast

“We're still fighting the last battles of the Civil War," according to attorney CONNIE RICE in a recent interview. Rice has for decades been doing the hard work of police reform. She believes, “There's a war within American policing … Does it continue to go with the policing that descended from slavery, which is containment suppression? Or do they go toward community healing, wraparound safety, public health policing — which doesn't even promote cops for making arrests?” Here’s my 2012 conversation with Rice about her book, POWER CONCEDES NOTHING.

ELIZABETH FERNANDEZ has worked on voter education and GOTV campaigns, helping to register thousands of new voters. She’s now Communications Director of MOVEMENT VOTER PROJECT, which offers a clear break from failed electoral strategies of big donors, big consultants, and big TV ad buys. MVP helps donors move their money to the best local community-based organizations in key states, who are alive on the ground 365 days a year, election or not. In 2018, they moved more than $13M to 350+ groups in 42 states - in almost every competitive US House, Senate, Governor’s race and ballot measure. You can learn more at movement.vote.

2019 was marked by mass demonstrations around the globe. That ended with the pandemic. until millions witnessed George Floyd’s death. For more than two weeks crowds have risked their health to protest police brutality in all 50 states. People argue whether violent or non-violent protest works best. ERICA CHENOWETH did the research. Listen to my 2019 conversation with her about her book WHY CIVIL RESISTANCE WORKS: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.

GEORGE PACKER’s recent essay in the Atlantic, We Are Living in a Failed State, was being quoted a lot - before George Floyd’s death and the ensuing days of rage. Packer is the author of 2013’s THE UNWINDING, which reported on a country growing vulnerable to a demagogue like Trump, and 2019’s Richard Holbrooke biography OUR MAN, just out in paperback. He’s a staff writer at The Atlantic and I reached out after reading two of his recent essays The President Is Winning His War on American Institutions and We Are Living in a Failed State. We talk about how it all fits together.

ASTRA TAYLOR takes democracy seriously. In her documentary WHAT IS DEMOCRACY? and the companion book, Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, she explores its early roots as well as its current embattled state. She reminds us that real democracy—fully inclusive and egalitarian—has never existed. Both ancient Athens and the original US were slave states. Can we restore rule of the people to the current American rule of the wealthy? Can democracy handle big challenges like the Coronovirus pandemic and climate change?

In these unsettling times, I turned to the archives for inspiring ideas about the meaning of life. First, my 2009 conversation with physicist FRITJOF CAPRA about one of my favorite books, The Turning Point. Written in 1981, it looks at many domains of human activity, and makes clear that we need to move toward a systems view of reality that sees everything as dynamic and interdependent. True to those themes, in the second half you’ll hear my 2008 conversation with MacArthur award-winning biologist STUART KAUFFMAN about his provocative book, Reinventing the Sacred, in which he offers an inspiring image of God as the ceaseless creativity of the universe and of life itself.

Millennials have already revolutionized technology, commerce and media. They’re responsible for our major social movements. And there are now 26 Millennials in Congress - five times as many as before the 2018 midterms. TIME magazine national correspondent CHARLOTTE ALTER (cover stories on Mayor Pete, AOC, and Person of the Year Greta Thunberg) examines how millennials have gained power so far — from City Hall to Congress. In her first book, THE ONES WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR, she asks - How are we going to get to the political future? - and - What’s it going to look like when we do?

In The Patterning Instinct, JEREMY LENT brings together cultural history and neuroscience - a new discipline he calls cognitive history. Lent reminds us we see the world through stories. The right has dominated politics with a story of America that is false on many counts and based on a set of values that brings us to this moment when we cannot work together to save our lives. Can we come out the other side with a story of shared vulnerability, shared fate, and shared purpose? I think this conversation recorded in 2018 lays a good foundation for considering that challenge.

The American people usually come together when confronting huge challenges – think of WWII and the attacks of 9/11. But today, facing the global pandemic, we are divided – on nearly every aspect of the crisis. In NONZERO, ROBERT WRIGHT contends that evolution and history move us toward greater cooperation, collaboration, and win-win outcomes. We talk about why - though individuals act heroically - the nation remains tribalized.

ROBERT WRIGHT takes on big questions, and in 2009’s THE EVOLUTION OF GOD, he shows how the concept of God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam has varied over time depending on the politics at play when their stories were told. When people see their interests threatened, this perception brings out the most belligerent parts of their religion. We explore how this might apply to Islamic terrorists and Evangelical Christians.

MARY O’HARA grew up in deep poverty in Belfast, Northern Ireland during the Troubles. In THE SHAME GAME, she fights to break the power of the narrative that excuses the cruel and unjust treatment of our most vulnerable. We talk about her own story and the stories of others who have begun to move past that narrative in their own lives, often through the power of reading and writing, the same pathways that O’Hara herself took. Inspiring.

Before the pandemic, before Trump, millions of Americans had already lost confidence in our political and economic system. Stagnant wages, volatile job markets, an unwillingness to deal with threats like climate change, fed a sense that the system is fixed, and serves only those with enough money to buy power. ROBERT REICH and I talk about the pandemic and about his new book, THE SYSTEM: Who Rigged It and How Do We Fix It?

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 capitalist excess as it fights for hearts and minds with political capitalism, as practiced by China. Milanovic asks - What are the prospects for a fairer world now that capitalism is the only game in town? And what can we do to make that more likely?

Our bodies — and all living systems — accomplish tasks far more sophisticated and dynamic than any entity yet designed by humans. By emulating nature's principles, researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering develop innovative engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, robotics, and more. Here’s my 2012 conversation with founding director, DON INGBER. I find the notion of learning from nature one of the most exciting developments in human activity, one that gives me great hope.

How far would you travel to vote if your polling place closed? How much time would you spend before giving up? I talk with ROBERT GREENWALD of Brave New Films about his latest documentary SUPPRESSED: The Fight to Vote, which exposes voter suppression tactics and policies used in Georgia that could be deployed nationally in 2020. Polling place closures, voter purges, missing absentee ballots, extreme wait times, and a host of voter ID issues disproportionately prevented many students and people of color from casting their ballots. I also speak with Linda Marshall, a disenfranchised voter. Learn more at bravenewfilms.org

On a national level and in many states, when politics and elections are played fair and square, Republicans lose. So they turn to gerrymandering, voter suppression, the refusal to act on Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, etc And it works. In this 2018 conversation, DAVID FARIS says “Enough.” We talk about the ideas in his book: IT’S TIME TO FIGHT DIRTY: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics.

In TIGHTROPE, the Pulitzer Prize winning husband-wife team of Nick Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn tell the story of how the town in which Nick grew up was devastated by the loss of well-paying jobs, how policy failures on education, healthcare, and criminal justice led ultimately to his childhood friends’ deaths of despair, how this is a national phenomenon and finally how we can end this crisis in working class America.

Since 1991 STEPHAN SCHWARTZ has been following trends shaping the future, and has tracked the rise of fascist and identitarian politics and the Theocratic Right. His new book 8 LAWS OF CHANGE: How to Be an Agent of Personal and Social Transformation, based on years of research, shows how nonviolent compassionate life-affirming change can be achieved. I've subscribed to his Schwartzreport email digest for years - 4 articles each day well worth reading.

In Homewreckers, AARON GLANTZ tells how a group of Wall Street bankers and private equity — including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, as well as Trump confidants and funders — transferred billions of dollars in wealth to themselves from millions of individual homeowners after the real estate crash of the Great Recession. Many of them are now working to weaken the safeguards put in place to prevent it from happening again.

The virus is spreading, Brexit looms, democracy in America is being abused. Let’s take a break this week. First, here’s my 2012 conversation with film director Roco Belic about his documentary, HAPPY. It features science and stories from around the world. What did he learn? What can we use? In the second half, you’ll hear my 2005 conversation with US teacher of the year Rafe Esquith, who taught fifth grade in LA for over thirty years, about the Hobart Shakepearians - members of his classes who performed a Shakespeare play in its entirety every year.