Table of Contents 

2010

2009

2008

2007

programs recorded prior to 2007 may be found in the Index

2011 2011

James Stewart
Justice — Obstructed & Defiled

The end of civilization. Organized crime. Tribalism. These are some of the words that James Stewart uses to describe a plague sweeping across America. The greatest damage, he says, comes from role-models who take a solemn oath to tell the truth ... and then lie. Even when convicted of lying, they continue their offensive performance. In Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America, brings together the stories of four convicted criminals: Martha Stewart, "Scooter" Libby, Barry Bonds and Bernie Madoff. The complicity of lawyers, the SEC, baseball owners, the media and gullible (and frequently dishonest) supporters further enables their delusions. Democracy requires justice. When justice is perverted and obstructed by willful lying, democracy is imperiled.

Journalist and author James Stewart has won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the 1987 stock market crash and insider trading. Formerly Page One editor of the Wall Street Journal, he is now a business columnist for The New York Times. Mr. Stewart is perhaps best known for his 1991 book, Den of Thieves. He practiced law until 1979 and is a regular contributor to The New Yorker.

[July 16—July 30]

James Mann
False Image

Rather than re-direct savings resulting from the end of the Cold War and in the absence of enemies that could justify the huge costs of the military budget, the Defense Department under Dick Cheney came up with a new rationale (yes, he ran the Defense Department before he became vice president). According to James Mann, the new excuse was "we need a huge military that's so big that any emerging rival would realize it is crazy to try and challenge the American military power." Could it also be "crazy" to spend what America spends?
History won't loose its hold on us, so we had best understand what actually happened rather that what participants want us to believe. Mr. Mann helped us revise our understanding of Ronald Reagan and of the George W. Bush administrations.


Prior to devoting full time to books, Mr. Mann was an award-winning Washington reporter, columnist, and foreign correspondent for 20 years at the Los Angeles TImes. The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War further enhances the Mr. Mann’s keen observations in his bestseller Rise of the Vulcans, bringing to clearer focus the individuals and influence of American conservatives and neoconservatives from the Nixon Administration forward. His several books on China include the best-seller, The China Fantasy. He is author in residence at the prestigious Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and lives near Washington, D.C.

[June 12—June 26]

Lonnie Johnson
Awake to the Possible

America's irrational commitment to coal, oil and natural gas is a mistake. Billions of dollars flow to nations which are hostile to the U.S. Billions more are spent on military ventures intended to protect those energy supplies. Carbon based fuels pollute our air and water. They cause disease and death. Burning fossil fuels destabilizes the global climate.


Defenders of the status quo argue that there are no economically viable alternative energy sources currently available. Their analysis does not include the costs listed above. The cheapest energy is the energy not use. With less than 5% of the world's population, Americans use 20% of its energy. Clearly there are great opportunities in conservation and increased efficiency. There are also major opportunities for scientific discovery and technological development.

One of the people who has stepped up to this challenge is Lonnie Johnson. Until now, Mr. Johnson is best know as the inventor of the Super Soaker water gun. It is the profits from that invention which have principally funded his research. With years of experience in the Air Force and NASA, at JPL and the Oakridge National Laboratory, he stepped outside the confines of industry, government and academia to pursue his own vision. Mr. Johnson is building and testing devices, batteries and solar electric generators, that many scientist had said were impossible. The odds are heavily against him, but he may be the person who leads us away from the fiscal and environment devastation of fossil fuels. See what you think.

[May 21—June 12]

Michele Goldberg
Women Are People

America grants human rights to corporations and questions whether those same rights should be permitted to women. That’s irrational ... and maddeningly counter-productive.


Susan Faludi characterizes it as “The Undeclared War Against American Women.” Tanya Melich calls it “The Republican War Against Women.” Conservatives oscillate between paternalism and overt misogyny. In America today, the latter appears ascendant. As Republicans and the Tea Partites spar over who’s the toughest conservative, data, facts and reality do not interfere with their proposals. Journalist Michelle Goldberg's research shows that the cure for many challenges facing our world today is the same: treat women as humans, allow them human rights.


Investigative journalist and author of The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World, Ms. Goldberg’s prior book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. She is a former senior writer at Salon.com. Among the many who have published Ms. Goldberg’s work are The New Republic, The Nation, Glamour and Rolling Stone magazines in the U.S. and The Guardian in the U.K. She has taught at New York University’s graduate school of journalism. Ms. Goldberg earned her graduate degree at the University of California - Berkeley.  She is a contributor to The Daily Beast.

[March 28—May 21]

Elizabeth Strout
Sustenance

We have to go to literature for the deepest, truest emotions. Otherwise we do not know who are, we cannot understand what it’s like to be another person -- and we must, says Elizabeth Strout, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Ms. Strout’s Olive Kitteridge is a novel composed of a series of short stories. She is also the author of the national bestseller Abide with Me and of Amy and Isabelle. Both won major prizes. A finalist for both the PEN/Faulkner Award and England’s Orange Prize, Ms. Strout’s short stories have been published in magazines from  The New Yorker to O: The Oprah Magazine. She grew up in Maine, is currently is on the MFA faculty of Queens University in Charlotte, NC, and lives with her family in New York City.

[February 14—March 28]

Carolyn Jessop
Crimes of "Religion"

"Money laundering ... child abuse ... worse than the Taliban ... priesthood prostitutes ... ."


In America? In the name of religion? Carolyn Jessop has documented the brutal physical and psychological force used to hold women and children in the sub-human state of God-sanctioned property by a "chosen" group of men. 

Carolyn Jessop’s memoir, Escape, traces her former life as a member of the radical polygamist FLDS cult. Born into the sixth generation of polygamists and forced at 18 to become the 4th wife of a 50 year old man who fathered her 8 children in 15 years, Ms. Jessop was the first woman to be given full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the closed world of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), an off-shoot of the Mormon church. Working with the Utah attorney general, Ms. Jessop was crucial to the arrest, conviction and sentencing of FLDS leader Warren Jeffs. She now actively campaigns for education and in defense of women and children still trapped in polygamy including boys forcibly ejected from the FLDS and for the enforcement of anti-polygamy laws nationwide. 

[January 30—February 14]

Anthony Lewis

Why Speech Must Be Free

As political discourse in America becomes diminishingly civilized, understanding the role of free speech in a nation nominally governed by its citizens is exceptionally important. Freedom for the Thought We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment is Anthony Lewis' wise and insightful examination of the essential nature of this basic freedom ... and the obligations it imparts. Mr. Lewis points to the pivotal New York Times v. Sullivan case as a prime example of the importance of free speech and of a free, unfettered and responsible press.
Anthony Lewis' professional integrity, diligence and intelligence serve as a model to reporters, editors and publishers. His example also serves as a rebuke to the main stream media which too regularly fall far short of his standards.

An award-winning reporter and author, the Pulitzer Prize has twice been awarded to Mr. Lewis over his long and distinguished journalistic career. Gideon’s Trumpet, his book on the important right to legal counsel, has been in print for almost half a century. Mr. Lewis was columnist for The New York Times op-ed page from 1969 through 2001 and for many years the paper’s London correspondent. He has also been a lecturer at Harvard’s Law School, a visiting professor at the Universities of California, Illinois, Oregon, and Arizona, and since 1983, the James Madison Visiting Professor at Columbia University. He and his wife, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, live in Cambridge.

[January 17—January 30]

Alan Alda
The Meaning of Laughter ... and Other Things

Regardless of the role or script, when Alan Alda is in the scene, one feels that there is an adult present, that sanity may peek through at any moment. His insights on the arts and on acting are equally relevant to living a life.


Alan Alda is an actor, director, screenwriter, teacher, activist and author. Among his many awards are 6 Emmy’s, 6 Golden Globes, nominations for both an Academy Award and a Grammy. His early fame came as “Hawkeye” Pierce, the character he created over the 11 years M*A*S*H was a smash-hit television series. In addition to writing and directing a number of those episodes, he’s also written and directed many feature films and appeared regularly on Broadway. During 11 years as host of PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers, he engaged his own active curiosity about science. A devoted family man and son of a famous actor, Mr. Alda revisits it all in his best-selling books, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself.

[December 23—January 17]

2010 2010

Robert A. G. Monks
Corpocracy

In his 2008 book, Corpocracy, Bob Monks presents a clear and strong case for making corporations accountable and responsible. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision unleashed an unprecedented flood of corporate money on the American political system. These corporations are being managed for the benefit of their managers, NOT for the benefit of their shareholder owners. As a consequence, the shareholders’ money and resources are being used in the parochial interest of managers. Shareholders are being short-changed, democracy undermined and capitalism damaged. Monks says the the means for correcting these flaws already exist and require no new legislation. What is required is the public and political will to enforce existing laws.


Robert Monks is a venture capitalist, shareholder activist, lawyer, and author most recently of Corpocracy: How CEOs and the Business Roundtable Hijacked the World's Greatest Wealth Machine -- And How to Get It Back. He’s founded a number of investment funds and asset management companies, started Institutional Shareholder Services, the environmental research company Trucost, and The Corporate Library. He’s served on the board of a dozen publicly-held companies; headed Boston Trust; and held several influential government positions in the Reagan Administration. In addition to Corpocracy, Mr. Monks also wrote The Emperor’s Nightingale, Reel and Rout, coauthored Watching the Watchers and Power and Accountability with Nell Minow.

[November 16—December 23]

John Dean
Dead Government Society

         

In Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches, John Dean makes the case that, for all of the damage done by Republicans to American democracy, the gravest threat is to the Judicial Branch. Judicial fundamentalist, he says, believe that "the Bill of Rights don't apply to the states ... . What happens? ...(R)emoval of the protection against self-incrimination, ... Utah might decide to have the Mormon religion as their state religion. ... Women have no rights at all in the fundamentalist thinking." The Roberts' Court is living down to Mr. Dean's predictions.

John Dean is attorney, author and key "Watergate" witness. In addition to Broken Government, his Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, and Conservatives Without Conscience, form a trilogy based on 40 years inside his "former tribe", the Republican Party. Once White House legal counsel to President Richard Nixon, Mr. Dean’s Blind Ambition, published in 1976, was followed by a number of other books. He had also served as chief minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee and an associate deputy attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice. Following a successful career as a corporate attorney, he is now a columnist for Findlaw.com and with his wife, Maureen, lives in California.

[October 30—November 13]

Thomas Frank
Everything is Broken

         

If we turn over the government to people who are hostile to government, it is unsurprising that government will suffer and the people whom government exists to serve will pay the price. We are paying the price. Bob Dylan's 1988 song "Everything is Broken" could be the soundtrack for the mess republicans are making ... with quite a bit of help from nominal democrats.

Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule documents decades of Republicans serving the interests of Big Business at the expense of the American people. Mr. Frank, a former Young Republican, also wrote What’s the Matter with Kansas? and One Market Under God, contrasting everyday cultural conservatives with predatory acts of free-market fundamentalists and right wingers committed to destroying government. He was founding editor of The Baffler, received the Lannon Award and was a regular columnist for The Wall Street Journal until moving full-time to Harper's in August, 2010.

[October10—October 30]

David Orr
Hope is a Verb

         

If our world is to have a chance of remaining livable in ways to which we are accustomed, we must find the will and courage to change our politics and our lifestyles. David Orr is candid about the challenges we face and hopeful about our abilities to meet and overcome those challenges.

Active worldwide as scholar, teacher, writer, speaker and entrepreneur, Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse is David Orr’s seventh book. He helped launch the green campus movement and organized the first-ever conference on the effects of impending climate change on banking in the 1980s. He led the creation of the first “green” building on a U.S. college campus, the iconic Adam Joseph Lewis Center at Oberlin College, where he is Distinguished Professor and Special Assistant to its President. Dr. Orr is also a Professor at University of Vermont; he has received numerous awards.

{September 23—October 10]

Rodger Schlickeisen
at War with Wolves and Ourselves

         

In many ecosystems, the wolf is a keystone species. Remove the keystone and the system is imbalanced and endanger. For Rodger Schlickeisen, this is imporatnat and this is personal.

 

President & CEO, Defenders of Wildlife since 1991, Mr. Schlickeisen has spurred tremendous growth for Defenders, one of the United States’ most prominent conservation advocacy organizations. Mr. Schlickeisen is also President of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, a political non-profit working to elect pro-conservation national leaders. Earlier, he was CEO of a leading consulting firm specializing in advancing the work of progressive advocacy organizations. He served in the Carter White House in the Office of Management & Budget and was Chief of Staff for U.S. Sentator Max Baucus. He is on the advisory committees of the Earth Communications Organization and the Environmental Media Association. His opinion pieces and articles are widely published.

[August 5—September 23]

Millicent Monks
What Money Can't Buy

         

Millicent Monks spent much of her childhood in her room, alone, hiding from her mother.

 

Mental illness is blind to great wealth, Ms. Monks demonstrates in Songs of Three Islands. The great-granddaughter of Thomas Carnegie (Andrew’s brother and business partner), Ms. Monks, unflinchingly relates the multi-generational impact of her great-grandmother’s, mother’s, daughter’s and granddaughters’ mental illnesses. She strives to help others to cope with mental illness, especially mothers. Her “islands”, both physical and metaphorical, stretch from the early, matriarchal Carnegie estate on Georgia’s Cumberland Island, through Ms. Monks’ adult life on an island in Maine, to her guiding metaphor and final destination, a patriarchal island far to the North.

{July22 —August 5]

Charles Raison & Stuart Kauffman
Lawless Potential

         

Charles Raison is a psychiatrist who is researching the efficacy of meditation as a tool for coping with stress. Stuart Kauffman is a theoretical biologist who has attacked the roots of reductionist science, and offered plausible alternatives. Together they explore what science is telling us ... about us, and perhaps where we're headed next. We're evolving into our futures and have great difficulty in knowing what that means, but the effort is still worthy of our time.

[June 20—July 22]

James Mann
False Image

         

As the United States militarizes more and more of its foreign policy, the role of soldiers becomes more important: on the often amorphous battlefields, in alien communities and, after their soldiering is done, on the streets of America. Throughout its history, the nation has typically abandoned its soldiers after they return home, though they are frequently damaged -- physically and psychically.

Historian Edward Lengel writes about wars and warriors. In To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918, he honors the bloodiest battle in American history. (If remembered at all, it’s for Carey Grant’s movie portrayal of Sergeant Alvin C. York, Dr. Lengel’s cousin.) Other military history books Dr. Lengel has written include General George Washington: A Military Life. Dr. Lengel, in conjunction with the Papers of George Washington documentary editing project, received the National Humanities Medal. He makes frequent appearances on television documentaries and was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize.

[May 18—June 20]

James Carse
Religion vs Belief

         

If Jesus actually said "You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free," he was wrong says James Carse. "Truth" is closed and dogmatic; our commitment should be to truthfulness, a constant striving to explore and learn.

Dr. Carse is a religious scholar, author and artist. The Religious Case Against Belief continues his long-time public engagement with pressing current issues, as he did for many years on CBS-TV in New York City. His widely admired book, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility has been continuously in print since first published in 1968 and has become a best-seller over that period. His other books include The Silence of God, Breakfast at the Victory and The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple. Emeritus Professor of the History and Philosophy of Religion, Dr. Carse directed New York University’s Religious Studies Program for 30 years. He lives in New York City and Massachusetts’ Berkshires.

[April 27—May 118]

Edward Lengel
Arrogance of War

         

As the United States militarizes more and more of its foreign policy, the role of soldiers becomes more important: on the often amorphous battlefields, in alien communities and, after their soldiering is done, on the streets of America. Throughout its history, the nation has typically abandoned its soldiers after they return home, though they are frequently damaged -- physically and psychically.

Historian Edward Lengel writes about wars and warriors. In To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918, he honors the bloodiest battle in American history. (If remembered at all, it’s for Carey Grant’s movie portrayal of Sergeant Alvin C. York, Dr. Lengel’s cousin.) Other military history books Dr. Lengel has written include General George Washington: A Military Life. Dr. Lengel, in conjunction with the Papers of George Washington documentary editing project, received the National Humanities Medal. He makes frequent appearances on television documentaries and was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize.

[April 7—April 27]

Garry Wills
Faith and Enlightenment

         

While far from inevitable, the conflict between reason and religion was built into American politics by an accident of the historical timing of its political creation. The nation's founding thinking, principles and documents are rooted firmly in the English Enlightenment. Yet at roughly the turn of each century since that founding, the nation has swung into periods of anti-scientific, fundamentalist fervor. Garry Wills says that the latest manifestation of this habitual oscillation was the political ascendancy of George W. Bush and the Republican Right.

 
Dr. Wills is a scholar, historian, classicist and author. Professor Wills’ many bestselling books include What Jesus Meant, What Paul Meant and What the Gospels Meant. His Lincoln at Gettysburg won the Pulitzer Prize, his two dozen other books are also widely read and admired. As one of nation’s leading public intellectuals, he appears often in leading periodicals. Professor Wills took his doctorate in the classics after studying for the priesthood, a tradition with which he continues to identify and to critique. Many years a teacher of ancient and New Testament Greek at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Wills is now professor of history emeritus at Northwestern University.

[March 23—April 7]

Christopher Dickey
Know Your Terrorist

         

Making people feel safe is not the same as making the people truly safe. Illusions and delusions are no substitute for actual security. When the threat to our well-being comes from terrorist, Christopher Dickey says the work of the New York Police Department provides important lessons for all of us.

 
An award-winning Newsweek reporter, Mr. Dickey is their Paris Bureau Chief and Middle East Regional Editor. Previously, he was Cairo Bureau Chief and Central America Bureau Chief for the Washington Post. Mr. Dickey, author of  Securing the City: Inside America’s Best Counterterror Force -- the NYPD, also writes the weekly “Shadowland” column on counterterrorism, espionage and the Middle East for Newsweek online. His five other books include Summer of Deliverance. He lives in Paris and New York City.

[March 7—March 23]

Anthony Lewis
Why Speech Must be Free

         

A major challenge to the framers of the American constitution was the question of how to get the people to truly act as the nation's ultimate sovereigns ... a challenge which continues to haunt us. "They have to know what's going on; they have to be free to criticize their leaders," says Anthony Lewis. "That's the First Amendment." At a time when corporations have subsumed many of the rights of natural people, the question of the exercise of sovereignty is more vital than ever.

 
Anthony Lewis is an award winning reporter and author. Twice the Pulitzer Prize has been awarded to Mr. Lewis over his long and distinguished journalistic career. Author of Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment, his Gideon’s Trumpet has been in print for over 40 years. Mr. Lewis was columnist for The New York Times op-ed page from 1969 through 2001 and for many years the paper’s London correspondent. He has also been a lecturer at Harvard’s Law School, a visiting professor at the Universities of California, Illinois, Oregon, and Arizona, and since 1983, the James Madison Visiting Professor at Columbia University. He and his wife, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, live in Cambridge.

[February 19—March 7]

Ray Anderson
Natural Profits

         

Industrialist Ray Anderson has convincingly demonstrated that genuinely green businesses can be genuinely profitable. Despite claims by vested economic interests that environmental and economic well-being inevitably conflict, the facts clearly demonstrate that sustainable future growth in the econo-sphere rest firmly on compatibility with nature, rather than conflict. Mr. Anderson presents the what and the how in Confessions of a Radical Industrialist.

 
A native Georgian, Ray Anderson is an engineering graduate of Georgia Tech which he attended on a football scholarship. He founded Interface, Inc. in 1973 and took it public in 1983. In 1994, after reading Natural Capitalism, he acknowledged that he was a "criminal" and "plunderer of the earth" because of the damage his company was doing to the planet and to people. He then committed his company to becoming sustainable by 2020. Mr. Anderson was co-chair of the President's Council on Sustainable Development during the Clinton administration and is featured in the 2004 Canadian documentary The Corporation and Leonardo DiCaprio 2007 film The 11th Hour.

[February 3—February19]

Paul Hawkin
Suicide Interventions

         

Environmental leaders all over the world cite Paul Hawken as their inspiration. The clarity of his vision and his manifest compassion are a valuable resource as we work to create human solutions for the problems we've created. If the question is "what's going to happen to the earth and to us?" the answer is "it depends on what you do."

 

Pioneering environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist and author, Paul Hawken is one of the world’s foremost environmental leaders, having spent his life putting his commitment to justice into action. Starting his activism in Selma, AL, when he was 19 years old, he has founded multiple businesses including Smith & Hawken and now heads the Natural Capital Institute. He is an widely sought speaker internationally, has contributed to and appeared in countless media outlets, has written international classics include The Ecology of Commerce, Natural Capitalism (with Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins), Blessed Unrest and Growing a Business, which Mr. Hawken also took to television. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

[January 12— February 3]

Frederick Ferré
The Continuity of All Things

         

As we are rapidly learning, humans are deeply connected to the context in which live. We are deeply embedded within nature and ignore that at our peril. Frederick Ferré, building on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead argues that we simply cannot separate ourselves from our surroundings, that the universe in all its parts is fully alive.

 
Philosopher, teacher, scholar and author, Frederick Ferré has provided a magisterial summary of western philosophy in his three-volume series: Being and Value, Knowing and Value and Living and Value. In that same context he also presents his fully-formed philosophic view by which we may create our way into a future. His Philosophy of Technology is a seminal work on the relationship between humans and their tools and is widely used as a textbook. Dr. Ferré and his wife, Barbara, a linguist, live in Munich.

[January 3— January12]

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