If you’re working to build a healthy and just society,
let me help you tap the unique power of narrative.
I draw on my experience teaching, acting, music & film producing, screenwriting, and interviewing to help you tell more compelling stories. Listen here. After years of radio interviews seeking A World That Just Might Work, I now produce and host the Disruptive podcast for Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Let’s explore how we might work together to change the world.
Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankindhas sold over 8 million copies and is currently the #1 selling paperback on the lists of both the LA and New York Times. Bill Gates reviewed his latest book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century in a recent NYTimes Book Review.
MICHAEL LEWIS’s best-selling THE UNDOING PROJECT tells how the collaborative work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman revealed previously undiscovered ways our minds fool us.
NEW – DAVID KIRP, Does the US love its children?
How are we doing by our kids? School and college budgets shrink. Teacher strikes are on the rise. College debt is crippling. Children are separated from their parents. I check in with DAVID KIRP, Professor at UC Berkeley. His books include THE SANDBOX INVESTMENT and KIDS FIRST. We talk about innovative programs that work and could make a big difference. If only we cared.
https://gspp.berkeley.edu/directories/faculty/david-kirp
In this podcast, I go solo. Rather than interviewing others, I share with you the best of the work I do to help organizations develop more engaging narratives and tell better stories. Learn why narrative is uniquely powerful as well as the recipe for a good story – whether in a Hollywood screenplay or a one-to-one conversation.
CORY DOCTOROW, has a lot to say about human nature, society, and technology. He writes speculative fiction – YA best-seller LITTLE BROTHER, and most recently the novel, WALKAWAY and graphic novel IN REAL LIFE. As a technology expert and activist, he’s co-editor of Boing Boing.net, a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate. Learn more at craphound.com. I suspect we’ll just scratch the surface.
In his newest book, We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the 21st Century, ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, Dean of Berkeley Law, makes the case that the right has since the 1970s developed and enacted a clear vision of constitutional interpretation. He calls on progressives to fight back with an alternative vision based on fulfilling the Constitution’s promise of liberty and justice for all.
Investigative reporter GREG PALAST (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) has been exposing GOP dirty tricks and voter suppression since 2000. Listen for the latest in the mid-terms in Georgia, Florida, and elsewhere – and how to fight back.
While elections matter, a vital society demands much more. In How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t, LESLIE CRUTCHFIELD examines some movements that have succeeded — from tobacco control and gun rights expansion, to marriage equality and acid rain reduction — as well as recent campaigns that haven’t – like Occupy Wall Street, controlling C02 emissions, and gun violence prevention. Her research identifies six practices linked to success. We’ll explore them so you can put them to work.
DAVID CORN wrote the Mother Jones cover story – The Most Important Election of Our Lives, declared that “The Russia scandal is the most important scandal in the history of the United States”, and co-authored with Michael Isikoff, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. Who better to talk to at this moment…less than two weeks till the midterms.
A friend emailed me JOAN WILLIAMS’ Harvard Business Review article, What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class. Read over 3.7 million times, it’s the most read article in HBR’s 90-plus year history, and I can see why. WILLIAMS is the author of WHITE WORKING CLASS: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America. “If we don’t take steps to bridge the class culture gap, when Trump proves unable to bring steel back to Youngstown, the consequences could turn dangerous.”
California Natural Resources Agency predicts severe heat waves, wildfires, ocean rise will cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Trump administration decimates Obama emissions rules for cars and power plants. Rise Up for Climate global day of action Sat 9/8. MICHAEL BRUNE, Executive Director of Sierra Club, shares good news, bad news, and ways to get involved.
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WHAT DO YOU THINK?
“Change the Story to Change the World.”
We hear it all the time. How are we doing with that?
When have we been successful?
How do we do it?
What stories do we need to change?
Add your thoughts, examples, questions.