5 BROKEN CAMERAS (2013)-EMAD BURNAT (Palestinian) & GUY DAVIDI (Israeli) co-directors, of the Oscar-nominated doc.

Written on February 22nd, 2024

This week the media offers Academy Award buzz as well as the horrors of Israel’s response to the horrors of October’s attack by Hamas. Here’s my 2013 conversation with Palestinian EMAD BURNAT and Israeli GUY DAVIDI, co-directors of the Oscar-nominated documentary, 5 BROKEN CAMERAS. The film tells the story of Burnat, a Palestinian West Bank farmer, his wife, and four small children. As we track the destruction of each of his cameras, we witness his village’s ancient olive trees bulldozed, protests intensify, and a son grow from a newborn to a young boy. 

MARGOT SUSCA-HEDGED: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy

Written on February 15th, 2024

We all know the newspaper business is in trouble. A weekday edition of the LA Times – once a “national” newspaper, along with the NYTimes, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal – now might be 32 pages and another 100 were recently laid off in the newsroom. The culprit is assumed to be the internet, stealing both stories and ads. Not so fast. I talk with MARGOT SUSCA, a former reporter, now a professor of Journalism, about her first book, HEDGED: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy. Her assessment: “What we have is not a crisis of profit. What we have is a crisis of greed and growing inequality.”

ROBERT P. JONES-THE HIDDEN ROOTS OF WHITE SUPREMACY and the Path to a Shared American Future

Written on February 2nd, 2024

The last time a Democratic presidential candidate won a majority of White voters was in 1964. ROBERT P JONES, President and Founder of the Public Religion Research Insitute (PRRI) and author of THE HIDDEN ROOTS OF WHITE SUPREMACY and the Path to a Shared American Future, writes that “White Christian nationalism has become central to the…Republican Party, two thirds of whom identify as white and Christian.” To find the origins of white supremacy, he says we need to look beyond 1619 to 1493, when the Pope issued the Doctrine of Discovery – that all territory not already inhabited or controlled by Christians shall be claimed by Christians as their new promised land. Learn more at www.whitetoolong.net

JONAH SACHS (2012)-Winning the STORY WARS-Key to persuasion & motivation – and as timely as ever

Written on January 24th, 2024

In todays fractionalized & polarized world, facts and reality are too often less important than which narrative you embrace or which stories you believe. Here’s my 2012 conversation with JONAH SACHS, Co-Founder of Free Range Studios – the folks behindthe classic Story of Stuff – and author of WINNING THE STORY WARS. Learn how and why narrative works so well and how to use it to your advantage.

CORPORATE BULLSH*T- JOAN WALSH-Six lies they use to hold onto power and hold back progress

Written on January 19th, 2024

The market – using money in politics to write its own rules – cannot respond effectively to critical challenges we face . JOAN WALSH, formerly at Salon, CNN, and MSNBC and now national affairs correspondent for The Nation, authored CORPORATE BULLSH*T with Nick Hanauer (Pitchfork Economics; Civic Action) & Donald Cohen (The Public Interest). Digging into myths and strategies of the Right, they focus on six big lies used over and over again to hold onto power and hold back progress. To learn more, go to thenation.com – search for Joan Walsh.