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 interviews seeking A World That Just Might Work, I now produce & host the podcast Disruptive for Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Let’s explore how we might work together.
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.
My 20-minute commentary calls for Millennials and Boomers with shared values to forge a movement large enough, creative enough, diverse enough, and powerful enough to successfully confront the critical problems we face. 60s.2.0 – 21st century tech in the service of the best of ‘60s values – meets OK Boomer – the impatience of the young with the failures of the old. “If the challenges we face are big enough to turn us against each other, then they must be big enough to bring us together.”
In his latest book, THEY DON’T REPRESENT US: Reclaiming Our Democracy, Harvard Law School professor LAWRENCE LESSIG points out big problems the U.S. is NOT solving, and adds, “The crisis in America is not its president. Its president is the consequence of a crisis much more fundamental…The core problem with our democracy today is that it is essentially unrepresentative. We should secure, finally, a representative democracy…let’s just try it for once… and see if things get better.” We talk about how democracy is broken and how we can fix it.
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.
The impeachment hearings have started and we’re a year away from the 2020 election. Who better to talk to about how to get impeachment right and how to beat Trump in the Rust Belt states next year than JOHN NICHOLS. He’s National Affairs correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. Not only that, he also wrote the book, THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism. Join us we talk about all this and more.
The documentary FOR SAMA – airing on PBS Tuesday 11/19 – takes us inside Aleppo during the brutal siege by al Assad and the Russians. Waad al-Kateab began shooting graffiti on university walls and a revolution rose around her – followed by an overwhelming response. Best Doc, Cannes Film Festival, Doc Grand Jury Prize, SXSW. I talk with directors Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts, and with Dr. Hamza al-Kateab, who ran the last hospital in East Aleppo. Listen. You’ll get a unique feel for life – and death – in Syria. Learn more at forsamafilm.com
I talk with EMMANUEL SAEZ, UC Berkeley economist, about his newest book, THE TRIUMPH OF INJUSTICE: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay – co-authored with Gabriel Zucman. The pair grabbed headlines when their book reported that in 2018, for the first time in history, America’s richest billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than the working class. Their solutions include a wealth tax, and they’ve advised Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on their proposals. You can learn more at taxjusticenow.org
NEW: JEREMY RIFKIN – The Green New Deal
I talk with JEREMY RIFKIN, advisor to China and the European Union, and author of 20 books about the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, society, and the environment. In his newest book, THE GREEN NEW DEAL: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth, he draws on successful lessons from bold initiatives in Europe and China to flesh out what it will take to pull it off in the US.
NEW: JONATHAN BLANK, Sex, Drugs & Bicycles – How does Holland do it?
In his documentary SEX, DRUGS & BICYCLES, high-tech entrepreneur JONATHAN BLANK asks, “How scary is life in a social democracy?” Beyond windmills, cannabis “coffeeshops”, and the red light district, Holland has one of the best economies in the world, is top 5 in almost every quality of life index, #1 for work-life balance. Dutch kids are the happiest in the world, the healthcare system is #3, and the government runs a budget surplus. Boo!
In this episode, Terrence welcomes Emmy-nominated filmmaker, speaker and Webby Awards Founder Tiffany Shlain to the podcast. Terrence and Tiffany discuss her career path, the societal impact of technology, and the inspiration for her book, 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week. They share their thoughts on how the digital age has impacted not just the way we live our lives, but how we think, feel and communicate with one another. Tiffany expounds on her family’s decade-long transformative practice of turning off screens one day each week for what she calls her Technology Shabbat. Finally, Terrence and Tiffany explore what the future could look like for our world if we act swiftly and resist the addiction that technology has inflicted on us as a people.
NEW: ADAM HOCHSCHILD-Lessons from a Dark Time – for our own dark times
As soon as I picked up and started reading LESSONS FROM A DARK TIME, I wanted to have this conversation with ADAM HOCHSCHILD. As a writer, he doesn’t waste your time. He brings an artist’s touch and a moralist’s conscience to the issues and events he grapples with. He’s one of the founders of Mother Jones Magazine, and threaded through his journalism and his books – King Leopold’s Ghost, Spain in Our Hearts among them – is his concern for social justice and the people who fight for it. How did we get thorough dark times in our past? How are we going to get through these?
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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?
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What stories do we need to change?
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