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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?

http://www.charlottealter.com/

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.”

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.

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?

https://stonecenter.gc.cuny.edu/people/milanovic-branko/

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

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.