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For 25 years my conversations have sought A World That Just Might Work. I also produced & hosted the podcast series Disruptive for Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
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DIANA McLAIN SMITH
REMAKING THE SPACE
BETWEEN US:
How Can We Work Together
to Build a Better Future?
Listen any time to Podcast
Straight talk. No BS.
STEVE SCHMIDT
former GOP strategist
co-founder Lincoln ProjectFeatured Podcasts:
BRENDAN BALLOU, Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America
MICHELLE WILDE ANDERSON, Saving Towns and Reviving Discarded America
PAUL HAWKEN, Regeneration – Life at the Center of All We Do
TERRENCE McNALLY, 60s.2.0 meets OK Boomer _______________________________________________________Yuval Noah Harari (2018)
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century_________________________________________
Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project (2017)
Tversky, Kahneman and the ways our minds fool us.Link to video
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- Can we the people join forces? DIANA McLAIN SMITH-REMAKING THE SPACE BETWEEN US
It’s up to us. Political parties, political players, and the media promote and profit from our division. We the people have ultimate responsibility for healing our politics and our society. In her book, REMAKING THE SPACE BETWEEN US: How Citizens Can Work Together to Build a Better Future for All, DIANA McLAIN SMITH has good news. The media doesn’t report it, but hundreds of organizations and millions of people are already actively engaged in developing relationships and alliances that can work together in the service of our better angels.Learn more at remakingthespace.org
Diana McLain Smith, 2025 – Transcript
- JULIE BATTILANA-POWER FOR ALL-How do we get it and use it to change the world?
Feeling pissed, panicked, powerless? That’s what they want. How do we turn things around? Here’s my refreshing 2021 conversation with JULIE BATTILANA, Harvard professor and founder of its Social Innovation and Change Initiative about her book POWER FOR ALL. It’s a call not only to understand and assert power in our own lives, but also to collectively use this power to remake society by rebalancing existing power relationships – including racial, gender, financial and political. To learn more, go to Powerforallbook.com
- Rich walk. Poor go to jail. AMY BACH (2009)-ORDINARY INJUSTICE
When Trump sits in the White House dispensing pardons to other convicted felons – and an ambassadorship or two, when he was able to run out the clock on justice with his political donors paying most of his legal bills, when so many actions this administration has taken in the first month serve to eliminate or disable accountability or oversight… Here’s my 2009 conversation with Amy Bach about how the legal system systematically fails regular people every day. The rich walk, the poor go to prison. Her book ORDINARY INJUSTICE shows how – in the name of expedience – legal professionals collaborate rather than face off, sacrificing defendants and victims to keep the court calendar moving.
- JAMES STEELE-of investigative reporting team, Barlett & Steele-AMERICA: What Went Wrong? The Crisis Deepens
I’m honored to talk with JAMES STEELE, of the investigative reporting team, Barlett & Steele. He and DON BARLETT worked together for over 50 years, won journalism’s highest awards, wrote nine books. Don Barlett died this past fall. Their 1991 Philadelphia Inquirer series America: What Went Wrong? showed how Wall Street and Washington were squeezing the middle class and fueling income inequality and led to a best-selling book. That was 1991 B.C. Before Clinton. They have been on that beat ever since. We did an episode in 2012 on their Betrayal of the American Dream. Jim and I talk about their partnership, about how we got here, and what it feels like to have your warnings ignored. Learn more: barlettandsteele.com
- JEAN GUERRERO(2020)-HATEMONGER: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, & the White Nationalist Agenda
Ever the real estate guy, Trump unleashes a demo crew on the government, says US should develop Gaza’s beachfront. Elon Musk invades federal agencies, accesses all our data, brags about throwing our global humanitarian aid in a wood chipper. Criminal, cruel, and unconstitutional. Here’s my 2020 conversation with JEAN GUERRERO, about her book, HATEMONGER: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. Chief architect of Trump’s Muslim travel ban and his family separation policy, Miller has even more power this time around as White House Deputy Chief of Staff. Learn more at jeanguerrero.com
- STEVE SCHMIDT-Straight talk from former GOP strategist, co-founder, Lincoln Project
A week into Trump 2.0, the cruelty and overreach are on full display, and the media and the Democrats are not up to the challenge. I turn to longtime Republican strategist, STEVE SCHMIDT, who abandoned the GOP in 2018 and co-founded the Lincoln Project. He’s now perhaps the most articulate, full-throated and damning critic of his former party and the inadequate opposition. You can learn more at steveschmidt.substack.com or The Warning with Steve Schmidt on YouTube.
- The time I was the guest. TERRENCE McNALLY(2014)-interviewed by SARA DAVIDSON
TERRENCE McNALLY is my guest this week. In February 2014, I took a hiatus from this show after 17 years. I thought it might be the end of the line, and before signing off, turned to journalist and best-selling author, SARA DAVIDSON, to interview me. I returned to these conversations In 2017 after Trump’s election. So here we are – 11 years after that hiatus and this conversation, 8 years after my return, and a few days after Trump’s second inauguration. How did things look to me then as I reflected both backward and forward?
McNally, Davidson 2025 – Transcript
- A life in books & newspapers-editor & publisher-STEVE WASSERMAN, TELL ME SOMETHING. TELL ME ANYTHING. EVEN IF IT’S A LIE.
STEVE WASSERMAN has spent half a century in the world of books, newspapers, and ideas, as an opinion editor at the LA Times, editor of the LA Times Book Review; and as an editor at several major publishers. We’ll talk about that lifetime of work, how publishing and the press have changed, and about his first book, a memoir, TELL ME SOMETHING. TELL ME ANYTHING. EVEN IF IT’S A LIE – with cameos from Susan Sontag, Orson Welles, Jackie Kennedy, Robert Scheer, Gore Vidal. He’s now the publisher at Heyday Books, a fifty-year old independent publisher in Berkeley. Learn more at heydaybooks.com
- What were we thinking last time? NAOMI KLEIN (2017) NO IS NOT ENOUGH: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need
With Trump acting as if he were already president – and madly so – a number of the wealthy and powerful are stepping over each other to obey in advance. A clear step on the path toward authoritarianism cited by both Tim Snyder in On Tyranny and Daniel Ziblatt & Stephen Levitsky in How Democracies Die – here’s my conversation with Naomi Klein, recorded in July 2017, 6 months into Trump’s first term, about her book, NO IS NOT ENOUGH: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. What were we thinking? How would we respond? How does our response look 8 years later?
- SAM DALEY HARRIS-RECLAIMING OUR DEMOCRACY-Transformational Advocacy Between Elections
Happy New Year! Let’s work together locally & personally in 2025 as citizens and neighbors to overcome the political and media failures that brought us to this place. Here’s my conversation with SAM DALEY-HARRIS, founder of the anti-poverty lobby Results, about RECLAIMING OUR DEMOCRACY: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy (2024 edition), out in paperback mid-January. Learn more at reclaimingourdemocracy.com. I recommend pairing this with my recent episode with MARSHALL GANZ on his book, PEOPLE, POWER, CHANGE.
Daley-Harris-12-19-2024-transcript