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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?

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 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.

In Homewreckers, AARON GLANTZ tells how a group of Wall Street bankers and private equity — including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, as well as Trump confidants and funders — transferred billions of dollars in wealth to themselves from millions of individual homeowners after the real estate crash of the Great Recession. Many of them are now working to weaken the safeguards put in place to prevent it from happening again.

In his newest book, The Age of Illusions, ANDREW BACEVICH takes us from 1989’s seemingly ultimate victory in the Cold War to the current troubling and chaotic moment. He attempts to explain how we ended up with outsized inequality, permanent war, moral confusion, an increasingly angry and alienated population, and Donald Trump. We also talk about current events including the confrontation with Iran.

www.quincyinst.org

I talk with HEDRICK SMITH, Pulitzer-winning former New York Times reporter and Emmy-winning producer/correspondent, about THE DEMOCRACY REBELLION, his PBS documentary on grassroots movements who are winning political reform victories, state by state. Six states, six successful campaigns take on Citizens United, gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc. Learn more at reclaimtheamericandream.org Check here for PBS airdates.

I talk with PAULA DANIELS, Co-Founder, Chief of What’s Next, and Chair of the Board of the Center for Good Food Purchasing, about what it takes to pull together elements of politics, government, business, entrepreneurism, science, and more to move the needle on a huge and complex system. The Center uses the power of procurement to create a food system that prioritizes the health and well-being of people, animals, and the environment. As its’s goals and standards are adopted by a growing national network of major food purchasers such as school districts, the program exerts growing leverage on the larger food system in America. You can learn more at GoodFoodPurchasing.org

In 1964, the original 7 UP – in which children talked about their hopes and dreams – was broadcast as a one-off special in the UK. Michael Apted (Coal Miner’s Daughter; Gorillas in the Mist), took over as director on 14 UP and has returned to interview these same 14 individuals every seven years since. Roger Ebert, A few months before his death, wrote of the series, “It is a mystery, this business of life. I can’t think of any cinematic undertaking that allows us to realize that more deeply.” 63 UP is in theatres.