07/08/12 Podcast
Written on July 11th, 2012 |
(1) KAREN THOMPSON WALKER,
author, THE AGE OF MIRACLES
Rolling Stone, “next big female novelist” WSJ, “big debut”
theageofmiraclesbook.com
(2) NORA BATESON
writer/director, AN ECOLOGY OF MIND:
A Daughter’s Portrait of Gregory Bateson
“The major problems in the world result from the difference
between how nature works and how people think.”
anecologyofmind.com
Q&A: NORA BATESON – Director, AN ECOLOGY OF MIND: A Daughter’s Portrait of Gregory Bateson
Written on July 11th, 2012 |
Aired 07/08/12
My guest will be NORA BATESON, and we’ll talk about AN ECOLOGY OF MIND, the wonderful documentary she’s made about her father, the late anthropologist GREGORY BATESON. He saw reality as made up of relationships and systems and had a big impact on a lot of people’s worldview in the late 60s and early 70s, myself included.
NORA BATESON is a media producer and educator. Her work includes documentaries, multimedia productions, magazine columns, and developing curriculum for elementary and high school students. Central to all her pursuits is the idea of utilizing media and storytelling to encourage cultural understanding, social justice, and environmental awareness.
Q&A: KAREN THOMPSON WALKER – Author, THE AGE OF MIRACLES
Written on July 10th, 2012 |
Aired 07/08/12
I seldom interview writers of fiction, but the debut novel THE AGE OF MIRACLES got my attention. It’s being heavily promoted as one of THE books of the summer. Enough so that I read the first couple of pages and I really like the writing. It’s about how one family in Southern California responds to a global crisis, the slowing of the earth, and the lengthening of days and nights. The writer, KAREN THOMPSON WALKER joins me for a delightful interview.
http://www.theageofmiraclesbook.com/
System Failure: We Are Approaching the End of Society As We Know It — And That May Be a Good Thing
Written on July 5th, 2012 |
Paul Gilding says it’s time to stop worrying about climate change; global crisis is no longer avoidable. He believes the Great Disruption started in 2008, as spiking food and oil prices signaled the end of Economic Growth 1.0 based on consumption and waste. Coming decades will see loss, suffering and conflict, but he believes the crisis offers us both an unmatched business opportunity as old industries collapse to be replaced by new ones, and a chance to replace our addiction to growth with an ethic of sustainability.
Gilding has been involved with activist campaigns on a wide variety of issues and served as executive director of Greenpeace Australia and Greenpeace International. He founded Ecos Corporation in 1995, consulting to some of the world’s largest corporations on issues of sustainability until its sale in 2008. Gilding’s first book is The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.
Terrence McNally: Could you briefly talk about your path to the work you do today?
Paul Gilding: I started as an activist really very young. Age 14, 15, I got involved in a variety of issues and went on from there through 19 years of traditional activism, more on the human social side than the environmental side. Then through the late ’70s to early ’80s, I got involved in the anti-nuclear weapons and nuclear war movement. That led to a greater understanding of environmental issues, which then led to Greenpeace and very focused direct-action campaigns against corporate pollution. I ended up head of Greenpeace International.
I left there in the mid ’90s, focused on the role of markets and companies. How could we mobilize the power of markets as a force for good in this area? For the next 15 years I focused on that question, working in the corporate sector, running two companies that I built. Really trying to see if you can drive change through business — from the point of view of self-interest, recognizing that business is driven by making money. That’s their core metric.
Then about four or five years ago, I came to the conclusion that we really had done our best in the environmental and social change movements, but the ecological and system pressures we’d brought to bear on the global ecosystem were now in full flight. Change is going to be unstoppable.
Q&A: David DeGraw – Occupy/99%
Written on June 20th, 2012 |
Aired 06/17/12
DAVID DeGRAW, who a year ago was among a handful who called for the 99% to rise up. On June 14th, Flag Day, last year, Anonymous and the 99% Movement launched a collaborative effort to announce the birth of a “decentralized non-violent resistance movement to end the system of political bribery and break up the big banks centered at the Federal Reserve.” This morphed into Occupy Wall Street, and we will talk about one of the newest incarnations of that effort.
DAVID DeGRAW. David is founder and editor of http://ampedstatus.com/, formerly editorial director of http://mediachannel.org/, and author of The Economic Elite Vs The People of the United States. He is one of the early leaders of the the Occupy/99% movement and one of the founders of http://moneyoutpack.org/
