Aired 06/17/12

This week’s show will deal with the Occupy/99% movement from two different perspectives. For most of the hour I’ll be joined by renowned scholar and activist, NOAM CHOMSKY. His newest book, a collection of interviews and speeches on the movement, is entitled simply OCCUPY.

NOAM CHOMSKY is Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where has taught for over 50 years. He is also a renowned political activist and writer. His scores of books on linguistics, human rights, economics and politics, include Manufacturing Consent, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, 9/11, and his latest, OCCUPY.

http://chomsky.info/about.htm

 

 

Aired 04/22/12

AQEELA SHERRILLS

20 years ago this spring there was a riot/disturbance following the Rodney King verdict. But there was another event in 1992 that received somewhat less attention, but was more remarkable: The Peace Treaty between the Crips and Bloods. Aqeela Sherrills was intimately involved in negotiating that treaty and is spearheading a celebration/reunion next week on its 20th anniversary. He is executive director and co-founder (with his brother Daude) of the Community Self-Determination Institute. He also co-founded Amer-I-Can with American football player Jim Brown. Sherrills’ son, Terrell Sherrills, was shot to death in 2004 in an apparently random killing. A longtime anti-death penalty activist, Sherrills became the Southern California Outreach Coordinator for California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CCV) in 2010.

EVENT:
Los Angeles “Peace Treaty” 20th Anniversary Reunion Celebration.

Community Dialogue this Friday April 27th all day at the Maxine Waters Employment Preparedness Cener, 10925 S Central Av.LA 90059. It will include Jim Brown, Connie Rice, Alex Sanchez, Rick Ross, among others.

UNITY MUSIC celebration — all day Saturday April 28th — Graham Ave and 103rd –featuring the Watts Prophets, Charles Wright and the 103rd Street Band and many others. To learn more go to https://www.facebook.com/20thPeaceTruce#!/20thPeaceTruce

 

Aired 04/15/12

For over thirty years, you and I have lived through a radical redistribution of wealth — upward, to a tiny fraction of the population — as though we’re part of a bizarre experiment to see how much inequality a democratic society can tolerate. Finally this past year, as a result of the Great Recession that burst the mortgage/refi/credit card bubble that had allowed too many of us to deny reality, people have woken up and “We are the 99%,” the rallying cry of the Occupy movement, has spread far and wide.

CHUCK COLLINS has been on the case since at least 1995, when he co-founded United for a Fair Economy to raise the profile of the inequality issue and support efforts to address it. In fact, when he did so, he was one of my first guests on this show and we talked then about the same issues we will talk about today.

Chuck’s new book, 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It, paints a picture of how disparities in wealth and power play out in America and the world, and identifies the shifts in social values, political power, and economic policy that have led to our current era of extreme inequality. He lays out the destructive cost of inequality on virtually every aspect of society.

But Collins believes there’s hope and offers proposals for closing the gap, and a guide to many of the groups working toward a society that works for everybody.

http://inequality.org/

 

Aired 04/08/12

Do you consider yourself to be creative? Do you think of creativity as a gift, a talent, something you either have or you don’t? Do you find creativity to be a bit mystical or magical, dependent on luck, the muses, or higher powers?

Today’s guest, JONAH LEHRER, has written a book in which he looks at the latest brain science and attempts, in his words, “to collapse the layers of description separating the nerve cell from the finished symphony, the cortical circuit from the successful product.”

In Imagine: How Creativity Works, Lehrer makes clear, “Creativity shouldn’t seem like something otherworldly. It shouldn’t seem like a process reserved for artists or inventors or other “creative types.” After all, he points out, the human mind has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code.” Creativity is a variety of distinct thought processes that we can all learn to use more effectively. In the book, Lehrer reveals the importance of embracing the rut, thinking like a child, and daydreaming productively. He also shows how we can use this knowledge to make our neighborhoods more vibrant, our companies more productive, and our schools more effective.

http://jonahlehrer.com

February 21, 2012

Tech futurist and game designer Jane McGonigle on how computer games can help the fight against AIDS, heal disabilities, increase optimism, and make us better people.

There are 183 million active computer game players in the United States. The average young person will spend 10,000 hours gaming by the age of 21. More than 5 million “extreme” gamers in the U.S. play an average of 45 hours a week. Videogames took in about $15.5 billion last year.

Most of what you hear about this phenomenon is doom and gloom – people becoming addicted, isolated and socially inept. Some worry that gaming is pulling people away from productive work, fulfilling relationships and real life. But game designer Jane McGonigal says the reason for the mass exodus to virtual worlds is that videogames are increasingly fulfilling genuine human needs. In a very popular TED talk — and in her first book, Reality Is Broken, just out in paperback – she suggests we can use the lessons of game design to fix what is wrong with the real world.