I’m calling this conversation with economist ROBERT POLLIN, INFLATION 101. What’s really going on? The current bout of inflation is global, not domestic. It’s higher in other economies than in the US. It’s primarily due to the global pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And it may already be over. Yet the Fed seems intent on risking recession to fight it with tools that ignore its real causes.

In his new book, THE FIFTIES: An Underground History, JAMES GAINES asks: Who laid the groundwork for the ’60s – and then celebrates a few solitary, brave, stubborn individuals who pioneered the radical gay rights, feminist, civil rights, and environmental movements. Their courage and genius changed what it was possible to imagine. As early as the mid-1940s, Harry Hay said “Gay is good.” Pauli Murray laid legal paths for Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Black vets of WWII and Korea said enough is enough. Silent Spring’s Rachel Carson and MIT’s Norbert Wiener warned of potential manmade environmental destruction. You’ll be inspired and you’ll learn a lot. I did.

In the first two years of the pandemic, globally the top 1% captured nearly double the amount of new wealth as the other 99%. 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 excess as it fights for hearts and minds with political capitalism, as practiced by China. What are the prospects for a fairer world now that capitalism is the only game in town? 

Since 1988, the GOP has won only one national popular vote but has named 11 of 15 Supreme Court justices. The current 6-3 court is a uniquely powerful tool of Minority rule. Their radical decisions last summer went against the majority of Americans on church and state, guns, environmental protection, the climate crisis, and women’s rights. I talk with DAHLIA LITHWICK – senior legal correspondent at Slate and host of Slate’s Amicus podcast – about that eventful term and some of the big cases of the current term. We examine how this court operates in order to achieve their extreme agenda. And we talk about her new book, LADY JUSTICE – stories of courageous and principled women lawyers who worked to hold the line against the Trump administration. 

As we reach the end of one year and the beginning of another, many of us take stock of how we live and what we value. Here’s my conversation with LYNNE TWIST about her new book, LIVING A COMMITTED LIFE: Finding Freedom and Fulfillment in a Purpose Larger Than Yourself. She asks us to consider “a commitment to the common good: to something that takes you out of yourself and into the realm of service.” I think the challenge and opportunity Lynne offers in her work and in her new book is timely and worthy of our attention. You can learn more at Lynne’s site, soulofmoney.org.