Here’s my 2008 conversation with ROBERT COLES, child psychiatrist, Harvard Professor, and author of 75 books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning six volume Children of Crisis. He died June 4 at the age of 97. He spent a lifetime listening to people – often those ignored by others – and told their stories. Coles was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, and the National Humanities Medal in 2001. 

I speak with ANNIE LEONARD & ANDRE CAROTHERS. She created the video documentary, The Story of Stuff, and led Greenpeace US for a decade. He worked for Greenpeace for 13 years and co-founded the Rockwood Institute. The new book they’ve written together, PROTEST: Respect it. Defend it. Use it includes brief essays on 42 protests from the 1700s to the present. It offers history and how-to, challenge and inspiration. Protest works. Protest is necessary. And as we celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary, the right to protest is under attack. The website theprotestbook.com offers resources and links to help you to act. 

FF_Carothers & Leonard-05-27-2026_Transcript

 

When many believe HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – lacking in scientific, medical or public health training – is giving alternative medicine a bad name, here’s my 2003 conversation with Andrew Weil MD. We trace the evolution of Dr. Weil’s work and thinking from his earliest understandings of health and healing to his ongoing commitment to train a new generation of physicians. Weil’s definition of integrative medicine: rooted in the connection of medicine with nature and the natural healing potential of the organism, it utilizes the magic of the doctor/patient relationship to treat the whole person. On this episode, Weil, Spontaneous HealingHyla Cass MD joins the conversation.

Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah lost his brother to Israeli authorities in the second Intifada. Israeli Jew Maoz Inon lost both his parents to Hamas on October 7th. In their book,The Future Is Peace, these two travel guides to Israel/Palestine and lifelong peace activists, take readers on a journey across their holy bloodstained land. They share the mythic, political, and personal history that divides but also binds them and their peoples. This episode, recorded in front of an audience at a LiveTalksLA event in April, punctuated often by laughter, makes clear their love for each other and the land they share as well as their absolute conviction that dialogue and peace must and will prevail. You can learn more at thefutureispeace.com

Plato cautions that democracy inevitably leads to tyranny because the rich always want to get richer and the poor will follow a demagogue who promises to overthrow the rich. I first learned of Plato’s critique in this 2020 conversation with ASTRA TAYLOR, about her documentary WHAT IS DEMOCRACY? and companion book, Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone. We explore democracy’s early roots as well as its current embattled state, and ask: Will we ever replace our current American rule of the wealthy with our never-quite-qchieved rule of the people?