Here’s my 2019 conversation with GREG GRANDIN about his book, THE END OF THE MYTH: From the Frontier to the Border Wall. Grandin reminds us that patrolling the border has often brought out our worst, and writes, “The border wall is America’s new myth, a monument to the final closing of the frontier…a symbol of a nation that used to believe that it had escaped history, but now finds itself trapped by history, and of a people who used to think they were captains of the future, but now are prisoners of the past.”

STEVE LOPEZ, award-winning columnist at the LATimes and best-selling author (The Soloist), just won a prize from Harvard for political reporting, but I don’t think of him as a “Political Reporter”. He’s a story-teller and the leading characters in his stories are the unsung heroes of Los Angeles. We talk about how he sees his role at the Times and in the community, his current take on Southern California and the state of journalism, and his new book (out 11/1), INDEPENDENCE DAY: What I’ve Learned about Retirement from Some Who’ve Done It and Some Who Never Will

Recent headlines: Temperatures in Europe Smash Historic Records. Lake Mead Plummets to New Low. Only ‘Rapid Action’ Can Prevent Worst Marine Extinction in 250M Years. UN’s Leading Climate Scientists Call Latest Climate Report Nothing Less Than “Code Red for Humanity.” Here’s my conversation with MARK HERTSGAARD, co-founder/Executive Director of Covering Climate Now. a global journalism initiative to help “news media cover the defining story of our time with the rigor and urgency it deserves.” Mark’s also the environment correspondent for The Nation and author of several books including HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. We’ll get an update on the crisis as well as efforts to report it well enough to turn things around.