Here’s my conversation with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates on his 2004 television project America Behind the Color Line. Since the late 60’s, two distinct classes emerged within Black America: a Black middle class and what some argue is a self-perpetuating Black underclass. One glaring example: the percentage of black children in poverty was about the same as the day Martin Luther King was assassinated. Gates asks, how can we bridge this class divide?

Here’s my 2003 conversation with Nobel-prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on his book The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century. He was one of few in the mainstream media to accuse George Bush of lying to to sell a tax cut and a war. He saw in the Bush-Cheney administration a radical group that rejects the legitimacy of key elements of the system itself. Sound familiar?

In this podcast, I go solo. Rather than interviewing others, I share with you the best of the work I do to help organizations develop more engaging narratives and tell better stories. Learn why narrative is uniquely powerful as well as the recipe for a good story – whether in a Hollywood screenplay or a one-to-one conversation. 

In his latest book, THEY DON’T REPRESENT US: Reclaiming Our Democracy, Harvard Law School professor LAWRENCE LESSIG points out big problems the U.S. is NOT solving, and adds, “The crisis in America is not its president. Its president is the consequence of a crisis much more fundamental…The core problem with our democracy today is that it is essentially unrepresentative. We should secure, finally, a representative democracy…let’s just try it for once… and see if things get better.” We talk about how democracy is broken and how we can fix it.

The documentary FOR SAMA – airing on PBS Tuesday 11/19 – takes us inside Aleppo during the brutal siege by al Assad and the Russians. Waad al-Kateab began shooting graffiti on university walls and a revolution rose around her – followed by an overwhelming response. Best Doc, Cannes Film Festival, Doc Grand Jury Prize, SXSW. I talk with directors Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts, and with Dr. Hamza al-Kateab, who ran the last hospital in East Aleppo. Listen. You’ll get a unique feel for life – and death – in Syria. Learn more at forsamafilm.com