I talk with BILL McKIBBEN (The New Yorker), co-founder of both the global climate campaign, 350.org, and, in 2021, ThirdAct for folks 60 & above. In these dark times, his new book, HERE COMES THE SUN offers hope – not with happy talk but with a clear declaration of facts: Solar and wind are no longer alternative fuels. They are the cheapest as well as the cleanest. (So cheapest also in external costs, health, for example.) Experience has taught Bill that winning on the science and now the economics is not enough. It will take the power of the people to fight the power of the fossil fuel industry. In the book – and in our conversation – Bill offers marching orders for action. billmckibben.com, thirdact.org 

 

McKibben-08-28-2025-Transcript

 

First half: This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Here’s my 2006 conversation with Douglas Brinkley about his book The Great Deluge, in which he investigates the failures of government at every level, and traces the character flaws, inexperience, and ulterior motives that allowed the disaster to devastate the Gulf Coast. Second half: As school year begins, here’s my 2005 conversation with National Teacher of the Year, Rafe Esquith, on a PBS documentary celebrating his Hobart Shakespearians. Esquith leads fifth graders at LA’s Hobart Elementary, one of the nation’s largest inner-city grade schools, through a challenging curriculum of English, math, geography, and literature. At semester’s end, students – few for whom English is their first language – perform a full-length Shakespeare play. 

 

BRINKLEY, DOUGLAS (2006)-transcript

ESQUITH-2005-transcript

 

What happens when the President plays mob boss – “How much can I get away with? Who’s going to stop me?” I talk with American legal scholar ROBERT POST of Yale Law School about the rule of law, the American legal system, free speech, academic freedom, public morality, and the Supreme Court’s weakness in the age of Trump. You can learn more at law.yale.edu/robert-c-post 

Post Robert-08-18-2025-Transcript

 

A bittersweet truth about having recorded these conversations for 25 years is how many of my guests are no longer with us. I went back through my files and found at least 60 – Sixty human beings worthy, willing, and able to share an hour with me. Here’s my 2003 conversation with ROBERT FULLER, who crusaded for the dignity of all and against what he defined as “rankism” – the dismissal of society’s unknowns and underachievers as “nobodies.” We talk about his first book, Somebodies and Nobodies. Fuller died July 15th at the age of 88. 

 

Fuller-05-20-2003-transcript.2

 

In just the last two decades, we’ve experienced a global financial crash, a pandemic, multiple wars, and a climate crisis with repeated natural disasters. I talk with LIZZIE WADE about the ideas in APOCALYPSE: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures. If a society enters a cataclysm – climate crisis, war, plague, etc. – behaving one way and emerges behaving another, she defines that as an apocalypse. Looking at these situations over time reveals they need not end badly. In fact, such transformation have often nudged us forward. Faced with today’s news, we could all use a dose of hope. You can learn more at lizziewade.com