Aired 11/07/11

From a small town in Northern Michigan to the mountains of Afghanistan and back, a raw and powerful documentary WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM follows the four-year journey of childhood friends, their families, and their town. At its heart a story about growing up, the film is an intimate look at the young men who fight our wars, where they come from, and their struggles when they return and try to fit back into their previous daily routines. On the podcast, HEATHER COURTNEY, producer/director of the documentary, is joined by DOMINIC FREDIANELLI, one of the young veterans she follows in the film.

Heather Courtney has directed and produced several documentary films including award-winners LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE and LOS TRABAJADORES. She was recently named one of Film Independent’s Top 10 Filmmakers to Watch. LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE was the Closing Night film at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 2006. LOS TRABAJADORES won the Audience Award at SXSW and the International Documentary Association David Wolper award. She spent eight years writing and photographing for the United Nations and several refugee and immigrant rights organizations, including in the Rwandan refugee camps after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Just a quick reminder that the Indie Spirit Award-nominated film WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM is now available on DVD, and if you order today, you’ll get it by Christmas!

You can go to http://www.wheresoldierscomefrom.com/dvd.php or see info below for more info on ordering, to read some reviews and to watch the trailer.

 

 

Aired 11/13/11

Some bad news:

In 2008 more than 50% of all US harvested cropland grew only two crops – corn and soybeans and more than 40% of the food calories consumed worldwide came from just three crops: wheat, corn and rice.

30% of Detroit residents receive food stamps, but 92% of Detroit’s food stamp retailers offer few or no fresh fruit or vegetables.

The average plate of food eaten in our homes or restaurants travels 1,500 miles from where the food is grown. Our food system consumes 10.3 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce 1.4 calories of food energy.”

And some good news:

There are now 8000 farm to school programs across the US. Eight years ago there were only 4. There are now 6000 farmers’ markets in the US three times as many as in 1995. 330 hospitals in the US and Canada have pledged to purchase food that is grown according to Fair Food principles.

In recent years a number of books and films have documented the dangers of our current food system, and a number of those have been featured on Free forum. Just as you can’t alter the course of climate change by simply switching to efficient light bulbs, today’s guests believe that you can’t fix the broken food system by simply growing a backyard garden. It requires redesigning our food system.

My first guest, ORAN HESTERMAN has a new book FAIR FOOD, a guide to changing not only what we eat, but how our food is grown, packaged, delivered, marketed and sold. Hesterman opens the book talking about Detroit, Michigan, an unlikely beacon of hope in the fight for fair food.

Prior to starting the Fair Food Network, where he is President & CEO, ORAN HESTERMAN was the inaugural president of Fair Food Foundation, leading their sustainable food systems programs. Before that, he researched and taught in the crop and soil sciences department at Michigan State University in East Lansing, and for more than 15 years he co-led the Integrated Farming Systems and Food and Society Programs for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, during which time the Foundation seeded the local food systems movement with over $200 million. FAIR FOOD is his first book.

My second guest LEILA CONNERS, a founder of Tree Media in Santa Monica, is a producer of URBAN ROOTS, a documentary on the food revolution taking place in Detroit. Directed by Detroit-native Mark McInnis the film tells the powerful story of a group of dedicated Detroiters working tirelessly to fulfill their vision for locally-grown, sustainably farmed food in a city where people — as in much of the county — have found themselves cut off from real food and limited to lifeless offerings of fast food chains, mini-marts, and grocery stores stocked with processed food from thousands of miles away.

LEILA CONNERS is Founder and President of Tree Media Group. Conners is director, producer, and writer on THE 11TH HOUR, as well as the short films “Global Warning” and “Water Planet” (all with Leonardo DiCaprio). She was Associate Editor at New Perspectives Quarterly and Global Viewpoint, focusing on international politics and social issues. She is producer of URBAN ROOTS.

fairfoodbook.org, fairfoodnetwork.org, urbanrootsamerica.com, treemedia.com

 

Aired 08/14/11

I've invited three people to begin a conversation with me about what's broken at the intersection of our society, our politics, and our economy, how it got broken, and how we can fix it.

ROB JOHNSON served as chief economist of the US Senate Banking Committee, was a Management DIrector at Soros Fund Management, and is now Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), funded by Soros to encourage and support a rethinking of the fundamentals of economics so that they take into account the role of human behavior including politics.

R J ESKOW, a former executive and consultant on matters of finance and information technology, to AIG, the World Bank and the State Department, is a prolific blogger at the Huffington Post and Campaign for America's Future.

DREW DELLINGER is a poet, teacher, activist and founder of Planetize the Movement. He is currently finishing his doctoral dissertation on the last years of Martin Luther King Jr., and co-wrote the documentary film, The Awakening Universe.

Learn more at drewdellinger.org, for RJ Eskow -- ourfuture.org/users/new-4468 or nightlight.typepad.com/,
for Rob Johnson -- ineteconomics.org

 

Aired 09/12/10

DIANE RAVITCH
author,
DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM
How Testing and Choice Are
Undermining Education

VICKI ABELES
producer-director,
RACE TO NOWHERE

ENRIQUE GONZALEZ
Principal, BIG PICTURE Schools

http://www.dianeravitch.com/
http://www.racetonowhere.com/
http://www.bigpicture.org/
http://www.fkhs.org/

 

Aired 07/25/10

VALERIE PLAME, CIA agent outed by Bush White House Her focus: non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. She's featured in the film 
COUNTDOWN TO ZERO, playing in NY and DC opening in LA July 30th.

http://www.globalzero.org/

How big a threat is North Korea? Will Iran go nuclear? Will Israel attack Iran? Are nukes safe in Pakistan? Are they safe in the former Soviet Union? Will Obama move seriously toward disarmament?

The globalization of the 21st century has produced positive and peaceful exchanges between peoples and nations, and it has given birth to global terrorism. Today a nuclear attack caused by accident, miscalculation or madness is a real possibility. The film COUNTDOWN TO ZERO (playing in NY and Washington and opening July 30th in LA) makes clear the nuclear threat and calls on us to commit to their abolition.

COUNTDOWN TO ZERO traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present, where nine nations possess nuclear weapons capabilities, and others race to join them. The world lives in a delicate balance that could be obliterated by an act of terrorism, failed diplomacy, or a simple accident.

The film, which includes Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pervez Musharraf and Tony Blair, was written and directed by Lucy Walker (Devil's Playground, Blindsight), produced by Lawrence Bender (Inglourious Basterds, An Inconvenient Truth) and developed, financed and executive produced by Participant Media, together with World Security Institute.