My 1989 speech to my 20th Harvard reunion – prescient & tragically hopeful
Written on July 27th, 2025A couple of weeks ago I recorded myself reading a speech I originally gave June 9, 1989 – 36 years ago – at my 20th college reunion, Harvard class of 1969. Ours was the year of the University Hall takeover and the campus strike. In ’89, I was fully involved in the entertainment industry. In the speech, I asked how we were living up to our youthful ideals. I don’t know if my words affected anyone else, but I came back home and got much more involved in causes, setting me on the path on which I found this show 7 years later. Today I find my words prescient, hopeful and – given today’s reality – a bit tragic.
FF_TM 1989 Harvard Speech_Transcript
(1) Can government save capitalism from itself? CHRIS HUGHES, Facebook co-founder, (2) my prescient & tragic 1989 speech to my 20th Harvard reunion
Written on July 4th, 2025
T. McNally Harvard Speech Transcript
LAWRENCE LESSIG – They’re Not Representing Us-and what we need to do about it
Written on November 21st, 2019In 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.
NEW: ERICA CHENOWETH-Non-Violent Protests On the March – Why They Work
Written on August 10th, 2019About
Disruptive #10: Sports Genomics
Written on April 23rd, 2017DISRUPTIVE #10: Sports Genomics
McNally:
Hello, I’m Terrence McNally and you’re listening to DISRUPTIVE the podcast from Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
Can sneaker endorsements, cereals, protein powders or electrolyte cocktails get any of us closer to the peak level performance of our favorite athletes? Despite billions in sales, the answer is probably no. But how about an elite athlete’s biology?
With 100 trillion cells in the human body, bacteria outnumber our own human cells 2 to 1, and bacteria in our gut affect all our key organ functions. They play a role in our health, development and wellness, including endurance, recovery and mental aptitude.
What if we could tap the gut bacteria of elite athletes to produce customized probiotics – and what if those probiotics could give recipients access to some of the biological advantages that make those athletes elite?
A former NBA hopeful in the lab of George Church at the Wyss Institute asked that question a couple of years ago and the lab is now moving toward a startup to bring such products to market.
In related news, consider this: With 2015 sales of $115B, sports-based nutraceuticals made up the largest share of the global nutraceutical market, but probiotic-focused sports products made up less than 1% of those sales.
I’ll talk with Wyss Research Fellow JONATHAN SCHEIMAN and – a previous guest on Disruptive – Wyss core-faculty member GEORGE CHURCH.
Continue reading “Disruptive #10: Sports Genomics”
