When tech billionaires make nice with authoritarians and AI challenges are everywhere, I check in with JONATHAN TAPLIN, Director Emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, a former tour manager for Bob Dylan & The Band, a producer of films including Martin Scorsese’s MEAN STREETS, and the author of MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy and THE END OF REALITY: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto. We talk about the relationships of AI, democracy, authoritarianism, inequality, billionaires, the arts, and the military. You can learn more at jontaplin.com

When tech billionaires seem okay with authoritarianism and AI may be today’s existential challenge, here’s my 2013 conversation with Jaron Lanier about his book, WHO OWNS THE FUTURE? Lanier envisions a radical solution to surveillance capitalism that he believes could restore the American middle class: we all get paid for our data - which is, after all, the source of the value of networks like Facebook, Yelp, YouTube, etc. We talk about a lot more than that and it’s wild to realize this took place 13 years ago.

Let’s get down to basics. Does your life have a purpose? Can you justify your existence? I talk with REBECCA GOLDSTEIN, philosopher, novelist, and MacArthur Fellow, about THE MATTERING INSTINCT: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us. Goldstein asserts we are “creatures of matter who long to matter” - physical beings governed by the laws of nature, yet obsessed with our own significance. She and I talk about the implications of this perspective on our understanding of what it means to be human, and about how we can put this understanding to use to help us turn things around in this challenging time of tribalism and social and political regression. Learn more at rebeccagoldstein.com/

To remind us what has to heal to put MAGA behind us, here’s my 2020 conversation with Pulitzer Prize winning husband-wife team, NICHOLAS KRISTOF & SHERYL WuDUNN. Their book, TIGHTROPE, tells how Nick’s childhood home - Yamhill, Oregon - was devastated by the loss of well-paying jobs and policy failures in education, healthcare, and justice that led to his childhood friends’ deaths of despair - and how we can end this crisis. We recorded this episode in the final year of Trump’s first term, a few weeks before the pandemic exploded.

I talk with TROY BRENNAN, professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and former Chief Medical Officer at CVS Health about his latest book, WONDERFUL AND BROKEN: The Complex Reality of Primary Care in the US. The US accounts for roughly half of total global health care spending, even though it's only 4% of world population. The World Health Organization ranks US healthcare 37th overall compared to other Western countries. Primary care physicians play a pivotal role in both preventing disease and lowering healthcare costs but they are overworked, underpaid, and incentivized to move into higher-paying specialties while patients face provider shortages.

For Oscar week, two half hour film-linked episodes from the archives. First my 2006 conversation with ROGER EBERT, following that year’s Oscars, where CRASH beat BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN for Best Picture. The vote was controversial in the film world and the fact that a gay cowboy movie came close riled the homophobic hearts of the Christian Right. So lots to talk about. In the second half, my 2007 episode with television trailblazer, PHIL DONAHUE, who died in 2024 at the age of 88. We talk about some of his courageous choices over the years and about Body of War, the documentary he co-directed about a severely disabled Iraq War veteran. His condemnations of the Iraq War and its beginnings are sadly and infuriatingly ripped from today’s news.

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TRILLION DOLLAR WAR MACHINE - the title of the new book BILL HARTUNG & BEN FREEMAN wrote together - is about a trillion dollar a year machine for waging wars and for creating them. Donald Trump has discovered he likes using it. We spend more than we did in 1985 for a military half the size. Hartung & Freeman talk about a military-lobbyist-newsmedia-entertainment-sports-industrial complex. The tech bro’s want in on the gravy train and see AI as their ticket. I assume we don’t talk about defense spending because no one expects anything to change. We’re about to find out once again how crazy that is. We recorded this conversation 2/26 - one day before the war on Iran. Learn more about Bill & Ben at the Quincy Institute - quincyinst.org/

Here’s my 2017 conversation with CHIP BERLET, investigative journalist, research analyst, activist - and friend - who died January 30, 2026. Over the last 50 years, Chip was one of a handful of folks who consistently tracked and organized against right-wing extremism. As MAGA grew and metastasized from its roots in the Silent Majority and the Tea Party, Chip was on the beat. Can’t say he didn’t warn us. Berlet was part of a team at the National Lawyers Guild who revealed the COINTELPRO program, in which US security and military forces disrupted left-wing movements for years, and co-authored (with Matthew N. Lyons) Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort a year before 9/11. We recorded this conversation two months into Trump One and five months before Tiki Torches in Charlottesville.