In 1969, my senior year at Harvard, anti-war activists took over University Hall and their brutal removal by state troopers led to a month-long strike. Today’s guest, longtime activist and organizer, MICHAEL ANSARA, was chair of the strike committee. We’ll talk about his new memoir, THE HARD WORK OF HOPE, the parallels between the late ‘60s and the current day, and lessons learned that might help this time around. You can learn more at michaelansara.org

Here’s my 2020 conversation with psychiatrist & author ROBERT JAY LIFTON whose work led him into some of history’s darkest corners - Hiroshima survivors, Nazi doctors, torture at Abu Ghraib. I turned to him as the pandemic raged and the BLM protests were in full bloom. We talk about his book LOSING REALITY: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry. Lifton wrote the foreword to The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists & Mental Health Experts Assess a President. He died September 4th at the age of 99. Learn more at robertjaylifton.com

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