interviews

‘I do occasionally have searching anxious moments where I'm convinced that there's going to be an awful end to a string of good fortune.”read more

“This project has sapped me. It took almost five years. But I’m very proud of it. It’s an accumulation of the themes of my films.”read more

America’s preeminent television documentarian, Ken Burns, returned to the little -- and big -- screen in November with a proverbial bang.read more

An old friend who long ago gave up on the Democratic Party in favor of politics on the left fringe greatly enjoys bashing prominent liberals. He finds that the opportunism , the compromises, and the double - standards of leading liberal Democrats provide easy targets. Yet of former South Dakota Senator and 1972 Presidential nominee George McGovern , my friend once opined, "If all liberals were like McGovern , I'd still be a liberal ."read more

“All art is to better life. We want to create more pleasure, and object to despair. It’s about creating a space where we can be less aggressed upon.” By Morvary Samaréread more

Gene Sharp is the single most influential proponent of nonviolent change in our time. His work has served as a how-to manual for activists in countries across Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa, and has been translated into dozens of languages. And it played a role in the Arab Spring, as anti-Mubarak protesters in Egypt, particularly, found inspiration in his teachings.read more

2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee has overcome tremendous adversity. A teenager at the start of the civil war in her native Liberia, she and her family were forced to go on the run, first within the country and then to Ghana. Along the way, she witnessed terrible atrocities and narrowly escaped harm herself. During the birth of her third child, sheread more

"It’s the stupidity that will really drive me away from this country." | Read his interview from 2006.read more

"I was told I needed to act more like the Establishment."read more

“The right was able to recast itself as a populist movement,” says the author and cultural critic.“This is the secret to conservatism’s success.”read more

“Restoration of collective bargaining rights would be at the top of the list.”read more

“The media was supposed to be the watchdog for the regular folks, and now comedians have to be the watchdog of the media,” says the creator of The Daily Show.read more

"The biggest industry hoax is that the United States can't move to renewable energy now," says the actor and environmentalist.read more

George Carlin as political and social philosopher? Why not? One would be hard-pressed to find anyone who so consistently, for more than three decades now, has stood before the public, in venues both small and global, to tell so many dirty and ugly and hilarious truths about the way we Americans live. Or pretend to live.read more