Moyers & Company

Remember climate change? The issue barely came up during the presidential campaigns, and little has been said since. But bringing climate change back into our national conversation is as much a communications challenge as it is a scientific one. Scientist Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, joins Bill to describe his efforts to do what even Hurricane Sandy couldn’t – galvanize communities over what’s arguably the greatest single threat facing humanity. Leiserowitz, who specializes in the psychology of risk perception, knows better than anyone if people are willing to change their behavior to make a difference. “[A] pervasive sense up to now has been that climate change is distant — distant in time, and distant in space,” Leiserowitz tells Bill. “And what we’re now beginning to see is that it’s not so distant. It’s not just future generations. It’s us and it’s our own children. I have a nine-year-old son — he’s going to be my age in the year 2050. I don’t want him to live in the world that we’re currently hurtling towards.” Later in the show, in a broadcast essay, Bill reports on how the NRA and gun merchants continue to strong-arm Congress and state legislatures into keeping any and all discussion of sensible gun control off the table.

Our current obsession with slashing the deficit is getting in the way of real work that needs to be done to preserve both our economy and our democracy. In this episode of Moyers & Company, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argues that we should put aside our excessive focus on saving money, try to overcome political recalcitrance, and spend money to put America back to work. Krugman offers specific solutions to not only end what he calls a “vast, unnecessary catastrophe,” but to do it more quickly than some imagine possible. His latest book, End This Depression Now!, is both a warning of the fiscal perils ahead and a prescription to safely avoid them. Later on the show, Bill explains how last week’s fiscal cliff deal gave tens of billions in tax breaks to Wall Street and corporations — what even the Wall Street Journal calls a “crony capitalist blowout.”

President Obama’s second inauguration will be a day of celebration, but whether or not he accomplishes his second-term goals depends on what happens the next day — Tuesday, January 22 — on Capitol Hill. That’s when the United States Senate is supposed to decide the fate of the filibuster. Once “the world’s most deliberative body”, the Senate has become a graveyard of democracy where, says Bill Moyers, “grown men and women are zombified in a process no respectable witch doctor would emulate for fear of a malpractice suit.” Case in point: The 112th Congress that just ended — the least productive in the record books — saw Republicans mounting or threatening to mount nearly 400 filibusters, blocking everything from equal pay for equal work and jobs bills to immigration reform and judicial appointments. As a result, there are more vacancies on the federal courts today than when President Obama first took office. With minimal effort — and hardly a word spoken — a minority of Senators can prevent lawmakers from even discussing legislation by simply making phone call to the cloakroom. The filibuster is also “a triumph of hypocrisy,” Moyers says, because the party in the majority always wants to reform it, until that same party winds up in the minority and wants to keep it. Larry Cohen, president of the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America, joins Bill to make the case for common-sense reform that would bring the Senate back to serving democracy. Cohen is a leader of the Democracy Initiative, a coalition of nearly 50 progressive organizations campaigning hard to change the filibuster rules — not to deny a minority the right to be heard, but to hold Senators accountable by bringing back the requirement that they show up in person and talk in plain sight, so we can know who’s holding democracy hostage. But time is not on their side — unless the Senate reforms the filibuster at the beginning of the new 113th Congress — that

At the top of the show, Bill digs deeper into a startling New York Times-reported story about a cost-control exception provided to Amgen, the world’s largest biotechnology firm. According to the report, the sweetheart deal — hidden in the Senate’s final “fiscal cliff” bill — will cost taxpayers half a billion dollars. Bill talks to U.S. Representative Peter Welch (D-VT) about the bi-partisan bill he recently sponsored to repeal that giveaway, and the political factors that allow such crony capitalism to occur. Later, as we note the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Bill discusses the fierce challenges facing the reproductive rights movement with Jessica González-Rojas, Executive Director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and Lynn Paltrow, founder and Executive Director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women. Though a majority of Americans now believe abortion should be legal in most cases, anti-abortion forces showing no sign of relenting. A study by the Guttmacher Institute reported that state legislatures passed 92 provisions restricting a woman’s access to reproductive health care in 2011 — a number four times higher than the previous year.

In the fight against terrorism, the American military’s escalating drone program has become the face of our foreign policy in Pakistan, Yemen and parts of Africa. And while the use of un-manned drones indeed protects American soldiers, the growing number of casualties — which include civilians as well as suspected terrorists — has prompted a United Nations investigation into both the legality and the deadly toll of these strikes. Bill explores the moral and legal implications of using drones to target our enemies — both foreign and American — as well as other intelligence issues with Vicki Divoll, a former general counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and former deputy legal adviser to the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center, and Vincent Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Also on the show, Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi on the shocking lack of accountability for big bankers who continue to act unethically, and in some cases, illegally.

America has a wide digital divide — high-speed Internet access is available only to those who can afford it, at prices much higher and speeds much slower in the U.S. than they are around the world. But neither has to be the case, says Susan Crawford, former special assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation, and author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. Crawford joins Bill to discuss how our government has allowed a few powerful media conglomerates to put profit ahead of the public interest — rigging the rules, raising prices, and stifling competition. As a result, Crawford says, all of us are at the mercy of the biggest business monopoly since Standard Oil in the first Gilded Age a hundred years ago. “The rich are getting gouged, the poor are very often left out, and this means that we’re creating, yet again, two Americas, and deepening inequality through this communications inequality,” Crawford tells Bill. Also on the show, journalist Nick Turse describes his personal mission to compile a complete and compelling account of the Vietnam War’s horror as experienced by all sides, including innocent civilians who were sucked into its violent vortex. Turse, who devoted 12 years to tracking down the true story of Vietnam, unlocked secret troves of documents, interviewed officials and veterans – including many accused of war atrocities – and traveled throughout the Vietnamese countryside talking with eyewitnesses to create his book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. “American culture has never fully come to grips with Vietnam,” Turse tells Bill, referring to “hidden and forbidden histories that just haven’t been fully engaged.”

There’s no question that big money calls the shots, or at least strongly influences the agenda, on many issues vital to America’s democracy and integrity. Dan Cantor, Executive Director of New York’s Working Families Party, and Jonathan Soros, co-founder of the Friends of Democracy super PAC and a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, join Bill to discuss their proposals to fight the corrosive effects of money in politics. With the help of Soros’ anti-super PAC super PAC, the two are combating the negative impacts of Citizens United by backing candidates who stand up for campaign finance reform. Soros and Cantor advocate for a New York State public financing system inspired by New York City’s publicly-funded program that makes it less financially prohibitive to run for city-wide office. Also on the program, Martín Espada on the power of poetry, and Bill’s essays on what money and influence will buy you in Washington.

Even as President Obama’s talking points champion the middle class and condemn how our economy caters to the very rich, modern American capitalism is a story of continued inequality and hardship. Even a modest increase in the minimum wage — as suggested by the president — faces opposition from those who seem to show allegiance first and foremost to America’s wealthy and powerful. Yet some aren’t just wringing their hands about our economic crisis; they’re fighting back. Economist Richard Wolff joins Bill to shine light on the disaster left behind in capitalism’s wake, and to discuss the fight for economic justice, including a fair minimum wage. A Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, and currently Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School, Wolff has written many books on the effects of rampant capitalism, including Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It. Also on the broadcast, activist and author Saru Jayaraman marches on Washington with restaurant workers struggling to make ends meet, and talks about how we can best support their right to a fair wage. Jayaraman is the co-founder and co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, which works to improve pay and working conditions for America’s 10 million-plus restaurant workers. She is also the author of Behind the Kitchen Door, a new exposé of the restaurant industry.

Religious fundamentalists backed by the right wing are finding increasingly stealthy ways to challenge evolution with the dogma of creationism. Their strategy includes passing education laws that encourage teaching creationism alongside evolution, and supporting school vouchers to transfer taxpayer money from public to private schools, where they can push a creationist agenda. But they didn’t count on 19-year-old anti-creationism activist Zack Kopplin. From the time he was a high school senior in his home state of Louisiana, Kopplin has been speaking, debating, cornering politicians and winning the active support of 78 Nobel Laureates, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New Orleans City Council, and tens of thousands of students, teachers and others around the country. The Rice University history major joins Bill to talk about fighting the creep of creationist curricula into public school science classes and publicly funded vouchers that end up supporting creationist instruction. Also on the program, journalist and historian Susan Jacoby talks with Bill about the role secularism and intellectual curiosity have played throughout America’s history, a topic explored in her new book, The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought.

Sheila Bair, the longtime Republican who served as chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) during the fiscal meltdown five years ago, joins Bill to talk about American banks’ continuing risky and manipulative practices, their seeming immunity from prosecution, and growing anger from Congress and the public. Also on the show, Richard Wolff, whose smart, blunt talk about the crisis of capitalism on his first Moyers & Company appearance was so compelling and provocative, we asked him to return. This time, the economics expert answers questions sent in by our viewers, diving further into economic inequality, the limitations of industry regulation, and the widening gap between a booming stock market and a population that increasingly lives in poverty.

Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright established the constitutional right of criminal defendants to legal representation, even if they can’t afford it. The Court ruled there shouldn’t be one kind of justice for the rich and another for the poor, but the scales of the American legal system still tilt heavily in favor of the white and wealthy. Attorney and legal scholar Bryan Stevenson joins Bill to expose the system’s failures, and ongoing struggles at the crossroads of race, class and justice. Stevenson’s Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative has reversed the death sentences of more than 75 inmates. But right now, there are more than 3,100 inmates on death row, and more than 60% are members of racial or ethnic minorities. Over time, Supreme Court Justices have fine-tuned the circumstances under which the death penalty may still apply, but no set of laws or jurisprudence can undo wrongful executions — or, it seems, completely prevent them. According to journalists Martin Clancy and Tim O’Brien, authors of Murder at the Supreme Court, in recent years at least 18 inmates were released from death row because DNA evidence proved their innocence. These cases are among more than 140 death penalty exonerations over the last three decades. The broadcast closes with a Bill Moyers Essay on the hypocrisy of “justice for all” in a society where billions are squandered for a war born in fraud while the poor are pushed aside.

Martin Luther King, Jr., who died 45 years ago this month, had long known that racial equality was inextricably linked to economic equity — fairness for all, including working people and the poor. In the last year of his life, Dr. King announced the Poor People’s Campaign to demand an “Economic Bill of Rights” for all Americans, regardless of color. But nearly a half-century later, that dream is still a dream deferred. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch and author and theologian James Cone join Bill to discuss Dr. King’s vision of economic justice, and why so little has changed for America’s most oppressed. Also on the show, poet Kyle Dargan talks about his efforts to reconcile disparate cultural environments through poetry.

The unprecedented level of economic inequality in America is undeniable. In an extended essay, Bill shares examples of the striking extremes of wealth and poverty across the country, including a video report on California’s Silicon Valley. There, Facebook, Google, and Apple are minting millionaires, while the area’s homeless — who’ve grown 20 percent in the last two years — are living in tent cities at their virtual doorsteps. “A petty, narcissistic, pridefully ignorant politics has come to dominate and paralyze our government,” says Bill, “while millions of people keep falling through the gaping hole that has turned us into the United States of Inequality.” Later, Bill is joined by writer Sherman Alexie. Born on a Native American reservation, Alexie has been navigating the cultural boundaries of American culture in lauded poetry, novels, short stories, screenplays, even stand-up comedy for over two decades. Alexie shares his irreverent perspective on contemporary American life, and discusses the challenges of living in two different cultures at the same time, especially when one has so much dominance over the other. “I know a lot more about being white than you know about being Indian,” Alexie tells Bill.

Biologist, mother and activist Sandra Steingraber joins Bill to explain why she was willing to go to jail — and did — for blocking access to the construction of a storage and transportation facility involved in the controversial process of fracking. Steingraber has become internationally known for building awareness about toxins she says are threatening our children’s health by contaminating our air, water and food, and talks to Bill about how we must take action stop these “toxic trespassers.” With government captured by the very industries it’s supposed to regulate, Steingraber has lost patience with politicians and corporations, and says we need to work together now to prevent destruction to the environment. Also on the show, Bill presents the short documentary “Dance of the Honey Bee.” Narrated by Bill McKibben, the film takes a look at the determined, beautiful, and vital role honey bees play in preserving life, as well as the threats bees face from a rapidly changing landscape.

The violent Boston rampage triggered a local and federal response that, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald, adds a new dimension to troubling questions about government secrecy, overreach, and what we sacrifice in the name of national security. Greenwald joins Bill to peel back layers that reveal what the Boston bombings and drone attacks have in common, and how secrecy leads to abuse of government power. Also on the show, political scholars Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann tell Bill that Congress’ failure to make progress on gun control last week — despite support for background checks from 90% of the American public – is symptomatic of a legislative branch reduced to dysfunction, partisan ravings and obstruction. A year ago, the two — who had strong reputations as non-partisan analysts — decided to speak truth to power with their book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism. In it, they argue that congressional gridlock is mostly the fault of right wing radicals within the Republican Party who engage in “policy hostage-taking” to extend their political war against the president. What’s more, Ornstein and Mann say, the mainstream media and media fact-checkers add to the problem by indulging in “false equivalency” — pretending both parties are equally to blame.

Francine and David Wheeler’s youngest son Ben was one of the 20 children killed in the December 14th attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Their grief has led them to Sandy Hook Promise, a now-nationwide group founded by Newtown friends and neighbors to heal the hurt and find new ways to talk about and campaign against the scourge of gun violence in the United States. One of their allies is folk singer Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary fame, who joined with the Wheelers and others in a February concert of harmony, resilience and solidarity. Francine Wheeler and Peter Yarrow discuss with Bill the power of music to create change, and their mission to protect children and adults from gun violence in communities across America. We also see excerpts from the concert, soon to appear on many public television stations. Later, the conversation continues as David Wheeler joins his wife to talk about what can be done and if the gun issue can be addressed in a way that includes diverse viewpoints and bypasses partisan brinkmanship.

With our democracy threatened by plutocrats and the politicians in their pockets more than ever, the antidote to organized money is organized people. It takes time and effort, but across the country, grass roots democracy is growing. Individuals are banding together, organizing toward common goals and demanding change – and often delivering it. Bill sits with three organizers leading the way. Marshall Ganz is a social movement legend who dropped out of Harvard to become a volunteer during Mississippi’s Freedom Summer of 1964. He then joined forces with Cesar Chavez of the United Farmworkers, protecting workers who picked crops for pennies in California’s fields and orchards. Ganz also had a pivotal role organizing students and volunteers for Barack Obama’s historic 2008 presidential campaign. Now 70, he’s still organizing across the United States and the Middle East, and back at Harvard, teaching students from around the world about what it takes to beat Goliath. Later on the broadcast, economic equality advocates Rachel LaForest, executive director of Right to the City, and Madeline Janis, co-founder and national policy director of Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, discuss with Bill how social action can change both policy and lives. Janis led the fight for a living wage in Los Angeles; LaForest fights for fair and affordable housing across the country.

Science can be a battleground — witness the politics of climate change, the teaching of evolution, the uncharted terrain of genetic modification and stem cell research, among other contentious issues. But when industries release untested chemicals into our environment — putting profits before public health — our children are the first to suffer. Nowhere is this more troubling than in the ongoing story of lead poisoning. Bill talks with David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, public health historians who’ve been taking on the chemical industry for years — writing about the hazards of industrial pollution and the neglect of worker safety — despite industry efforts to undermine them. Their latest book, Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children, is the culmination of 20 years of research. Markowitz and Rosner warn that, for young children, there’s no safe level of exposure to this dangerous toxin still lurking in millions of homes. The authors discuss thwarted efforts to hold the lead industry accountable, failed attempts to find cheap solutions, and the cost to the future of our children. As long as the chemical industry and its powerful lobbies prevail in blocking efforts to reform outdated laws, Markowitz and Rosner say, we will continue to float in a soup of toxins — inhaling, drinking, and absorbing chemicals that we may learn, years later, have put us all in harm’s way. Also on the show, Bill is joined by the heads of two independent watchdog groups keeping an eye on government as well as on powerful interests seeking to influence it. Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics and OpenSecrets.org, and Danielle Brian, who runs the Project on Government Oversight, talk to Bill about the importance of transparency to our democracy, and their efforts to scrutinize who’s giving money, who’s receiving it, and most importantly, what’s expected in return.

In December 2008, during the closing weeks of the Bush White House, 27-year-old environmental activist Tim DeChristopher went to protest the auction of gas and oil drilling rights to more than 150,000 acres of publicly-owned Utah wilderness. But instead of yelling slogans or waving a sign, DeChristopher disrupted the proceedings by starting to bid. Given an auction paddle designating him “Bidder 70”, DeChristopher won a dozen land leases worth nearly two million dollars. He was arrested for criminal fraud, found guilty, and sentenced to two years in federal prison — even though the new Obama Administration had since declared the oil and gas auction null and void. DeChristopher — who was released less than a month ago — joins Bill to talk about the necessity of civil disobedience in the fight for justice, how his jury was ordered to place the strict letter of the law over moral conscience, and the future of the environmental movement. Bidder 70, a new documentary chronicling DeChristopher’s legal battle and activism, opened May 17. DeChristopher is co-founder of the grassroots environmental group Peaceful Uprising. Also on the show, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson tells Bill that, five years after the country’s economic near-collapse, banks are still too big to fail, too big to manage, and too big to trust. Stockholders’ reaffirmation of Jamie Dimon as JP Morgan Chase’s chairman and CEO this week — despite a year of accusations and investigations at the bank — is further evidence, she says, of an unchecked system that continues to covet profits and eschew accountability, putting our economy and democracy at risk. Morgenson also discusses how behemoth companies like Apple manipulate the system and avail themselves of the biggest tax loopholes money and influence can buy.

Whatever your take on the recent revelations about government spying on our phone calls and Internet activity, there’s no denying that Big Brother is bigger and less brotherly than we thought. What’s the resulting cost to our privacy — and more so, our democracy? Lawrence Lessig, professor of law and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and founder of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, discusses the implications of our government’s actions, Edward Snowden’s role in leaking the information, and steps we must take to better protect our privacy. “Snowden describes agents having the authority to pick and choose who they’re going to be following on the basis of their hunch about what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense. This is the worst of both worlds. We have a technology now that gives them access to everything, but a culture if again it’s true that encourages them to be as wide ranging as they can,” Lessig tells Bill. “The question is — are there protections or controls or counter technologies to make sure that when the government gets access to this information they can’t misuse it in all the ways that, you know, anybody who remembers Nixon believes and fears governments might use?” Few are as knowledgeable about the impact of the Internet on our public and private lives as Lessig, who argues that government needs to protect American rights with the same determination and technological sophistication it uses to invade our privacy and root out terrorists. “If we don’t have technical measures in place to protect against misuse, this is just a trove of potential misuse…We’ve got to think about the technology as a protector of liberty too. And the government should be implementing technologies to protect our liberties,” Lessig says. “Because if they don’t, we don’t figure out how to build that protection into the technology, it won’t be there.” “We

A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge. In state houses around the country, hundreds of pieces of boilerplate ALEC legislation are proposed or enacted that would, among other things, dilute collective bargaining rights, make it harder for some Americans to vote, and limit corporate liability for harm caused to consumers — each accomplished without the public ever knowing who’s behind it. Using interviews, documents, and field reporting, the episode explores ALEC’s self-serving machine at work, acting in a way one Wisconsin politician describes as “a corporate dating service for lonely legislators and corporate special interests.” Former health care industry executive Wendell Potter says, “Even though I’d known of [ALEC] for a long time, I was astonished. Just about everything that I knew that the health insurance industry wanted out of any state lawmaker was included in that package of bills.” Following up on a 2012 report, this update includes new examples of corporate influence on state legislation and lawmakers, the growing public protest against ALEC’s big business-serving agenda, and internal tactics ALEC is instituting to further shroud its actions and intentions. “United States of ALEC” Executive Producer Tom Casciato says people who saw the first report “might be surprised to learn that, despite more than 40 companies having dropped out of ALEC, the organization is still going very strong.” He adds, “ALEC doesn’t publish a list of its members, so covering will always be hard, but in a democracy it’s a good idea for people to know where their laws originate.” “United States of ALEC” is a collabo

The story of American families facing food insecurity is as frustrating as it is heartbreaking, because the truth is as avoidable as it is tragic. Here in the richest country on earth, 50 million of us — one in six Americans — go hungry. More than a third of them are children. And yet Congress can’t pass a Farm Bill because our representatives continue to fight over how many billions to slash from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. The debate is filled with tired clichés about freeloaders undeserving of government help, living large at the expense of honest, hardworking taxpayers. But a new documentary, A Place at the Table, paints a truer picture of America’s poor. “The cost of food insecurity, obesity and malnutrition is way larger than it is to feed kids nutritious food,” Kristi Jacobson, one of the film’s directors and producers, tells Bill. She and Mariana Chilton, director of the Center for Hunger-Free Communities, explain to Bill how hunger hits hard at people from every walk of life. “There’s no opportunity for people who are low-income to really engage in our democracy,” says Chilton. “I think they’re actively shut out.” Later, Greg Kaufmann — poverty correspondent for The Nation — talks about how the poor have been stereotyped and demonized in an effort to justify huge cuts in food stamps and other crucial programs for low-income Americans. “People are working and they’re not getting paid enough to feed their families, pay their utilities, pay for their housing, pay for the healthcare… if you’re not paying people enough to pay for the basics, they’re going to need help getting food,” Kaufmann tells Bill. “There are a lot of corporations that want to be involved in the fight against hunger. The best thing they can do is get on board for fair wages.”

Twenty-two years ago, Bill Moyers started documenting the story of two ordinary families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin — families whose breadwinners had lost well-paying factory jobs. Relying on the belief that hard work is the key to a good living and better life, the Stanleys and the Neumanns, like millions of others, went about pursuing the American dream. But as they found other jobs, got re-trained, and worked any time and overtime, they still found themselves on a downward slope, working harder and longer for less pay and fewer benefits, facing devastating challenges and difficult choices. Bill Moyers revisits his reports on the Stanleys and Neumanns — whose stories Bill updates on the July 9 Frontline report “Two American Families.” He also talks with the authors of two important books about how the changing nature of the economy is affecting everyone: Barbara Miner, a public education advocate who’s been following the decline of her own Milwaukee hometown for nearly 40 years and just published Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City; and author, activist and playwright Barbara Garson, who’s published a number of books about the changing lives of working Americans. Her most recent is Down the Up Escalator: How the 99% Live in the Great Recession. “The growing [economic] disparity didn’t happen as some sort of natural event, like the rain falling from the sky… it really is the result of policy decisions,” Miner tells Bill. “Forty years of concentrated efforts have gone to lowering wages, whether it was breaking unions or creating laws that allowed you to make more money overseas than you might have otherwise,” says Garson. “We just have to raise wages — not only for the sake of people getting the low wages, but if we don’t raise wages, we’re well on our way to the next debt crisis.” The Stanleys and Neumanns were first featured in Minimum Wages: The New Economy

Across the world — Greece, Spain, Brazil, Egypt — citizens are turning angrily to their governments to demand economic fair play and equality. But here in America, with few exceptions, the streets and airwaves remain relatively silent. In a country as rich and powerful as America, why is there so little outcry about the ever-increasing, deliberate divide between the very wealthy and everyone else? Media scholar Marty Kaplan points to a number of forces keeping these issues and affected citizens in the dark — especially our well-fed appetite for media distraction. An award-winning columnist and head of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, Kaplan also talks about the appropriate role of journalists as advocates for truth. Later on the show, acclaimed historian Gary May puts the recent Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act into historical perspective. A specialist in American political, diplomatic and social history, May’s latest book is Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy.

Since the end of slavery in America, no workers have been more exploited than the men and women who bend to the earth in backbreaking labor, picking fruits, vegetables, and tobacco, and getting very little back in terms of wages or respect for their humanity. But their cause has a champion in Baldemar Velásquez. Velásquez was among hundreds of thousands of children who joined their migrant parents working long hours in the fields. Inspired by that early experience, he founded the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in 1967. Velásquez joins Bill to talk about the ongoing David vs. Goliath struggles to ensure fairness for American farmworkers. Also on the program, author and gun industry analyst Tom Diaz explains how a lethal combination of self-defense laws and concealed carry laws — championed by the NRA and the gun industry — makes us more vulnerable to gun violence. He warns that the genie is out of the bottle and we should be gravely concerned about the unrelenting marketing of guns. Diaz’s latest book is The Last Gun: How Changes in the Gun Industry Are Killing Americans and What It Will Take to Stop It.

Bill Moyers and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) meet to share experiences and revelations about the momentous March on Washington both attended 50 years ago. Their discussion takes them to the spot in front of the Lincoln Memorial where Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, and others famously spoke about freedom and justice, creating critical momentum for both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. While there, Moyers and Lewis attract the attention of schoolchildren, and conduct a spontaneous living history lesson. The March on Washington is largely remembered for King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The 23-year-old Lewis, newly named to lead the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was the youngest of the featured speakers, but among the most defiant. Now a 14-term congressman from Georgia, Lewis shares new insight into how the event unfolded — including last-minute conflicts over his own manuscript. He also discusses the continuing challenges to racial and economic equality, and his unwavering dedication to nonviolence and brotherly love as a means toward a more just end — even when facing inevitable violence and brutality. “To look out and see the best of America convinced me more than anything else that this is the product, this is the work of the movement,” Lewis tells Bill. “Sometimes you have to not just dream about what could be — you get out and push and you pull and you preach. And you create a climate and environment to get those in high places, to get men and women of good will in power to act.” Threading rarely-seen documentary footage into their conversation, Bill — who was deputy director of the newly-created Peace Corps at the time — also shares his own memories of the day. He concludes with an essay about how the goal of equal rights and opportunities for all Americans — so championed at the March on Washington — continues to elude us. “But for a few hours that day,” Bill say

Mark Leibovich covers Washington, D.C., as chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine. In his new book, This Town, he writes about the city’s bipartisan lust for power, cash and notoriety. It’s the story of how Washington became an occupied city; its hold on reality distorted by greed and ambition. Leibovich pulls no punches, names names, and reveals the movers, the shakers and the lucrative deals they make — all in the name of crony capitalism. Also this week, in an essay, Moyers says the parody and satire of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert pay Washington the disrespect it deserves, but in the end it’s the city’s predatory mercenaries who have the last laugh.

With the probability of American intervention, Syria is everywhere in the news. On this week’s Moyers & Company, Phil Donahue, filling in for Bill Moyers, speaks with National Public Radio Middle East correspondent Deborah Amos and historian and Vietnam veteran Andrew Bacevich about the possible repercussions of our actions in the Middle East. As he has done so often in recent years, Andrew Bacevich is asking the important questions about America’s role in the world and specifically why we should go into Syria. Is a military response justified and if we take action, where does it stop? A graduate of West Point and Vietnam veteran, he served for 23 years in the military before becoming a professor at Boston University. His new book, Breach of Trust, asks whether our reliance on a professional military rather than a citizen’s army has lured us into a morass of endless war — a trap that threatens not only our global reputation but democracy itself. Among its deadly side effects, the war in Syria has created a refugee crisis beyond that country’s borders — a “disgraceful humanitarian calamity” and “the great tragedy of this century,” according to the United Nations. Deborah Amos, a veteran National Public Radio correspondent, joins Donahue for a discussion about the human toll of the Syrian fighting, and the potential impact of millions of displaced people on the region.

The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat; the millions of dollars spent in the pursuit of power and celebrity — sports and politics have a lot in common. And although in a perfect world, athletes are supposed to put politics aside when they take to the field, in reality, the two forces are inextricably entwined. Look at the black power protests at the Summer Olympics in 1968, the terrorist tragedy at the Munich games in 1972, or the current controversy around next year’s Winter Olympics in Russia because of that nation’s virulent anti-gay policies. Witness demonstrations in Brazil against millions being spent on World Cup stadiums, or disputes here at home over taxpayer funding of new municipal arenas — not to mention the physical risks faced by athletes from steroid use and repetitive injuries. The NFL recently announced it would pay out $765 million to settle a lawsuit from thousands of former players suffering from concussions and related brain trauma. Dave Zirin, The Nation magazine’s first ever sports writer, joins Bill Moyers to discuss the collision of sports with politics and why it’s not only inevitable but significant and newsworthy. He’s been called the best sportswriter in the United States and also hosts Sirius XM Radio’s popular weekly broadcast, Edge of Sports. A prolific author, his books include Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love and this, his most recent, Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down. Also on this week’s Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers says that in time, the White House, Congress and the punditry of the Beltway may ultimately be grateful to a public that weighed in on a potential military strike in Syria – that the collective common sense of everyday people became a force so powerful it could not be ignored.

This week marks both the fifth anniversary of the fiscal meltdown that almost tanked the world economy and the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, the movement that sparked heightened public awareness of income inequality. Yet the crisis is worse than ever – in the first three years of the recovery, 95 percent of the economic gains have gone only to the top one percent of Americans. And the share of working people in the U.S. who define themselves as lower class is at its highest level in four decades. More and more are fighting back. According to Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor: “The core principle is that we want an economy that works for everyone, not just for a small elite. We want equal opportunity, not equality of outcome. We want to make sure that there’s upward mobility again, in our society and in our economy.” This week, Reich joins Moyers & Company to discuss a new documentary film, Inequality for All, opening next week in theaters across the country. Directed by Jacob Kornbluth, the film aims to be a game-changer in our national discussion of income inequality. Reich, who Time magazine called one of the best cabinet secretaries of the 20th century, stars in this dynamic, witty and entertaining documentary. A professor at the University of California Berkeley, Reich is the author of thirteen books, including The Work of Nations, which is available in 22 languages; Aftershock and Supercapitalism, which were best sellers; and his latest, Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone Wrong with Our Economy and our Democracy, and How to Fix It. He appears regularly on television and radio – you can hear him on public radio’s Marketplace – and blogs about politics and economics at RobertReich.org.

As of this moment Vladimir Putin’s government is holding in custody the Arctic Sunrise, the command ship of the environmental activist organization Greenpeace International. The ship was seized by armed members of the Russian Coast Guard last week after Greenpeace activists tried to board an offshore oil platform as a protest against drilling for fossil fuels in the fragile environment of the Arctic, where global warming has reduced the sea ice cover 40 percent since 1980. On this week’s broadcast Bill Moyers talked with the executive director of Greenpeace International, Kumi Naidoo, about the fate of the Arctic Sunrise and the charges of piracy brought against the crew of 30. Naidoo tells Bill, “If there’s injustice in the world, those of us that have the ability to witness it and to record it, document it and tell the world what is happening have a moral responsibility to do that. Then, of course, it’s left up to those that are receiving that knowledge to make the moral choice about whether they want to stand up against the injustice or observe it.” In an essay following the conversation, Moyers links Naidoo’s courage in speaking truth to power with an account of the recent visit by Pope Francis to Sardinia, the Mediterranean island known for its beautifully beaches and palatial homes owned by the richest of the rich. Sardinia is now blighted by widespread joblessness – 51 percent of its young people are out of work — and as the pope heard the stories of desperation and deprivation, he threw away his prepared speech and decried a global economic system “that does us so much harm.” The story leads Bill to conclude that unless we “dethrone our present system of financial capitalism that rewards those at the top” while everyone else is struggling, “it will consume us” and democracy will be finished.

This week on Moyers & Company in a rare television interview, Bill talks to visionary, author and farmer Wendell Berry to discuss a sensible, but no-compromise plan to save the Earth. We also examine the critical role of honey bees in our food supply and the threats they face in The Dance of the Honey Bee. And after the antics in Washington this week, Bill shares his views on the government shutdown. Wendell Berry, one of America’s most influential writers who has written more than 40 novels, books of poetry, short stories and essays, has become an outspoken advocate for revolution. He’s calling for immediate action to end industrial farming and return to the sustainable farming methods of years past. In his interview with Bill, Berry says: “People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped; by influence, by power, by us.” The short documentary Dance of the Honey Bee, narrated by Bill McKibben, takes a look at the determined, beautiful and vital role honey bees play in preserving life, as well as the threats bees face from a rapidly changing landscape. “Not only are we dependent on the honey bee for much of what we eat,” says Bill, “there is, of course, a grace and elegance they bring to the natural world that would diminish us all were they to disappear.” And this week’s government shutdown has consequences for all of us, costing an estimated $300 million each day that the government is closed for business. Many Americans have voiced their frustrations with the fallout from the shutdown on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using the hash tag #DearCongress. Here, Bill Moyers shares his own frustrations, admonishing the Republican Party for holding the country hostage via an irrational “ransom list” of demands, while sabotaging democracy in the process.

While much of the government continued in shutdown mode this week, the Supreme Court was back in business starting off its new term with a controversial campaign finance case. This week, the court heard arguments in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a case that could have a huge impact on the way money influences our democracy. McCutcheon challenges aggregate caps on how much individual donors can give to candidates and political parties. The current overall cap stands at $123,200 per donor for a two-year election cycle, but McCutcheon could raise that amount to more than $3.5 million. This week on Moyers & Company, Bill talks to Yale Law School election and constitutional law professor Heather Gerken who warns that McCutcheon has the potential to kill campaign finance reform, already reeling from the Citizens United decision that gave corporations, unions and the wealthy the opportunity to pour vast and often anonymous amounts of cash into political campaigns. Gerken tells Bill that if McCutcheon prevails, a small group of wealthy donors will have an immense influence on elections and government policy. “It’s not just a seat at the table on election day. It’s a seat at the table for the next four to six years when they’re governing,” Gerken says. Bill also speaks with historian Joyce Appleby whose new book, Shores of Knowledge, provides a captivating account of curiosity and how it has shaped our modern world.

After a 16-day shutdown, there’s finally a deal to raise the debt limit and reopen the government. But the can’s just been kicked down the road – another Congressional confrontation over spending cuts, entitlement programs and possible default will take place within a few months. Nonetheless, Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, believes that no matter the rhetoric and flamethrowing, the debt ceiling has to be raised because the alternatives are “simply, unimaginably horrible.” This week on Moyers & Company Wolf, who has been described as “the premier financial and economics writer in the world,” joins Bill Moyers for a discussion of the current crisis in Washington and its potentially lethal impact on the global economy. Wolf views the debt ceiling as the legislative equivalent of a nuclear bomb the US has aimed at itself, but its fallout could spread throughout the global economy. Bill also speaks with media scholar Sherry Turkle who says that the Internet and social media have changed not only what we do but also who we are. She’s a developmental psychologist who has studied the impact of computers on culture and society. A professor at MIT and director of the university’s Initiative on Technology and Self, Turkle has written several books, including her most recent, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.

It’s the largest corporate fine in American history — $13 billion. That’s the amount JPMorgan Chase will reportedly pay to settle civil charges around its alleged manipulation of mortgage securities — a series of shady business deals that five years ago crippled homeowners and helped trigger the meltdown that threatened the world’s economy. And that’s just the tip of a REALLY big iceberg. What does the settlement tell us about the corruption of American capitalism? This week on Moyers & Company Bill Moyers poses that question to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gretchen Morgenson, a columnist for The New York Times. Bill also speaks to historian and author Peter Dreier who sees the current political crisis as fraught with possibility for progressives in America — and shares the reasons he continues to be optimistic, including dynamic grass-roots initiatives around the country and, believe it or not, the radical politics of Dr. Seuss.

A cornerstone of President Obama’s plan to create more American jobs is a new agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), referred to by some as “NAFTA on steroids.” While negotiations are being carried out in secret and very little about the terms has been leaked, enough is known to worry about its possible effect on trade unions and our copyright and patent laws, not to mention environmental, health and safety regulations. This week on Moyers & Company, Bill discusses the TPP with two perceptive observers of the global economy. Yves Smith is an expert on investment banking who runs the Naked Capitalism blog, a go-to site for information and insight on the business and ethics of finance. Dean Baker is co-director of the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. Also on this week’s broadcast, a preview of Robert Greenwald’s new documentary, Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars. It’s release coincided with a first: victims of deadly drone attacks testified at a special briefing for members of Congress. In this week’s show we feature clips from the film, which shares testimony, stories and alarming news on the fatal impact of our drone strategy. And a Bill Moyers’ essay on Obamacare’s rocky rollout.

The money and power behind this week’s election results confirm what everyone knows: democracy is under siege. Corporations buy elections with virtually unlimited cash and big media conglomerates reap billions from political advertising. This week on Moyers & Company, Bill talks to John Nichols and Robert McChesney about America’s transformation into a dollarocracy and what we can do to get our political system back on track. Nichols is the Washington correspondent for The Nation and McChesney is a leading professor and scholar of communications and society at the University of Illinois. Their latest book is Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America. Also this week, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild Heidi Boghosian joins Bill for a conversation on the illicit surveillance strategies used by the government and corporations to track us all. In her book Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance, she has collected stories of how public and private sector surveillance has turned innocent lives upside down and has been used to suppress journalists, whistleblowers and activists.

Between them, doctors Jill Stein and Margaret Flowers have been arrested nine times. In the face of injustice in America, rather than look the other way and stick to practicing medicine, they decided to do something about it. Stein and Flowers serve as president and secretary of health, respectively, for the Green Shadow Cabinet, a new organization formed to speak out against dysfunctional government and offer alternative policies. Each fights against political corruption and a host of grievances that that have led many people to cynicism and despair. This week on Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers speaks with Stein and Flowers about their personal journeys, what they have learned about our political system along the way and why they continue to fight the good fight. Also on the broadcast, Bill reports back on viewer response to our recent segments on drone attacks and government surveillance and previews the new film Following the Ninth, a documentary exploring the worldwide cultural and political influence of Beethoven’s masterpiece, the Ninth Symphony and its majestic “Ode to Joy.”

This week on Moyers & Company, author and scholar Henry Giroux explains how our political system has turned people into zombies – “people who are basically so caught up with surviving that they become like the walking dead — they lose their sense of agency, they lose their homes, they lose their jobs.” Also on the broadcast, Bill looks at Birth of the Living Dead, a mesmerizing new documentary that examines the singular time in which the classic 1968 film Night of the Living Dead was shot – when civil unrest and violence gave the nation nightmares and zombies were a metaphor for a troubled and distressed American public. Bill also reflects on his 2003 interview with Nobel-prize winning novelist Doris Lessing who passed away earlier this week in London at the age of 94.

As America remembers the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting a year after a lone gunman shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children, Bill speaks with cultural historian and scholar Richard Slotkin about the role of guns and violence in our society. Slotkin is the author of an acclaimed trilogy — including Gunfighter Nation — on the myth of the frontier that has shaped our nation. In an essay following his conversation with Slotkin, Bill talks about the role of the NRA in the firearms debate and looks at a new public service announcement by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun control organization.

America’s prison population has exploded from 300,000 to more than two million today due to harsh sentencing policies and the 40-year-old war on drugs. This week, Bill speaks to civil rights lawyer and legal scholar Michelle Alexander about why we need to end our system of mass incarceration. The program also includes an excerpt from the film Susan, by Tessa Blake and Emma Hewitt. It tells the story of former California inmate Susan Burton who built an organization in Los Angeles devoted to helping formerly-incarcerated women rebuild their lives.

In just a few months, Pope Francis has proven to be one of the most outspoken pontiffs in recent history, especially when it comes to the widening gap between the rich and poor. This week on Moyers & Company Bill talks to author and historian Thomas Cahill to get his perspective on what the actions of Pope Francis could mean for the future of the church and why he has some conservatives up in arms. In a web extra, they continue their conversation on the nature of human progress and explore the ascendancy of Christopher Columbus, who Cahill describes as an “avatar of the new man” that emerges following the Black Death. Also on the broadcast, poet Philip Levine joins Bill to discuss why Americans have lost sight of those who really keep the country afloat – the hardworking men and women who toil, unsung and unknown, in our nation’s fields and factories. Levine himself worked on the assembly lines of Detroit’s auto plants, and his experience inspired several of his poems. Described by one critic as “a large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland,” Levine recently served as the nation’s poet laureate at the Library of Congress.