Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the standoff at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which now has two acting directors, one Leandra English is the deputy to the outgoing Director of the CFPB Richard Cordray, and the other is an avowed enemy of the CFPB Mick Mulvaney who Trump has appointed as acting director. Dennis Kelleher, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Better Markets Inc., a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit organization that promotes the public interest in the U.S. and global financial markets, joins us. We discuss a bureau that has been under constant political assault from Republicans since it was created under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and how President Trump, who ran against Wall Street but has since proven to be the financial industry’s most faithful servant, will reward Wall Street by crippling the most effective watchdog against financial abuse and predatory behavior that has resulted in 30 million American consumers collecting $12 billion in refunds.

Part 2

Then we examine the Pope’s visit to Myanmar, Burma and the delicate diplomacy underway with Burma’s small Catholic community urging the Pope not to even utter the word “Rohinga” despite global condemnation of the ethnic cleansing that has driven Burma’s Muslim minority into neighboring Bangladesh where their future in crowded refugee camps is uncertain. David Steinberg, a distinguished professor of Asian Studies Emeritus at Georgetown University and a former member of the Senior Foreign Service and author of “Burma: The State of Myanmar”, joins us to discuss how the Pope is trying to exercise his moral authority while not exposing Burmese Catholics to a backlash of persecution.

Part 3

Full Program

Part 1

We begin on this Thanksgiving with an exploration into the megatrends that will impact our lives and the planet as we gather to celebrate that which we have to give thanks for. The author of “The 8 Laws of Change”, Stephan Schwartz, the editor of the daily web publication the Schwartzreport.net, which concentrates on trends that will shape the future, joins us to discuss his new book “Awakening” and how simply being born white or male will no longer confer privilege in the future and how a new form of global feudalism is evolving with a handful of plutocratic families controlling most of the world’s wealth, while a vast worldwide peasantry scrambles to make a living as competition bids down labor and technological advances make traditional work obsolete. We also explore hopeful trends as a growing mass movement develops as citizens around the world begin to realize what they have in common and how they are all in lifeboat earth together which is threatened by rising sea levels from global warming, presenting a global challenge that transcends national boundaries.

Part 2

Then we continue the conversation on Thanksgiving with Frank Schaeffer, a best-selling author whose parent Francis and Edith Schaeffer were world-famous evangelical speakers and authors, and Frank previously worked for such figures as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Focus on the Family’s James Dobson. However he felt increasingly alienated and experienced a crisis of faith that would ultimately lead to his departure from the evangelical movement. The author of a number of fiction and non-fiction books, he joins us to discuss his latest iBook “Letter to Lucy: A Manifesto of Creative Redemption – In an Age of Trump, Fascism and Lies” and talk about how the values of non-commercial family holiday Thanksgiving can be built upon to rescue the country from the Trump nightmare.