Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an assessment of last night’s Democratic presidential debate and analyze the Bernie Sanders phenomenon and his call for a revolution to defeat organized money with organized people. Joining us is Jedediah Purdy, a Professor of Law at Duke University and the author of “A Tolerable Anarchy”. He has an article at The Huffington Post “Bernie is Not the New Barry – And That’s a Good Thing” which we  discuss. In the article Jedediah Purdy makes the case that Senator Sanders is running on ideas and policies and not charisma, and that although he could win the presidency, if he loses his ideas and policies will live on and come back to the political mainstream some years or a decade or so later as Barry Goldwater’s did following his defeat by LBJ in the form of Ronald Reagan’s victory running on on Goldwater’s anti-government platform, 16 years later.

Part 2

Then on this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, we speak with the leading African American scholar and intellectual Dr. Obery Hendricks who is a Senior Fellow for Faith and Opportunity at The Opportunity Agenda, a Visiting Scholar in Religion and African American Studies at Columbia University and Professor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary. He is the author of “The Universe Bends Toward Justice: Radical Reflections on the Bible, the Church and the Body Politic” and has an article at Salon.com “The Macro Ethics of Martin Luther King Jr.” and an article at The Huffington Post “Martin Luther King and Immigrant’s Rights” and we will discuss both articles and how, although Martin Luther King was attacked by both the right and the left during his short life, he takes his place in history along with Jesus Christ as a true revolutionary who, quoting MLK, “chose to give my life for those who have been left out…This is the way I’m going. If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way…If it means dying for them, I’m going that way.”

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the sixth Republican presidential debate in South Carolina that begins when this program ends and discuss the battle of the billionaires as the self-declared billionaire Donald Trump is expected to square off against Ted Cruz who lately has been courting billionaires with the help of his wife who works for Goldman Sachs who were big donors to Cruz’s 2012 Senate campaign, with a generous loan that Cruz did not report according to the New York Times. Darrell West, the vice president of governance studies at the Brookings Institution and author of “Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust”, joins us to discuss the “wealthification” of our politics with Republican presidential hopefuls lining up to kneel at the feet of the Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson begging for his money as they offer to do his bidding.

Part 2

Then we are joined in the studio by Ani Zonneveld, the Founder and President of Muslims for Progressive Values who recently returned from Malaysia which has been under the influence of the well-financed hardline Saudi Arabian Wahhabi religious doctrine that has made inroads into the country which has traditionally practiced a moderate form of Islam as is the case in Indonesia. We discuss the terrorist bombing in Indonesia the Islamic State has taken credit for and assess the role of Wahhabi influence in radicalizing Indonesian Muslims and death threats that Ani received in Malaysia from religious radicals.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with the best-selling author Jon Krakauer about his latest book “Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town” and we also discuss his latest article at The Huffington Post “The Fundamentalist Religious Views That Inspired Ammon Bundy and His Militia to Occupy a Remote Federal Facility in Oregon”.