FORA.tv - Audio Program of the Week

Journalists Gail Collins, Mike Allen and Peter Beinart discuss the current state of Washington politics, and examine outlooks for the 2012 Presidential election. This program was recorded in collaboration with the City University of New York, on March 1, 2011. The spring Perspectives with Peter Beinart series opens with an evening examining the new order in Washington. The discussion features Gail Collins, columnist for the New York Times, and Mike Allen, chief political correspondent for Politico. Peter Beinart is a faculty member at CUNY's Graduate Center and Graduate School of Journalism and a senior political writer for the Daily Beast. - CUNY Mike Allen is the chief White House correspondent for Politico. He comes to us from Time magazine where he was their White House correspondent. Prior to that, Allen spent six years at the Washington Post, where he covered President Bush's first term, Capitol Hill, campaign finance, and the Bush, Gore and Bradley campaigns of 2000. Gail Collins joined the New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board and later as an Op-Ed columnist. In 2001 she became the first woman ever appointed editor of the Times's editorial page. At the beginning of 2007, she stepped down and began a leave in order to finish her new book: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present. She returned to the Times as a columnist in July 2007. Peter Beinart is an American journalist and Associate Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York. He is a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and Senior Political Writer for The Daily Beast website. Beinart worked at The New Republic until 2006, for much of the time writing The New Republic's signature "TRB" column, which was reprinted in the New York Post and other major American newspapers.

American farmer Joel Salatin, the star of the documentary Food Inc, has become a "pin up boy" for the growing food "re-localization" movement. On a recent visit to Canberra, he gives his take on food politics after a lifetime of experience in natural and profitable farming. This program was recorded in collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, on November 24, 2010. Salatin came to prominence with his ideas about creating abundance on a family farm. His methods include learning how to mimic nature and arrange the facets of farm life so they don't operate as independent operations, but rather a system of "intertwined cycles." Disregarding conventional wisdom, the Salatins planted trees, built huge compost piles, dug ponds, moved cows daily with portable electric fencing, and utilized portable sheltering systems to produce all their animals on perennial prairie polycultures. Salatin believes we’re now living through an age of a "food inquisition", not unlike the religious inquisition of 500 years ago, where the powers behind industrialized agriculture and food production are putting heretical farmers like him "on the rack." In this talk, organized by Milkwood Permaculture in association with Slow Food Canberra, Salatin lays out twelve false assumptions peddled by the "inquisitors," which sustainable farming methods counter. - Australian Broadcasting Corporation Joel Salatin has been featured in Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and in the films Fresh and Food Inc. He is also the author of six books including Family Friendly Farming, Salad Bar Beef, and his latest, Everything I Want To Do is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front. He is a full-time farmer of the highly successful Polyface Farms, and winner of the Heinz International Award for Environmental Leadership.

Acclaimed international economist Dambisa Moyo discusses her latest work, How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly -- and the Stark Choices Ahead. This program was recorded in collaboration with the Commonwealth Club of California, on February 17, 2011. Dambisa Moyo daringly claims that the West can no longer afford to simply regard global up-and-comers as menacing gatecrashers. In a world where Western economies hover on the brink of recession while emerging economies post double-digit growth rates, Moyo calls out the economic myopia of the West and the radical solutions that it needs to adopt to salvage its global economic power. A former consultant for the World Bank and former emerging markets investment banker at Goldman Sachs, Moyo was named by Time Magazine as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World," and was nominated to the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders Forum. - The Commonwealth Club of California Dambisa Moyo is an international economist who comments on the macroeconomy and global affairs. She is the author of the New York Times Bestseller Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How there is a Better Way for Africa. Her latest book is entitled How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly and the Stark Choices Ahead. She completed a PhD in Economics at Oxford University and holds a Masters degree from Harvard University. She completed an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and an MBA in Finance at the American University in Washington D.C.

Just how much separates homo sapiens from our closest relatives in the animal kingdom? Not all that much, as it turns out. Dr. Robert Sapolosky, professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University, explains in this discussion on his latest book, "A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons." This program was recorded in collaboration with the California Academy of Sciences, on February 15, 2011. Dr. Robert Sapolsky discusses his work as professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and as a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research at the National Museum of Kenya. His enviable gift for storytelling led the New York Times to print, "If you crossed Jane Goodall with a borscht-belt comedian, she might have written a book like A Primate's Memoir." Dr. Sapolsky's account of his early years as a field biologist. He is sure to dazzle and delight with tales of what it means to be human. - California Academy of Sciences Dr. Robert Sapolsky is a professor of Biology and Neurology at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya. Dr. Sapolsky is the author of several works of nonfiction, including A Primate's Memoir, The Trouble with Testosterone, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers and Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals.