Pathways Radio by Paul O'Brien

Our guest on Pathways today is Helena Norberg-Hodge, analyst, author, speaker, filmmaker, and producer of a new award-winning documentary entitled The Economics of Happiness. Helena is the founder and director of International Society for Ecology and Culture. She is a pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement, and has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than thirty years. Trained in linguistics, she has given public lectures in seven languages, and has appeared on broadcast, print, and online media worldwide, including MSNBC, The London Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian. Her ground-breaking work in Ladakh, or ‘Little Tibet’, earned her the Right Livelihood Award, or ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ and her book, Ancient Futures, along with a film of the same title, has been translated into more than 40 languages.

Our guest on Pathways today is Scott Teitsworth, author of the new book, Krishna in the Sky with Diamonds: The Bhagavad Gita as Psychadelic Guide. Scott is a lifelong student of Indian philosophy and modern science under the tutelage of Nitya Chaitanya Yati, himself a disciple of Nataraja Guru, in the lineage of Narayana Guru. An editor of books written by these gurus, he and his wife host the Portland branch of the Narayana Gurukula, where they have taught classes on the Bhagavad Gita and Indian philosophy since the 1970s.

Our guest today on Pathways is storyteller Will Hornyak. From Irish folktales and American tall tales to Native American legends, Russian fairytales and beyond, Will weaves a wide web of well-crafted stories into energetic and highly engaging performances.  A former newspaper reporter in Latin America, he combines an understanding of world cultures with a love for the rhythm and music of language. A strong advocate for storytelling as a tool for personal and social empowerment, Will has performed and offered workshops for the Multnomah County Juvenile Justice Dept., the Oregon State Penitentiary (Salem), the American Cancer Society, the Oregon Early Childhood Education Council and numerous businesses, schools and colleges.  He teaches classes in storytelling at Marylhurst University and Lewis and Clark College and performs throughout the Northwest and beyond.  He was awarded the Brimstone Grant from the National Storytelling Association for his environmental education program: Living Streams: Stories for Healthy Watersheds.

Economic catastrophe usually brings social protest and demands for change—or at least it's supposed to. But when today's guest set out in 2009 to look for expressions of American discontent, all he could find were loud demands that the economic system be made even harsher on the recession's victims and that society's traditional winners receive even grander prizes. Today we will examine the peculiar mechanism by which the dire circumstances of the economy have delivered wildly unexpected political results. Our guest on Pathways today is Thomas Frank, the author of Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right, The Wrecking Crew, What's the Matter with Kansas?, and One Market Under God. A former opinion columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Frank is the founding editor of The Baffler and a monthly columnist for Harper's. He lives outside Washington, D.C.