iEat Green – Elise Golan – 06.16.16

Elise H. Golan is the Director for Sustainable Development for USDA. In this role, she provides leadership in planning, coordinating, and analyzing the Department’s various policies, programs and activities that impact and relate to sustainable agricultural, natural resource, and community development including food security.

Prior to this position, Elise served as the Associate Director of the Food Economics Division at the Economic Research Service, USDA. She received her Ph.D. in agricultural economics from the University of California at Berkeley and completed a post-doctorate fellowship focusing on environmental economics at the University of Haifa, Israel. Before joining USDA, Elise did consulting work for, among others, the World Bank, the International Labour Organization, and the California Department of Finance. She served as a senior staff economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1998-99.

Dr. Golan’s research has spanned a wide range of sustainability issues, including land tenure and sustainable land management in the Sahel and West Africa; rice-straw burning and sustainable land management in California; regional and U.S. food-system modeling; food labeling and market development; food access, affordability, and security; and the distributional consequences of food policy.

Progressive Commentary Hour – 04.12.16

GUEST 1: Ellen Brown

Ellen Brown is an economist and attorney in Los Angeles who is now the founder of the Public Banking Institute – a non profit economic venture to find viable, sustainable solutions to America’s banking crises by promoting people-owned state and community banks. Last year she ran as the Green Party candidate for California State’s Treasurer. Ellen has written extensively about the private financial cartels and the Federal Reserve. Her recent book, “The Public Bank Solution: From Austerity to Prosperity”, introduces a safe soluble public banking alternative to the credit-based system of the current big banks. Her writings also frequently appear on the website of the Center for Global Research, where she is a research associate.

She is the host of the radio program Its Our Money, heard every Wednesday at 3 pm Eastern here on the Progressive Radio Network, and her website is WebOfDebt.com

GUEST 2: Guy McPherson

Dr. Guy McPherson is a professor emeritus of Natural Resources, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. He has specialized in forest resources, energy decline and climate change and its economic consequences. In the past he has also taught at Texas A&M and University of California at Berkeley. Having become disillusioned with the American university environment and academia, and after attempts by university officials to silence his outspokenness about the human causes of climate change, Guy abandoned his tenured position as a full professor for ethical reasons of conscience. He is the author of several books, the latest entitled “Extinction Dialogs: How to Live with Death in Mind.” He is also the co-host with Mikey Silwa of the radio program Nature Bats Last heard every Tuesday afternoon at 3 pm Eastern time on the Progressive Radio Network. His website is GuyMcpherson.com

The Gary Null Show – 03.11.16

Roberto Lovato is an independent investigative journalist specializing in Latin American geopolitics, internal conflicts and border wars, asylum seekers and the US incarceration of immigrants, the war on drugs and climate change. He is a former research associate at the Center for Latino Policy Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, and a co-founder of the Latino online advocacy organization Presente.org. Earlier he was the executive director of the nation’s largest immigrant rights organization, Central American Resource Center and actively supported refugees and displaced communities during wartime El Salvador. He was also targeted for his efforts. Roberto’s research into post-Katrina migrant exploitation led to a congressional investigation. He is frequent contributor to The Nation, and his work appears in numerous publications including The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Der Spiegel, American Prospect, Mother Jones, Salon and others. He also frequently appears networks such as MSNBC, BBC, CNN, NPR and al-Jazeera. His websites are RobertoLovato.com and Presente.org

Heart of Mind Radio – 03.04.16

On today’s Heart Of Mind Radio, host Kathryn Davis features the work of Pema Chödrön, with audio segments offered by SoundsTrue.com. Also learn more about her work at http://pemachodronfoundation.org

Pema Chodron was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936, in New York City. She attended Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. She taught as an elementary school teacher for many years in both New Mexico and California. Pema has two children and three grandchildren.

While in her mid-thirties, Pema traveled to the French Alps and encountered Lama Chime Rinpoche, with whom she studied for several years. She became a novice nun in 1974 while studying with Lama Chime in London. His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa came to England at that time, and Pema received her ordination from him.

Pema first met her root teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in 1972. Lama Chime encouraged her to work with Rinpoche, and it was with him that she ultimately made her most profound connection, studying with him from 1974 until his death in 1987. At the request of the Sixteenth Karmapa, she received the full monastic ordination in the Chinese lineage of Buddhism in 1981 in Hong Kong.

Pema served as the director of Karma Dzong, in Boulder, until moving in 1984 to rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to be the director of Gampo Abbey. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche asked her to work towards the establishment of a monastery for western monks and nuns.

Pema currently teaches in the United States and Canada and plans for an increased amount of time in solitary retreat under the guidance of Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.

Pema is interested in helping establish the monastic tradition in the West, as well in continuing her work with Buddhists of all traditions, sharing ideas and teachings. She has written several books: “The Wisdom of No Escape”, “Start Where You Are”, “When Things Fall Apart”, “The Places that Scare You”, “No Time to Lose” and “Practicing Peace in Times of War”, and most recently, “Smile at Fear”.