KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with actor Ian Ruskin about his production 'To Begin the World: The Life of Thomas Paine'. This is staged in full 18th-century regalia with Ruskin, as actor director, addressing his way through a broad spectrum of key historical events including the French Revolution. In Ruskin's work, the essence of Paine emerges, peppered with quotes from "Common Sense" and other immortal writings from this most radical of pre-Revolutionary American colonists. "One must always speak the truth as one sees it, no matter the consequences."

To learn more about Ian Ruskin's IndieGogo efforts to raising funding for a cinematic or TV production of the play, visit To Begin the World Over Again, Thomas Paine for PBS. 

CLICK ON 'iPod' icon above left to listen.

In this interview, journalist Claudia Cragg speaks here with Linda Tirado about her thought-provoking and (to some) controversial Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America. Unlike the sheltered, ivory-tower social scientists who usually write about poverty, Tirado is an actual poor person. Or at least, she was. Last fall she posted a lengthy response to someone in an online forum who asked why poor people make decisions that seem so self-destructive. Her essay went viral and before long the shrewd and politically savvy Tirado had crowdfunded more than $60,000 to write a book. No longer officially poor, Tirado has endured a backlash from those suggesting she’s a fraud — which only proves her point that it’s easier to dismiss poor people than to listen to them.

Christmas is a time of seasonal cheer, family get-togethers, holiday parties, and-gift giving. Lots and lots--and lots--of gift giving. And says Joel Waldvogel, in this interview, it's hard to imagine any Christmas without this time-honored custom. But let's stop to consider the gifts we receive--the rooster sweater from Grandma or the singing fish from Uncle Mike. How many of us get gifts we like? How many of us give gifts not knowing what recipients want? Did your cousin really look excited about that jumping alarm clock? Lively and informed, Scroogenomics illustrates how our consumer spending generates vast amounts of economic waste--to the shocking tune of eighty-five billion dollars each winter. Economist Joel Waldfogel provides solid explanations to show us why it's time to stop the madness and think twice before buying gifts for the holidays.

 When we buy for ourselves, every dollar we spend produces at least a dollar in satisfaction, because we shop carefully and purchase items that are worth more than they cost. Gift giving is different. We make less-informed choices, max out on credit to buy gifts worth less than the money spent, and leave recipients less than satisfied, creating what Waldfogel calls "deadweight loss." Waldfogel indicates that this waste isn't confined to Americans--most major economies share in this orgy of wealth destruction. While recognizing the difficulties of altering current trends, Waldfogel offers viable gift-giving alternatives.

 Waldvogel argues here, in an interview with Claudia Cragg for KGNU Denver/Boulder's 'It's The Economy', that by reprioritizing our gift-giving habits, Scroogenomics proves that we can still maintain the economy without gouging our wallets, and reclaim the true spirit of the holiday season.

KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with historian, Andrew Roberts about his work 'Napoleon The Great', the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last, says Roberts, we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century.

Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, Roberts argues that Napoleon was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times.

An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Many believe this to be a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by a foremost historian.

(To listen to the interview, CLICK 'ipod' icon above left)

Stephen Singular’s first book, Talked to Death, set the tone for his journalistic career. Published in 1987, it chronicled the assassination of a Denver Jewish talk show host, Alan Berg, by a group of neo-Nazis known as The Order. The book was nominated for a national award — the Edgar for true crime — and became the basis for the 1989 Oliver Stone film, Talk Radio. Talked to Death explored the timeless American themes of racism, class, violence, and religious intolerance, and the critics had been alerted to a new author and an important subject.

Here KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks with Singular together with his wife, Joyce Jacques Singular, an author in her own right as well as a co-author with her husband for many projects. 

The Singulars are in the midst of writing a book about James Holmes, who carried out the largest mass shooting in American history in July 2012 at the Aurora movie theater. This will examine the larger social issues involving gun control, mental health, video games, neuroscience, the death penalty, doctor/patient confidentiality, and will offer a variety of perspectives from the Twenty-Something generation that’s driven much of this violence.

Since 1991, Joyce Jacques Singular, has worked closely with her husband on many of the true crime books. They both have an intense interest in the psychological aspects of murder and have unconventional views of spirituality.  Over time, this combination filtered into their work together. They've been intrigued with the place where darkness meets the light — and with looking at certain crimes not just from a legal, forensic or sociological point of view but from a spiritual angle as well. This is especially true when killers have committed acts of violence in the name of religion.

Since 1987, Singular has published 19 more non-fiction books that reflect a wide range of interest and diversity of styles. Twice a New York Times best selling author, he’s written three books about sports, including collaborations with NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and controversial NFL superstar Terrell Owens, and biographies of Hollywood power players Michael Ovitz and David Geffen. True crime remained the focal point of his work, but he’d begun writing less about individual crimes and more about social crimes. His 1995 study of the O.J. Simpson case, Legacy of Deception, went beneath the media hysteria surrounding these murders and connected the violent bigotry of The Order with the racist corruption inside the Los Angeles Police Department. Singular’s 1999 book, Presumed Guilty: An Investigation into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, the Media, and the Culture of Pornography, performed a similar role for the infamous child killing in Boulder, Colorado. 

In 2001, Singular brought out The Uncivil War: The Rise of Hate, Violence, and Terrorism in America documenting the increasing dangers of the nation’s deepening cultural war. The book was published well before terrorism struck the United States on September 11, 2001, and the country had plunged into a bitterly divisive conflict in Iraq. The same themes the author had first uncovered in Talked to Death – Fundamentalist religion and intolerance, racism and violence – were re-examined in this book, but now the stakes were much higher and the stage was global. Singular was probing not just the violence itself, but its underlying emotional and spiritual causes. His 2006 book,Unholy Messenger: The Life & Crimes of the BTK Serial Killer, goes even deeper into the convergence of distorted religious beliefs and bloodshed.

In her work on the books, Joyce has attended legal proceedings, visited inmates in prison, interviewed witnesses, studied forensic data, and been involved in developing ideas for stories, photo selection, editing, creative suggestions, and re-writing. The use of both a male and female perspective has added a unique dimension to the true crimes books, three of which have been about women who committed murders. These include  A Killing in the Family which was an NBC-TV mini-series entitled Love, Lies, and Murder; Sweet Evil, about a young Colorado Springs wife and mother who killed another woman; and Charmed to Death, which became a FOX-TV movie titled “Legacy of Sin.”  In Anyone You Want Me to Be, the story of the Internet’s first known serial killer, Joyce was especially insightful in chronicling women who were drawn into online romances that ended with their deaths.

(KGNU Denver/Boulder Broadcast Link)

KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with Naomi Klein who argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. As she points out in her latest book. 'This Changes Everything', it is as she sees it alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.

Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.

Can we pull off these changes in time? Nothing is certain. Nothing except that climate change changes everything. And for a very brief time, the nature of that change is still up to us. 

In Carbon Shock, veteran journalist Mark Schapiro, explains here to KGNU's Claudia Cragg, how in this book he takes readers on a journey into a world where the same chaotic forces reshaping our natural world are also transforming the economy, playing havoc with corporate calculations, shifting economic and political power, and upending our understanding of the real risks, costs, and possibilities of what lies ahead.

In this ever-changing world, carbon—the stand-in for all greenhouse gases—rules, and disrupts, and calls upon us to seek new ways to reduce it while factoring it into nearly every long-term financial plan we have. But how?

From the jungles of the Amazon to the farms in California’s Central Valley, from ‘greening’ cities like Pittsburgh to rising powerhouses like China, from the oil-splattered beaches of Spain to carbon-trading desks in London, Schapiro deftly explores the key axis points of change.

For almost two decades, global climate talks have focused on how to make polluters pay for the carbon they emit. It remains an unfolding financial mystery: What are the costs? Who will pay for them? Who do you pay? How do you pay? And what are the potential impacts? The answers to these questions, and more, are crucial to understanding, if not shaping, the coming decade.

Carbon Shock evokes a world in which the parameters of our understanding are shifting—on a scale even more monumental than how the digital revolution transformed financial decision-making—toward a slow but steady acknowledgement of the costs and consequences of climate change. It also offers a critical new perspective as global leaders gear up for the next round of climate talks in 2015.

It is clear that popular anger against the financial system has never been higher, yet the practical workings of the system remain opaque to many people. A new book by Brett Scott, The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance, aims to bridge the gap between protest slogans and practical proposals for reform. Here, KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks with Scott who is a campaigner and former derivatives broker who has a unique understanding of life inside and outside the financial sector. In this book, he builds up a framework for approaching it based on the three principles of 'Exploring', 'Jamming' and 'Building', offering a practical guide for those who wish to deepen their understanding of, and access to, the inner workings of financial institutions. Scott covers aspects frequently overlooked, such as the cultural dimensions of the financial system, and considers major issues such as agricultural speculation, carbon markets and tar-sands financing. Crucially, it also showcases the growing alternative finance movement, showing how everyday people can get involved in building a new, democratic, financial system.

For KGNU Denver/Boulder, Claudia Cragg learns more about Tibet's enduring myth, a story animated with Himalayan adventurers, British military expeditions, and the novel, Lost Horizon, remains an inspirational fantasy, a modern morality play about the failure of brutality to subdue the human spirit. Tibet also exercises immense "soft power" as one of the lenses through which the world views China. 

In their book, Stefan and Lezlee Brown Halper book trace the origins and manifestations of the Tibetan myth, as propagated by Younghusband, Madam Blavatsky, Himmler, Acheson and Roosevelt. The authors discuss how, after WW2, Tibet-- isolated, misunderstood and with a tiny elite unschooled in political-military realities --- misread the diplomacy between its two giant neighbours, India and China, forlornly hoping London or Washington might intervene. China's People's Liberation Army sought nothing less than to deconstruct traditional Tibet, unseat the Dalai Lama and "absorb" this vast region into the People's Republic, and Lhasa succumbed to China's invasion in 1950. 

Drawing on declassified CIA and Chinese documents, the authors reveal Mao's collusion with Stalin to subdue Tibet, double-dealing by Nehru, the brilliant diplomacy of Chou en Lai and how Washington see-sawed between the China lobby, who insisted there be no backing for an independent Tibet, and Presidents Truman and later Eisenhower, who initiated a covert CIA programme to support the Dalai Lama and resist Chinese occupation. It has been reviewed as 'an ignoble saga with few, if any, heroes, other than ordinary Tibetans'.

In this interview with Claudia Cragg for KGNU Denver/Boulder, Daniel Levitin explains how the information age is now drowning us with an unprecedented deluge of data. At the same time, we’re expected to make more—and faster—decisions about our lives than ever before. No wonder, then, that the average American reports frequently losing car keys or reading glasses, missing appointments, and feeling worn out by the effort required just to keep up.

But somehow some people become quite accomplished at managing information flow. In The Organized Mind, Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, uses the latest brain science to demonstrate how those people excel—and how readers can use their methods to regain a sense of mastery over the way they organize their homes, workplaces, and time.

With lively, entertaining chapters on everything from the kitchen junk drawer to health care to executive office workflow, Levitin reveals how new research into the cognitive neuroscience of attention and memory can be applied to the challenges of our daily lives. This Is Your Brain on Musicshowed how to better play and appreciate music through an understanding of how the brain works. The Organized Mind shows how to navigate the churning flood of information in the twenty-first century with the same neuroscientific perspective.

In this interview for KGNU's 'It's The Economy' Claudia Cragg speaks with Vann Alexandra Daly who is renowned as the “crowdsorceress” for her expertise in crowdfunding. Over the course of a year, Alex has raised millions of dollars for clients including Oscar and Emmy-nominated filmmakers and Neil Young (for the 'Pono'). She has served on panels at distinguished film festivals, universities, and is now on a national tour with the Knight Foundation offering her expertise on the subject. In addition to her crowdfunding successes, Alex is a producer for the feature length documentary "Cocaine Prison", which has received support from the Macarthur Foundation, Cannes Film Festival’s Fonds Sud Cinema, the Tribeca Latin America Fund, Bertha BritDoc Journalism Award, and more. Her other films have been selected by the world’s most prestigious festivals including Sundance and Tribeca.

Before transitioning into film Alex was a journalist for numerous publications, including New York magazine and SPIN, as well as the sole researcher for WSJ. magazine. Alex graduated from Vanderbilt University, where she double majored in Spanish and Philosophy, minored in film, and earned her honors thesis on 'Existentialism in Contemporary Drug Cinema'.

KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with Aidan White, Director of the Ethical Journalism Network. The network is a coalition of media professionals and support groups committed to building a global campaign in support of ethics, good governance and self-regulation in journalism and media. He is committed to new and innovative ways to support independent journalism and promotion of journalists' rights. He is an expert with deep understanding of issues related to media policy and journalism standards and has helped launch major international groups in support of press freedom and journalists' safety. Over a period of 30 years he has initiated programmes of support for journalists including professional training, association and union building and humanitarian support and raising awareness of the dangers facing media and journalists across the world. You can read his blog here and his Twitter handle is @aidanpwhite.

White is an inspiring communicator and speaker, writer, negotiator and presenter with experience in building coalitions and encouraging social dialogue between employers and unions.

He was the General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists from 1987 until April 2011. He previously worked for several newspapers in the United Kingdom. He was with The Guardian in London prior to joining the IFJ. He is a long-time campaigner for journalists' rights and is a former activist with the National Union of Journalists in Great Britain and Ireland.

(To listen, click on 'Pod' icon above left)

"Fool me once, shame on you Fool me twice, shame on you."

Orig: "He that deceives me once; shame fall him; if he deceives me twice, shame fall me". James Kelly, Scottish Proverbs (1720).

In May 2009, Claudia Cragg interviewed the FT's Gillian Tett for then KGNU News co-Director, Joel Edelstein, on the 'It's The Economy' show. This was shortly after publication of Tett's then brand new book, "Fool's Gold, the Inside Story of J P Morgan and How Wall St. Greed Corrupted Its Bold Dream and Created a Financial Catastrophe."

The so-called 'never again' safeguards may or may not be in place to prevent a new worldwide even more serious catastrophe. By the time their efficacy is tested, it may be too late. And given the surfeit of new financial instruments and derivative games created since 2008, there is no sensible reason to presume it cannot or won't happen again and the fallout, while unimaginable, could be even worse than the prolonged 'Great Recession' that so many ordinary working lives have been subjected to.

Recently Gillian Tett has been calling attention to a relatively new problem, the 'Dark Pools' and their potential for causing global financial instability.

Relying on caveat emptor to keep the trading system from becoming too murky is naive

Few are taking heed.

Having ignored this proven financial Cassandra once before, are the Powers That Be so obdurate and greedy that they will wilfully ignore her once again?

When you listen to her analysis here of 2008, you will concur that as of July 1st 2014, very little indeed has changed. 

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To begin the 12 June 2014 of the "It's The Economy" show broadcast on KGNU Denver/Boulder, everyone makes career mistakes. For many, though, acknowledging them can feel tantamount to occupation suicide.

Here, Jessica Bacal, director of the Smith College Wurtele Center for Work and Life, speaks with Claudia Cragg about her book, Mistakes I Made At Work. For this, she has interviewed 25 women across a variety of career fields—from writers to doctors to engineers—who share their worst on-the-job moments.

This advice, useful to all, shares how mis-steps  can be used as learning experiences to build a successful career.

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For the second half of the 12 June 2014 of the "It's The Economy" broadcast on KGNU Denver/Boulder 'Money in Education' was the topic under discussion in the studio with Claudia Cragg. First of all, we speak with Ron Berler, author of Raising The Curve. This is followed by two highly informed, academic guests with more than a passing interest, Richard Murnane and Greg Duncan exploring the 'Inequality in, and potential for, 'Restoring Opportunity' in the US education system. In focus is the Common Core Curriculum. Watch related videos at RestoringOpportunity.com.

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#MayaAngelou RIP 

In May of 2013, KGNU News Director, Joel Edelstein, generously invited colleague Claudia Cragg to speak by phone with Dr. Maya Angelou for a one on one interview. It turned out to be one of the very last she ever gave to talk about her then latest book. Explored here is the influence the great woman has had on another Maya, Maya Carter. She is a 19 year old from Denver,(now just finishing her College freshman year) and, listening to the original KGNU interview, young Maya here tries to explain the effect that Dr.Angelou's life, work, poetry and thinking has had on her and in her initiation of the Motivate & Empower Movement she has founded in her honour. 

Trans author and activist Matt Kailey has, very sadly indeed, passed away this past weekend.

In 2006, KGNU's Claudia Cragg spoke with Matt about his memoir, Just Add Hormones: An Insider’s Guide to the Transsexual Experience. The work relayed Matt's experience as a 42­-year­old straight woman turned gay trans man with a highly personal account of his gender transition that is known to have given a great many others the courage to transition themselves.

"Matt didn’t just blaze trails as a gay trans man demonstrating how the T fit with the LGB. He wasn’t just a role model for those of us who transitioned late in life." He was also one of the first visible trans journalists, who wrote for one of the oldest LGBT publications in the West, Colorado’s Out Front. His 2007 promotion to managing editor made Matt the highest­ ranking trans journalist at a queer publication, a distinction he continues to hold.

Although he was dedicated to his work at Out Front, Matt also became an award ­winning activist and educator. He represented the trans male community in numerous news articles, television spots and five documentary films. He founded the award­ winning blog Tranifesto. He spoke at dozens of conferences and colleges and developed his own training program for employers who needed guidance embracing trans people into the workplace

In 2011, after eight years with Out Front, Matt stepped down to focus on his other writings and teaching. He published a collection of essays, Teeny Weenies and Other Short Subjects, about his life before and after transition — and as always he managed to balance heartfelt moments with his great sense of humor.

Matt also created the guidebook, My Child is Transgender: 10 Tips for Parents of Adult Trans Children for parents of transitioning adult children.

During the past few years, Matt also embraced teaching. As an adjunct instructor at Red Rocks Community College, Matt taught courses in psychology and human sexuality. At the same time, he worked at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, where he designed several courses, including a transgender studies course and a class called “Writing Your Gender.”

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KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with Peter Van Buren, a 24-year veteran of the State Department. He spent a year in Iraq, an experience that led to his first book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. As a result, the US Department of State began proceedings against him. Through the efforts of the Government Accountability Project and the ACLU, Van Buren instead retired from the State Department with his full benefits of service.

The main point of discussion here though is Van Buren’s personal work experience (in the hiatus when suspended from the State Dept) working for a store he calls 'Bullseye' in the minimum wage Big Box economy. This led to his new book Ghosts of Tom Joad, A Story of the #99Percent based on his up close take on the drastic effects of social and economic changes in America between WWII and the decline of the blue collar middle class in the 1980’s right up to today.

Notes for the book (from Van Buren's Blog); Some Background from a Real Economist

Economist Thomas Piketty’s new bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century makes clear there has been a significant increase in income inequality in America. Our inequality rate is higher than it ever has been in our own history, is growing, and is higher than in countries in Western Europe and Canada.

In the United States, the top one percent own 35 percent of all capital, and the top ten percent of wealth holders own roughly 70 percent. The bottom 50 percent have roughly five percent. Note also that until slavery was ended in the United States, human beings were also considered capital.

The inequality is driven by two complementary forces.

By owning more and more of every thing (capital), rich people have a mechanism to keep getting richer, because the rate of return on investment is a higher percentage than the rate of economic growth. This is expressed in Piketty’s now-famous equation R > G. The author claims the top of layer of wealth distribution is rising at 6-7 percent a year, more than three times faster than the size of the economy.

At the same time, wages for middle and lower income people are sinking, driven by factors largely in control of the wealthy, such as technology employed to eliminate human jobs, unions being crushed and decline in the inflation-adjusted minimum wage more and more Americans now depend on for their survival.

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In June 2011, KGNU's Claudia Cragg spoke with the New York Times' Gretchen Morgenson about her then just published book, 'Reckless Endangerment'. More than 5 years on since the world financial catastrophe of 2008, nothing much has changed and many consider 'endangerment' not only persists but may now be even more prevalent. 

In Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson exposes how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect the country from financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy. Drawing on previously untapped sources and building on original research from coauthor Joshua Rosner—who himself raised early warnings with the public and investors, and kept detailed records—Morgenson connects the dots that led to this fiasco.

Morgenson and Rosner draw back the curtain on Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance giant that grew, with the support of the Clinton administration, through the 1990s, becoming a major opponent of government oversight even as it was benefiting from public subsidies. They expose the role played not only by Fannie Mae executives but also by enablers at Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress, and the biggest players on Wall Street, to show how greed, aggression, and fear led countless officials to ignore warning signs of an imminent disaster.

KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with Ryan Carson about the 70 people who work at Treehouse, an online education company that teaches people about technology. They work only four days a week at the same full salary as other tech workers. Yet the company’s revenue has grown 120 percent, it generates more than $10 million a year in sales, and it responds to more than 70,000 customers, according to a post in Quartz by CEO Ryan Carson.

Carson has been working four-day weeks since 2006, when he founded his first company with his wife, he told ThinkProgress. He quit his job to start it, only to find that they both put in seven days a week. “I remember distinctly my wife and I were on the couch one evening,” he recalled, “and she said something like, ‘What are we doing? I thought that starting a company means you have more time and more control, but it seems like we have less time and less control and we’re more stressed out.’” They decided to cut back by not working Fridays, and after they hired their first employee, “we decided to officially enact [a four-day week] and we never looked back.”

Carson has since started three other companies at which he’s instituted this rule, Treehouse being the latest. While it’s hard to quantify, he believes his company benefits from better output and morale. “The quality of the work, I believe, is higher,” he said. “Thirty-two hours of higher quality work is better than 40 hours of lower quality work.” The impact on his employees’ outlook is also “massive,” he said. “I find I just can’t wait to get back to work” after the weekend, and he suspects the same is true for others. On Mondays, “everyone’s invigorated and excited.” He recounted a time when a developer told him that his hope was to work at the company for 20 years. In the Quartz article, he noted that a team member gets recruitment emails from Facebook, but that his response is always, “Do you work a four-day week yet?”

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KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with Dee Williams (PAD, Portland Alternative Dwellings) to discover how she found a way to lower her monthly bills to only $8 dollars as outlined in her new memoir and 'how to' The Big Tiny.

After a heart condition diagnosis ten years ago, a new sense of clarity took hold for Dee Williams. As she looked around her overpriced, oversized house, Williams thought: What was all this stuff for? So she downsized, building a new life in 84 square feet. Now a pioneer in sustainable living and an accomplished teacher and lecturer on tiny house-building, Williams has achieved a happy balance and created a model for simple, sustainable, practical living.

Her book, as you will hear here, is a touching personal memoir of a woman rebuilding her life from scratch, as well as an account of the DIY tiny house movement. From suburban properties to city apartments, and from HGTV to local communities across the country, people are rethinking what it means to be a homeowner and how to build sustainable lives for themselves and their families.

But Williams also offers practical and philosophical guidance for aspiring tiny homeowners and for those just looking to de-clutter their lives (Williams can list all of her belongings on a single sheet of paper.) This is part how-to and part why-to and The Big Tiny is both a graceful and inspired meditation as well as an exploration of what it really means to build the good life and more importantly the right life.

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In April of 2014,  Elaine "Lainey" Lui fulfilled a lifelong dream when her first book, Listen to the Squawking Chicken: When a Mother Knows Best, What's a Daughter to do? A Memoir (Sort Of) was published (by Random House in Canada and Penguin in the USA). 

Here KGNU's Claudia Cragg talks about the book, a paean to her mother aka 'The Squawking Chicken' and learns how Lainey co-founded LaineyGossip.com, an entertainment news and gossip blog and how she also became co-host of CTV's daytime talk show "The Social", and a reporter on CTV's "etalk", Canada's number one rated entertainment news show. She joined the show in 2006 as a special correspondent and has since covered the Red Carpet at the Oscars, SuperBowl XLII, Cannes and Toronto International Film Festivals, and other events worldwide. 

Her website in fact started as an email to small group of friends and colleagues in 2003 and spread by word of mouth to thousands of now loyal readers. It launched as a website in December 2004 and has since grown into an immensely popular entertainment destination visited by over 1.5 million monthly unique readers. Generating over 18 million monthly page views, it is now a leading international celebrity gossip source and a must read for well-read, educated females across North America. 

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(IMPORTANT NOTE: @KerryZuckus points out that Rusasebagina's is just one side of a complex story. Zuckus believes that in"INSIDE THE HOTEL RWANDA": a different 'truth' is perhaps exposed. wp.me/p3lmJ2-4g - cut & paste link - via @rwandaissues

Twenty years ago, beginning on April 6 1994, more than 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda in a horrific genocide that spanned 100 days.  To mark the 20th anniversary of the horrendous events of that time, KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks where with Paul Rusesabagina, the part played by actor Don Cheadle in the film 'Hotel Rwanda'.

Genocide continues to be a tragic global issue. To raise awareness of and commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, the autobiography of Paul Rusesabagina, who saved thousands of lives during the horrific events of 1994 has been re-published. 

In his book, An Ordinary Man, Paul Rusesabagina provides an inside look into his life both before and after the horrendous mass murder in Rwanda. As the manager of the exclusive 'Hotel Les Milles Collines' he sheltered more than 1,200 Tutsis and Hutu moderates from the killings. The story brings the reader inside the hotel during those 100 days, relates the anguish of those who saw loved ones brutally murdered, and describe Rusesabagina's ambivalence at pouring scotch and lighting the cigars of killers in the Swimming Pool bar, even as he was trying to cram as many refugees as possible inside the guest rooms upstairs. Rusesabagina explores his inner turmoil as he discusses the racial complexity within his own life (he is a Hutu married to a Tutsi) and his complete estrangement from the madness that surrounded him during the genocide

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KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with Francine Prose about her newest novel, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932. Emerging from the austerity and deprivation of the Great War, Paris in the 1920s shimmers with excitement, dissipation, and freedom.

It is a place of intoxicating ambition, passion, art, and discontent, where louche jazz venues like the Chameleon Club draw expats, artists, libertines, and parvenus looking to indulge their true selves. It is at the Chameleon where the striking Lou Villars, an extraordinary athlete and scandalous cross-dressing lesbian, finds refuge among the club’s loyal patrons, including rising Hungarian photographer Gabor Tsenyi, socialite and art patron Baroness Lily de Rossignol, and caustic American writer Lionel Maine.

As the years pass, their fortunes-and the world itself-evolve. Lou falls desperately in love and finds success as a racecar driver.

Gabor builds his reputation with startlingly vivid and imaginative photographs, including a haunting portrait of Lou and her lover, which will resonate through all their lives. As the exuberant 20s give way to the Depression of the 30s, Lou experiences another metamorphosis-sparked by tumultuous events-that will warp her earnest desire for love and approval into something far more sinister: collaboration with the Nazis.

Told in a kaleidoscope of voices that circle around the dark star of Lou Villars, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 evokes this incandescent city with brio, humor, and intimacy. Exploring a turbulent time defined by terror, bravery, and difficult moral choices, it raises critical questions about truth and memory and the nature of storytelling itself.

(There was an excellent Janet Maslin review of the novel also in the April 10 edition of The New York Times.)

KGNU's Claudia Cragg speaks here with Kimberley Palmer who writes about money – how to have more of it and how to manage the money you have. Her new book, 'The Economy of You: Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur and Recession-Proof Your Life' (January 2014, AMACOM), tells the stories of 100 successful side-giggers who built financial security by launching side-businesses. In addition, she writes about money as the senior money editor and Alpha Consumer blogger at US News & World Report. Palmer says she loves helping people make smarter money choices, especially when it comes to navigating big life milestones, from college graduation to parenthood to homeownership. In her first book, Generation Earn: The Young Professional’s Guide to Spending, Investing, and Giving Back, she covers many of those topics.

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For this week's KGNU programme, 'It's The Economy', Claudia Cragg speaks with Tim Harford. His first book, the global bestseller The Undercover Economist was a sensation – and has gone on to sell well over a million copies worldwide. In it, Harford looked at the world through the eyes of a microeconomist, from the changing cost of a cappuccino to how supermarkets choose to display the products on their shelves. Now, in a world utterly transformed by the global downturn, Harford is back.

In The Undercover Economist Strikes Back, he turns to the wider picture – to macroeconomics – to help us unpick and understand the complexities of major economies – which, he says, putting you (the reader) in the driving seat.

With a word of advice now and then, the Undercover Economist encourages you to run the show. Along the way you’ll discover what happens to inflation when you burn a million pound notes, why even prison camps have recessions and why Coke didn’t change the price of a bottle for seventy years.

According to The New Statesman's Felix Salmon, 

“Tim Harford is perhaps the best popular economics writer in the world… his new book is nothing less than the holy grail of popular economics.”

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This interview for #KGNU and 'It's The Economy' (a show produced by a team of the station's reporters) is a weekly radio economics and all-things-business program with international reach. This week Claudia Cragg talks to Gayle Avery about 'Honeybees and Locusts' and discusses why all of us in business and the world at large should adopt as many of the traits of the former as possible to discourage the continuing plague of the latter.

In this interview, Avery, who is one of the founders of the instituteforsustainableleadership.com, points out that if only the 23 main principles of SL had been followed into the run up to the Great Crash of 2008, it more than likely could have been avoided or at least significantly minimized. Furthermore, many very successful companies, like BMW for example, purposefully follow SL principles to their very evident and consequent bottom-line corporate advantage. 

The idea is that the honey bee creators, makers and providers lend valuable things for others” to an environment while the locust “takers and predators” are those who, says Avery, “extract value from others without contributing much in return”. The distinction comes from a so-called founding work of modern capitalism, Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees (which first appeared as a poem in 1705).

The implication for those who may still believe that capitalism, as we see it today, is viable in the long term, is that the adoption of these principles encourages bee-like virtues and so discourages the locusts.

But is that what we see today? The nasty little secret of much of C21st business may be that capitalism not only comes with moral hazards (as often required to meet sometimes greedy and ultimately unsustainable $$$ stockholder demands) but may actually depend on that climate for much of its success.  

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According to Gar Alperovitz, never before have so many Americans been more frustrated with the economic system, more fearful that it is failing, or more open to fresh ideas about a new one. The seeds of a new movement demanding change are forming, he says, and it is this that he discusses here with KGNU's Claudia Cragg for 'It's The Economy.'

But just what is this thing called a new economy, and how might it take shape in America? In What Then Must We Do?, Gar Alperovitz speaks directly to the reader about where we find ourselves in history, why the time is right for a new-economy movement to coalesce, what it means to build a new system to replace the crumbling one, and how we might begin. He also suggests what the next system might look like—and where we can see its outlines, like an image slowly emerging in the developing trays of a photographer’s darkroom, already taking shape.

He proposes a possible next system that is not corporate capitalism, not state socialism, but something else entirely—and something entirely American.

Alperovitz calls for an evolution, not a revolution, out of the old system and into the new. That new system would democratize the ownership of wealth, strengthen communities in diverse ways, and be governed by policies and institutions sophisticated enough to manage a large-scale, powerful economy.

For the growing group of Americans pacing at the edge of confidence in the old system, or already among its detractors, What Then Must We Do?, Alperovitz believes, offers an elegant solution for moving from anger to strategy.

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In the week celebrating the 50th anniversary (January 8, 1964) since, in what many consider to be one of the most memorable ever State of the Union addresses, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his “War on Poverty” and introduced legislation that would expand the federal government’s role in poverty reduction efforts. This set in motion the creation of programs such as Head Start, food stamps (now SNAP), work study, Community Action Agencies, VISTA, Medicare and Medicaid. Our guest for this edition of KGNU's 'It's The Economy' is Jill Quadagno, author of The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty.