VIDEO: Naomi Klein on Climate Change

On Wednesday, we posted a video of Nation columnist Naomi Klein speaking at the 2010 TEDWomen conference in Washington, DC.  As she has detailed in an investigation for The Nation, "The Search for BP’s Oil," Klein spoke on the long-term effects of the spill and how we have not fully come to terms with the meaning of this environmental disaster.  Klein also discussed the energy crisis, proclaiming, "We are frantically digging to get at the dirtiest, highest emitting stuff imaginable.  This is how civilizations commit suicide—by slamming their foot on the accelerator at the exact same moment they should be putting on the breaks."  Watch that talk here.

LIVED HISTORY: Paying tribute

We recently inaugurated Lived History as a new section of TheNation.com to pay tribute to the dearly departed who have made significant contributions to bettering our world. Each week we feature a remembrance of a member of the progressive community, either well known or not, who made valuable contributions to the lives of those around them. In the process, we hope to highlight and recover some of the more important but often overlooked periods of our history that demonstrate the progressive tradition in American life.

AUDIO: Wendell Potter on the Health Insurance Industry

We were happy to have Wendell Potter, author of Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans, come to our Nation offices to discuss how insurance practices manipulate the conversation surrounding health care legislation.  Potter, a former vice-president for CIGNA, quit his job to expose how the industry manipulates facts to preserve for-profit health care.  Addressing the Republican attempts at repeal, Potter says, "By now the insurance industry lobbyists have met with every new member of Congress, certainly those that they helped put into Congress…. Anything that is in the bill that is a consumer protection they’ll try to water down or get stripped out."  In an editorial in this week’s issue, "Healthcare Reality Check," we wrote about Potter’s talk,  writing that the recent repeal passed by the House won’t survive in the Senate, but that, as Potter points out, the real danger lies in the piece-by-piece gutting of the Affordable Care Act’s consumer protections.  Be sure to read that editorial and listen to Wendell Potter’s exclusive Nation talk here.  

PLAY: Red Hot Patriot 

As a special treat to Nation readers, I am happy to invite you to the dress rehearsal of Red Hot Patriot in Austin this Sunday, January 23 at 3:00pm. Red Hot Patriot is a play celebrating the courage and tenacity of the great journalist, humorist and author, Molly Ivins, and runs from January 29 to March 13 at the Zach Theatre.  To see a free performance, simply send an email here requesting to be placed on the list.  Ivins was always an admired and welcomed voice at The Nation, writing for us often over the years, always swimming against the tide with political toughness and bravery.  For more information on Red Hot Patriot or to purchase tickets, check out the website here. And be sure to take a look at some of Molly’s work for The Nation and read a compilation of some of her great quotes, "Molly, In Her Own Words," here.