Moyers & Company

Earlier this month, as part of the $585 billion defense bill for 2015, Congress passed a measure that would give lands sacred to American Indians in Arizona to a foreign company. This week, Bill speaks with Robert A. Williams Jr., a professor specializing in American Indian law, about how such deals are a part of American Indian's tragic history of dispossession.

The very agencies created to protect our environment have been hijacked by the polluting industries they were meant to regulate. It may just turn out that the judicial system, our children and their children will save us from ourselves, Mary Christina Wood, a legal scholar, tells Bill Moyers this week.

We've just watched as Washington paid off financial interests with provisions in the new spending bill that expand the amount of campaign cash wealthy donors can give, and let banks off the hook for gambling with customer (and taxpayer) money. It all sounds strikingly familiar to the First Gilded Age, says historian Steve Fraser. But back then people rose in rebellion against the powers that be.

Bill speaks with outspoken veteran journalist John R. MacArthur, president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine, about the problems with the Obama-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership being negotiated in secret and Hillary Clinton's possible presidential campaign.

In the wake of decisions by grand juries in both Missouri and New York’s Staten Island not to indict white police officers in the deaths of unarmed African-Americans, this week we present an encore broadcast of Bill’s conversation earlier this year with journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates.

This week Bill Moyers looks at how a portion of the famous skyline of Manhattan, towering above the south end of Central Park, is becoming a symbol of how wealth and power get their way without regard for the impact on the lives and neighborhoods of everyday people.

This week, Lawrence Lessig and Zephyr Teachout return to talk about the corrupting influence of money in politics — a subject both have studied as scholars — and how they’re fighting to reform the system.

In this turbulent midterm election year, two academics -- Lawrence Lessig and Zephyr Teachout -- left the classroom and confronted the reality of down-and-dirty politics, attempting to replace moneyed interests with the public interest. Neither was successful – this year, at least – but on this week’s show, Bill speaks with them about the hard-fought lessons learned on the state of American.

In the small city of Richmond, California, a slate of progressive candidates prevailed over pro-business candidates backed by over $3 million from the energy giant Chevron. This week, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and reporter Harriet Rowan, a college student and journalist who uncovered the Chevron funding story, talk about the role unlimited sums of corporate cash have played in Richmond.

Days ahead of the midterm elections, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s independent US Senator, is angry about what he sees as big money’s wholesale purchase of political power. It’s a grave threat, he believes, not only to our electoral process but to democracy itself.

The Supreme Court has upheld Texas' harsh voter ID law for the upcoming midterm elections. The law is part of a nationwide effort to suppress the vote, nurtured by the right’s desire to hold onto power. Bill speaks with Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Ari Berman, a journalist with The Nation, about the ongoing vote suppression controversy.

Marilynne Robinson’s new book,  “Lila,” has just been nominated for the National Book Award, the latest of a series of books set in a fictional Iowa town.  In addition to her fiction, she is also an accomplished essayist, and on this week’s show, Bill talks with her about her fervent belief in the power of grace and faith and her devotion to democracy.

Reporter and former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert talks to Bill about his new book, “Losing Our Way,” the stories of brave, hard-working men and women battered by the economic downturn. Herbert travelled across the US and found that jobs have disappeared, infrastructure is falling apart and the “virtuous cycle” of well-paid workers spending their wages to power the economy has been broken.

Attorney General Eric Holder's resignation last week reminds us of an infuriating fact: No senior Wall Street executives have been criminally prosecuted for their role in causing the financial meltdown. "The problem definitely comes from the top," veteran bank regulator William K. Black says. "And remember, Obama wouldn't have been president but for the financial contribution of bankers.”

President Obama announced this week that the US was taking the lead in bombing jihadists in Iraq and Syria, opening what is being widely interpreted as another long and costly American military campaign in the Middle East. Bill discusses the conflict with Jonathan Landay, a national security reporter for McClatchy Newspapers and Matthew Hoh, a former foreign service officer in Afghanistan.

Ahead of the UN’s global summit on climate and as thousands gather in NY for the People’s Climate March, Bill talks to 18-year-old Oregonian Kelsey Juliana, who is walking across America to draw attention to global warming. Now just out of high school, she’s co-plaintiff in a major lawsuit that could force Oregon to take a more aggressive stance against the carbon emissions warming the earth and d

While a majority of Americans think global warming is real and that human activity’s a factor, some two-thirds of white evangelical Christians aren’t convinced. Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian, believes that her faith is compatible with science. She speaks to Bill about ending the gridlock between politics, science and religion to combat global warming.

Before returning to Washington for the start of Congress, Sen. Elizabeth Warren talks to Bill Moyers about the problems facing middle class Americans. "Washington works for those who can hire armies of lobbyists, armies of lawyers and get just the rules they want. It doesn't work so well for American families," Sen. Warren tells Moyers.

In part two of his interview, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz talks to Bill about his new plan for overhauling America's current tax system, which he believes contributes to making America the most unequal society of the advanced countries.

A recent report by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz suggests that paying our fair share of taxes and cracking down on corporate tax dodgers could be a cure for inequality and a faltering economy. Stiglitz tells Bill that Apple, Google, GE and a host of other Fortune 500 companies are creating what amounts to “an unlimited IRA for corporations".