Every year on this day, tens of thousands of people make the pilgrimage to Omaha, Nebraska to hear two of the worlds richest men discuss everything from cultural trends, to love and marriage, to assigning probabilities to terrorist attacks. Those men are Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, of course.

Warren Buffett is known as one of the worlds greatest investors. This is self-evident.  Warren Buffett is also a great teacher, maybe as good or better a teacher than he is an investor. He listens well, he answers with clarity and empathy for his pupils.

However, Berskshire Hathaway’s annual meeting goes beyond the achievement and power of two men.

For four consecutive years I covered this weekend while working as a newswire reporter for Bloomberg News in the mid-90’s.  Held the first weekend in May each year in Omaha, my first trip to interview him in 1996 at the age of 24 was probably the most defining for much of the perspective I have today for wealth, power, money, investment and what it means to grow older regardless of your means.

His lessons and commentary are famously simple and easy to understand but remarkably challenging for most to live by.

In essence his lesson to me and so many others over the years is that having more or less money has little to with life after the basics have been covered. That life is lived in debate and passion with others you respect around the development of ideas. Life is lived through partnership, investment and collective manifestation of those ideas.

I always found it telling that the so-called woodstock of capitalism had so little to do with money and said so much about a life well lived.

Onward and Upward,

Dylan

“Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes a fire.” The first line in “Antifragile” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

There is something about a book you read on a trip that stays with you. Probably because you are mentally and physically in flux, shifting, and the passages anchor you to a fixed point while at the same time making a deeper etch on your brain than that book you are picking up in bed instead of flipping on Letterman.

On my trip across the country last summer—having fled the overstuffed core of the Big Apple and an MSNBC news desk for a life of promoting kale, veterans, and kale-growing veterans—I carried what I fervently believe to be a very important book in at least the past quarter century, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Antifragile.”

What’s it about? Nassim says it best, “Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”

Everyone, from so-called risk management experts to bankers to boxers, are all repackaging and spitting out his ideas and, as a result, ideas like measured harm and exposure to potential danger (in the form of Taleb’s “stressors”) are infiltrating a wide variety of dialogue.

My strongest criticism of Taleb—mainly that his witty and charmingly arrogant prose makes the pursuit of measured harm and casting away of safe shores seem so important that one is tempted to forget that there will be harm in seeking measured harm.

Much like reading the clear, gracefully lucid passages in “A River Runs Through It” has lead to immeasurable amounts of swearing and tangled fly lines, “Antifragile” weaves a miraculously simple line of reasoning that is almost too good for the reader’s good.

Real creativity and progress only happen in that sweet spot that is outside of the comfort zone yet not so deep in that we are paralyzed by fear. While the Harvard Business Review likes to publish articles about it as much as financial journalists love to write about it, the reality of moving into this spot is frightening and booby-trapped with snares of doubt and uncertainty.

That I read this book as I was shifting from a stressful, albeit incredibly rewarding lifestyle in Manhattan which had worn in and settled around me like an old baseball glove and intentionally cast myself into unfamiliar acreage (literally, three of them here on the farm) only served to deepen my appreciation of Antifragility.

It provided no advice, nor was it a roadmap for this journey. Taleb doesn’t provide answers, but his questions felt familiar and asking them myself and finding my own answers does keep me sane on some long, dark nights in the west.

And for all of this what have I learned? Little so far. The wave hasn’t even crested yet and already it has been a wild ride, albeit with little time for real reflection. And anyway, a wise man once said that nobody knows the winners of the most important games until years after they are played.

I have joined  a collaborative game and every player affects the variables. We are small pieces in a large puzzle, none of us sure of exactly where we fit, tumbling as we are through this adventure, and pulled by something that none of us quite understands.

It is a blazingly brilliant trip —  but it is also sleepless nights on an upset stomach.

Two things: I’m not whining about my new scars and I’m not preaching to you about the need to get outside your comfort zone.  My failures and successes have been of my own doing — except those successes that I owe to the team around me — and I wouldn’t wish the difficulty on an enemy or give away the joy at gunpoint.

This is just a view from where I’m sitting and, most of the time, I’m enjoying it.

I will leave you with the words of a man I suspect Nassim would appreciate. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a man who should pop into every mind that conjures the phrase “skin in the game.”

“If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail the sea, and then adds that I must not sail upon a sea where shipwrecks are a common occurrence and there are often sudden storms that sweep the helmsman in an adverse direction, I conclude that this man, although he lauds navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship.”

Onward and Upward!

Dylan

I received this ground-level view of Boston from an email he sent me yesterday:

Today is the memorial service and everyone seems ready to move forward and not let this evil cripple the city.  I love the resiliency of this town and am definitely happy to be a member.

You get that? No conjecture about blast radius. No angry blanket statements about what race, religion, or political belief might have to do with the bomb.

This message came to me before the shutdown of the city as police forces closed in on two suspects over the last 18 or so hours.  But even the closing of city streets for a manhunt hasn’t deterred his desire to keep an even keel.

Why? It’s because Ryan knows what he can control, what he can influence and what he can’t do no matter how hard he tries. Just as he couldn’t stanch the flow of blood for a medevac’d Marine in Iraq (he could only fly his CH-46 with expert care and control to get to waiting doctors), he won’t be prosecuting this case or questioning when his beloved metropolis will heal.

But he can follow his love and Ryan is doing just that. What he loves just so happens to be meeting with investors, politicians and community supporters in Boston to help open a greenhouse that he believes will shine a light in the city he is proud to proclaim he loves.

There’s a lot of that attitude with the Archi’s Acres crew, even the ones who aren’t from Boston. Colin and his farming service men and women at Archi’s Acres are pure love and have converted me into a full-on believer in the possibility of a veteran-led American renaissance.

Maybe it’s just Southern California, but I feel like I’m bathed in light these days.  I’ve been working on a new documentary film casting light on the imprisonment of Ryan Ferguson.  My fellow producer Chip Rosenbloom, known for countless films, and his ownership of the St. Louis Rams has been a great ally of efforts to get money out of politics and to expand ArchisAcres. Chip, will be best known for his work as a social justice advocate. He is a light shiner. The fantastically talented director and friend, Andrew Jenks is light shiner. It’s why I’m proud to go into the documentary film business with them.

Colin and his veteran team won’t change the world in short order. This film won’t fix an obviously broken and destructive justice system. But we need not wait on big solutions to complicated problems. We simply need to bend light each moment of each day and shine more of it on our local problems and engage our energy in a collective mission larger than ourselves.

It is happening, and—God help me—it is exciting. This converging, revolutionary and transformative force is as real as those bombs in Boston. While this force cannot take the evil away, it can dilute it into the expanding ocean of light as we all shine brighter for ourselves and each other.

This light will show us the path. It will help us find and build the new way forward with resolve, passion and focus!

Onward and Upward,

Dylan

PS: Here is the link to the Variety article on my first documentary as a partner with Chip Rosenbloom’s “Open Pictures”  and director Andrew Jenks, and more from Deadline Hollywood.

In life there are some clear paths that we can walk down today to reach a better place, while others are less clear, dangerous even, yet no less important for us to travel.

When it comes to creating jobs for veterans, it’s clear we can act now to feed people using the modern technology of hydroponic, organic farming.  As you know, an increasingly large group of us are acting to do just that by taking Archi’s Acres to the national level.

Other problems are more intractable, seemingly insurmountable. Beyond jobs, food and our vets, few things keep me up more than the disastrous functionality of our prison system.

It is, after all, no secret that the U.S. houses 25 percent of the world’s inmates, while representing a mere 5 percent of the world’s population.

In my opinion, this is a direct byproduct of “fear politiks” practiced by both parties — holding power by way of first scaring the broad population and then offering superficial relief by assault on some minority, or “other” population.  Too often, that population is “young black men.”

In fact, as I have reported in the past:

Since 1971, there have been more than 40 million arrests for drug-related offenses. Even though blacks and whites have similar levels of drug use, blacks are ten times as likely to be incarcerated for drug crimes.

“There are more blacks under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.”

In 2005, 4 out of 5 drug arrests were for possession not trafficking, and 80 percent of the increase in drug arrests in the 1990s was for marijuana.

The development of for-profit prison companies and their vast lobbying and political apparatus doesn’t help.

Prisoners now manufacture and assemble products for Microsoft, Starbucks, Victoria’s Secret, Boeing, as well as body armor for soldiers and handcuff cases for law enforcement officers.

In 2007, taxpayers spent 74 billion on prisons, with the largest percentage increase of prisoners going to for-profit prison companies.

Putting people in jail and keeping them there is good for business. So, of course, that’s what for-profit prison companies lobby do. According to the Justice Policy Institute, these companies “have contributed $835,514 to federal candidates and over $6 million to state politicians.”

What’s the alternative?  David Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, has highlighted a very simple common sense approach known as “hotspotting.” He advocates for sitting down the gang members that perpetrate most of the violence, police, prosecutors, and community leaders to talk about their shared problems and the consequences of crime.

Such an approach has dramatically reduced homicide rates in Boston and Baltimore, and across the country. Yet these programs and programs like them with proven success in reducing crime are the first to go on the chopping block because they don’t provide the budgetary incentive that forfeiture laws do.

Changing our criminal justice system is an issue I intend raise awareness around so we can act. It is why I was so proud to sign a letter assembled by Russell Simmons and a coalition of thousands this week and delivered to President Obama Monday evening.  You can help by spreading the word.

Onward and Upward,

Dylan

P.S. Vote for Archi’s Acres to become Mamma Chia Entrepreneur of the Year.

Dylan’s Weekly Notes For Friday, April 5, 2013

Sign up for weekly notes each Friday here.

Friends,

Washington D.C. is a strange place to be seized by the idea that America’s strength rests in small communities and that this strength is powered by our connection to food.

Our capitol is the nerve center of big ideas and policy decisions that affect billions of people around the world. And, while the restaurants are top notch, there probably isn’t enough food grown in the city to feed one large family.

But as I travelled with the Archipleys, Maj. General Mel Spiese and his wife Filomena, University of Vermont’s Dr. Jeffrey Spees, and VSAT graduates to Congressional offices, meetings with officials like USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, and even to our White House, where the group helped the First Lady plant the White House garden, the connection of community and food became clear as day.

A healthy relationship with the way we produce and consume our food is the foundation of our nation and determinative to the quality of our lives.

America’s finest agrarian writer, Wendell Berry, once wrote, “Anybody interested in solving, rather than profiting from, the problems of food production and distribution will see that in the long run the safest food supply is a local food supply, not a supply that is dependent on a global economy. Nations and regions within nations must be left free — and should be encouraged — to develop the local food economies that best suit local needs and local conditions.”

In these meetings while listening to the concerns of the veteran-farmers, I came to realize that much of what our leaders can do is turn loose the reins and start enabling citizens—rather than corporations—to feed each other.

And as our nation steps off of its war footing in the Middle East, we also have this perfect time to stop the disastrous war against our soil and our citizens, who are ultimately the victims of bad food policy.

Food is the foundation of life. It has defined every moment of our existence. It is the path to our salvation and our ruin, and is the portal to family, energy and health.

Yes, our trip to Washington, in the most narrow terms, was to raise awareness of the incredibly high capacity our vets have to solve our country’s core problems (like replacing a generation of farmers who average 60 years old), but my eyes have been opened once again by this special group of individuals.

An awakening is happening in America, and it is as simple as creating jobs that solve our actual needs and, in the process, restore the very fabric of our own bodies and our relationship with the very planet we inhabit.

That is the real message we brought to Washington D.C. this week and that is the message our high capacity veteran leaders are delivering to the nation they love every day.

As we heal ourselves, we heal each other.

Onward and upward,

Dylan

See coverage from WTOP Radio and MSNBC’s Martin Bashir.

Visit our Photo Gallery from our Washington Visit.

Colin and Karen Archipley, along with two graduates of their Veterans SustainableAgriculture Training (VSAT) program, will assist First Lady Michelle Obama in planting the White House Garden on Thursday.

The Archi’s Acres/VSAT team and Mrs. Obama will be joined in their efforts by a group of kids from Milton Elementary School in Milton, VT.

The planting of the garden is the most visible piece of what will be an incredibly busy week for the delegation from SoCal. The group will also be meeting with legislators in our nation’s capital to advocate for smarter policies surrounding agriculture and veterans employment.

Check back here Friday for photos and a complete report!

But I’m learning more and more by just watching the locals in action. What stands out is the state remains uncoupled from the bureaucratic machinery of the East.

A remnant from our pre-tech days, perhaps, but Californians still do things their own way as if assistance from Washington would take too long to arrive.

Lower your gaze from the massive economy and celebrity politicians to the average citizen in small towns and big cities up and down the state, and you will see this easily observable phenomenon.

Out here, there is a culture that is impatient and unwilling to wait for large institutions to hatch plans to solve problems and create solutions. Whether it is the Silicon Valley entrepreneur, my friends and business partners at Archi’s Acres, or even folks in the entertainment industry breaking new ground, the one common thread that binds this Golden State together is a willingness to try, fail, succeed and, occasionally, triumph without anyone else’s permission.

To borrow and rejigger a riff from “The South,” Californians don’t give a damn how you do it anywhere else.

For a population that spends so little time looking outside for ways to do something, it is especially jarring when the scent of dysfunction blows in from the east.

Case in point—the sickening decision of the Pentagon to suspend the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) for the active duty military that is being downsized after relying heavily on this force for multiple tours over the last decade.

This program allows for thousands of men and women from all branches of the military to take educational and vocational courses to help ensure a smooth transition into civilian life. In case you have not heard, the stress and difficulty in this readjustment period are akin to your worst job transfer on steroids.

Congress recently voted to turn the program back on, which makes a nice headline. In reality, by the time each branch figures out where to find that money in their budget, thousands of men and women will be turned out into society without this training. That isn’t such a nice headline.

I won’t tell you what you should do or think about this problem. It is one of a myriad of Sequester-related budget issues precipitated by a host of circumstances both in and out of our control.

I can only say that I know a few worthy Marines who have been caught up in the snare of this ugly situation. These men and women want to be farmers and help rebuild America’s broken agriculture system. They came to the farm to take the Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training (VSAT) program but were informed before arrival that they wouldn’t get TAP funding.

Relying on faith and being native Californians with can-do philosophies, Colin and Karen Archipley brought them in anyway.

I think they deserve my support and I’m going to channel my inner Californian and not wait to see if Washington can fix the situation.

If you want to join me, donate here, http://www.veteransvalorfund.com/

You can also see more from my recent Huffington Post Live segment and appearance on The Young Turks.

My “light bulb” moment came when I met Marine Corps Veteran Colin Archipley and his wife Karen.  I learned about their hydroponic, organic greenhouse project.  They were able to create a fully sustainable hydroponic farm that uses less resources and yields high quality products.

They figured out a way to turn their success into a training ground for additional veterans interested in owning and operating their own businesses.  Colin and Karen’s success story is just the beginning.

“Every problem is a job,” as I learned on my Greedy Bastards book tour.  With so many problems, it is preposterous our unemployment continues to remain so staggeringly high. This was my “light bulb” moment, this was the blinding flash that shocked me back to life and helped me understand that the current systems we use in this country are already irrelevant.  It’s people like Colin and Karen that can help us transition into a new paradigm. This is what led me to leave MSNBC.  I want to be part of the solutions, not just talk about the problems.

We have an untapped resource that has yet to be re-purposed.  Our veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are not only experiencing a criminal rate of unemployment, but they are the men and women who have proven themselves willing to pull together and face the most difficult challenges, under the most dire circumstances.

Our mission is to help veterans transition to lead our communities to resolve the issues where others were failing.

What if our young, strong, high-capacity combat veterans deployed domestically to build and operate greenhouses to cure food deserts across America?

What if the men and women we had invested millions of dollars to train for these wars were trained to provide domestic energy from coast-to-coast?

Hadn’t those who had served as members of an all volunteer Military since 9/11 – less than 1% of the population – already identified themselves as willing to do things for America no one else was willing to do?

The Greatest Generation wasn’t great only because they won the war. These men and women literally came home to build an America ready to meet and overcome challenges for decades to come. They were a precious natural resource.

Colin and his wife, Karen, have been helping  transition Marines and other veterans to become farmers for the past few years.  I’m backing Colin and Karen because they had an idea, turned it into a business, and built a model that helps returning soldiers while providing high quality products using less resources.  I’m backing their play–and getting others to do so as well–because they have inspired me to put skin in the game and not wait on the sidelines for others to begin fixing an obviously damaged system.

Our veterans, in the words of Muhammad Ali, “They’re young, they’re handsome, they’re strong and they can’t possibly be beaten!” A huge number are ready to serve us in a mission greater than themselves. They want to build this nation into a land worthy of the sacrifices they made when they were called into combat.

The ownership of this idea is theirs. I’m here to help facilitate it and hope you will join me.

Onward and upward,

Dylan

P.S. If you missed us yesterday on The Chew, watch here, as well as this afternoon on Martin Bashir.  You can also find coverage from The Daily Beast and more from DylanRatigan.com.

]]> http://www.dylanratigan.com/2013/03/22/green-giant/feed/ 5 http://www.dylanratigan.com/2013/03/22/dylan-prepares-the-archisacres-kale-hero-salad-on-the-chew/ http://www.dylanratigan.com/2013/03/22/dylan-prepares-the-archisacres-kale-hero-salad-on-the-chew/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:54:14 +0000 Dylan Ratigan http://www.dylanratigan.com/?p=11471 Dylan makes the “ArchisAcres Kale Hero Salad” on The Chew.

“ArchisAcres Kale Hero Salad”

2 bunches of “Dino” or “Laciento” Kale
2 bunches of “Red Chard”
1/2 cup almonds or sunflower seeds (toasted and chopped)
Gorgonzola cheese (crumbled)
2 Fuji Apples (cubed)
1 Papaya (softens the kale nicely and its yummy)

“Kale Hero Dressing”

1/2 full bulb of garlic (chopped)
A chunk of ginger root (peeled and chopped)
Balsamic Vinger
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

Not to go all Joseph Campbell on you, but in order to heal ourselves I think we need to change some pieces of our national mythology.

For instance, real men grow kale.* And the truly heroic eat kale too.

Blitz-era folks in the UK grew it in “victory gardens” because its nutrient density was a gift during times of heavy rationing.  Thomas Jefferson grew it at Montecello.  Kale is a low calorie, high fiber, protein-rich, zero fat gift from Mother Earth and its image needs an upgrade.

Enter my good friend, Marine combat vet and kale-growing farmer Colin Archipley. Here is a guy who isn’t afraid to come out in defense of this underrated cabbage. In fact, he proudly wears the nickname “Kale Hero” and has even willing to share some of his favorite recipes (to fuel his engines and keep the kale growing, create by his boss and wife, Mrs. Archi) based on his love of the plant (see below).

Kale is part of his livelihood as an organic, hydroponic greenhouse farmer and, more importantly, it is part of his vision for a new America. He has a vision of his fellow veterans growing kale in smart, eco-friendly and community-constructive ways from sea to shining sea.

And he isn’t waiting for anyone to tell him it will work. He believes it in his heart. Think of Colin as working Manifest Destiny in reverse, going across America from west to east with the goal of helping heal and strengthen the nation instead of submitting to it.

A “Kale Hero,” indeed.

“ArchisAcres Kale Hero Salad”

2 bunches of “Dino” or “Laciento” Kale

2 bunches of “Red Chard”

1/2 cup almonds or sunflower seeds (toasted and chopped)

Gorgonzola cheese (crumbled)

2 Fuji Apples (cubed)

1 Papaya (softens the kale nicely and its yummy)

“Kale Hero Dressing”

1/2 full bulb of garlic (chopped)

A chunk of ginger root (peeled and chopped)

Balsamic Vinger

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

” Dr. Spees’** Kale Hero Smoothie”

10 Leaves of Dino Kale

Juice of 2 Limes

1 Papaya (inner flesh of fruit)

2 cups Apple Juice

1 piece of raw Ginger diced (size of 2 thumbs)

1 Banana

Sometimes I add 1 Scoop of “Rainbow Vibrance” antioxidant powder.

*Real women do too. I freely acknowledge this piece of our mythology needs updated as well!

** Dr. Spees is a neuroscientist and assistant professor of medicine at The University of Vermont and staff biologist at ArchisAcres.

I find myself blessed to realize my role in an amazing drama as it unfolds and perhaps nothing is more amazing than the cast of fellow characters sharing the stage and forcing me to take better action and utter better lines.

Colin Archipley—When you first meet Colin, you can’t help but wonder how a guy this tall was able to find cover in the intense fighting he waded through in the invasion of Iraq, the Battle of Fallujah and the intense fighting in Haditha. This blond-haired California native not only survived but rose to the rank of sergeant in less than four years. He is a natural leader who can think under stress and has the sort of charisma that is both innate and refined by hard-earned experience. First he joined the Corps in response to 9/11. The, after service, he trained himself to build greenhouses to help save his farm in northern San Diego County. Then he and his wife started a sustainable, organic agriculture training program and has helped more than 150 veterans start down the same path. And now I’ve dubbed him the Kale Hero. Not bad for just over 30 years of living.

Karen Archipley—You know what a farmer’s wife is like, right? Grey hair pulled back in a bun, dirty apron, rolling pin out and a pie in the window sill. Wrong. Karen is a former international fashion entrepreneur who can secure a six-figure deal with Whole Foods Market,  find a scholarship for a needy veteran and whip up a kale salad in about 10 minutes. Her deep passion for sustainable food growing practices fuels a motor that doesn’t seem to have much quit. With her husband Colin, she has helped change the face of agriculture and permanently scorched the stereotype of the “farmer’s wife.”

Maj. General Mel Spiese (USMC-Ret.)—It’s tough for a lifelong civilian to read the bio of a Marine Corps general and decipher exactly what all of the roles, assignments, honors and achievements mean. But a look at Mel’s work history—which started about six years after  I was born—reveals that many men and women were led as Marines and influenced by his wisdom, decisions and commitment to being the guy who takes responsibility for when things go right and wrong.  Take a second and truly contemplate what that means and you will certainly come away with an understanding of why I revere this man’s character and trust his guidance.

Filomena Spiese — One has to marvel at the balancing act that is the life of a general’s wife. The general often steals the show because of the stars on his collar, but a successful general’s wife is part debutante, part ninja and a full-on leader in her own rite. Filomena Spiese has the easy-going humor and wit of a fun-loving Northern Cali girl, but is a passionate and staunch allie to her major general husband. Her work in support of VSAT, including spearheading a non-profit that has helped raise funds for student tuition to the program, has been nothing short of amazing. When you hear someone say “Spiese is a good leader,” you should immediately ask, “Which one?”

“Forager” Mike Haines—A reconnaissance Marine and veteran of the invasion of Iraq. Mike is a relentless tinkerer and a mad scientist of an inventor. He has no interest in Lex Luther world domination. He wants to create food, housing and transportation systems that shatter the current economic paradigm and usher in a new form of prosperity for those willing to work for the greater good. While attending VSAT, Mike created Dang!!! Hot Sauce, a raw, organic superfood creation that tastes amazing and sets off symphony of healthy enzymes and positive vibrations as soon as it touches the tongue. Does he sound like a relic of Haight/Ashbury? Well, Mike is also trained to survive under the harshest conditions, loves to sleep in bushes and forage off the land, and can locate an enemy and dispatch with extreme prejudice. So you may want to keep those hippie jokes to yourself.

Jon and Tony Smalls—Somewhere back during the Civil War, one of Jon’s ancestors stole a Confederate ship. Not a horse. Not a cannon. An entire ship. I would tell you how he did it—and then went on to become the first black congressman from South Carolina—but I was too busy feeding my face with the sweet potato pie made by Jon and his brother Tony to get all the details. Jon served in combat as a Marine. Tony is an Army veteran. Both are VSAT grads. And the two natives of South Carolina’s “Lowcountry” have a magical sweet potato pie recipe that has been a family secret for well over a century. These two pie-men are gearing up for a run in Whole Foods Market and I can assure you they will commandeer America’s taste buds like their ancestor commandeered enemy ships.

Jerome Yoskovitis—Southern California is home to the nation’s highest per capita population of laid-back dudes with blonde ponytails. Jerome is one of these dudes. But this ultra-mellow man is no Spicolli. He is a Marine veteran of both combat and humanitarian missions around the globe. To cope with the horrors of war and the difficulties of transition into the civilian world after his service, he started growing tomatoes as therapy. The plan worked…too well. He had tons of extra tomatoes. So, after going through VSAT, Jerome came up with an organic, heirloom tomato variety ketchup. It’s called Kaught Up because it’s the only brand that has caught up to the idea that folks don’t want high fructose corn syrup and GMO crap on their French fries.

Rob Lewis—He loves Crossfit, beekeeping, jujitsu and permaculture. He “contains multitudes,” as Walt Whitman might have said. Need a mushroom identified? He’s your guy. Want to go for a run and plan a strategy for setting up a farm in some faraway city? He’s also your guy. Video edited? Story written? Celebrity endorsement secured? He’s your guy. As a journalist/public affairs guru in the Marine Corps, Rob was forced to be a master of many trades. And thankfully he has gathered some great stories along the way to pick you up when you are ready to crash. He was once threatened by a heavyweight champion boxer and introduced to natives of a southern Pacific island who worshipped the Marine Corps…all in one week. Spend a week with him and you’ll have some stories of your own.

Ryan McGill—Ever seen a CH-46? Here is a picture of one. As a Marine, Ryan flew one of these helicopters in combat in Iraq, transporting both warfighters to and from battle and wounded comrades to needed medical treatment. This was after an enlistment in the Navy as a diver. Now he will grow food in the city of Boston, running his own organic, hydroponic greenhouse in Beantown. The city is known for toughness, patriotism and grit. Captain McGill is too.

Not a bad bunch, right? And I’m blessed to be working this cast of VSAT-centered characters to discover more players every day.

Dear friend,

If you are reading this, you likely know I left a highly-successful,  self-titled show at MSNBC last June in search of meaning and purpose in my work and life. I had lost both after 18 years in Manhattan and the chaos surrounding the hollow political debates permeating America’s media and politics.

After 780 hours of political cable news, 6000 hours of live financial television, 45 cities, 2 national jobs tours, 277,963 signatures to amend The Constitution, 245 pages of book and a promotion tour for Greedy Bastards, I was exhausted.

It was a three-tour Iraq combat Marine and his war-protestor wife who pointed me in a new direction.  They were guests on my show last June discussing how they were bootstrapping their way to operate a high-yield hydroponic organic farm that uses 90% less water and produces three times as much food. It was a business that promised to cure food deserts – areas where access to fresh and healthy food is limited – while having the potential to create jobs for thousands of combat veterans, each of whom was the beneficiary of $1 million in military training while on active duty.

The couple even created a school where they trained other veterans to open their own farms or establish their own organic businesses in pursuit of a dream of creating thousands of American jobs and feeding millions of people.

Our intention is to create real value and good jobs in countless American communities, by harnessing the power of the 1% of Americans who served in the past decade of war.  These high capacity people have already demonstrated their unique ability to be trained and subsequently serve with distinction under most arduous and demanding of conditions, and we can leverage those qualities and skills against some of our greatest needs.  We have begun redeploying returning veterans and unemployed civilians to US cities, while coordinating with city, state and federal governments to create good jobs providing local, fresh food, reduced energy waste and pollution, improved wellness and rebuild infrastructure.

Colin Archipley—When you first meet Colin, you can’t help but wonder how a guy this tall was able to find cover in the intense fighting he waded through in the invasion of Iraq, the Battle of Fallujah and the intense fighting in Haditha. This blond-haired California native not only survived but rose to the rank of sergeant in less than four years. He is a natural leader who can think under stress and has the sort of charisma that is both innate and refined by hard-earned experience. First he joined the Corps in response to 9/11. The, after service, he trained himself to build greenhouses to help save his farm in northern San Diego County. Then he and his wife started a sustainable, organic agriculture training program and has helped more than 150 veterans start down the same path. And now I’ve dubbed him the Kale Hero. Not bad for just over 30 years of living.

Karen Archipley—You know what a farmer’s wife is like, right? Grey hair pulled back in a bun, dirty apron, rolling pin out and a pie in the window sill. Wrong. Karen is a former international fashion entrepreneur who can secure a six-figure deal with Whole Foods Market,  find a scholarship for a needy veteran and whip up a kale salad in about 10 minutes. Her deep passion for sustainable food growing practices fuels a motor that doesn’t seem to have much quit. With her husband Colin, she has helped change the face of agriculture and permanently scorched the stereotype of the “farmer’s wife.”

Over the past 3 years, I have been learning from these community heroes that are modeling a new culture of solving age old problems with new tools.

These cultures all share one set of universal principals:

1. They are honest with a tendency toward one-set of rules and shared mutual understanding and goals.

2. They emphasize FIRST STEPS. This means they are ruthless in evaluating where they are and what they have before they make any plans.

3. They use an “Apollo 13” mentality of making the best use of what the group does have, rather than itemize what the group doesn’t have only to get lost in fighting over why that is.

4. They have a clear imagination of exactly what the goal of their mission is.

5. They make decisions based on the clarity of that imagination not in response to available or lost objects.

6. They use mission based hierarchical structures to plan, brief and execute tasks. But the more power you wield in the hierarchy to more you are expected to serve the mission.

7. They use communal egalitarian structures for mission analysis and debriefing before and after each plan, brief and execution.

All of this is definitive to any true problem-solvers culture.

Failure to have a good first step can result in jumping out of a plane without a parachute, building a bridge without any nuts and bolts, or planning a political reform that treats symptoms, not roots. It is the most important step, before planning or execution can begin.

The people in these playbooks have been some of my best teachers the past 3 years and I believe their culture of thinking represents a clear success in achieving security, abundance and individual and collective freedom.

The best community heroes use a “mission” culture.  This best defined in the Marine Corps, a surgical operating room, or while engineering a bridge, road or factory.

I believe that if we teach, model and show good first step practices – which are being shown to us by our “Greatest Generation,” returning war veterans, youth and countless civilians – a true renaissance is closer than we realize.

I am thrilled to share this Community Hero Playbook with you featuring some of my most valuable teachers, and ask you to help me expand on them.

Here’s to the story of our lifetime!

Dylan

Setting out on a journey bigger than yourself, or a quest to define yourself; to find the truth for you, whatever that may be.  We may not be planning to go out and walk around the woods, but we can relate to the conflict between our desires to experience a certain quest or a certain opportunity to hear and listen.  Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of, A Sense of Direction:  Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful, joins the show today to share his own experiences with the life-changing adventure.

The greatest barrier to embarking on a life-changing journey is that people do not have the financial resources, the time availability, or the ability to do quests like this.  They allow themselves to be constrained and, typically, wait for something to force them into a moment of change.

“Many of the people who embark on a journey do it at a time of perceived crisis in their life,” Lewis-Kraus explained.  ”It’s really just about the time and finding a way to free yourself from the obligations in your life.”

Once you are able to embrace the challenge of a journey like this, what is the most valuable thing that lives out there in the world that is a detachment from whatever you may know in your day-to-day life?

“The sense that you are doing something every day that you are choosing to do,” Lewis-Kraus replied.  ”At a certain point you can’t complain because you are doing something that you want to do.  The idea of waking up every day with a strong, if not arbitrary, sense of direction every day to your life was the greatest rush for me.  You almost get addicted to the adventure.”

There is a freedom from the seemingly endless number of decisions and choices we have as a society to make on a regular basis.  So many pilgrimages end with this exhilarating moment but then no one discusses the return to normal life.  Does it become a quest or does it become an invasion on your ability to live in the regular world?

“People need to be aware that you have more choices in your life than you ever think that you do,” Lewis-Kraus continued.  ”It was as close to a total freedom from economic constraints that I had ever experienced when I lived in Berlin.  It is something that people will have to

As we launch into the summer of mission analysis, we believe that this is the perfect time to embark on our own journey of a lifetime.

For the full interview:

]]> http://www.dylanratigan.com/2012/06/14/the-journey-of-a-lifetime/feed/ 0 http://www.dylanratigan.com/2012/06/12/opposites-attract-not-in-todays-america/ http://www.dylanratigan.com/2012/06/12/opposites-attract-not-in-todays-america/#comments Tue, 12 Jun 2012 10:12:19 +0000 Dylan Ratigan http://www.dylanratigan.com/?p=10862 The Wisconsin Recall is expected to generate one of the highest voter turnouts in recent memory, yet the gap between Left and Right on the political spectrum has doubled since 1987.  Joe Costello comes on the show today to discuss his new book Of By For: The New Politics of Money, Debt, and Democracy to discuss how the extreme partisanship of American politics, interwoven with the influence of money, has derailed the Grand Experiment that America was launched under.

The book begins with a quote: “We do not need a revolution in America, we need a reformation,” that Costello explains is meant to highlight that our system has simply gone off the tracks.  We don’t need a revolution, defined by overthrow of government and violence, but rather we need true, honest reform that reworks our system of self-governance and refocuses it with an eye toward engagement and growth.

A growing problem is with the disenfranchisement of American citizens, where our decision-making abilities as a voting citizenry are being limited by a distorted culture of governance that is defined by extreme partisanship that shuts down our ability to meet and talk on policy.

“The first thing we need to work on is more education and general awareness; we won’t have a reform of the banking system, for example until we know how it works,” Costello explained. “The second step is talking to each other.  We don’t talk to each other politically anymore; we don’t have the dialogue to do that.”

A lot of people would agree with this assertion.  We are the heroes of our own stories after all; how can we parlay this awareness into action that will bring about concrete results and change that can unleash our system from these limitations?

“Go after these problems that we have together.  Let’s say banking: let’s not talk liberal or conservative, or Democrat or Republican, let’s talk about banking.  How are we going to change this?  How are we going to start changing the way banking and the money system is utilized in our country?” Costello posited.

It is trite to continue with the path we are currently on: I like Romney.  Well, I like Obama. And we maintain the status quo.  There has to be an understanding with people that, before now, we have have to band together in an effort to change issues of substance.  The really large forces of our nation that make us feel powerless seem overwhelming until we learn to work together and congregate around these common grievances.

“It’s been about people getting together, from the Revolution all the way to civil rights.  Our political system is set up in a way now that is meant to divide us.”

In a period of increasing polarization, it is increasingly clear that our system of politics, media coverage, and electoral processes have driven us apart, while issues that are pressing for the growth and progress of our nation are allowed to go by the wayside.  We need to start adhering to magnetic principle soon before our system collapses entirely, and let our differences bring us together, before our bickering defines the end of the Grand Experiment.

The full interview is here:

Joe Costello is author of Of, For, By: The New Politics of Money, Debt, and Democracy.  Follow him on Twitter for more information.

I was invited to deliver my first ever Commencement speech to the graduating class of Union College.  (Let me take this opportunity to wish them another congratulations on their successes; onward and upward.) I was honored to receive an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the school and then do my best to not embarrass myself in front of a talented group of young, eager soon-to-be-graduates.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Brian Stelter of the New York Times’ Media Decoder blog was hot on the tail of a story.  I took my phone out after the ceremony (always a no-no) to discover that Brian wants a statement on me leaving MSNBC.  Time to scramble the jets.

After allowing us time to contact my staff and deliver the message myself, I responded to his request for a statement with this: My last day on air at MSNBC will be June 22.  My letter of transition, Beyond Talk, only begins to tell the story of my appreciation and debt of gratitude that I hope to pay back as I continue on in my journey.

As I told Brian: “Once you’ve said your piece, you can either keep saying it – or you can decide what you’re going to do about it.”  The opportunity to learn from those that are leading us to reveal new ways to resolve the ongoing narrative of my television show is too thrilling to pass up.

I am fortunate to be able to spend the next two months talking to people, listening, and making a plan for whatever is next.  To those of you at home, thank you for your ideas, thank you for your passion, thank you for making us so successful, and thank you for your support.  To those of you that have been members of my MSNBC family, thank you for your creative energy and, our most precious resource, time over these three years.

As we go into the summer, and we start asking what it’s going to be that shapes the future of this country, think of what the president of Union College, Dr. Stephen Ainlay, asked his students on Sunday at their Commencement: “Why not you?”

I echo that question: Why not you?  You are the hero of your own story, and the renewal and resolution of America’s obstacles begins with each individual, with our interactions and connections to the world around us.  It’s the culture, and I am going to explore what our heroes have in store for us.  Stay tuned.

]]> http://www.dylanratigan.com/2012/06/11/what-the-fazaka/feed/ 20 http://www.dylanratigan.com/2012/06/11/phil-griffins-announcement-to-msnbc/ http://www.dylanratigan.com/2012/06/11/phil-griffins-announcement-to-msnbc/#comments Mon, 11 Jun 2012 19:48:00 +0000 Dylan Ratigan http://www.dylanratigan.com/?p=10918 My time as part of the MSNBC family has been marked by a profound sense of support, professionalism, and respect.  With Phil Griffin overseeing, The Dylan Ratigan Show has made steady growth in its viewership throughout its time in the 4pm slot.  Phil’s announcement to the MSNBC family demonstrates the unwavering support that afforded me space to be myself, and I would be remiss if I did not thank the network for an outstanding three years as a full-time host on its airwaves.

Announcement from Phil Griffin:

Team –

I want you to know that our friend Dylan Ratigan has decided to pursue new opportunities and will be ending his role as a full-time host. The final Dylan Ratigan Show will be June 22. I’m proud of all that Dylan, Steve Friedman, and the entire Ratigan show team have accomplished over the past three years. Dylan’s distinct voice and his fearless approach to tackling complicated issues has been a key part of msnbc’s growth and success.  Dylan is going out on a high note.  Year- to- date, the show is up 18% in total viewers and up 17% in hard to reach younger demographic of A18-34. We’ll be watching as Dylan begins his next mission.

While it’s sad to see our friend Dylan go, I’m happy to announce that Martin Bashir will move to 4 p.m. on June 25. Martin’s audience has also been growing and I’m confident he’ll be a fantastic lead-in to our early evening and primetime line-up.

I will have more to say about the 3p time-slot in the coming weeks. I’m working with Steve and his outstanding team to develop a new show in that hour.

Please join me in thanking Dylan and good luck to Martin and his team for what I know will be continued success at 4 p.m.

DYLAN RATIGAN, Class of 1994 – journalist, author, advocate and political reformer – we are pleased to honor you today, and proud that Union has played a role in launching your career.

You once said in an interview that you intend to “do as much as possible to address…the structural misaligned interests in America.”

During your career, you have done precisely that. Never shy about taking a stand, you have exposed greed and wealth inequality. And you have tirelessly advocated for reform of our nation’s political and financial systems.

Since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, your work has brought to the attention of millions the extent to which public and private interests influence the U.S. government’s economic policy. You lead a large and growing nonprofit organization dedicated to banning corporate campaign contributions. In your writing, you have argued that for the first time in history, technology can play a vital role in promoting a transparency of information that will enhance the common good.

Throughout your career, you have stood with those who for economic reasons find themselves at the political margins. As a native of the Adirondack region, where your mother was a social worker, you understand the struggle of those who live in poverty. Though you identify yourself as conservative, you have given voice to those who feel disenfranchised.

It is with admiration for your dedication to economic justice and your commitment to create fairness for all who seek the American dream that Union College presents you with an honorary degree.

By the authority vested by the Regents of the University of the State of New York in the Trustees of Union College and delegated by the Trustee to me, I am happy to confer on you the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa with all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto.

Stephen C. Ainlay, Ph.D.
President
Union College Commencement
June 10, 2012

I left a fifteen year career in financial journalism amid the crisis of 2008.  I did this to join the traditional cable news ranks with a clear goal of revealing the ruthless truth about our biggest problems and telling the inspiring stories of those who are resolving them despite all odds.

After three years at MSNBC, two national roadshows and one book, (and a couple of rants,) my objections to our current political process and our dominance-at-all-costs culture that gives us all less, while we pay more is well documented.

Fortunately, I have been inspired by meeting countless “doers” like Bea Cohen, 102 years old and one of the original “Rosie the Riveter’s” to contemporaries like Marine Veteran Colin Archipley who after serving 3 tours in Iraq, started “Archi’s Acres” with his wife in San Diego to teach returning veterans how use low-cost, hydroponic, organic farming techniques to create good jobs that produce twice as much food, at a higher quality, using 90% less soil and water.

They are pointing us — through their actions in history and today — on a clear mission – to seize new tools and take cultural risks to resolve our challenges.  Bea Cohen, and millions of other women did this in the past. Millions of men and women are doing this now — simply by daring to create new, sustainable, tolerant, problem-solving cultures in almost every social, personal and financial system.

It is in this context that I have decided to leave cable news to collaborate and join with some of these leaders to experiment and explore new ways to tell their stories.

While it may seem unconventional to leave a rapidly growing political cable show on the eve of a Presidential election, to me, the timing couldn’t be better.

In fact, the thrill of an opportunity to expand new systems that cost less and give us more in every part of life is impossible to pass up.  I believe if we are honest about where we are now, honest about where we want to go and honest about how we are going to get there, we may well end up as the hero of our own stories.  While I don’t know exactly how my own story will develop, I hope to share some initial details with you soon.  In the meantime, keep in touch.

I have had the privilege and confidence of NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC for nine years and want to thank everyone who worked with me in that time, especially Phil Griffin and Steve Friedman, who made the work of the past three years possible along with The Dylan Ratigan Show and MSNBC staff.  I look forward to collaborating with all of you in learning, sharing, and building new ways to solve old problems in this expanding mission.

Onward and Upward,

Dylan

As a testament to the cause, and credit to you, here are some of the latest ratings:

The Dylan Ratigan Show is the only cable news program to show total audience growth in 2012 (Year-over-Year/4pm ET). While CNN and Fox fell at 4pm ET, The Dylan Show on msnbc showed healthy gained.

The Dylan Ratigan Show gained in total viewership 18%, while CNN and Fox fell 15% and 7% respectively in total audience (Year-over-Year/4pm ET).

In the 18-34 demographic, The Dylan Ratigan Show gained 17%. Competitors, CNN and Fox fell 42% and 14% respectively (Year-over-Year/4pm ET).

By: Dylan Ratigan

Commencement to Union College Class of 2012,

Delivered June 10, 2012

SPEECH:

I’d like to thank President Ainlay and Mrs. Judith Gardner Ainlay for hosting me and for their gracious hospitality. I’d also like to thank Mr. Mark Walsh, Chairman of the Union College Board of Trustees, and the entire Board of Trustees of Union College for their dedication to furthering education.  I’d like to recognize and thank Dr. Therese McCarty, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty for making this day a possibility for all of you.

I’d also like to congratulate the faculty, staff and of course all of the wonderful parents joining us on this occasion.  And I’d like to give special recognition to G. Bingham Powell for receiving an honorary doctorate of humane letters.

Graduates, I’m getting to you.

22 Years ago I showed up here with a typewriter…. ADLIB.

And you had to call landlines to make plans to meet up.

And hockey was D3.

Hockey team. Frozen 4.

When I left I had no idea what I was going to do….and even now I’m not always sure what to do.

So I’ve always made it a point to ask a lot of questions. And I’ve been able to ask a lot of people, a lot of questions.

What I’ve learned, despite-what you-may-have-heard-on ….cable news….., is it’s all going to be fine because a cultural renaissance that is giving us all more for less – it sounds cliché, but I can back it up.

An abundant present is here – for all of us – if we just wake up and ask better questions – and if we request better answers from ourselves and those around us.

There is a growing under–current coursing through the inner fiber of our country that is “awake.”  This culture recognizes that they don’t know – but that they have unprecedented access to answers. They know that better questions, result in better answers.  They imagine things, design experiments to test them — and learn and fail everyday.  This forces a “GET OVER IT”  culture of resilience for failure and a perserverence and humility and passion to press on.

They are finding a “POT OF GOLD”, and I believe you are among the privildged generation of people who will lead us into the thick of it.

This culture of questions  – married to new communications cuts across all industry’s and identities, because those doing it share a single mission; to ask better questions and in the process turn fearful and unsustainable cultures into a joyful sustainable ones.

This culture comes in all shapes and sizes.  It looks like Derek Sivers, a professional musician turned entrepreneur who pointed out that we learn much more, much faster if we use testing to survey what people DON’T know —  and then customize missions for them to learn the missing skills.  He found doing this accelerated learning 3-fold. He’s been inspiring people to experiment, fail, learn and adapt to do what excites them since 2008.

It looks like Colin Archipley, a Marine Sergeant, who served 3 tours in Iraq, now a community leader at Archi’s Acres able to produce twice the amount of food using 90% less water and dirt.

This culture looks like Dr. Jeffrey Brenner, a doctor from Camden New Jersey who is reducing healthcare costs while healing people simply by targeting the group needing the most help in the system first.  And then implementing simple measures like paying high school students to take senior citizens out for walks or ensuring that those most in need take their medication on a daily basis.

This culture looks like David Kennedy, a criminal justice professor reducing crime by unprecedented levels in Baltimore by locating and engaging the most violent offenders in partnership with the community.

He assembles the group most trusted by a given violent offender and simply says with the group:

“Every community has petty drug use and theft to one degree or another — and that is public health issue we must address. But not every community uses guns to shoot each other, please, just don’t shoot each other.”

In Baltimore, they did this – A sixty percent reduction in crime for mere pennies, simply by taking the time to re-establish a community covenant.

What the music entrepreneur, Marine Sergeant, Doctor and criminal justice professor all have in common is their culture; It’s a mission first, leave no man behind culture.  They are ruthless and compassionate and asking better questions everyday.  You have the chance to expand this culture, to help lead us to the worlds first global “POT OF GOLD” through your collective collaboration, innovation, experiments, and excitement.

You are the real force.  You are the richest people in America, because you have the most valuable thing  – time and options.

In fact, unlike any other time in the entirety of human civilization you are all able to pursue almost any and every avenue you choose to explore.

Take time every day to talk with each other, learn how find agreement with those you don’t and define sets missions with those you do.  It doesn’t matter if you’re an environmentalist or a history buff, a political science major or a law student – a musician, an author, a thespian or an animator – You’re arrival into this world is perfectly timed.

But to capitalize on this opportunity you have to ask more ruthless questions and be more compassionate whatever the answers may be. And most importantly – be willing to change your thinking and your actions when new answers reveal themselves to you

The best questions no longer start with Who or What or When or Where..

We can look that up.

They start with How.

You don’t read about the stories of the musician entrepreneur, the Marine Sergeant, the doctor, and the criminal justice professor or see them in the news. Because they are defined by HOW they interact which isn’t measured by an old system incapable of keeping pace with the rate of change taking place in our world.  But we know it’s happening, because we met these people.  There are innovators all across our country inspiring new methods and creative solutions to solve age-old problems.  They are the hero’s of their own stories.

I challenge you to seek them out, to talk with them, work with them and learn from them.  Share this knowledge and these experiences with others.  You will see, as I have, that there is a burgeoning culture that has been awakened from a slumbering one that fights into joyful one that questions and collaborates.  People are occupying, studying, researching, investigating, challenging and resolving new maps for their future. New technologies are upgrading old techniques that visionaries are using to get to the center of our most troubled areas.

We are challenging the culture of our longest standing institutions like education, healthcare, and energy to work differently.  We no longer accept that because it’s the way it’s been done before means that it’s the best way to do it.  Take a piece of our universe and resurrect it, change it, shape it into something that no one’s seen before.

You can choose to lead us into this renaissance, unleashing waves of potential.  I want you – and your parents – to be embrace failing.  If you’re not failing, you’re not trying and that is our greatest risk. So let’s fail our asses off as we experiment with unprecedented tools and connections in this new paradigm of joy and genius that we can choose for ourselves daily if we experiment, learn and fail.

Be careful of the seductions of hero-worship and villainy.  They are lies.

There is no silver bullet.  Let me be clear: there is no knight in shining armor, there is no sinister cabal.  There are no heroes nor villains.  We are the heroes of our own stories.  I am the hero of mine, and you are the hero of yours.

The integrity of our relationships and our trust to talk to each other is our greatest currency. Use it. Celebrate It.

While you will physically be detached from this place and these people, you will take the most important pieces from your last four years into your next experiment, your next step, whatever that may be.

We’re all  looking forward to hearing your ideas and most important, seeing what you do.  From one Union College Grad to another, let’s be honest – if you can make it through four winters in Schenctady, you can change the world.  With that, I wish you luck and my heartfelt Congratulations to the class of 2012.

It’s called leadership culture, and we want to see our citizenry adapt it for themselves.  We want to emphasize the good and get rid of the bad in our current system, and we need to believe that we are all capable of being leaders in this renaissance.  Colonel Christopher Conlin explained: “We are social creatures; we instinctively follow and model behavior from our leaders.  Right now a lot of our leaders are leading more in line with do as I say, not as I do.”

When we have a chaotic and uncertain environment, it is an occasion to create millions of new opportunities and resolve problems that threaten the health and well-being of our society.  Our citizen culture is missing that desire to create, to innovate, and to run toward the chaotic realm of potential failure.  The Marine Corps manual states, “The risks of inaction are always equal to or greater than the risks of action.”  We are at a point, as a nation, where we cannot continue to sit by and follow the path of unsustainable action.  We are afraid of failure, but must learn instead to discover what it can afford us:

It is time to reinvigorate our culture with a sense of entrepreneurial risk-taking.  Whether it be in health, education, science and technology, or sustainable energy, we must be willing to embrace failure and welcome the challenges it brings as we try to resolve the difficulties facing our nation.  We must find that sense of daring, audacious, and creative thinking that has characterized some of our nation’s greatest accomplishments.  It begins with you and your interactions with people around you on a regular basis.  You are the hero of your own story.  It’s the culture, friend.

As private companies become responsible for the management and development of our prison system, the cost per prisoner has increased by nearly $24,000.  This begs the question: why are we spending more to keep people longer behind bars?

“There has been an underlying assumption for some time now that the best way to combat crime was to put as many people as possible in prison for as long as possible,” Gleb articulated.  “The trouble is that, over time, research has shown that for a lot of low-risk offenders that isn’t the case.”

A lot of lower-level, non-violent offenders have been swept up into this net of incarceration.  We have gotten to a point where one in one hundred of American adults are in prison, one in thirty-one are on some form of supervision, and one in eight States’ employees works in correction.  Our spending on prisons has only been outpaced by spending on Medicaid.

“Prisons are a government spending program that needs to be put to the cost-benefit analysis like any other form of government spending program,” Gelb suggested.  “Taxpayers now, in this situation more than ever, want their tax dollars to be put to the best possible use.”

Privatization of the prison system has contributed to the traveling to the prison-building path.  As a business model the prison system essentially mirrors the hotel industry, with linens, foods, workers, and the important thing is to keep the prisons populated to maintain the work that needs to be done to keep the prison up.  Is there a new way to ensure our population doesn’t have to rely on prisons only?

“We have new technologies, systems, and strategies we didn’t have before that will help people stay out of prison.  A lot of extra comfort to judges and prosecutors is brought when they are presented with these low-cost options that run against prison,” Gelb explained.  “Sometimes it sounds like snake oil a little bit, but we are seeing in State after State reduced prison stays due to implementation of these new techniques.”

People are sick and tired of the revolving door, in more ways than one, and it is time we start to hold our system of incarceration to a level of accountability that we would expect out of any government system.  We are funding the collection and training of prison culture and wondering why it is becoming street culture.  The time for resolving this unsustainable path is now.

For the full interview watch here:

Adam Gelb is the director of the Pew Center’s Public Safety Performance Project. For more on the Pew Center visit their website or follow them on Twitter.

Our Congress is trying to intervene against the Pentagon to prevent the military, which wants to go green, from doing it.  Both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House pushing measure prohibiting the military from investing in, or buying, alternate energy if traditional sources like coal and oil are cheaper.  Bob Deans from the National Resources Defense Council Action Fund, and author of Reckless: The Political Assault on the American Environment, joins Dylan to talk about Congress’ steps to prevent the military from going green.

Bearing in mind that our government subsidizes those forms of energy that the measures would protect, it begs the question: who is responsible for intervening in this logical, seeming natural process of going green?

Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is the point man for trying to intervene on the effort to make our military more energy efficient, and the number one contributor to his campaign are oil and gas companies.  The audacity to intervene in this natural process is something that should shame our politicians in such a blatant attempt to utilize their position of power to prevent something that is essential to the modernization of our armed forces.

The military wants to do this; they are the ones that have been in the field of battle and have an understanding of our energy policy and how it can impact our ability to function abroad.  Now we have an oil and gas industry-backed Senator trying to intervene in the interest of maintaining his political contributions.

“The Pentagon uses $19 billion of energy every year,” Deans explained.  They are trying to become more efficient, and they are doing it for three reasons.  They want to make our forces stronger, they want to control costs, and they want to deny our enemies around the world the resources they need to come after our men and women.”

The people at the Pentagon understand that if we are able to get more out of our fuel, and that we aren’t reliant on imported oil, than we will be able to strengthen our troops and put them less at risk.  How can this be lost on a Senator on the Armed Services Committee?

“The oil  and gas industry spends over $100 million dollars a year lobbying our elected officials with regard to energy policy,” Deans answered.  ”We have to be forward learning, and the Pentagon knows this.  We need to continue to invest in efficiency and in renewables.  That’s how we make our economy stronger.”

It is an outrage that our own troops, who come back with all sorts of injuries, damage, and investment in the mission for tolerance and sustainability, are not supported by the elected politicians that send them to war.

For the full video see below:

Bob Deans is author of Reckless: The Political Assault on the American Environment and from the National Resources Defense Council Action Fund.

What about learning has Mr. Thrun been looking at that we all seem to have forgotten in our educational system?

“I think learning should be free, should be a basic human right, and that we shouldn’t charge a lot of money for it,” Mr. Thrun explained.  ”Learning should be student-centered. We should change the pedagogy of learning, from a classroom of hundreds of students just listening to the professor, to the the student exercise.  You can’t learn something by watching someone else do it.”

The socialization inherent to classroom settings, however, could be something that is beneficial to certain students, while the online work is something that may be beneficial to other students.  Some people may be left behind because they are not necessarily able to follow along.

“Learning how to play tennis, for example, is hard to do.  In terms of literature: we already have vast social networks that students use, so we just take the material to the internet,” said Thrun.  ”It’s similar to what happened to theater about a hundred years ago.  By going to scale, utilizing scale and digital technology, you can bring high-quality education to hundreds of thousands, millions of students.”

A classic example of distribution of information and knowledge.  We already have access to information and online social networks that allow for us to connect throughout the world.  If theater was able to adapt and do it, and bring its product to a national audience through movies, why can’t our educational system be able to connect to this vast network of learning and sharing?

For the full interview watch below:

Sebastian Thrun is a professor at Stanford University and part of the Google X Lab.  To learn more about his online start-up, Udacity, click here. 

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), in his new book The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting America, accuses both parties of hypocrisy and failed leadership in dealing with the country’s mounting debt problems.  $15.8 trillion in debt and we are, for a third time, talking about printing more money.  Not only is it a huge problem but it is a reflection of a systemic, cultural problem that Senator Coburn indicts in the book.

“The Federal Reserve, it would seem, is going to start with another QE3, which means that if you feel good about your retirement, your 401(k), you won’t soon,” Coburn said on the show.  ”Everybody loses: the poor lose the most, the middle class goes away, and the economy stumbles, even though on dollar terms it doesn’t look like it.”

Why don’t we address the real disease instead of the symptoms of the disease?  The disease is we continue to add things to the federal government with no way to fund them.  We added nearly $12 trillion in debt for Medicare Part D, but we didn’t generate a revenue stream to fund it.

“If you use practical accounting guidelines, generally accepted mechanisms, our unfunded liabilities are $131 trillion dollars, and we have $16 trillion worth of debt.  Knowing the interest on that, you can’t get out of that hole,” Coburn continued.  ”I think we have to do four things: reestablish confidence in our economy and our future by broadening our tax base.  Second thing is markedly save, make changes to Medicare and Social Security and make them viable; earnings test, disability program reform, and good oversight of this is the third.  The final thing is to utilize our resources in a responsible way.”

Sending $300 billion a year overseas for energy right now, we are on a path that is unsustainable. Imagine that money coming back into our economy, plugging that energy money into innovation and growth that is right now funding our reliance on energy that is not being developed in the United States.

How do we reestablish confidence in our economy and our political infrastructure?

“There’s no leadership.  Leadership, in America, is when people come around a central point and idea that will help out kids.  There is a lack of leadership across both parties,” Coburn explained.  ”Congress is the real problem.  Congress is more concerned with being reelected, not building our economy again.”

What we’ve done is placed our hope in government, and what we need to do is place our hope in us.  Senator Tom Coburn believes we are a “can do” country, and right now we are not doing a lot of anything to help ourselves as we spiral down this unsustainable path.

For the full interview watch below:

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is author of The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting America.

In fact, while people are often scared off by the cost of retrofitting older buildings – with the new savings, supervisors expect to pay back those costs in only 3 years. Our specialist, Anthony Malkin, president of Malkin Holdings, one of the owners of the Empire State Building, says cost-savings is just one of the benefits. (We officially appoint him a community hero for sustainable energy!)

Watch the full segment here:

For more information on the energy retrofitting projects at the Empire State Building, visit their website.

The Big Story: Men Behaving Badly!   The federal jury in the John Edwards trial is still deliberating the six felony charges against the former Presidential candidate, including conspiracy to violate federal election law, illegally soliciting election funds and giving false statements.  Edwards could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted and $1.5 million in fines. There’s no doubt Edwards made some moral mistakes, but does that mean he should be criminally convicted? We’ll be joined by Melanie Sloan, Executive Director, CREW (Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington) and Sol Wisenberg, Former Federal Prosecutor.

The  Wednesday Mega-Panel: Imogen Lloyd Webber (@illoydwebber), Jonathan Capehart (@capehartj) and Rob Cox (@rob1cox) are here… Top astrologers who predicted Obama’s win in ’08 say unanimously he will win again.  Can we actually look to the stars for predicting the outcome of this political horse race — and how did they measure up last time?  On that mystical note, Mitt Romney has finally hit a magical number — with a win in Texas last night, he surpassed 1144 delegates and officially clinched the GOP nomination.  We’ll take a look back at his run so far.

The Specialist:  As the President of the company that owns one of the most famous buildings, Anthony Malkin, President of Malkin Holdings will join us.  We’ll talk about an often-overlooked area for job creation: retrofitting projects on existing buildings to make them more energy-efficient.  He’ll tell us about one major success story: how, at age 80, the Empire State Building was transformed from the world’s most famous office building to one of the most energy efficient, reducing the skyscraper’s energy use by 38 percent a year by 2013.  That’s a big deal financially, too — it adds up to an annual savings of $4.4 million.  We’ll hear about the retrofitting project, and how efficiency upgrades to buildings can become part of the engine of job creation in our cities and towns nationwide.

James Higdon, author of The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate’s Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History – it’s a sharp look into the “code of silence” about growing marijuana, and tells the story of the biggest pot bust in American history.

Then, we’ll wrap up with Melber’s Minute: Ari Melber (@arimelber) is here. He’ll argue as to why we need more transparency on federal security policies (especially in light of yesterday’s New York Times story on the Presidents’ “kill list.”  Ari points out that we can’t even have a national policy debate if the White House won’t release the new legal authorities it claims for these killings.

In an afternoon ceremony today, the President presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the thirteen 2012 winners.  The US’s highest civilian honor was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1963, and is historically presented “to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors,” as the White House describes it.

“These extraordinary honorees come from different backgrounds and different walks of life, but each of them has made a lasting contribution to the life of our nation. They’ve challenged us, they’ve inspired us, and they’ve made the world a better place. I look forward to recognizing them with this award,” President Obama said in a statement.

This years list is full of American icons from the world of politics and culture: astronaut John Glenn, Pat Summitt, the most successful basketball coach in NCAA history, Madeline Albright, and even 11-time Grammy award winner Bob Dylan.

Here’s the full list:

Madeline Albright was the first woman to hold the top U.S. diplomatic job, appointed to be U.S. Secretary of State by President Bill Clinton.

John Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth, and the third American in space.  He is also a former marine corps pilot, and of course, a former US senator.

Pat Summitt led the University of Tennessee women’s basketball team to more NCAA Final Four appearances than any other team.  Also interesting: Summitt is the second woman in sports to win this award — the first was Billie Jean King.

Bob Dylan – need we say anything about the great Bob Dylan?  His huge catalog of classic songs like “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” are on our summer (and winter) soundtracks every year.  He has won 11 Grammy awards, and written over 600 songs.

Toni Morrison, the incredible Pulizter-prize winning author of such novels as “Song of Solomon” and “Beloved.”  She was also the first African American woman to win the Nobel prize.

John Paul Stevens, former Supreme Court Justice.  He is the third-longest serving justice in Supreme Court history, and a veteran of World War II, where he was awarded the Bronze Star for his work as a naval intelligence officer.

Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts in 1912, which is now the largest educational organization for girls in the U.S. This award is presented posthumously, as Low died in 1927.  It is the 100th anniversary of the organization.

Shimon Peres, the ninth president of Israel. He also won the 1994 Nobel prize for his efforts in the Middle East peace talks that led to the Oslo accords.

John Doar, who handled civil rights cases as assistant attorney general in the 1960s.

William Foege, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who helped lead the effort to eradicate smallpox.

Gordon Hirabayashi, who fought the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Jan Karski, a resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II.  As The Guardian described her, “Karski served as an officer in the Polish Underground during the second world war and carried one of the first eye-witness accounts of the Holocaust to the world.” He became US citizen in 1954 and taught at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service before he died in 2000.

Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers of America.

Syria: On the Brink of Civil War? Amb. Marc Ginsberg, the former U.S. Ambassafor to Morocco and Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, Senior Fellow & External Communications Director at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies will join us. As protests continue to grow in Syria, are they on the brink of civil war? After increased violence over the last few days, UN human rights office has declared that more than 85 people who were killed in the Houla region were “summarily executed — most of the victims, including children, were shot at close range.  Meanwhile, German, Italian and Spanish foreign ministries have announced that Syrian ambassadors are being expelled — following similar moves by France, Britain, Australia, and Canada.

The Tuesday Mega-Panel: Karen Finney (@finneyk) + Susan Del Percio (@delpercios) + Jimmy Williams (@jimmyspolitics) will be here talking about the news of the day.  Have a story suggestion for us? Send links our way on Twitter to @DylanRatigan!

The Specialist: Ross Perlin (@rossperlin), the author of Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy will be here. Each year, millions put off getting a job and financial independence to fight for chance to engaging in “thankless and menial tasks for little acknowledgement or compensation,” as Perlin describes it.  Since interns have become key part of the workforce, have internships just become way for big companies to get low-wage or no-wage labor in a poor economy? Or are they actually a key way to get a job in a tough job market?

Veterans Job Training Program: Chris Porter, The Training Camp CEO and Tyler Heather, veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan and Training Camp Graduate will be with us.  Their program — it’s job training, military boot camp style.  The goal of “The Training Camp” is to help position unemployed vets to get hired in numerous career fields.

The Daily Rant: David Goodfriend (@davidgoodfriend) is here.  Why aren’t there privacy grades for websites, apps and online services that collect our personal information, much like NYC’s restaurant grades that tell us how clean a restaurant is?

That’s it for today — as always, join us on Twitter @DylanRatigan and on our Facebook page here.  See you at 4PM ET!

This Memorial Day weekend, we are focusing on the next mission facing our war heroes. We all know our service members and returning vets are committed to our national security — but as they return home, that mission extends beyond the battlefield, as vets work to ensure that future generations never go to war over resources. Sustainable energy and sustainable food are what most wars are fought over now. Our returning marines know it, and they’re doing something about it.

Watch as Dylan Ratigan talks about the connection between vets, jobs, sustainability and security with Liz Perez of GC Green, and John Hofmeister, former CEO of Shell Oil and founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy, as well as some amazing veterans we met on the road on the West Coast who are working for change.

Fed Conflicts of Interest:  Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) will join us. JPMorgan Chase’s multibillion trading loss will be forgotten before the year is through, Chief Executive Jamie Dimon predicted Monday at the Deutsche Bank Global Financial Services Investor Conference. Dimon called the losing trades “an isolated event” and said he both hopes and expects that it will be “something we don’t have to talk about by the end of the year.” The good news that has come out of this is the renewed push for a new Glass-Steagall bill that reinstitutes capital requirements and seperates high-risk investment banks from traditional banks where most Americans deposit their money. You can check out the bill here.

The Thursday Megapanel: The Facebook Debacle:  Karen Finney, Susan Del Percio and Jimmy Williams will join us. It has taken just six days for the razzle-dazzle of Facebook’s $104 billion market debut to turn into a nightmare of congressional inquiries. Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday began to look into the debacle of what was supposed to be the social networking company’s crowning achievement.

The Specialist: Charles Ferguson, author of Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America is here. In his book, he says that we’ve allowed the predators of Wall Street to co-opt the country and send us into financial ruin — and no one has paid for it but the American people. We’ll talk to him about “two sets of rules” and how unequal the opportunities have become for our society.

The President and The Middle East: Author Fawaz Gerges is here with his new book Obama and the Middle East: The End of America’s Moment? Fawaz’s new book claims Obama’s Middle East strategy has veered off course. Has America lost its influence in the Middle East?

Kass’ Couch:  Noah Kass is here — how do you know when it’s time to break away from the group, and why can it be so difficult?

Hot-Spotting Jobs: Enrico Moretti, UC Berkeley economics professor and author of The New Geography of Jobs will be here. You could have all the training and skills in the world, but unless there’s a job at the end of the tunnel, what’s the point? Many workers are opting to relocate where the jobs are — and if can pay off big. Our guest today, Enrico Moretti, says that where you live is the biggest factor in finding a job, keeping it, and getting the salary you want.

The Wednesday Mega-Panel: Imogen Lloyd Webber (@illoydwebber), Jonathan Capehart (@capehartj) + Rob Cox (@rob1cox) will be here.  The Romney campaign and the RNC are set to go after Joe Biden, hoping the VP will turn himself into a liability for the Obama campaign.  We love his honesty — and don’t we need more of that in Washington?

The Specialist: Michael Ross, political science professor at UCLA and the author of The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations will be here.  When you really think about it, we fight wars over two things on this planet, for the most part: energy and good.  This is why energy and food sustainability is good national security!

The Debate over Unpaid Internships: Matthew Segal (@ourtimematthew), co-founder and president of Our Time.org will be here.  Unpaid internships are considered a foot in the door for many college students, but for many companies it has become a source of free labor.  With new college graduates entering the job force this month and few jobs out there, for many, taking an internship is the only option.  Are unpaid internships worth it in a tough economy, or are they simply unpaid labor?

Melber’s Minute: Ari Melber (@arimelber) is here — he’ll be asking the question, has big brother gotten TOO BIG?

That’s it for today! As always, join us on Twitter throughout the show @DylanRatigan.  See you at 4PM ET.

4:00pmET: JP MORGAN LATEST
– Mike Mayo, Banking Analyst and Author, “Exile on Wall St.” (30 Rock)

PART II: MEGA-MEGA PANEL ON FACEBOOK
–Rob Cox, Reuters BreakingViews US Editor (Stamford, CT)
–Ari Melber, MSNBC Contributor (30 Rock)
–Krystal Ball, Democratic Strategist, MSNBC Contributor (DC)
–Toure, MSNBC Contributor (30 Rock)

4:10pmET: NATO SUMMIT
–Mike Barrett, CEO of Diligent Solutions and Fmr. Director of Strategy for the WH Homeland Security Council (DC)

4:20pmET: SPECIALIST JOINS PANEL
–Michael Hirsh, Chief National Correspondent, The National Journal (DC)

4:40pmET: THE WEEK (THAT WAS)
–Ben Fruman, Deputy Editor, The Week.com (30 Rock)

4:50pmET: TOURE’S TURN
–Toure (30 Rock)

4:00pmET: MANUFACTURING JOBS
–David Sievers, Strategy & Operations Leader, The Hackett Group (30 Rock)
–Scott Paul, Alliance for American Manufacturing (Columbus, OH)

4:10pmET:  MEGA-PANEL          
–Jimmy Williams, Democratic Strategist (DC)
–Karen Finney, MSNBC Political Analyst, Fmr. DNC Communications Director (DC)
–Susan Del Percio, Republican Strategist (30 Rock)

4:20pmET: SPECIALIST JOINS PANEL
–Philip Howard, “America the Fixable” Atlantic.com Series, Health Care, Chair, Common Good (30 Rock)

4:40pmET: LEAST AMONG SAINTS
–Martin Papazian, Writer/Director/Actor, “Least Among Saints” (DC)
–Laura San Giacomo, Actor, “Least Among Saints”

4:50pmET: CHEAT CHAT
–Jeff Kreisler (30 Rock)

Two words describe it: Collective collaboration — or solving problems together — is something that we’ve been talking a lot about on the show over the last few months.

“Working together” may sound simple, but it’s not easy.  In order to effectively perpetuate collective collaboration, our results are only as good as the visibility, integrity and choice of the network of people and institutions we have involved.  The other challenge is recognizing (and accepting!) that it’s impossible for us to know everything.  But guess what? It’s okay to not know everything. Through experimentation, a willingness to learn from results and a willingness to adapt, we can find better outcomes for nearly any challenge.

On the theme of collective collaboration, we spoke with Tim Harford, the “Undercover Economist” and senior columnist for the Financial Times.  He is the author of  Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure.   Harford hares his tips on how people, and even nations, can utilize trial and error feedback in order to succeed.

You can learn more about Harford’s book here, and follow him on Twitter @timharford.

We’ll be talking more about collective collaboration on May 24th with Russell Simmons at the 92nd St. Y in New York.  For tickets and information on the event, visit 92Y.org.

The Wednesday Mega-Panel: Imogen Lloyd Webber (@illoydwebber), Jonathan Capehart (@capehartj) and Rob Cox (@rob1cox).  We’ll discuss President Obama’s meeting with Boehner and congressional leadership today — as Boehner is vowing another showdown over taxes and spending, we ask “again!?”  We’ll also look at the Americans Elect campaign — $35 million was spent, but it failed to get enough support in the online petition for candidate.  What does that mean for a viable third-party candidate?

The Specialist: We’re very much looking forward to this one — Tim Harford (@timharford), author of Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure, will be joining us from London.  In his book, Tim shows us a new and inspiring approach to solving the most pressing problems in our lives. Harford argues that today’s challenges simply cannot be tackled with ready-made solutions and expert opinions; the world has become far too unpredictable and profoundly complex. Instead, we must adapt—improvise rather than plan, work from the bottom up rather than the top down, and take baby steps rather than great leaps forward.

Battleship!: In the new and soon-to-be-blockbuster movie based on the classic board game, a fleet of ships is forced to do battle with an armada of unknown origins in order to discover and thwart their destructive goals.  The creators of Battleship wanted to include an actor who had been wounded in the film — we’ll be joined by Col. Greg Gadson, an Army commander who served in Iraq. In 2007, Gadson lost both of his legs when his car was hit by a roadside bomb.  He now runs the Wounded Warriors Program (@wwpinc).

The Daily Rant: Melber’s Minute:  Many people are saying that Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage was all politics and — Ari agrees,  and he’ll argue that he doesn’t think that’s a bad thing.

The reason for the trip is simple — California has more veterans than any state in America, and is also our nations leader on sustainable energy technology. The marriage of Veterans and energy sustainability in California is a perfect match to start creating the 30 Million Jobs we need. This is also a big follow up to the Defense Energy Project we announced while we were on the 30 Million Jobs tour in Austin with John Hofmeister, Liz Perez, Operation Free and many others. (If you missed that show, you can watch the interview segments here.)

Dylan will be doing updates on the road all day — be sure to follow him on Twitter @DylanRatigan to keep up with the latest.

Meanwhile, here’s what we’re working on for 4PM – Matt Miller (@mattmillernow) will be guest hosting while Dylan is on assignment.

California Budget Crisis – Who’s Next?: Matt is in NY today, but he comes from California, which is drowning in budget deficits with the Governor proposing some harsh new cuts to close a $15.7 billion budget gap.  Gray Davis (@governordavis), former Governor of California and Chris Megerian, reporter for the LA Times will be here to discuss.

The Tuesday Mega-Panel: Karen Finney (@finneyk), Susan Del Percio (@delpercios) and Jimmy Williams (@jimmyspolitics) will be here.  Angry JPMorgan Chase shareholders expected to swarm the annual shareholders meeting in Tampa today.  The timing couldn’t have come at a worse time, as the fallout continues from the $2 billion blunder.  Meanwhile, President Obama is attempting to define the economic difference between himself and Mitt Romney, playing into the concerns of middle class values.  With Romney having opened up 3 point lead over Obama in the latest CBS News/NYT poll, and this is the one that usually is favorable toward Obama.

The Specialist: Commander Kirk Lippold, USN (Ret.) is author of Front Burner: Al Qaeda’s Attack on the USS Cole.  A year before the September 11th attacks, al Qaeda opened up the war on terror with its attack on the USS Cole. In the attack, 17 soldiers died, and 33 others were injured.  Commander Lippold was commander on the ship that day, and tells the harrowing story in his new book.

Also on the show today: Ross Douthat, author of Bad Religion: How We Became A Nation Of Heretics.  The NY Times columnist argues that institutional Christianity has suffered a slow-motion collapse since the 1960′s, leaving the country without the moral core that carried it through foreign wars, economic depressions and roiling internal debates.  With Christianity “going off the rails,” as he says, will it take American society with it?

The Daily Rant: David Goodfriend (@davidgoodfriend) — he says we shouldn’t mistrust the big banks, but we should mistrust the regulators.

That’s all coming up at 4PM ET — as always, follow our host Matt Miller on Twitter @mattmillernow, and Dylan will be back tomorrow!

Watch at Business Insiders’ Henry Blodget joins us on the show:

Is it time to “Occupy Graduation?” With student debt in the U.S. going through the roof, we’re not letting up with our focus on the ever-expanding cost of college education. We’ll start things off talking Occupy Graduation with Natalia Abrams, spokesperson and founding member of Occupy Colleges (@occupycolleges), and Mark Kantrowitz, publisher Fastweb.com and FinAid.org, two websites with resources for students to learn about financial aid options.

The Monday Mega-Panel: Henry Blodget (@hblodget) of Business Insider will be here, along with the all-star panel of Imogen Lloyd Webber (@illoydwebber), Tim Carney (@tpcarney) and Sam Seder (@samseder). We’ll talk about the latest in the JP Morgan fallout — their disclosure of over $2 billion in losses has led lawmakers and critics of the banking industry to call for stricter regulation of Wall Street. (Don’t say we didn’t warn you three years ago on this!)

The Specialist: Edward Luce is author of Time To Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent. As President Obama said in his last State of the Union, “America is back. Anyone who tells you America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”  Edward Luce argues that by promoting this rosy outlook, we ignore the harsher realities of an America in economic, social, and political crisis, and stresses that we do so at our own peril.  According to him, here’s why: corporate profits at a high while wages are lower, debt a bigger threat to national security than terrorism, ailing educational system, debilitating effect of our “permanent election system”. We’ll talk to him about the big challenges facing the country, and hear his predictions for fixing them.

He’s back! One of our most fascinating West Coast guests Michael Shermer, Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, will be here — we’ll talk about the link between religion and health, and how that’s connected to the idea of “over-optimism.”  Remember all the hype about Steve Jobs and his “reality distortion field” that worked wonders to build Apple into the world’s most valuable company? Shermer says that’s not always a smart formula for CEOs to follow, and it may have played a role in how he dealt with his health.

The Daily Rant: The one and only Keli Goff (@keligoff) will he here with today’s Daily Rant… That’s all coming up at 4PM ET/1P PT on MSNBC — be sure to join us on Twitter @DylanRatigan during the show, and on our Facebook page here.

1 more day till Friday!

Here’s what we’re working on for 4PM…

The Big Story! We’ll be joined by Kevin Schmiegel, Executive Director of Hiring Our Heroes, a program of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Spencer Kympton, Chief Operating Officer of The Mission Continues. The entertainment industry coming together to launch the Got Your 6 campaign to provide veterans opportunities to convert their leadership operation training into positive civilian roles in communities nationwide.  The goal of the program? 500,000 jobs for veterans, housing 10,000 chronically homeless veterans, and the completion 1.5 million volunteer service hours by veterans. You can watch the PSA here.  Helping our returning vets find work is the goal of the Defense Energy Project, which we first showcased during the Austin leg of the 30 Million Jobs tour.

The Thursday Megapanel: Karen Finney (@finneyk), Susan Del Percio (@delpercios) + Jimmy Williams (@jimmyspolitics) will be here. We are exactly 180 days out from the election, with the Presidency, House and Senate up for grabs What did the President’s endorsement of same-sex marriage yesterday do to his campaign? Will it spell any trouble for him in batteground states?

The Specialist: When God Talks Back T.M. Luhrmann, author of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God will be here. The book explores the extraordinary process that leads some believers to a place where God is profoundly real and his voice can be heard amid the clutter of everyday thoughts. You can check out more on the book here, via the NY Times and NPR.

Documentary of the Week: “Bailout” — Bailout is a social documentary that explores American anger with the Wall Street elites “who survive and thrive on their cancerous system of bailouts, fraud, and political corruption that actively work in concert to destroy Main Street.”  We’ll talk to the director, Sean Fahey (@seanpfahey), and John Titus, its Executive Producer & write — you can check out the films’ website here and here’s the trailer…

To wrap things up, our resident therapist Noah Kass (@noahkass) will be here. What do you do when you feel like you’re being inundated by the news? He’ll give us some advice on staying afloat in a world of too much information!

Segal’s group is launching a new campaign with AmeriCorps around national service jobs for college grads. It’s called 1 Million Strong for 1 Million Jobs, and has an aggressive goal — finding that many jobs for college graduates who are ready to work.

Watch Dylan talk with Matt Segal about the economic and social benefits of programs like AmeriCorps:

- Meg Robertson (@megrobertson) is a digital producer for DylanRatigan.com.

The Big Story: American Idle As we learn more about the sophistication and story behind the al Qaeda bomb-maker, we’re also learning that the technology to discover it during screening already exists — but it’s sitting in a non-descript warehouse in Texas. The cost to taxpayers for the technology? $184 million. How do we balance the need for safety on airplanes with concerns about privacy, spending, and ineffective, expensive technology? We’ll hear from Kate Hanni (@katehanni), Founder/Spokesperson, FlyersRights.org and Evan Kohlmann (@inteltweet), our NBC Terrorism Analyst and Senior Partner at Flashpoint Global Partners.

The Wednesday Megapanel:  We’ll start off with last night’s primaries — Sen. Dick Lugar lost (as expected), and the fight for marriage equality failed in North Carolina.  We’ll take a look at the politics of the day with Imogen Lloyd Webber (@illoydwebber), Ari Berman (@ariberman) and Rob Cox (@rob1cox).  We’ll also hear from Rep. Brad Sherman (@bradsherman) on his legislation targeting Too Big to Fail institutions — we’ll ask him about it, and get his take on instituting capital requirements.

The Specialist:  Can we use evolutionary biology to explain everyday human behavior, from the desire to climb the ladder at work to the “7 year itch” in relationships?  We’ll talk to an expert who says that human behavior is nothing unique to us — we play the same games in our relationships that monkeys and apes did.  Dario Maestripieri, author of Games Primates Play: An Undercover Investigation of the Evolution and Economics of Human Relationships will be here. Maestripieri is a Professor at The University of Chicago, where he teaches and conducts research on the biological bases of social behavior in human and nonhuman primates.

AmeriCorps, the national job service program for recent grads, is on the chopping in the Ryan budget.  They want to cut it completely — yet service positions are often a great first job for recent grads, and a way for students to “give back” while they repay their student loans.  We’ll talk to Matthew Segal (@matthewourtime), Co-Founder and President of Our Time  (@ourtimeorg)

Finally, for today’s Daily Rant, Imogen Lloyd Webber (@illoydwebber) will tackle the new announcement from Vogue magazine that they will no longer use images of dangerously underweight or underage models. Imogen says it’s a positive step that a magazine like Vogue takes a leadership stand on another public health “catastrophe” in America: anorexia and bulimia.