In this week's Conversatiosn with Great Minds - Thom Hartmann is joined by Professor Frances Fox Piven who envisioned the 99 percent movement over a year ago. For the past thirty years - she has been a professor of political science and sociology at the Graduate Center at The City University of New York. She gained notoriety for an article she co-wrote with sociologist Richard Cloward in 1996 that advocated increased enrollment in social welfare programs in order to collapse the dysfunctional parts of that system and force reforms - leading to a guaranteed annual income. This political strategy is now known as the "Cloward-Piven strategy" and has been a hot topic of discussion in recent years. Professor Piven has served as the President of the American Sociological Association and is currently an honoray chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. And she is one of the people responsible for the fact that you can now register to vote at the DMV - In 1983 she co-founded Human SERVE, an organization with the goal of increasing voter registration by linking vehicle registration with access to social services and voting. Human SERVE's initiative was incorporated into the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 - more commonly known as the "Motor Voter Bill" - and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, Professor Piven is the author of a dozen books - the latest being "Who's Afraid of Frances Fox Piven?: The Essential Writings of the Professor Glenn Beck Loves to Hate."

In this week's Conversations With Great Minds we'll meet a true pioneer who may well help revolutionize your relationship with our healthcare system. For tonight's Conversations with Great Minds I am joined by Dr. Peter Beilenson. He currently heads up the Health Deparment in Howard County, Maryland where he and his team have launched the Healthy Howard Intiative - a program that joins individuals, businesses, schools, community organizations and government to ceate and make accessible healthy alternatives in many different aspects of daily life for county residents. For 13 years he served as the Health Commissioner of Baltimore City in Maryland where his vision led to expanded drug treatment programs, improved immunization compliance, a wide range of extremely effective lead poisoning prevention initiatives, juvenile violence prevention, and the creation of the state-wide initiative for universal health coverage in Maryland called "Health Care for All" He is also the founder of "The Evergreen Project" - an initiative that was inspired by a provision in the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and seeks to create healthcare co-ops that cut costs to both patients and providers while making sure that excellent health care is avaialble to communities. Dr. Beilenson was chosen as an Utne Reader visionary in 2011 - joining a distinguished list of individuals who - as described by the Editors of the publication - "are world visionaries who don't just concoct great ideas but also act on them."

In this week's Conversations with Great Minds Harriet A.Washington joins Thom. Her book Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself is an exposé of the medical industrial complex's rush to own and exploit the raw materials of human life - including your body tissue and DNA! Her book "Medical Apartheid" documents how people of color - particularly African Americans - have been subjected to everything from medical experimentation and vivisection to the denial of medical services from the days of slavery to today.

For tonight's conversation with Great Minds Thom Hartmann is joined by Ellen Brown. Ellen Brown is an attorney and the president of the Public Banking Institute and Author Web of Debt.

Morris Berman, author Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline. "Why America Failed" is the third volume of his trilogy on the decline of the American empire. In it - Morris Berman examines America's commitment to economic liberalism and free enterprise going as far back as the late sixteenth century, and concludes that this ideology, combined with technological progress, was an inevitable recipe for creating the demise of the American empire as we are experiencing today. He served on the faculty of a number of universities in the United States, Canada and Europe and he currently resides in Mexico where he writes for a number of publications worldwide.

For tonight's Converation with Great Minds - I am joined by Dick Gregory to talk about Occupy Wall Street, his activist work on the death penalty for a white supremacist, the Keystone Pipeline and more. Dick Gregory is a comedian, social activist writer, and entrepreneur whose work has redefined how Americans perceive political comedy and African American comedians. He got his first big break when he was hired by Hugh Hefner to perform stand up at the Chicago Playboy Club in 1961 and he hasn't stopped since. He began political activism by running against Richard J. Daley for the mayor's office in Chicago in 1967 and followed that up with a write-in campaign for the Oval Office in 1968 as a candidate of the Freedom and Peace Party. He has devoted himself to many causes throughout his career as an activist - including civil rights, women's rights, anti-war campaigns, the international anti-apartheid movement and environmental protection issues. When Thom Hartmann ran a community for abused kids in New England in the early 1980s, he was on the advisory board, and did fundraisers for the Salem program, and he traveled with Thom to Uganda during the end of the war with Idi Amin to set up famine and medical relief programs. He has devoted his life to using his considerable talents and gifts to helping others. He now finds himself on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Standups of All Time and has his own star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

For tonight's Conversations with Great Minds - Thom is joined by David Korten. David is an economist, author, and former Professor of the Harvard Business School. His political activism has made him a prominent critic of corporate globalization. His 2006 book "The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community" argues that the development of empires about 5,000 years ago initiated unequal distribution of power and social benefits to a small portion of the population.