Bunny McDiarmid, Executive Director, Greenpeace International, joins Thom. Bunny McDiarmid, Executive Director, Greenpeace International, joins Thom. Earlier today President Barack Obama created the Atlantic Ocean's first United States marine monument - called the Northeast Cannons and Seamounts Marine national Monument. President Obama made the announcement at an ocean conservation meeting earlier today - shortly after he issued a proclamation protecting an area of ocean off the coast of Cape Cod with a total area roughly equal to the size of Connecticut. The move comes after a week of disturbing news about the world's oceans. One recent report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature shows that the oceans have absorbed much of the energy that's been added to Earth's atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels into the atmosphere. Another recent study published in "Global Biogeochemical Cycles" shows how all of the CO2 that we've dumped into the atmosphere is causing the oceans to acidify - which is having profound negative impacts on deep-sea shell-forming organisms like sea urchins and snails. And another study from Stanford University showed that larger marine animals are going extinct faster than smaller animals - marking "a pattern that is unprecedented in the history of life on Earth, and one that is likely driven by human fishing." How urgent are these threats to our oceans - and what type of efforts will it take to avoid an oceanic mass extinction event? And what will it take to go even further - to repair our ocean's ecosystems?

For more information on the stories we've covered visit our websites at thomhartmann.com - freespeech.org - and RT.com. You can also watch tonight's show on Hulu - at Hulu.com/THE BIG PICTURE and over at The Big Picture YouTube page. And - be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter!

Thomas Frank, Listen, Liberal...Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (Also by Thomas Frank: Pity The Billionaire, The Wrecking Crew and What's the Matter with Kansas? For tonight's Conversations with Great Minds - we're going to take a closer look at what happened to the Democratic Party. From the New Deal until the middle part of the 20th century - the Democratic Party - like most left or center left parties the world over - was the party of the people. It was the home of unions - social security - medicare - and American working and middle-classes. But then something strange started happening. Over the course of the 1970s - the 1980s - and then the 1990s - the Democrats - well - they got a lot less democratic. They were still "liberal" - or said they were - but they now got their economic policies from Wall Street - and their trade policies from multinational corporations. And that was just the beginning. Then came school "reform" - welfare "reform" - the bankruptcy bill - the bailout. What happened? What happened to the party of FDR - Henry Wallace - and Lyndon Johnson? When did that party disappear and become the party of Bill Clinton - Tim Geithner and Larry Summers? Joining me now to help answer these questions and more is Thomas Frank, founding editor of the Baffler - contributor to Salon and author of numerous books - including his latest - "Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?”

For more information on the stories we've covered visit our websites at thomhartmann.com - freespeech.org - and RT.com. You can also watch tonight's show on Hulu - at Hulu.com/THE BIG PICTURE and over at The Big Picture YouTube page. And - be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter!

Congressman Mark Pocan(D-WI, 2nd District) joins Thom Hartmann. While the Supreme Court handed same-sex marriage supporters two huge victories this week - equality for all Americans regardless of sexual orientation is still in the works. So what's next for the gay rights movement?

Jim Hightower, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, joins Thom. The media has dubbed this presidential election the "populist moment." But what does it actually mean to be populist?

For more information on the stories we've covered visit our websites at thomhartmann.com - freespeech.org - and RT.com. You can also watch tonight's show on Hulu - at Hulu.com/THE BIG PICTURE and over at The Big Picture YouTube page. And - be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter!

For tonight's Conversations with Great Minds - we're going to take a look at Part 2 of my interview with legendary TV and film producer Norman Lear. The creative force behind some of the 20th century's most famous television shows including "The Jeffersons", "All in the Family", "Good Times" and "Sanford & Sons" - Norman is a titan of modern American culture. He’s also the founder of the People for the American Way - one of America's most influential political advocacy groups - and the author of the new book "Even this I Get to Experience."

Norman Lear, (Pt. 1) is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Maude. As a political activist, he founded the advocacy organization People For the American Way in 1981 and has supported First Amendment rights and progressive causes. Shows like "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons" didn't just shatter ratings charts - they changed the way we thought about American society. Why is that - and what can that tell us about the power of socially-conscious art? I'll ask legendary television producer Norman Lear - the man behind "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons" - in tonight's Conversation with Great Minds. His new book is Even This I Get to Experience.

Peggy is the Chairperson of the Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy (the JUCCCE). She is internationally-recognized for her expertise on China's sustainability efforts - and is also an advisor to the World Economic Forum Project Board on Sustainable Consumption. Peggy has been honored as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader - a Time Magazine Hero of the Environment- a Forbes "Woman to Watch in Asia" - and one of China's top 50 innovative business leaders by China Business News Weekly. In 2007 - she organized the MIT Forum on the Future of Energy in China - which at the time was the first public dialogue between US and Chinese government officials on clean energy in China. China and the United States are the world's two biggest powers and polluters- so how important is an open dialogue between the two superpowers when it comes to combatting global warming and climate change?