Conversations with Great Minds - Tim Noah, Journalist & Senior Editor-The New Republic / Author of the new book "The Great Divergence" / Contributing editor to The Washington Monthly and a frequent commentator on CBS News' Sunday Morning. America has become a nation of the haves - and the have nots - with a higher income inequality than the likes of Venezuela, Kenya and even Yemen. So what's brought us to this defining moment in American history - and how do we close the gap between the wealthy elite and everyone else?

Former Congressman Bob Ney, "Sideswiped: Lessons Learned Courtesy of the Hit Men of Capitol Hill" joins Thom Hartmann. If - like most Americans - you think Congress is corrupt ..... well - you're right!

Economist Dr. Richard Wolff, Capitalism's Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown/Democracy At Work/The New School, joins Thom. Is the neverending recovery of the Great Recession the fault of austerity or the fault of capitalism itself?

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!

This Sunday will mark the one year anniversary of the beginning of the Fukushima nuclear disaster - and a year on - the disaster continues to devastate the people and nation of Japan. Towns and cities within miles of the Fukushima plant are still covered in a fine layer of radioactive dust - and have been turned into nuclear wastelands - devoid of life. Those lucky enough to have survived the earthquake and tsunami are now battling radiation poisoning and and the probability of cancer and birth defects. As hundreds of thousands of people across the world prepare to commemorate the tragedy over the course of the next month - we need to ask ourselves - is nuclear power really worth enduring such a horrible and deadly disaster? Will there ever be a way to make nuclear power a safe form of energy - or do we need to move away from it all together? Tonight we have a special edition of Conversations with Great Minds - featuring Stephanie Cooke. Stephanie is one of the world's top reporters and authors on the issues of nuclear energy and the use and history of nuclear weapons and is a real industry insider. Her articles on nuclear topics have appeared in a variety of publications - including Readers Digest - The International Herald Tribune - and GQ magazine. Stephanie first began her reporting career in 1977 at the Associated Press - and later moved to London where she covered the Chernobyl disaster for Business Week. She returned to the United States in 2004 to complete her most recent book, "In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age." Currently - Stephanie is the editor of Nuclear Intelligence Weekly - part of the Energy Intelligence Group.

Economist Ian Fletcher and author of "Free Trade Doesn't Work", breaks down the plague on our economy that is free trade and what we can do to turn things around.

Kate Pickett joined Thom to discuss how inequality and equality can be changed to your advantage.

This latest edition of Conversations with Great Minds talks about the new book 'The Inner Level' from Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson.

Thom reads an excerpt from the book here: https://youtu.be/8JtNSIV-mRk

The book is available from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2S4OtCs

In 1991, Anita Hill shed new light on sexual harassment when she testified during Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Thirty years later, while awareness is at an all-time high, society’s approach to dealing with gender-based violence—socially, legally, and legislatively—still falls far short of where it needs to be. In BELIEVING: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence Hill uses her decades of experience and breadth of knowledge to show the pervasive impact of gender-based violence and what needs to change.