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

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.

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 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!

Thom Hartmann talks to film director and political activist, Robert Greenwald noted in the 2000s for his documentaries critical of Fox News, war and the health industry. "Sick for Profit" and "Rethink Afghanistan" are his two recent films.

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?

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."