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."

Joel D. Joseph, Made In the USA Foundation/Inequality in America: 10 Causes and 10 Cures joins Thom. The United States of America is the most unequal society in the developed world. Is that just a natural result of capitalism or is it the consequence of specific policies that have been put in place since the Reagan years?

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?

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!

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!

Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right/The New Yorker Magazine joins Thom. For tonight's Conversations with Great Minds - I'm talking to Jane Mayer - who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1995 and is the author of three bestselling books. She’s also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship - the John Chancellor Award - the George Polk Award - the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting - and the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. Her latest book is "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

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!

Bill Press, Buyer's Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down/The Bill Press Show joins Thom. Based on his campaign promises - many progressives thought President Obama would usher in a new golden age of liberalism upon taking office. But 7 years later - that obviously hasn't happened. So what went wrong? I'll ask renowned radio host and columnist Bill Press in tonight's Conversations with Great Minds

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!