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It’s the year 2025 in Northern California and the end of nature as we know it. The ozone layer is gone, the oceans are barren, and you can’t see the forests because there are no trees. This is the setting for T.C. Boyle’s new novel and his worst environmental nightmare. Everything’s been poached or encroached out of existence, and the rats have inherited the earth. Everybody has skin cancer and lives in condos; there’s no social security, and only the rock stars have electricity.

Ty Tierwater is a 75 year old former eco-terrorist who tried to save the earth back in the late 80′s and early 1990′s with his band of tree-huggers and eco-warriors. His daughter, Sierra died for the cause, and now he’s questioning his old method and his madness. “If a protest falls in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it,” Ty Tierwater asks, “does it make a sound?” T.C. Boyle and “A Friend of the Earth”.

(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

T.C. Boyle, Author “A Friend of the Earth”

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Al Gore and Joe Lieberman have put out a shape-up warning to Hollywood: they’re saying: do something about the violence and vulgarity of movies and music, or the government will. They’re running now on a government study, after the Columbine massacre, that finds that the movie companies have been marketing violence to kids much the way the cigarette companies sold nicotine addiction. But who really believes that Hollywood is scared?

Senator Joe Lieberman has been a zealous Hollywood basher who with Republican Bill Bennett conferred “Silver Sewer” awards on big shots at CBS and Fox TV. Tough stuff, by Democratic standards. Yet Hollywood has been sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom all through the Clinton presidency. The show-biz alliance with Washington and especially with presidential Democrats was sealed long ago by power lust and millions of campaign dollars. Is the decency campaign a phony war?

(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Peter Bart, Editor-in-Chief Variety

Martin Kaplan, Director, Norman Lear Center at USC

Steven Brill, Brill’s Content

Bernard Weinraub, writer for the New York Times

Ken Auletta, New Yorker Media Columnist