How do religious beliefs change who we are and how the world works? Lawrence Wright explores these issues in a new exposé of Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard. People view Hubbard as a con-man, but was he? How did his book Dianetics draw so many people into a church that demands total submission? Wright has also written a play about the famed journalist Oriana Fallaci's move to the extreme right.

Two decades into the internet revolution, what's the state of a medium that was supposed to create new, perhaps utopian, relationships between people around the world? Why is it not dominated by collaborative nonprofit efforts like Wikipedia? Media critic Robert McChesney describes how capitalist interests have managed to enclose the non-commercial promise of the internet -- and argues that it doesn't have to be so. He also considers the state of online journalism. (Encore presentation.)

Two decades into the internet revolution, what's the state of a medium that was supposed to create new, perhaps utopian, relationships between people around the world? Why is it not dominated by collaborative, non-profit efforts like Wikipedia?  Media critic Robert McChesney describes how capitalist interests have managed to enclose the non-commercial promise of the internet -- and argues that it doesn't have to be so. He also considers the state of online journalism.

Reporters by the thousands are being let go; newspapers and foreign bureaus are disappearing. Why is this happening, and what impact does journalism's crisis have on democracy? At a recent event, Robert McChesney and John Nichols addressed these questions and cited early US governmental support for journalism.