i'm ken paulson, executive director of the first amendment center. david crosby has written and performed some of the most powerful music of the past 35 years. throughout his solo career and his years with the byrds; crosby, stills, nash, and young; and now cpr, he's demonstrated that music can make a difference. now he's teamed with david bender, a founding contributing editor for george magazine, to write stand and be counted: making music, making history. welcome, gentlemen. it's a book about courageous musicians and courageous music, and at a time when i read on the front page of the new york times that record companies are routinely self-censoring themselves to enhance marketability of music, why this project, why the book, and why the television show now? well, to pick one of your words, courage. we are both very taken with human courage. our heroes have been people who had the guts to stick up for what they believed in, and we saw that there had been no one looking at music being used to gather people in a cause as a phenomenon. the two bigges

i'm ken paulson. back next week with another conversation about the first amendment, the arts, and american culture. i hope you can join us then for speaking freely. captioning provided by the freedom forum first amendment center captioning by captionmax www.captionmax.com >> i work with the department of environment and we are recycling oil. thank you. we can go into a refinery and we can use it again. they do oil changes and sell it anyway, so now they know when a ticket to a. hal>> to you have something you want to get rid of? >> why throw it away when you can reuse it? >> it can be filtered out and used for other products. >> [speaking spanish] >> it is going to be a good thing for us to

i'm ken paulson, joining you today from nashville. we're honored today to welcome an academy award-winning director, a highly successful actor and producer, a fervent supporter of independent films, and a champion of the environment, robert redford. [applause] we're delighted to have you here, both for the remarkable body of work you've done and-- and for the fact that very, very few of our guests have ever been hung in effigy. [laughter] that had to be a wake-up call for an emerging activist. i hope there's not a sequel to that. you've dedicated your life both to your art and to what you believe in. have you paid a price, trying to balance being-- between being an activist and an actor? yeah, i have. i think there's always a price to be paid when you step out and speak up on anything, because there's always another side to the issue. so, yes, i've paid a price, and i've been rewarded at the same time. i mean, if you speak out because you believe in something or you feel that there's the danger of the loss of a voice, which everyone s

i'm ken paulson. our guest today is a highly respected actress, activist, and citizen; susan sarandon, welcome. thank you. i know you've spent your entire career, your entire life balancing art and activism. when was the first hint that you would some day be the kind of woman who was arrested for her beliefs? well, i was--i was just lucky to come of age at a time when your, i think, natural sense of need for justice and need for equality and all those things had issues that were very clear. i mean, there was the war. there was, you know, the rise of women wanting equal pay. there was voter registration in the south, desegregation. and there wasn't quite as much ability-- at that time, the media wasn't owned by just a handful of people, and so you were getting a lot of views, and they hadn't yet figured out not to allow the press in. so you had pictures. you had-- part of being young and being idealistic meant, you know, looking for a better way around the violence, looking for a better way for everybo

and largely focused on ben bernanke and hank paulson at the time communicating with ken lewis, the ceo of bank of america about buying merrill lynch. and whose account you believe is still a bit very vague. ken lewis, his account has somewhat been tarnished over time. but nontheless, there seems a real interesting question. i would like to know if you guys have addressed it at all. it seemed to be communicated to him at least according to ken lewis' account, that he should be buying merrill lynch to help quote save the system. i don't know how far people in the executive branch, particularly people in the fed, to make those sorts of suggestions and where the duty of loyalty lies to the officer of the bank, obviously. but i'm curious if you guys have thought about that at all and where that fits in the course of the financial crisis. >> i haven't thought deeply about the example, but one of the things that is striking about the degree to which informal pressure in the kinds of ways the government can achieve its goals outside of even the most overt repertory schemes as a factor here, bu