Corporate power and free speech

A video interview with author Arie Farnam

This is a repost of the first in a series of video interviews on hope and integrity in a perilous world. This interview focuses on the influence of corporations in society and how individuals respond with integrity. 

While the vast power of corporations often feels indomitable and the manipulation of our culture and media can be demoralizing, understanding of and resistance to tyranny is spreading.

As the progress of the past fifty years in civil, economic and environmental rights is under threat, we come to see that we have come a great distance and have much to believe in and lives worth defending. 

YouTube Link

This interview also touches on how the struggle for social justice inspired my writing in 2014. The dystopian series that came out of that time is eerily predictive of our waking reality in 2017. That's why I'm reposting the video. As we struggle with immediate danger, we must also remember how we came to this situation in order to prevent its repetition in the future.

I write my stories because I cannot help myself. Writers must write. But I also write them to reach out and wake up the world from the malaise of apathy and despair. Mine are stories of hard-won and authentic hope and these video interviews tell how and why.

Climate Change and Conspiracy: A Video Interview with Arie Farnam

Are you fed up yet? Ninety-seven percent of peer-reviewed scientific papers that touch on the subject are certain climate change (global warming and increases in extreme weather) is happening at a rapid rate and it's caused by human industry and specifically the burning of fossil fuels. 

Ninety-seven percent. This isn't much of a controversy among scientists, at least not among those who aren't directly backed by oil and coal companies. And yet, when Fox News reports on climate issues, seventy percent of the mentions of climate change deny its reality or the role of fossil fuels. Fox News doesn't have a lot of scientists to choose from with only three percent inflated to seventy percent, but they try. 

But why do they try? The producers and owners must have children too? Can they really be ignorant or are they willfully lying in a dangerous betting game with mass starvation as the stakes? Whatever their motives nearly half of the American public believes that climate change is a hoax and that we can go on burning fossil fuels with impunity. This is what Fox News and others have done.

In this next interview on the burning issues of today's dystopian world, I discuss the facts on climate change, the anonymous donor's association that provides the lion's share of the funding for pro-fossil-fuels media and lobbying, what we can do about it and who is the real-world equivalent of J. Company from the Kyrennei Series.

This is the second video interview in which I take a look at the factual real-world issues that lurk in the pages of the dystopian fantasy thrillers of the Kyrennei Series.

Kyrennei Series readers, please comment below and nominate individuals or organizations as your personal heroes. Who do you think is the real-world equivalent of J. Company? Who do you think has the courage and the audacity to go up against the worst injustices in our world?

A video interview with Arie Farnam on the US media, corporate power and dystopia today

This is the first in a series of video interviews by the hearth on issues of social and environmental justice and how I deal with them as a writer. Please share this far and wide and add your voice in the comments. 

While the vast power of corporations often feels indomitable and the manipulation of our culture and media is often depressing, it is worth remembering that we can use their tools to connect people. People have made progress in the past fifty years. Civil rights, the ADA and the beginnings of independent media were built by the quiet hands of many people like you and me. I'm not exactly a celebrity and my interviews reflect that. I'm a writer and mother by the hearth, speaking truth to power and being true to spirit. You are welcome here and we'll find common ground.

I write my stories because I can't help myself. Writers must write. But I also write them to reach out and wake up the world from the malaise of apathy and despair. Mine are stories of hard-won and authentic hope and these video interviews tell how and why.