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An explosive new cover story in the June issue of The Atlantic magazine by the famed essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates has rekindled a national discussion on reparations for American slavery and institutional racism. Coates explores how slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and federally backed housing policy systematically robbed African Americans of their possessions and prevented them from accruing inter-generational wealth. Much of the essay focuses on predatory lending schemes that bilked potential African-American homeowners, concluding: "Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole."

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"We have to understand what [Bergdahl] was going through," says Charles Glass, a historian and former ABC News chief Middle East correspondent.. "The young person at the front line, having believed in his country's mission in Afghanistan and discovering it was not at all what he was told it was, and saw himself as part of the mechanism of oppression, of killing people, of going into villages, and when trying to take out enemy combatants was killing families. I hope that we'll understand what he went through and have compassion for him and his family."

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Thom Hartmann talks with Timothy Johnson, Researcher-Media Matters for America about research that debunks right wing claims that gun free policies attract crime.

Thom Hartmann talks with Robert Greenwald, Founder / President-Brave New Films about the updated edition of his movie.

Richard Clarke talks about the history of drones in the US and his concerns about President Obama's escalation of the drone war. "I think the [drone] program got out of hand," Clarke says. "The excessive secrecy is as counterproductive as some of the strikes are."

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Seattle made history this week by passing the $15-an-hour minimum wage — the highest rate in the country for a major city, and more than twice the federal minimum. The raise will be phased in over time. Seattle businesses will have three to seven years to implement it, depending on their size. The plan also includes several loopholes for businesses, which were fought until the last minute by Seattle City Council Member Kshama Sawant, the first socialist to be elected to the council in a century. Sawant ran for City Council last year on a platform of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

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Santa Barbara is grieving after a 22-year-old man killed six college students just after posting a misogynistic video online vowing to take his revenge on women for sexually rejecting him. The massacre prompted an unprecedented reaction online with tens of thousands of women joining together to tell their stories of sexual violence, harassment and intimidation. By Sunday, the hashtag #YesAllWomen had gone viral. In speaking out, women were placing the shooting inside a broader context of misogynist violence that often goes ignored. In her new book, "Men Explain Things to Me," author and historian Rebecca Solnit tackles this issue and many others. "We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it's almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern," Solnit says. "Violence doesn't have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender."

Stephen Burg will tell us why Republicans are lining up to kiss the ring of billionaire conservatives.

Elliot Fineman, CEO of National Gun Victims Action Council, talks about the myth that carrying a weapon reduces violence.

Howard Nations will tell us about the Republicans' complaints about Obama's "imperialism," while conveniently forgetting about the 8 years of Bush.

Author Michael T. Klare (The Race for What's Left) will join us to discuss the new UN IPCC report.

Mark Godsey, director of the Ohio Innocence Project, will discuss his organization's work to free wrongfully convicted prisoners.

Matthew Edling will tell us all about Wall Street's attack on 401k programs.

Aviva Chomsky's new book, "Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal" details how systemic prejudice against Mexicans and many other migrant workers has been woven into U.S. immigration policies that deny them the same path to citizenship that have long been granted to European immigrants.