Episode #119: Norman Lear

Norman Lear is a television legend. Writer, producer and creator of all-time classic sitcoms of the 1970s – including All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Maude. Lear made satire tackling race, class, and gender inequalities and things that matter to people, at a time when nobody else on TV dared to do so. At one point, he had five of the top nine TV shows in America. Lear left TV to found the progressive organization, People For the American Way, and later purchased the actual Declaration of Independence so Americans of all ages could still see it. Now 94, a new documentary about him from American Masters, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, and it’ll make its broadcast debut Oct. 25, 2016, on PBS.

Lear also spoke with me about the importance of voting in the 2016 presidential election. I asked him what “Make America Great Again” means to him, and you bet Lear had a few things to say about that.

Here are two clips from the PBS documentary on Lear, too: