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Elizabeth Edwards, passionate advocate for healthcare reform, lawyer, and wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards, died last week at age 61. Karen Finney was her communications director on the campaign, and has remained close to the family, and she joins us via Skype to share her memories of Elizabeth. Distributed by Tubemogul.

Yesterday, we noted that the fangs seem to have been pulled out of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and financial reform seems to be quietly fading from the agenda. But our friends at the Roosevelt Institute are in the middle of a groundbreaking conference on market reform, and we asked a few of their guests to join us in studio. Lynn Parramore, editor of New Deal 2.0 for the Institute, Raj Date, chairman and executive director of the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, and Lawrence White of NYU's Stern School of Business discuss where financial reform is headed and what will happen to us if it dies.
 
Speaking of regulation, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has an ongoing series, "Hard Times Profiteers," looking into schemes cropping up around the country. David Vlateck of the Federal Trade Commission explains.
 
Swine flu, bird flu, cancer, parasites, E. Coli...what do they all have in common? Factory farms, says investigative reporter David Kirby. In his new book, Animal Factory, he exposes the deep problems with the factory farming system and how it hurts people and the environment. Kirby joins Laura in studio to talk about the book and what we can do to fix our food supply, and Rick Dove of the Waterkeeper Alliance explains the effect the farms have had on his home in North Carolina.
 
The always lyrical Jay Smooth weighs in on what rappers think is profitable these days, and how not being lyrical is "the subprime mortgage of hip-hop," and our friends at Ramblin' Man Films look at the growing movement for student loan justice.
 
Finally, Laura has some thoughts about the secrets that really shape our society.

One of the nation's most celebrated writers, naturalist and author of "Refuge; Leap; Red - Passion," "Patience in the Desert and "The Open Space of Democracy," Terry Tempest Williams has long been a passionate and effective activist on behalf of the environment and justice, especially the defense of Southern Utah's stunning red rock deserts, and the resistance to nuclear folly. She once again graces Bioneers with her shining integrity, wry humor, astonishing emotional depth and piercing lucidity as she looks at the state of our democracy and its centrality in restoring our Earth.