Anthropologist and author, Dr. David Graeber joins Thom for the first half hour in "Conversations with Great Minds." They discuss his latest book "Debt: The First 5000 Years", which chronicles how the concepts of debt and credit have defined human history and what this means for America's current credit crisis and the future of the economy. Later, Thom talks about the recent jobs report in the weekly rumble.

More wars, more billionaires, and a devastated middle class - this is what the billionaires who've seized control of Dwight Eisenhower's once-proud Republican Party are offering us today - this is their vision of America. For thirty years - they've campaigned and spoken openly about their dislike for our government - that extraordinary gift that was created by the Founding Fathers is, as Reagan said, the "problem and not the solution" to our problems. They're anti-American.

Bisphenol A or BPA is a chemical that they body reacts to as if it were a synthetic estrogen. It's commonly used in polycarbonate plastic and resin-lined food and beverage containers here in the United States, where it's still legal - it's been outlawed in Europe. It can be found here in almost anything packaged in flexible soft plastic or lined with plastic - from baby bottles to lunch containers and even soda cans and energy drinks. But a new study shows pretty solidly that BPA can trigger hormone-responsive gene changes in people. The authors of the study have concluded that BPA is active in humans and that it can be linked biologically to hormone signaling and related disorders in humans and that includes things like diabetes, thyroid disease and obesity.

Dan Gainor, Business and Media Institute, joins Thom Hartmann. Rick Perry is a big government "socialist!" While Governor Good Hair is on the campaign trail touting his impressive record of job creation - census data shows most of that Texas job creation was thanks to...the government. Between 2009 and 2010 - Governor Rick Perry added a higher percentage of government workers than any other Governor in the country - hiring more than 17000 new government workers. Of course this is the same guy who claims the government can't create jobs. But his actions show Rick Perry seems to get the simple economic truth that the government is the employer and spender of last resort when the economy falls on hard times. So why isn't he preaching this message now that he's running for the White House?