Science can be a battleground -- witness the politics of climate change, the teaching of evolution, the uncharted terrain of genetic modification and stem cell research, among other contentious issues. But when industries release untested chemicals into our environment -- putting profits before public health -- our children are the first to suffer. Nowhere is this more troubling than in the ongoing story of lead poisoning. On this week's Moyers & Company (check local listings), Bill talks with David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, public health historians who've been taking on the chemical industry for years -- writing about the hazards of industrial pollution and the neglect of worker safety -- despite industry efforts to undermine them. Their latest book, Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America's Children, is the culmination of 20 years of research. Markowitz and Rosner warn that, for young children, there's no safe level of exposure to this dangerous toxin still lurking in millions of homes. Rosner and Markowitz discuss thwarted efforts to hold the lead industry accountable, failed attempts to find cheap solutions, and the cost to the future of our children. As long as the chemical industry and its powerful lobbies prevail in blocking efforts to reform outdated laws, the authors say, we will continue to float in a soup of toxins -- inhaling, drinking, and absorbing chemicals that we may learn, years later, have put us all in harm's way. Also on the show, Bill is joined by the heads of two independent watchdog groups keeping an eye on government as well as on powerful interests -- like chemical companies -- seeking to influence it. Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics and OpenSecrets.org, and Danielle Brian, who runs the Project on Government Oversight, talk to Bill about the importance of transparency to our democracy, and their efforts to scrutinize who's giving money, who's receiving it, and most importantly, what's expected in return.

Science can be a battleground -- witness the politics of climate change, the teaching of evolution, the uncharted terrain of genetic modification and stem cell research, among other contentious issues. But when industries release untested chemicals into our environment -- putting profits before public health -- our children are the first to suffer. Nowhere is this more troubling than in the ongoing story of lead poisoning. On this week's Moyers & Company (check local listings), Bill talks with David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, public health historians who've been taking on the chemical industry for years -- writing about the hazards of industrial pollution and the neglect of worker safety -- despite industry efforts to undermine them. Their latest book, Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America's Children, is the culmination of 20 years of research. Markowitz and Rosner warn that, for young children, there's no safe level of exposure to this dangerous toxin still lurking in millions of homes. Rosner and Markowitz discuss thwarted efforts to hold the lead industry accountable, failed attempts to find cheap solutions, and the cost to the future of our children. As long as the chemical industry and its powerful lobbies prevail in blocking efforts to reform outdated laws, the authors say, we will continue to float in a soup of toxins -- inhaling, drinking, and absorbing chemicals that we may learn, years later, have put us all in harm's way. Also on the show, Bill is joined by the heads of two independent watchdog groups keeping an eye on government as well as on powerful interests -- like chemical companies -- seeking to influence it. Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics and OpenSecrets.org, and Danielle Brian, who runs the Project on Government Oversight, talk to Bill about the importance of transparency to our democracy, and their efforts to scrutinize who's giving money, who's receiving it, and most importantly, what's expected in return.

With our democracy threatened by plutocrats and the politicians in their pockets more than ever, the antidote to organized money is organized people. It takes time and effort, but across the country, grass roots democracy is growing. Individuals are banding together, organizing toward common goals and demanding change - and often delivering it. On this week's Moyers & Company (check local listings), we'll meet three organizers leading the way. Marshall Ganz is a social movement legend who dropped out of Harvard to become a volunteer during Mississippi's Freedom Summer of 1964. He then joined forces with Cesar Chavez of the United Farmworkers, protecting workers who picked crops for pennies in California's fields and orchards. Ganz also had a pivotal role organizing students and volunteers for Barack Obama's historic 2008 presidential campaign. Now 70, he's still organizing across the United States and the Middle East, and back at Harvard, teaching students from around the world about what it takes to beat Goliath. Later on the broadcast, economic equality advocates Rachel LaForest, executive director of Right to the City, and Madeline Janis, co-founder and national policy director of Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, discuss with Bill how social action can change both policy and lives. Janis led the fight for a living wage in Los Angeles; LaForest fights for fair and affordable housing across the country. Grass roots democracy clamors for change. Next on Moyers & Company.

Francine and David Wheeler's youngest son Ben was killed in the December 14th attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Their grief has led them to the Sandy Hook Promise, a now-nationwide group founded by Newtown friends and neighbors to heal the hurt and find new ways to talk about and campaign against the scourge of gun violence in the United States. One of their allies is folksinger and activist Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary fame, who joined with the Wheelers and others in a February concert of harmony, resilience and solidarity. On this week's Moyers & Company (check local listings), we see excerpts from the concert, soon to appear on many public television stations. Francine Wheeler and Peter Yarrow discuss with Bill the power of music to create change, and their mission to protect children and adults from gun violence in communities across America. Later, the conversation continues as David Wheeler joins his wife to talk with Bill about what can be done and if the gun issue can be addressed rationally in a way that includes diverse viewpoints and bypasses partisan brinkmanship.

The violent Boston rampage triggered a local and federal response that, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald, adds a new dimension to troubling questions about government secrecy, overreach, and what we sacrifice in the name of national security. Greenwald joins Bill on this week's Moyers & Company (check local listings) to peel back layers that reveal what the Boston bombings and drone attacks have in common, and how secrecy leads to abuse of government power. Also on the show, political scholars Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann tell Bill that Congress' failure to make progress on gun control last week -- despite support for background checks from 90% of the American public - is symptomatic of a legislative branch reduced to dysfunction, partisan ravings and obstruction. A year ago, the two -- who had strong reputations as non-partisan analysts - decided to speak truth to power with their book It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism. In it, they argue that congressional gridlock is mostly the fault of the right wing of the Republican Party, which engages in "policy hostage-taking" to extend their political war against the president. What's more, Ornstein and Mann say, the mainstream media and media fact-checkers add to the problem by pretending both parties are equally to blame.

On this week's Moyers & Company (check local listings), biologist, mother and activist Sandra Steingraber explains why she was willing to go to jail for blocking access to the construction of a storage and transportation facility involved in the controversial process of fracking. Steingraber has become internationally known for building awareness about the toxic trespassers she says are contaminating our air, water, and food -- and threatening our children's health. With government captured by the very industries it's supposed to regulate, Steingraber has lost patience with politicians and corporations, but says our kids need to know "mom is on the job" of preventing destruction to the environment.

This week's Moyers & Company (check local listings), begins with a report on striking extremes of wealth and poverty on display in California's Silicon Valley. Facebook, Google, and Apple are minting millionaires while the area's homeless -- who've grown 20 percent in the last two years -- are living in tent cities at their virtual doorsteps. These are the human faces of economic inequality. Later, Bill is joined by writer Sherman Alexie. Born on a Native American Reservation, Alexie has been navigating the cultural boundaries of American culture in lauded poetry, novels, short stories, screenplays, even stand-up comedy for over two decades. Alexie discusses the challenges of living in different cultures at the same time, and shares his irreverent perspective on contemporary American life.

Martin Luther King, Jr., who died 45 years ago this month, had long known that racial equality was inextricably linked to economic equity -- fairness for all, including working people and the poor. In the last year of his life, as he moved toward Memphis and assassination, Dr. King announced the Poor People's Campaign to demand an "Economic Bill of Rights" for all Americans, regardless of color. But nearly a half-century later, that dream is still a dream deferred. On this week's Moyers & Company (check local listings), Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch and author and theologian James Cone join Bill to discuss Dr. King's vision of economic justice, and why so little has changed for America's most oppressed. Also on the show, poet Kyle Dargan, whose poetry provides a window into the humanity that Branch & Cone say is essential to get people working towards justice, visits Bill to talk about and read from his work.

Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court's landmark decision in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright established the constitutional right of criminal defendants to legal representation, even if they can't afford it. The Court ruled there shouldn't be one kind of justice for the rich and another for the poor, but the scales of the American legal system still tilt heavily in favor of the white and wealthy. On this week's Moyers & Company (check local listings), attorney and legal scholar Bryan Stevenson exposes the system's failures, and ongoing struggles at the crossroads of race, class and justice. Stevenson's Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative has reversed the death sentences of more than 75 inmates. But right now, there are more than 3,100 inmates on death row, and more than 60% are members of racial or ethnic minorities. Over time, Supreme Court Justices have fine-tuned the circumstances under which the death penalty may still apply, but no set of laws or jurisprudence can undo wrongful executions -- or, it seems, completely prevent them. According to journalists Martin Clancy and Tim O'Brien, authors of Murder at the Supreme Court, in recent years at least 18 inmates were released from death row because DNA evidence proved their innocence. These cases are among more than 140 death penalty exonerations over the last three decades. The broadcast closes with a Bill Moyers Essay on the hypocrisy of "justice for all" in a society where billions are squandered for a war born in fraud while the poor are pushed aside.

Richard Wolff's smart, blunt talk about the crisis of capitalism on his first Moyers & Company appearance, we asked him to return. On this week's show (check local listings Wolff dives further into income inequality, analyzing the widening gap between a booming stock market and a population that increasingly lives in poverty. Wolff also takes questions sent in from around the world by our viewers. Wolff taught economics for 35 years at the University of Massachusetts and is now visiting professor at The New School University in New York City. His books include Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism and Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It. Also returning is Sheila Bair, the longtime Republican who served as chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) during the fiscal meltdown five years ago. During that time, she warned the public and her colleagues about big banking's excesses and against the billions in "too big to fail" taxpayer bailouts. Bair joins Bill to talk about American banks' continuing risky and manipulative practices, their seeming immunity from prosecution, and growing anger from Congress and the public. Bair is the author of Bull by the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street from Wall Street and Wall Street from Itself.