In this must-see speech author T.R. Reid touches on the many points brought up in his New York Times Bestseller “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Health Care.”

Moving and humorous at turns, Reid begins by posing the question: How come all the other advanced, industrialized, free market democracies -- countries just like us -- manage to provide health care for everybody, of high quality, and still spend half as much as we do?

He then retells his own experiences traveling the world, interviewing everyone from health ministers and leaders of state to doctors and patients about the realities of their own health care systems.

We’re so used to seeing the health care debate chopped down into sound bites or insults, or talked around in political speeches. But take a moment for this serious topic, one that -- as Reid argues --  is just as much about our own sense of morality as it is about economics or politics.

You can also catch excerpts from the new documentary by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), Money-Driven Medicine, which is airing as part of the Link TV special Can We Really Fix U.S. Health Care? Money-Driven Medicine provides the essential introduction Americans need to become knowledgeable participants in health care reform, and asks the central question: Can a health system designed to turn a profit also meet the needs of the people it serves?

Also, check out Reid's "Five Myths About Health Care in the Rest of the World" from The Washington Post.

Earlier this year Link TV's Know the News project joined with the Poynter Institute's NewsU.org to bring our unique video editing tool to more classrooms. The online course, called Video News Editing: The Remixer Game, allows students to learn about media spin by comparing and editing new stories from broadcasters worldwide.

The start of the school year has brought many new schools and organizations to the Know the News remixer thanks to the partnership.

Here's a list of schools and orgs now using Know the News, which is funded by the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation:

Check out the Remixer Game at NewsU.org. For more information on the tools visit Know the News.

The industrialization of the U.S. food system is multiplying rates of obesity and preventable illness. Our planet is suffering as well: the massive amounts of oil, coal and natural gas needed to produce, distribute and refrigerate our food is putting further strain on the planet's limited resources. I recently heard that a grocery chain that touts themselves as "green" flies their salmon to Japan to be filleted, then flies it back to the U.S. for sale in their stores! Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, says: "When we eat from the modern industrial food system," Pollan says, "we are eating fossil fuel and spewing greenhouse gas."

Though this situation seems abysmal, Pollan offers real alternatives to our current system; alternatives and solutions for a healthier, safer and more environmentally-friendly food supply. Watch the premiere of Michael Pollan: Deep Agriculture tonight at 9PM Eastern/6PM Pacific: click here for more information.

It's been a busy week for The Yes Men - an arrest on Tuesday hot on the heels of their enviro New York Post hoax on Monday. Ten months after their fake satirical New York Times issue, the faux-Post concerns itself with the current environmental crisis, and the tabloid-style headline is perhaps more accurate than usual for the notorious Post - "WE'RE SCREWED." The issue details, in fluent Murdoch-speak, the tragic and scary events scientists say are about to unfold thanks to our failure to move on climate change and other unchecked environmental damage, and was released to coincide with the U.N. meeting on climate change. Check out the complete issue, available online here. The group says nearly a million copies were distributed.

You can also watch this video of The Yes Men discussing the hoax:

Just the next day, Yes Men co-founder Andy Bichlbaum was arrested in New York while demonstrating their SurvivaBall which, according to their promotional materials, is "a self-contained living system—truly, a gated community for one. If you have a SurvivaBall, even if everyone else is dying, at least you can weather all storms."

Unfamiliar with The Yes Men? Here's the group's mission: "Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else." The Yes Men have released two films of their hijinks, and the first The Yes Men will be airing on Link TV, along with clips from the latest film The Yes Men Fix the World which will be released in theaters on October 7. We'll also be interviewing the recently arrested Andy Bichlbaum. Click here for airdates.

Also, check out these videos of other classic Yes Men moments:

Dow Spokesman Hoax

Trailer for The Yes Men Fix the World

Mosaic's Jalal Ghazi must be a busy guy, sifting through news broadcasts from all over the Middle East by day as Associate Producer for Link TV's Mosaic, and screening the latest in Palestinian film by night. We enjoyed Ghazi's latest contribution to New America Media, "Palestinian Films With a Woman's Touch," and think you will too.

Ghazi reports on "a new kind of Intifada" taking place among women in Palestinian cinema, where "instead of stones, bullets or bombs" they are telling the Palestinian story through film. Several of the films surveyed were screened, or will be screened, at San Francisco's Arab Film Festival, and the article includes trailers and interviews with the filmmakers. See inside the often hidden world of an ordinary Palestinian - and ordinary Palestinian women in particular - and check out these extraordinary films!

This week several of Link's staff, including myself, attended SOCAP09 in San Francisco, a conference of social innovators and entrepreneurs investing in doing GOOD in the world. At the keynote address of the Embrace Disruption mini-conference on social media, Adam Werbach (former president of the Sierra Club) alerted us to the scourge of "yuppie mouth". This term is apparently used by dentists to describe tooth decay in young people who have avoided fluoridated public tap water in favor of an exclusive liquid diet of bottled waters, sodas and juices.

But cavities aren't the only reason you might think twice about drinking bottled H2O. There are sound ecological and economic reasons to eschew the bottle in favor of the tap -- including the plastic bottle refuse and the vast distances some bottled waters are transported. In the case of Fiji Water, as Werbach pointed out at SOCAP, your pristine thirst quencher is literally shipped from the other side of the world.

Wanting to dive in to the water wars, I found that Democracy Now! (airing on Link TV) was already there, interviewing author Anna Lenzer about her recent exposé in Mother Jones, "Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle." She points out the troubling environmental record of this brand that boasts the slogan "Every Drop is Green," as well as the U.S.-owned company's questionable relations with the island paradise's military junta. You can watch the complete interview at DemocracyNow.org.

Fiji Water has issued a response to the Mother Jones article, arguing that the company has and will continue to invest substantially into the people of Fiji. The company also strongly rejected the premise that their doing "business in Fiji somehow...legitimizes a military dictatorship."

Where do you stand on the water debate? Do you drink from the bottle or the tap -- and why? And do you buy Fiji Water's rebuttal of Lenzer's claims? Link wants to hear from you!

Fiji Water photo courtesy of Verne Equinox under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.