Common Ground with Jane Whitney artwork

Common Ground with Jane Whitney

16 episodes - English - Latest episode: 12 months ago - ★★★★ - 1 rating

The antidote to the sound bite mentality that dominates the airwaves and cable shows, Common Ground with Jane Whitney is a nationally syndicated PBS public affairs program that brings together recognized experts and artists in town-hall style conversations about the country’s most critical issues. Built on the idea that civil discussion is the lifeblood of finding ways to live together - common ground - the series strives to reaffirm the democratic principle that out of many, we are one.

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Episodes

Game Over: Politics and Sports

April 03, 2023 14:32 - 56 minutes - 54.7 MB

The long-time voice of sports, ABC’s iconic commentator Howard Cosell, dubbed it the first rule of “jockocracy” – sports and politics don’t mix.  The last thing a nation of couch potatoes wanted to see was a political hot potato on their fields of dreams. Sports, for most Americans, were the sacrosanct refuge where we went to get away from it all, to escape the tension and drama and conflict that colors daily life.  But now many of our most divisive debates about class, race, religion, s...

Fury: America's Uncivil War

April 03, 2023 14:23 - 56 minutes - 52.1 MB

The legendary anchorman of the classic film "Network," Howard Beale, became a cultural icon for the axiom "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." We're all Howard Beales now, to paraphrase John F. Kennedy. If the country has a national mood, it's mad. The fury has become so intense that it has fractured our national psyche and has provoked daily speculation from even the most blasé pundits about whether America is on the verge of another civil war. But what are the root...

The Soul of America

December 01, 2020 20:11 - 1 hour - 63.7 MB

Often referred to as “the conscience of America,” Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and historian Jon Meacham joins Jane Whitney to talk about how America’s history of overcoming crises makes him confident and hopeful that the country once again will prevail over these tumultuous times.

LGBTQ Rights: The Next Frontier

December 01, 2020 20:08 - 1 hour - 80 MB

Former mayor and presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg headlines a panel of leading activists, including Jonathan Capehart, Sharice Davids and Danica Roem, to talk with Jane Whitney about the landmark successes of the LGBTQ rights movement and the remaining hurdles of the movement.

America and The World: U.S. Foreign Policy Update

September 15, 2020 14:17 - 1 hour - 80.8 MB

Three renowned experts on international affairs discuss America’s standing in the world and the impact of President Trump’s relegation of the country’s traditional allies and alliances. In the face of the country’s most consequential foreign policy election in the post-war era, the trio of preeminent panelists also will debate how to project American power and how to protect the country from foreign threats.

Prescient Predictions

August 17, 2020 18:56 - 1 hour - 84.4 MB

Don’t wait until November to find out who won the 2020 presidential campaign! Or if Republicans maintained their Senate majority. Or what happened in the House. MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki will tune up his big board with other nationally recognized prognosticators to explain the election’s dominant forces and how they will determine the outcome. The panel, also including Rachel Bitecofer and David Axelrod, will explain how the major campaigns are assembling their coalitions, which states are key ...

Democracy in Color

August 08, 2020 21:39 - 1 hour - 80.1 MB

Three nationally known voices - Maya Wiley, Joy Reid, and Dr. Jason Johnson - come together in Conversations On the Green's third event of the season to discuss the role of race in American politics and how identity issues will shape the 2020 campaign for the presidency and Congress.

The Politics of Justice

July 13, 2020 15:11 - 1 hour - 68.9 MB

The second Conversation of our 2020 season, brings together a panel of renowned legal scholars to discuss the threats to the rule of law, which contains the furious competition among the Federal government's three branches.

Life After COVID-19: A Brave New World

June 04, 2020 13:17 - 1 hour - 84.8 MB

In a symposium to benefit charities on the front lines of the battle against COVID-19, three of the nation’s sagest visionaries will come together on May 17 to discuss how the pandemic will indelibly change the country and affect the daily life of every American. The trio of renowned panelists are the historian Douglas Brinkley, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and bioethicist Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a leading voice on devising national policies to battle the ongoing pandemic.  ...

007: Working Without a Net: On Air in the Age of Trump

November 12, 2019 14:00 - 56 minutes - 78.1 MB

Since the time of the Roman Empire, the fourth estate has been celebrated as a pillar of democracy, a guardian of the separation of powers and a systemic counterbalance of the natural propensity of power to corrupt. But in a challenge to the American system of checks and balances, it has become a recurrent theme of the daily news cycle for President Trump and his allies to marshal their base under the banner of “Fake News” and to accuse journalists of being “enemies of the people,” a phras...

006: Late Night: Divine Comedy with Seth Meyers

November 10, 2019 23:00 - 1 hour - 116 MB

Once a safe, somnambulant replacement for counting-sheep, late night comedy has metastasized into a crucible for American angst - a cutting, ruthless, running commentary on the nation’s polarized political life. The shift is largely credited to – or blamed on – Jon Stewart, who transformed “The Daily Show” into political satire that amalgamated silliness and substance in exposing the hypocrisy of elected officials and critiquing the superficiality of TV news. He put, one wag noted, the pol...

005: Democracy In Danger: History's Lessons

September 29, 2019 22:00 - 55 minutes - 75.7 MB

Unchallenged for so long, the primacy and legitimacy of the American system of checks and balances came to be accepted as political bedrock, certain to survive even the most severe earthquakes. But the daily headlines show the guardrails of American democracy are under assault and, many analysts now warn, the entire American experiment is in danger of collapse - a majority of Republicans, polls have found, favor postponing the 2020 election if President Trump says it's the sole way to ensu...

004: New Kids On the Hill: Ms. Smith Goes to Washington

September 03, 2019 16:25 - 59 minutes - 81.4 MB

When Americans awoke the morning after the midterm elections last November, they found the halls of Congress littered by the detritus of broken taboos and traditions. In the most multicultural, multiracial democratic experiment in the country's history, the newly elected freshman class smashed stereotypes by including more women, people of color, young people or LGBTQ lawmakers than ever before.  This class of Democratic freshmen jumped in head first, shattering routines on the Hill and s...

003: The Reckoning: SCOTUS Breakpoint

August 05, 2019 13:23 - 57 minutes - 78.6 MB

Conservatives' 30-year mission to restructure the courts in their own image is culminating with a series of cases that is reshaping the country. Case by case, the Supreme Court is rewriting the rules that have long structured the way we live, how we are governed, how we worship, even who we are. Immigration. Health Care. Political representation. Reproductive and religious rights. . . It's hard to find any aspect of daily life beyond the reach of the court's long tentacles. The July 21 C...

002: Is the Party Over? Rebuilding the GOP

July 01, 2019 10:00 - 1 hour - 94.8 MB

What happens to Trumpism after Trump, whenever that moment comes?  Although the GOP establishment remains firmly in President Trump’s thrall, many traditional Republican constituencies are fleeing the party. The conventional coalitions that once came together to power both the Republican and Democratic national parties are splitting apart as the president casts aside political principles, defies political orthodoxy and sells his personality. That’s turned political angst into the natio...

001: Doomsday Denial: The Politics of Climate Change

June 18, 2019 12:19 - 1 hour - 84.4 MB

As climate change moves from an imminent peril to a deadly reality for vast swaths of the country, two nationally recognized groundbreakers in the debate on global warming, Jay Inslee and David Wallace-Wells, discuss the gaping dichotomy between what scientists say needs to be done to moderate an impending disaster and the political reality of what is possible. “Doomsday Denial: The Politics of Climate Change” is a broad ranging discussion of the science, economics and politics swirling ar...