Democracy Works
191 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★★ - 73 ratingsExamining what it means to live in a democracy
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Episodes
Cassidy Hutchinson on what comes after January 6
March 25, 2024 09:00 - 40 minutes - 92.2 MBCassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows whose testimony captured the nation’s attention in the January 6 Congressional hearings, joins us this week to discuss her time in the Trump administration and her new role safeguarding American democracy. Hutchinson was faced with a choice between loyalty to the Trump […]
How to combat political extremism
February 12, 2024 10:00 - 37 minutes - 85.1 MBCynthia Miller-Idriss, one of America’s leading experts on the far right, joins us this week to discuss what draws people to political extremism online and offline — and what we can do to combat it. Miller-Idriss is the director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University and author of the book Hate […]
Tim Alberta on evangelicals and Republicans
January 22, 2024 10:00 - 33 minutes - 45.6 MBChris Beem talks with journalist Tim Alberta about the role that Evangelical Christians play in the Republican Party — and what that means for the future of American democracy. Alberta is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the books The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism and American Carnage: On […]
Year in review: Media, mental health, and threats to democracy
December 29, 2023 10:17 - 50 minutes - 69.4 MBFor our final episode of 2023, we revisit some of our episodes from throughout the year and reflect on what’s in store for democracy in 2024. We talk about: Mental health and media consumption Bureaucracy and the prospect of Project 2025 The Republican party and threats to democracy Plus, we share some recommendations of the […]
Does mandatory civic education increase voter turnout?
December 04, 2023 10:00 - 39 minutes - 90 MBTwo of our Penn State colleagues join us this week to discuss their recent findings on the connection between state-mandated civics tests and voter turnout. Jilli Jung, a doctoral student in education policy and Maithreyi Gopalan, assistant professor of education and public policy, recently published the paper “The Stubborn Unresponsiveness of Youth Voter Turnout to […]
Understanding union voters
October 23, 2023 09:00 - 38 minutes - 5 MBIn the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions were embedded in tight-knit communities, touching nearly every aspect of the lives of members—mostly men—and their families and neighbors. They conveyed fundamental worldviews, making blue-collar unionists into loyal Democrats who saw the party as on the side of […]
A conflict at the heart of our political disagreements
October 09, 2023 09:00 - 41 minutes - 76.4 MBWhy do we disagree about the causes of and solutions to social inequality? What explains our different viewpoints on Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, income inequality, and immigration? Penn State professors John Iceland and Eric Silver join us this week to discuss how the discrepancy between social order and social justice impedes political compromise and progress. […]
“Democracy 2024” on the debate stage
September 04, 2023 09:00 - 33 minutes - 5 MBWe’re back from summer break and diving into the 2024 election season, Donald Trump’s indictments, the spread of election deniers, and more. We also welcome Michael Berkman back from sabbatical and discuss the significance of “Democracy 2024” as the backdrop for the first Republican presidential debate on August 23. For our listeners who teach American […]
A deep dive on parties and political reform
August 02, 2023 15:07 - 41 minutes - 56.6 MBAmericans want electoral reforms so that they can have more choice in elections. Recent surveys show that 20 to 50 percent of Americans are open to a new electoral system, while demand for a third party has crept upward since Gallup began asking in 2003. More Americans now call themselves “independent” than identify with either […]
Is America in a third reconstruction?
May 01, 2023 09:00 - 47 minutes - 108 MBPeniel E. Joseph, author of The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the 21st Century, joins us this week to discuss how the era from Barack Obama’s election to George Floyd’s murder compare to the post-Civil War Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement. Joseph argues that racial reckoning that unfolded in 2020 marked […]
Living in a fragmented democracy
April 03, 2023 09:00 - 44 minutes - 102 MBAt the end of March, millions of Americans lost access to Medicaid as pandemic-era expansions to the program were rolled back. At the same time, North Carolina’s legislature voted to expand Medicaid, marking a demonstration of bipartisan agreement in these polarizing times. This backdrop makes it a very interesting time to talk with Jamila Michener, […]
Harnessing the power of juries
March 20, 2023 09:00 - 46 minutes - 64 MBJuries have been at the center of some of the most emotionally charged moments of political life, especially in high profile cases like the trial of Derek Chauvin for George Floyd’s murder in 2021. This week, we explore juries as a democratic institution. Our guest, Sonali Chakravarti, argues that juries provide an important site for […]
Why politics makes us depressed — and what we can do about it
February 20, 2023 10:00 - 43 minutes - 60.4 MBMany of us can conjure moments when politics made us feel sad. But how often do those feelings translate into more serious forms of depression or other mental health issues? And if politics does make us depressed, what do we do about it? Christopher Ojeda has spent the past few years exploring these questions and […]
Separating news from noise
January 23, 2023 10:00 - 46 minutes - 63.9 MBHow much news is too much? Or not enough? News Over Noise, the new podcast from Penn State’s News Literacy Initiative explores that question and offers guidance on how to consume news that enhances your participation in our democracy without becoming overwhelmed by all the noise on social media and the 24/7 news cycle. News […]
What we learned from our guests in 2022
December 19, 2022 10:00 - 46 minutes - 63.8 MBWe’ve had some incredible guests on the show in 2022. For our final episode of the year, we’re taking a look back at what we’ve learned from them. Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, Candis Watts Smith, and Jenna Spinelle revisit our episodes with: Jake Grumbach Jeffrey Sutton Francis Fukuyama Jamelle Bouie Lilliana Mason Jon Meacham Jessica […]
The real free speech problem on campus
December 05, 2022 10:00 - 46 minutes - 63.6 MBAcross op-ed pages and Substack newsletters college campuses have become fiercely ideological spaces where students unthinkingly endorse a liberal orthodoxy and forcibly silence anyone who dares to disagree. These commentators lament the demise of free speech and academic freedom. But what is really happening on college campuses? In his new book, Campus Misinformation, Penn State […]
Jamelle Bouie makes the case for majoritarianism
November 21, 2022 10:00 - 44 minutes - 60.7 MBJamelle Bouie’s writing spans everything from 19th century American history to 1990s movies, but he’s spent a lot of time recently thinking about America’s founders, the Constitution, and the still-unfinished work of making America a multi-everything democracy. In that work, he’s identified a contradiction that he believes is impeding democratic progress: “Americans take for granted […]
Celebrating democracy’s small victories
October 31, 2022 09:00 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBAmid election deniers and political polarization, it’s easy to overlook the times when democracy is actually working. We do that this week in a hopeful conversation about resident-centered government. Elected officials and administrative staff like city planners often have the best intentions when it comes to development and redevelopment, but political and professional incentives push […]
The backbone of democracy is now the face of fraud
October 10, 2022 09:00 - 40 minutes - 55.2 MBThis episode is part of the series 2022 Midterms: What’s at Stake? series from The Democracy Group podcast network. Think of it as an election administrator vibe check as we head into the midterms. Election officials are the backbone of our democracy, but also increasingly the face of fraud allegations from far-right groups and others who […]
A deep dive into the administrative state
September 05, 2022 09:00 - 42 minutes - 39.3 MBThe passage of the Inflation Reduction Act shines a light on the administrative state. How will the billions of dollars for Medicaid, green energy, and other provisions be spent and turned into policy? With the help of people whose jobs are largely nonpartisan and non-political. Complaints about government bureaucracy are nothing new but has recently […]
Reflecting on the January 6 hearings and what’s happened since
August 29, 2022 09:00 - 32 minutes - 59.8 MBWe’re back after our summer break and catch up on what’s happened to American democracy while we were on hiatus. Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, Candis Watts Smith, and Jenna Spinelle are back after summer break to discuss the January 6 committee hearings, which we previously teased as “democracy’s summer blockbusters.” Did they live up to […]
A new approach to breaking our media silos
August 01, 2022 09:00 - 28 minutes - 39.4 MBIt’s no secret that there’s a partisan divide in the media, but thus far, solutions to bridge that divide have been few and far between. Our guest this week had an idea that seems to be taking hold and building a readership across the political spectrum. Isaac Saul is the founder and publisher of Tangle, […]
Introducing: When the People Decide
June 13, 2022 09:00 - 34 minutes - 47.4 MBWe are excited to share the first episode of a new narrative series on ballot initiatives from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy: When the People Decide. In this reported series, Jenna Spinelle tells the stories of activists, legislators, academics, and average citizens who changed their cities, states, and the country by taking important issues directly […]
Democracy’s summer blockbusters
June 06, 2022 09:00 - 33 minutes - 30.5 MBDemocracy Works is taking its annual summer hiatus starting next week, but that does not mean the wheels of democracy will stop turning while we’re away. In fact, this summer could prove to be quite the opposite. In this episode, we discuss what’s going on in the Supreme Court and the impact of the rulings […]
Baby Boomers and American gerontocracy
May 23, 2022 09:00 - 43 minutes - 59.8 MBThe Baby Boomers are the most powerful generation in American history — and they’re not going away anytime soon. Their influence in politics, media, business, and other areas of life is likely to continue for at least the next decade. What does that mean for younger generations? Generational conflict, with Millennials and Generation Z pitted […]
What student debt says about democratic institutions
April 25, 2022 09:00 - 42 minutes - 57.8 MBAmericans owe more than $1.5 trillion in student debt and some members of the Millennial and Gen Z wonder whether they’ll ever pay off their loans. Student loans began as a well-intended government program to help increase America’s brainpower in the Cold War era, but as our guest this week describes, grew into a political […]
Jon Meacham on creating a more perfect union
April 11, 2022 09:00 - 37 minutes - 34.3 MBJon Meacham is one of America’s leading thinkers on how the country’s political history can inform the present. He recently visited Penn State to present a lecture on his 2018 book The Soul of America and joined us for a wide-ranging conversation on the war in Ukraine (and whether Zelensky really is like Churchill), American […]
The roots of radical partisanship
April 04, 2022 09:00 - 46 minutes - 42.4 MBPolitical violence is rising in the United States, with Republicans and Democrats divided along racial and ethnic lines that spurred massive bloodshed and democratic collapse earlier in the nation’s history. The January 6, 2021 insurrection and the partisan responses that ensued are a vivid illustration of how deep these currents run. How did American politics become […]
Ro Khanna on dignity and democracy
March 21, 2022 09:00 - 41 minutes - 56.7 MBThe concept of dignity comes up a lot when we think about the condition of American democracy. Francis Fukuyama wrote about the demand for dignity and the politics of resentment and Chris Bail talked with us how dignity offline impacts our behavior online, just to name a few. Rep. Ro Khanna combines his experience in […]
Defending democracy at home and abroad
March 07, 2022 10:00 - 42 minutes - 58.3 MBRobert Kagan is a foreign policy expert who turned his focus to the United States last fall in a Washington Post column titled “Our Constitutional Crisis Is Already Here” that became one of the Post’s most-read pieces of 2021. We’re lucky to have Kagan with us this week to discuss the ongoing crises of democracy […]
Moving beyond news deserts and misinformation
February 14, 2022 10:00 - 42 minutes - 58.9 MBWe’ve talked a lot on this show about the problems that news deserts, misinformation, and information silos present to democracy. Our guest this week says these things are all downstream from a much more fundamental disconnect between the need for a free press in a democracy and the models the United States has set up […]
Sore losers are bad for democracy
January 17, 2022 10:00 - 40 minutes - 56.1 MBWe’re back with a new season and our 200th episode! Penn State’s Jim Piazza returns to the show this week to discuss a new study on why the loser’s consent is a critical part of a healthy democracy — and what happens when politicians and other elites fail to abide by it. Piazza found that […]
The soul of democracy
November 22, 2021 10:00 - 37 minutes - 34.4 MBAs we’ve heard from Carol Anderson and others on this show, the fight for voting rights often breaks down along racial and partisan lines. Desmond Meade saw that as a problem and set out to change it by channeling our shared sense of humanity and the common good to push for change. Meade is a […]
Tom Nichols on democracy’s worst enemy
October 18, 2021 09:00 - 35 minutes - 49.2 MBOver the past 30 years, citizens of democracies who claim to value freedom, tolerance, and the rule of law have increasingly embraced illiberal politicians and platforms on both the right and the left. Democracy is in trouble, but who is really to blame? In Our Own Worst Enemy, Tom Nichols challenges the current depictions of […]
A love letter to democratic institutions
September 27, 2021 09:00 - 42 minutes - 77.2 MBThe problems of disinformation, conspiracies, and cancel culture are probably familiar to many of our listeners. But they’re usually talked about separately, including on this show. In his new book, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, Jonathan Rauch ties these threads together and shows how they contribute to a larger problem of a departure […]
How Amazon is disrupting democracy
September 20, 2021 09:00 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBAs we’ve said many times on this show, democracy is long and slow, which is the exact opposite of the ethos that Amazon has pushed into our culture through quick shipping, easily accessible entertainment, its takeover of cloud computing, and more. Amazon’s expansion across America, from distribution facilities to data centers, is exacerbating regional inequities […]
Millennials’ slow climb to political power
September 06, 2021 09:00 - 41 minutes - 57.5 MBHalf of the U.S. Senate and one-third of the House of Representatives is 65 or older. What does that mean for Millennial politicians? Time magazine’s Charlotte Alter joins us this week to discuss. Generational divides in American politics are nothing new, but they seem particularly striking now as the oldest Millennials turn 40 this year. […]
A summer of the collective vs. the individual
August 30, 2021 09:00 - 30 minutes - 55.3 MBWe’re back after our summer break! Michael, Chris, Candis, and Jenna catch up on what happened over the summer, from COVID vaccine mandates to school board chaos to the refugee crisis in Afghanistan. The underlying theme of it all is one of democracy’s central tensions — the collective vs. the individual. The tension between individual […]
Democracy as a way of life
June 28, 2021 09:00 - 32 minutes - 44.5 MBWe often talk about democracy in the context of politics and institutions, but this week’s guest draws from Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Dewey to offer a different perspective. We live in an era defined by a sense of separation, even in the midst of networked connectivity. As cultural climates sour and political […]
How democracies can win the war on reality
May 17, 2021 09:00 - 39 minutes - 54.5 MBMisinformation, disinformation, propaganda — the terms are thrown around a lot but often used to describe the same general trend toward conspiratorial thinking that spread from the post-Soviet world to the West over the past two decades. Peter Pomerantsev had a front seat to this shift and is one of the people trying to figure […]
Public schools, not government schools
April 12, 2021 09:00 - 43 minutes - 60.1 MBOur guest this week argues that, much like democracy itself, public education is an ideal that we’ve never quite lived up to. We discuss the constitutional right to education and how it’s ebbed and flowed over the years, following many of the same trends as support for and access to other democratic institutions. The Trump […]
Reforming criminal justice from the inside out
April 05, 2021 09:00 - 40 minutes - 56.1 MBPhiladelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner joins us to discuss the promise and peril of institutional reform and how he built a coalition of voters who are traditionally overlooked in politics. He spent his career as a civil rights attorney, not a as a prosecutor like his predecessors. He’s part of a growing movement of progressive […]
Understanding — and addressing — domestic terrorism
March 08, 2021 10:00 - 35 minutes - 65 MBThe FBI recently reported that it’s opened 2,000 domestic terrorism investigations since 2017. How the United States responds to these threats touches on some of democracy’s most basic tensions. We explore those tensions this week and discuss where things might go from here. When the social fabric and institutions the hold a democracy together are […]
Anne Applebaum on why democracy is not inevitable
March 01, 2021 10:00 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBJournalist, author, and historian Anne Applebaum says that democracy is not like running water — something that we know will always be there when we turn on the tap. Her latest book Twilight of Democracy, highlights the ways in which countries around the world are coming to terms with this fact and provides suggestions for how […]
A path forward for social media and democracy
February 15, 2021 10:00 - 39 minutes - 53.7 MBThe U.S. Capitol insurrection broke open a lot of conversations that had long been simmering under the surface about social media and democracy. Michal and Chris discuss this inflection point and our guest, Sinan Aral, shares ideas for how we might move forward. Sinan Aral has spent two decades studying how social media impacts our […]
Extreme maps, extreme politics
January 18, 2021 10:00 - 38 minutes - 52.9 MBDespite ongoing threats of violence, the wheels of democracy continue to turn, and in 2021 that means redistricting. States will draw new electoral maps this year using data from the 2020 Census. Our guest this week has spent the past decade covering attempts by politicians to draw those maps to their advantage in a practice […]
American democracy’s violent disruption
January 11, 2021 10:00 - 32 minutes - 44.8 MBThis episode was recorded on Friday, January 8, 2021, two days after the day that many of the things we’ve talked about on this show came to a head — political and epistemic polarization, delgitimation of the opposition, degradation of democratic norms, racial inequity, and many other factors. Democracy Works hosts Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, […]
What really motivates Trump supporters
December 07, 2020 10:00 - 38 minutes - 70.8 MBMany, many articles, books, documentaries — and even podcasts — have been produced over the past four years to explain who Donald Trump’s base is and what motivates people to vote for and otherwise support him. Our guest this week offers answers to these questions that are grounded in social science and political psychology. John […]
Wynton Marsalis on democracy as jazz and The Ever Fonky Lowdown
November 02, 2020 10:00 - 36 minutes - 67.1 MBDemocracy takes center stage on Wynton Marsalis’s latest album, The Ever Fonky Lowdown and his forthcoming work, the Democracy Suite. However, he’s been thinking about the connection between jazz and democracy for his entire career. We are thrilled that he took a few minutes to talk with us about it this week. Listen to this […]
News deserts are democracy deserts, too
October 26, 2020 09:00 - 42 minutes - 69 MBMore than 2,000 local newspapers have closed over the past 20 years, leaving some parts of the country in what’s known as a “news desert.” This week, we examine what impact that’s had on civic engagement and democratic participation — and look at ways people are trying to make local news great again. The connection […]