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PODCAST

Democracy Works

Penn State McCourtney Institute for Democracy

The Democracy Works podcast seeks to answer that question by examining a different aspect of democratic life each week — from voting to criminal justice to the free press and everything in between. We interview experts who study democracy, as well as people who are out there doing the hard work of democracy day in and day out. The show’s name comes from Pennsylvania’s long tradition of iron and steel works — people coming together to build things greater than the sum of their parts. We believe that

government

All Episodes

00:42:49

Francis Fukuyama on the promise and peril of liberalism

Democracy Works ·

2022/10/17

It's no secret that liberalism didn't always live up to its own ideals. In America, many people were denied equality before the law. Who counted as full human beings worthy of universal rights was contested for centuries, and only recently has this circle expanded to include women, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people, and others. Conservatives complain that liberalism empties the common life of meaning. As the renowned political philosopher Francis Fukuyama shows in Liberalism and Its Discontents, the

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00:40:13

The backbone of democracy is now the face of fraud

Democracy Works ·

2022/10/10

This 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 deny the legitimacy of elections that don't go their way.Many of us watched Georgia election officials Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss testify before the January 6

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00:39:32

How Democrats can harness grassroots energy

Democracy Works ·

2022/10/03

The Democratic Party saw a surge in grassroots activism after the 2016 election, after George Floyd's murder, and most recently after the Dobbs decision. However, the party seems to be sticking to the same old playbook of fundraising emails and text messages, rather than building long-term organizational power. Our guests this week explore why that is and how the Democratic Party can use grassroots mometum to build and expand coaltions.Lara Putnam is professor of history at the University of

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00:46:20

When should the states decide?

Democracy Works ·

2022/09/26

Following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Supreme Court decision, reproductive rights are heading to ballots in states across the country this fall. Are states the right venue for this and other issues? Our guest this week says yes and makes the case that state courts and constitutions are more democratic than their counterparts at the federal level.In Who Decides? State as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation, U.S. Appellate Court Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton focuses on the

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00:40:02

Chris Beem on the seven democratic virtues

Democracy Works ·

2022/09/19

This week, we bring you an episode from Future Hindsight. Our own Chris Beem talks with host Mila Atmos about his new book, The Seven Democratic Virtues: What You Can Do to Overcome Tribalism and Save Our Democracy.In the book and in this conversation, Beem argues that American democracy is at a crisis point and to fix our politics, we have to change our culture first. We can all take part in creating a culture that cultivates democratic virtues. Humility, for example, recognizes that all of us are

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00:44:21

Rural broadband and the politics of "good enough"

Democracy Works ·

2022/09/12

COVID-19 showed just how essential high-speed Internet is to our everyday lives. It determines how many of us work, learn, and access news and entertainment. Yet, millions of Americans do not have reliable access to broadband and millions more can't afford to pay for the service that's available to them.Christopher Ali, the Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications at Penn State, unpacks these issues in his book Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity and joins us this week for a

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00:42:45

A deep dive into the administrative state

Democracy Works ·

2022/09/05

The 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 moved beyond rhetoric to a concerted attack on policy implementation.Don Moynihan, the McCourt Chair at the McCourt School of Public Policy at

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00:32:38

Reflecting on the January 6 hearings and what's...

Democracy Works ·

2022/08/29

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 the hype? Did they change public opinion — and does that matter?We also discuss the January 6 hearings and the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago in the context of democratic pedagogy, or behavior that helps us learn what it means to be good democratic citizens. Finally, we discuss some

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00:28:35

A new approach to breaking our media silos

Democracy Works ·

2022/08/01

It'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, a non-partisan news and politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on one issue each day. He a politics reporter who grew up in Bucks County,

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00:43:17

Laboratories against democracy [rebroadcast]

Democracy Works ·

2022/07/18

Jake Grumbach's book "Laboratories against Democracy: How National Parties Transformed State Politics" is out now from Princeton University Press. We were lucky enough to receive and advance copy and are rebroadcasting our conversation with him from earlier this year.As many liberals were saying "thank God for federalism" in the Trump era, Grumbach saw some different — and disturbing — patterns emerging. He argues that as Congress has become more gridlocked, national partisan and activist groups

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00:32:40

How positive and negative freedoms shape democracy

Democracy Works ·

2022/06/20

From COVID-19 policies to reproductive rights, conversations about freedom and liberty seem to be front and center in politics and the culture wars. This week, we take a deep dive into the philosophical underpinnings of these concepts and how different interpretations of them impact our ability to sustain a democracy. We also examine how bringing the idea of freedom into political debates can obscure what's really at stake and make it difficult to come to meaningful resolution.Democracy Works host

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00:34:30

Introducing: When the People Decide

Democracy Works ·

2022/06/13

We 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 to votes — like Medicaid expansion in Idaho, sentencing reform in California, and LGBTQ workplace protections in Ohio. This episode tells the

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00:33:15

Democracy's summer blockbusters

Democracy Works ·

2022/06/06

Democracy 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 that are expected to come out by the end of June. We'll also be watching the January 6 committee hearings, which are scheduled to begin June 9. We consider what the goals of the hearings are and

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00:42:51

Can American democracy have nice things?

Democracy Works ·

2022/05/30

In 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting, E.J. Dionne and Miles Rapoport argue that all members of a democracy must participate in elections. Universal voting would be the surest way to protect against voter suppression and the active disenfranchisement of a large share of our citizens. And it would create a system true to the Declaration of Independence's aspirations by calling for a government based on the consent of all of the governed.The system works in Australia, but can it work in the

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00:43:29

Baby Boomers and American gerontocracy

Democracy Works ·

2022/05/23

The 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 against the aging Boomer cohort, has become a media staple. Older and younger voters are increasingly at odds: Republicans as a whole skew gray-haired, and

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00:28:37

No Jargon: How white Millennials think about race

Democracy Works ·

2022/05/16

Millennials are often seen as a progressive-minded generation – as 80’s and 90’s kids, they grew up in a digital landscape that exposed them to a diversity of perspectives. But while expectations were high that this generation would be on the frontlines in the fight for racial equality, recent research by Democracy Works host Candis Watts Smith paints a different picture. During this conversation with Lisa Hernandez and Lizzy Ghedi-Ehrlich, host of the Scholars Strategy Network's No Jargon podcast,

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00:38:36

Book bans are never just about books

Democracy Works ·

2022/05/09

Book bans are nothing new in the United States, but our guest this week says the current movement to restrict access to books about race and gender has a different flavor than bans in previous eras. Rather than coming from individual parents or from the ground up in a community, demands to ban dozens or even hundreds of books at a time are coming from state legislators or national parent groups who circulate lists of books online. This trend is troubling for free speech and for the democratic

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00:39:10

Debating the future of debates

Democracy Works ·

2022/05/02

We love a good debate — and have certainly had plenty of them on this show. But how effective are they in today's media and political landscape? We take up that question this week, prompted by the Republican National Committee's recent decision to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates.John Hudak, deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management and a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, wrote a piece on the GOP's decision that caught our attention. He joins

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00:41:49

What student debt says about democratic institutions

Democracy Works ·

2022/04/25

Americans 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 and financial morass that's swept up millions of people over the past 50 years. The Department of Education announced on April 19 that at least 40,000 borrowers will be eligible

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00:43:40

Combating disinformation at home and abroad

Democracy Works ·

2022/04/18

Peter Pomerantsev visited Penn State at the end of March, when he was just back from a trip to Ukraine. We discuss what he saw there, as well as how American media is covering the war. We also talk about the similarities between Ukraine and the United States when it comes to being vulnerable to Russian disinformation — and how both countries can strengthen democratic media. Pomerantsev is a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and author of the books This Is Not

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243 results

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