Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchTom Nichols on democracy's worst enemy
Episode 192
Over the past 30 years, citizens of democracies who claim to value freedom, tolerance, and the rule of law have increasingly embraced illiberal polit…
4 years, 5 months ago
Independent commissions alone can't create fair maps
Episode 191
Gerrymandering is one of the topics we've discussed most on this show, with good reason. But those conversations mostly stopped at the solution of cr…
4 years, 5 months ago
Voter suppression doesn't repeat, but it rhymes
Episode 190
Carol Anderson's book One Person, No Vote was written before COVID-19, but many of the patterns she discussed are more salient than ever as states en…
4 years, 6 months ago
A love letter to democratic institutions
Episode 189
The problems of disinformation, conspiracies, and cancel culture are probably familiar to many of our listeners. But they're usually talked about sep…
4 years, 6 months ago
How Amazon is disrupting democracy
Episode 188
As 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 t…
4 years, 6 months ago
Abortion is not always a clash of absolutes
Episode 187
Candis Watts Smith takes a turn in the interviewer's chair this week for a conversation about abortion and American democracy following the passage o…
4 years, 6 months ago
Millennials' slow climb to political power
Episode 186
Generational divides in American politics are nothing new, but they seem particularly striking now as the oldest Millennials turn 40 this year. This …
4 years, 7 months ago
A summer of the individual vs. the common good
Episode 185
We'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…
4 years, 7 months ago
Extreme maps, extreme politics [reboradcast]
As redistricting begins across the country, we revisit our conversation with journalist and author David Daley about the consequences for American de…
4 years, 7 months ago
Jan-Werner Müller on democracy's rules
Democracy and populism diverge at a single point. It’s like a fork in a road where both traditions depend on a common history, but they split in two.…
4 years, 7 months ago