Political analyst Susan MacManus calls Florida the most complex and difficult swing state to win. And many assumptions about how voters vote, whether based on age or ethnicity, go to die in the Sunshine State. Florida is getting younger and more diverse, and it’s pushing the needle on democracy — in both directions. Hear how activist Desmond Meade helped enfranchise more than a million new voters, even as his state’s Republican-controlled legislature has limited how and when Floridians cast thei...
Nov 03, 2021•48 min•Season 3Ep. 8
Something weird is going on in Mesa County, Colo. Images, passwords and copies of raw data from election equipment mysteriously turned up online over the summer. Then Mesa’s elections clerk vanished, only to resurface weeks later, claiming she had uncovered fraud — in a county that Trump won handily. This week, investigative reporter Emma Brown of the Washington Post breaks down this bizarre case from Colorado. It fits a national playbook designed to undermine the 2020 election and faith in voti...
Oct 27, 2021•27 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Last year, Virginians approved a redistricting commission that was supposed to bring an end to gerrymandering. But this month the commission broke down while trying to decide on statehouse districts, and the process appears headed to the Virginia Supreme Court. Meanwhile, citizens in the Old Dominion are heading to the polls next month to elect their first governor of the post-Trump era. We talk state politics with former Del. David Toscano and Brian Cannon, who championed the redistricting refo...
Oct 20, 2021•32 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Besides all but banning abortions, GOP leaders in Texas are limiting what students may learn about slavery, sidelining transgender athletes, allowing citizens to carry guns unlicensed, and making voting more difficult. This week a teacher in Dallas explains why those education reforms hurt classrooms and democracy. Plus, we hear from two historians about all those other divisive measures... Join Siva and guest-host Allison Wright of VQR as they speak Texan in this first of a series on state-leve...
Oct 13, 2021•Season 3Ep. 5
American democracy is supposed to come with a warranty: equal opportunity, social mobility, the promise of success with hard work. But the fabled Dream is fraying. In fact, journalist Eduardo Porter says, it was never sold as advertised. This week we’re replaying an episode that speaks to the current impasse in Congress over social spending. To mend a tattered republic, Porter tells Siva and Will, we need “a new idea of America,” made from policies that address wealth inequality across the socia...
Oct 06, 2021•34 min
In 1905, Austrian baroness Bertha von Suttner won the Nobel Peace Prize, which she had helped convince Alfred Nobel to establish. Largely forgotten among antiwar activists, she was an outspoken critic of efforts to make combat merely less brutal. Today, Yale legal scholar Samuel Moyn finds inspiration in Suttner’s story for his own provocative stance against the logic of “humanizing” war with technological innovations like drone strikes. He says we’re only making conflicts more frequent and long...
Sep 29, 2021•34 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Listen to Siva’s full conversation with Haiti expert Laurent Dubois, co-director of the UVA Democracy Initiative. Dubois narrates the early history of slave revolt in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, the founding of Haiti and the country’s history up through a brutal intervention of the U.S. Marines in the early 20th century. This past, he says, helps put into context the current crises in Haiti, where conflicting models of political and economic autonomy have been in tension for 230 years.
Sep 25, 2021•26 min
In 1791, the people of Saint-Domingue threw off the yoke of slavery and revolted against their French masters, eventually founding a new nation with the radical promise of universal freedom: Haiti. Then came the hard reality of a world-system that would plague the country with debt, discord and military interventions, including a 19-year occupation by the United States. Three scholars — Marlene Daut, Laurent Dubois and Robert Fatton — help us consider Haiti’s burdened past and its echoes in the ...
Sep 22, 2021•46 min•Season 3Ep. 3
It’s hard not to see shades of Saigon in the frenetic evacuation of Kabul last month — and wonder why U.S. leaders seem not to have learned from bungled foreign wars and nation-building efforts. In this second part of a series reflecting on the debacle in Afghanistan, Will and Siva speak with two historians of the post-Vietnam era. They shed light on the grandiose and self-interested visions America has tried to realize abroad and ask what hope there may be for a future of soft power and humanit...
Sep 15, 2021•42 min•Season 3Ep. 2
The “forever war” in Afghanistan claimed 243,000 lives and cost $2.3 trillion over two decades, ending with the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops last week. But what about the costs you can’t count? In this first of a series on lessons inscribed in America’s foreign military ventures, Will and Siva speak with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Spencer Ackerman about the fallout on the home front from the war on terror. Ackerman says the enterprise was built on lies and has disfigured our politica...
Sep 08, 2021•38 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Well, it’s our final rebroadcast of the summer... For the one million young people who have grown up in the United States undocumented, feeling like they really belong here remains a dream deferred. This time, we hear from two of them living in limbo. Plus, legal scholar Amanda Frost unearths the unsettling stories of Americans who have had their citizenship taken away — because of their politics, their race and even because of whom they choose to marry.
Aug 24, 2021•49 min
Srdja Popovic was 16 and playing guitar in a goth-rock band when Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic came to power. A decade later — after a series of brutal civil wars — Popovic and a few friends launched a resistance movement that grew to tens of thousands and helped topple a reign of terror. What can the secret of their success say about all the protests we see going on around the world today? Popovic shares his story, his principles and his hopes, in this rebroadcast of one of our favorite ...
Aug 10, 2021•39 min
We’re doing something a little different this time — swapping feeds with one of our sister shows. On this episode you’ll hear Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum, author of “The Twilight of Democracy.” She spoke last February with Penn State’s McCourtney Institute in a live lecture plus Q&A with the hosts of “Democracy Works.” Applebaum discusses the Republican Party, the Cold War era, and why she believes economic inequality and democratic erosion are not as closely linked as some people t...
Jul 27, 2021•45 min
Last month the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a pair of Arizona laws limiting voter access to the polls, emboldening Republican-led states to pass restrictive measures that discourage election participation. As scholar Carol Anderson explained in Season One, such laws hark back to America’s long history of disenfranchising minorities. She says the core safeguards of the 1965 Voting Rights Act are unraveling — even as citizens across the country keep fighting to protect the kernel of democracy: their ...
Jul 13, 2021•31 min
After a violent crackdown on protestors, Donald Trump posed for a photo-op with a bible in front of a church. A year later, a federal judge has tossed most of the civil complaints against the former president. But the image remains telling. Today we replay our interview with religion scholar Matthew Hedstrom on the ideology of Christian nationalism and its harder-core variety, dominionism. Hedstrom says a muscular resistance to pluralism — not ideas about piety — lies at the core of this belief ...
Jun 29, 2021•26 min
When we launched this podcast a year ago, we made it clear we weren’t going to produce a show about “Democrats” in danger. But in the United States, one political party epitomizes the antidemocratic moment: Republicans remain devoted to a corrupt leader, intent on suppressing the vote and hostile to racial justice. This week, we wrap up Season Two with a hard look at the GOP — with help from a historian, a political scientist and a former Republican congresswoman who has dared to call out Presid...
Jun 15, 2021•Season 2Ep. 18
Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister in 2014, promising economic growth and a respite from the corrupt and calcified Congress Party. But Modi’s Hindu nationalism has hardened along with his will to govern. He has stifled dissent, taken over almost every government institution and adopted policies that are hostile to Muslims. Now India is reeling from a devastating surge in covid infections and deaths. Where did Modi come from? And can he be stopped? A historian and two journalists offer s...
Jun 08, 2021•46 min•Season 2Ep. 17
Three pillars hold up autocracy in Russia, journalist Masha Gessen says: media control, sham elections and downright terror. But the opposition movement spearheaded by imprisoned activist Alexei Navalny has struck at the heart of all three. Gessen explains how — and measures the power of democratic aspirations in a country struggling against corruption with hope, against the past with visions of a happier future.
Jun 01, 2021•28 min•Season 2Ep. 16
Ukrainians took to the streets twice in 10 years to defend their fledgling democracy. The first time, it seemed an election might be stolen. Then the government broke a pledge to bring the country closer to the European Union — and the people pushed back. Now Ukraine is mired in conflicts with separatists in the east and with Russia over its hold on Crimea. But even as Putin wages war on this former Soviet republic, the long-term outlook for Ukraine is strong. Harvard historian Serhii Plokhii ex...
May 25, 2021•35 min•Season 2Ep. 15
In Germany, like much of Europe, the antidemocratic forces of the far right have been gaining ground, even as chancellor Angela Merkel has kept extremism at bay in her own coalition, with often shrewd and at times brave politics. As she prepares to retire, can she cement a legacy of benevolent pragmatism and keep her country’s noisy fringe from coopting the opposition? Two experts on German politics help us explore Merkel’s legacy and what it means for the rest of the European Union — and the Un...
May 18, 2021•44 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Citizenship determines who is in and who is out, who has a voice in a democracy and who doesn’t. But for the one million young people who have grown up in the United States undocumented, feeling like they really belong here remains a dream deferred. This time, we hear from two of them living in limbo. Plus, legal scholar Amanda Frost unearths the unsettling stories of Americans who have had their citizenship taken away — because of their politics, their race, even because of whom they choose to ...
May 11, 2021•49 min•Season 2Ep. 13
As states prepare to redraw their congressional districts, some will benefit from the prison-industrial complex: There are more people behind bars in America than in any country, and inmates are disproportionately Black and Latino. This week we’re replaying an interview about mass incarceration with Yale historian Elizabeth Hinton, who says minority communities suffered disproportionately from successive “wars” meant to save them — from poverty, from crime, from drugs — but which criminalized th...
May 04, 2021•28 min
Mexico’s murder rate has almost tripled in 15 years, even as the country has enjoyed a robust multiparty electoral system, a growing economy and a vibrant civil society. This mixed fate is common across Latin American democracies, as they struggle to overcome a past marred by U.S. imperialism, and face the problems of the present: violence, inequality and agonizing migrations. But, says sociologist Gema Kloppe-Santamaría, there is common ground on which the Americas, together, can build a better...
Apr 27, 2021•34 min•Season 2Ep. 12
Most top carbon-emitting nations, like the United States, are wealthy democracies. Yet climate change is hurting poor countries first and destabilizing their societies — with rising seas, more frequent hurricanes and harsh droughts, leading to mass migration. Science journalist Kendra Pierre-Louis says buying an electric car won’t help much. What we need, she tells Will and Siva, is far more than good individual choices: a wholesale structural shift, international reparations and a healthy dose ...
Apr 20, 2021•33 min•Season 2Ep. 11
The toxic waste that seeps into rivers taints everything downstream, spoiling lakes and oceans, killing flora and fauna, altering the air we breathe and raining back down. Information works the same way, media scholar Whitney Phillips says. Fueled by human passions, falsehoods permeate the mainstream media, undermine trust and hurt vulnerable people most. To untangle this trash, she argues, we need to think ecologically, too: looking not only to coders but faith leaders, teachers, even healthcar...
Apr 13, 2021•Season 2Ep. 10
When law professor Danielle Citron began exploring the scourge of online harassment, especially of women, what she found was disturbing. Virtually undeterred, stalkers would share intimate details about their targets, post nude photos without consent and threaten rape. This kind of behavior is enabled by the same Wild West approach to cyberspace regulation that permits so much of our personal data to be harvested and abused. What’s at stake, Citron says, is not just our privacy online, but our c...
Apr 06, 2021•Season 2Ep. 9
Srdja Popovic was 16 and playing guitar in a goth-rock band when Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic came to power. A decade later — after a series of brutal civil wars — Popovic and a few friends launched a resistance movement that grew to tens of thousands and helped topple Milosevic’s reign of terror. The secret of their success? Nonviolence, Popovic says. Today he leads an organization that supports pro-democracy activists all over the world. Hear him share his story, his principles and his...
Mar 30, 2021•38 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Like many of you, we were shocked and horrified by the killings at Atlanta-area spas last week — reminding us once again that nativist ideology in America is nothing new. Historian Erika Lee, who testified on hate crimes again Asian Americans before Congress in the wake of the massacre, walked Will and Siva through this sordid past on a show we produced in Season One. This week, we’re interrupting our regular schedule to bring you that episode.
Mar 23, 2021•37 min
Given a real choice, people around the world would take a shorter work week over bigger salaries, consume less to live more and seek mutual flourishing rather than plunder their natural resources. The problem is, says anthropologist Jason Hickel, the idea of a “degrowth” economy has never been on the ballot. Instead, the core tenet of capitalism — insatiable expansion — is holding humanity, and democratic ideals, hostage. The stakes can’t be higher, he argues: if we don’t fix that, we won’t save...
Mar 16, 2021•36 min•Season 2Ep. 7
The U.S. Constitution is clear: every person counts. But in a country with a sordid history of voter suppression, tinkering with the decennial census has become the latest trick for undermining majority rule. And the usually mundane rite of enumeration was politicized like never before when President Trump tried to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census. Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, explains why that’s detrimental to the proper functioning of government. And il...
Mar 09, 2021•32 min•Season 2Ep. 6
