This week we bring you a special episode from Dashiell Quinn, one of our 2024 Podcast Fellows. In this inaugural episode of 'Democracy on Fire,' host Dashiell Quinn discusses the vulnerabilities and challenges facing democracy with special guest Mr. Hauser, an experienced lawyer and former federal prosecutor. The conversation dives into key issues such as political polarization, media manipulation, misinformation, and the integrity of politicians. Through insightful dialogue, they explore the cu...
Jan 13, 2025•25 min•Ep. 377
This week we bring you a special episode from Sabrina Tomei Gonzalez, one of our 2024 Podcast Fellows. In this episode of Town Hall Conversations, Sabrina from Fairfield, Connecticut, interviews Jen Leeper, a state representative from the 132nd district of Connecticut. Jen shares insights into her background, journey to office, and passion for public policy. She discusses the importance of state government, outlines the process of how a bill becomes law, and responds to questions from Sabrina's ...
Jan 08, 2025•39 min•Ep. 376
This week we bring you a special episode from Claire Baek, one of our 2024 Podcast Fellows. In this episode of Dear Government, host Claire Baek and guests from Shansley High School's newspaper, The Purple Tide, analyze and discuss the unexpected results of the 2024 presidential election. The conversation dives into the electoral and popular vote outcomes that led to President Donald Trump's victory and the reactions of young voters. They also touch on the importance of the working class, the ro...
Jan 06, 2025•19 min•Ep. 375
We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from the Democracy Decoded podcast, with host Simone Leeper. In the end, the worst of everyone’s election fears — political violence, overt foreign interference or a razor-thin margin between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump leading to a hotly contested legal battle — did not come to pass. Instead, Donald Trump won a plurality of votes for president, and did so decisively. On January 20, 2025, he will once again become the country’s most powerf...
Dec 11, 2024•31 min•Ep. 374
We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from An Honorable Profession podcast, with hosts Debbie Cox Bultan and Ryan Coonerty. In this week’s episode, host Ryan Coonerty speaks with Pittsburgh, PA, City Controller Rachael Heisler. Heisler explains the role of the controller, which consists of three core functions: accounting, accounts payable, and auditing. She also discussed her role in making sure that tax dollars are used responsibly and effectively and that they are spent in acc...
Dec 09, 2024•35 min•Ep. 373
We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from the Future Hindsight podcast, hosted by Mila Atmos. We discuss deepening our understanding of the climate crisis, the urgent need for decarbonization, and our role in speaking truth about phasing out fossil fuels. Genevieve Guenther is the founding director of End Climate Silence and affiliate faculty at The New School. Her most recent book is The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It . Genevieve’s civi...
Dec 04, 2024•58 min•Ep. 372
We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from The Great Battlefield podcast, with hosts Nathaniel Pearlman. Regina Wallace-Jones joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about her career in tech, politics and business and her current role as CEO of ActBlue, a nonprofit fundraising platform for progressives, and where she wants to take it. Additional Information The Great Battlefield Podcast More shows from The Democracy Group...
Dec 02, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 371
We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from the Democracy Works podcast, hosted by Jenna Spinelle, Christopher Beem, Michael Berkman. Cynthia 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 i...
Nov 27, 2024•38 min•Ep. 370
We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from the Village SquareCast podcast, hosted by the Village Square. We wanted you wonderful SquareCast listeners to know that we didn't plan for this episode to drop on Leap Day and we didn't plan on it being (we kid you not) Episode 100. But both things just happened . At the very least, we think that's a sign that you really ought to listen. Were we "the universe has a plan" maximalists, though, we'd say it means you need to quit your day jo...
Nov 25, 2024•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 369
We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from the Bad Watchdog podcast, hosted by Maren Machles. For the past few episodes, Maren has explored the reality of immigration detention, uplifting the conditions in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) centers where thousands are held under the presumption that they may be threats to national security. In the season finale of Bad Watchdog , we return to where we started, with the DHS’s counterterrorism mission. Maren breaks down the curre...
Nov 20, 2024•50 min•Ep. 368
Democracy Works host Michael Berkman, director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy and professor of political science at Penn State talks with Christopher Claassen , a political scientist at the University of Glasgow, about how to measure support for democracy across countries and across generations. Claassen grew up in South Africa and was 16 when the country held its first democratic elections. His interest in democracy continued through college and into his career as a political scienti...
Nov 18, 2024•35 min•Ep. 367
Do you believe what you see in newspapers, websites and on TV? Most Americans don't trust the people who are supposed to truthfully report the news. A new Gallup poll says Americans have record-low trust in mass media. Only one-in-three adults has a "great deal" or a "fair amount" of confidence in the media to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly." More than 150,000 readers each day turn to Tangle , a website read by liberals, conservatives and independents. Every day Tangle tackles one...
Nov 13, 2024•26 min•Ep. 366
In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Lee and James explore the role of the Senate and the dysfunction we see today with Sean Theriault. Theriault is a Professor at the Department of Government at the University of Texas, Austin and the author of Disruption?: The Senate During the Trump Era (Oxford University Press, 2024). Do we need the Senate? What has caused gridlock in the Senate? What would the Senate look like during a second Trump term? These are some of the questions Sean, Lee...
Nov 11, 2024•48 min•Ep. 365
Mike talks with Stephen J. Ducat, an author, political psychologist, psychoanalyst, and former psychology professor in the School of Humanities at New College of California. They discuss Professor Ducat’s most recent book, Hatreds We Love: The Psychology of Political Tribalism in Post-Truth America . Topics Mike and Stephen discuss include: - why tribal loyalty often overrides material self-interest - demonizing outsiders to reinforce in-group virtue - conservative disgust vs liberal disdain - t...
Nov 06, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 364
We discuss why American democracy should not treat the Latinx community as a monolith, what actually matters to this community, and how the strength of their engagement in U.S. democracy will play out in this year’s presidential election. Maria Teresa’s civic action toolkit recommendations are: VOTE! Share your excitement to vote with everyone you know, especially young people. Maria Teresa Kumar is the President and CEO of Voto Latino, a civic engagement organization focused on educating and em...
Nov 04, 2024•47 min•Ep. 363
When New Hampshire voters picked up the phone earlier this year and heard what sounded like the voice of President Joe Biden asking them not to vote in that state’s primary election, the stage was set for an unprecedented election year. The call was a deepfake — and the first major instance of artificial intelligence being used in the 2024 election. With the rise of AI tools that can credibly synthesize voices, images and videos, how are voters supposed to determine what they can trust as they p...
Oct 30, 2024•33 min•Ep. 362
In today’s episode, NewDEAL CEO Debbie Cox Bultan speaks with the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) President, Heather Williams. Heather explains how the DLCC works to elect more Democrats to the House and Senate and win legislative majorities. She walks us through the DLCC’s strategy of targeting key states and legislature chambers, the opportunities she is most excited about this year, and the organization’s important work to raise awareness of legislative candidates and ensure ...
Oct 28, 2024•31 min•Ep. 361
These final days before the election are tense times . Today’s toxic politics are hurtful and heart breaking for many of us. Maybe we all need a hope vaccine. An injection of kindness, curiosity and understanding for those who see the world differently than we do. In our latest report on the work, ideas, and people of Braver Angels , the nationwide citizen-led campaign against political polarization, we learn more about its Election Day Initiative : A volunteer-led effort to push back against po...
Oct 23, 2024•25 min•Ep. 360
Election officials have always played a critical role in ensuring that our votes are cast and counted fairly. But in recent years, the landscape of election work has dramatically changed. No longer seen as a quiet, behind-the-scenes service, election officials are now on the front lines of an increasingly toxic environment, facing harassment, threats, and a flood of misinformation. In this episode of Democracy Fix, two seasoned election officials, Tonya Wichman, Director of Elections in Defiance...
Oct 21, 2024•26 min•Ep. 359
What does it mean to be a conservative? (And no, Donald Trump is not a conservative.) Can the Republican Party be redeemed? What implications does any of this have on the 2024 election and beyond? In this episode, we’re joined by Mona Charon, Policy Editor at The Bulwark and host of the podcasts Just Between Us and Beg to Differ . We explore the state of democracy, the role of media, and the evolving definitions of conservatism. Mona reflects on her experiences living in Israel, the challenges o...
Oct 16, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 358
As we barrel toward America’s 250th, one could argue that if we crack up before we get there (some bad days we’d take even odds), it’ll have something to do with the complexity of being in charge of executing one of the founders’ biggest ideas — that the church and the state were to be separate in this new nation of theirs. (It had been so much “easier” when the king told all us peasants what religion we were.) Our framers, for the first time in history, asserted that a citizenry had “natural ri...
Oct 14, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 357
In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Lee and James explore America’s reliance on direct primaries in federal elections with Nick Troiano. Troiano is the Executive Director of Unite America and the author of The Primary Solution: Rescuing Our Democracy from the Fringes (Simon & Schuster, 2024). What are direct primaries? Why do Americans rely on them? When did they first start using direct primaries in federal elections? And what are the consequences? These are some of the questio...
Oct 09, 2024•51 min•Ep. 356
Chris Beem talks with political theorist Alexandre Lefebvre about why liberalism is more than just a political ideas and procedures, and how abiding by liberal principles can enhance your life far beyond politics. In his book Liberalism as a Way of Life , Lefebvre argues that liberalism isn’t just a set of neutral procedures; it’s a comprehensive way of life that shapes the way we live and think and work and love in innumerable ways. He also argues that it’s a way of life worth robustly defendin...
Oct 07, 2024•39 min•Ep. 355
Mike talks with Matt Grossmann, Director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. Matt was on the show in 2019 when we talked about his book on public policy change, Artists of the Possible , and he’s back again for a discussion of his latest book, co-authored with David Hopkins, Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics . Topics Mike & Matt Discuss Include: - t...
Oct 02, 2024•50 min•Ep. 354
Voter registration is the number one obstacle to voting in the United States. It should be easy, accessible and secure, but too often, states are moving backwards; making voter registration more difficult and less equitable. Here, we introduce a new type of episode: an up-to-the-minute interview with an expert to help you better understand some of the most important issues affecting elections. Danielle Lang, a voting rights attorney at CLC, joins Simone to explain why major actions in Arizona an...
Sep 30, 2024•32 min•Ep. 353
We discuss the power and the promise of public schools, the universal rejection of book bans by parents across the country, and an inclusive vision for democracy. Their civic action toolkit recommendations are: Have a conversation with people with whom you disagree Remain open-minded. Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider are co-hosts of the education podcast Have You Heard. Their new book is The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual. Follow Jennifer on X: https://x.com/BisforBerk...
Sep 25, 2024•53 min•Ep. 352
Progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann returns to The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about his latest book "The Hidden History of the American Dream: The Demise of the Middle Class―and How to Rescue Our Future". Additional Information The Democracy Group listener survey The Great Battlefield Podcast More shows from The Democracy Group...
Sep 23, 2024•30 min•Ep. 351
In this episode, hosts Carah Ong Whaley, Angelina Clapp, and Mia Minkin sit down with King County, WA Director of Elections Julie Wise for a deep dive into the county’s award-winning initiatives to ensure all voices are heard in elections. Known for her passionate advocacy for voter accessibility and election transparency, Wise discusses the critical role of trained, nonpartisan election administrators in preserving democracy. She highlights the challenges faced by election officials across the ...
Sep 11, 2024•45 min•Ep. 350
In this week's episode, producer Rachel Walsh joins co-hosts Ryan Coonery and Debbie Cox Bultan to recap the past few months of this exciting election cycle. They discuss last week's Democratic National Convention, highlighting key themes and standout moments from speakers, including many NewDEAL leaders and alumni. They also reflect on our Road to November 2024 Messaging series, which featured insights from political strategists, policy experts, and state and local elected officials. Ryan, Debb...
Sep 09, 2024•39 min•Ep. 349
In the 20th Century, we had Cold War adversaries. In the early 2000s, George W. Bush talked about the Axis of Evil. But are those frameworks the most accurate way to understand the forces attempting to undermine not just democratic nations but democratic ideas? And to what degree have these antagonists - those that are fundamentally opposed to our core principles such as the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and basic human rights - pervaded U.S. politics? In this epis...
Aug 28, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 348
