Thursday, June 22nd, 2023 Anna Chu is the executive director of We The Action, an organization that connects volunteer lawyers with nonprofits that require legal assistance. We discuss how lawyers play a unique and critical role in strengthening American democracy. A strong democracy relies on everyone having the ability to have their voices heard at every level of the government, but in the US there is a huge gap between who is actually eligible to vote and who actually votes. In addition, ther...
Jun 22, 2023•39 min•Ep 250•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, June 15th, 2023 Frank Guridy is the Executive Director of the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia University and the Dr. Kenneth and Kareitha Forde Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies. We discuss social movements in the past, present, and future. Social movements consist of mass participation from outside of established political structures to address grievances or to pursue larger social goals. They are often long term endeavors ...
Jun 15, 2023•47 min•Ep 249•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, June 8th, 2023 David Priess is the Director of Intelligence at Bedrock Learning and has served at the CIA as an intelligence officer, a manager, and a daily intelligence briefer during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. We discuss how the issues of waging war and negotiating peace affect our everyday lives. The intelligence function is about discovering the truth in order to reduce uncertainty for decision-makers on issues of national security. Intelligence cannot pre...
Jun 08, 2023•54 min•Ep 248•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, June 1st, 2023 Beto O’Rourke is a fourth-generation Texan, the former US Representative of Texas’s 16th Congressional district, the Democratic Party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2018, and the Democratic nominee for the 2022 Texas gubernatorial election. He is also the author of We've Got to Try: How the Fight for Voting Rights Makes Everything Else Possible. We discuss the outsized importance of Texas politics for the nation. Republicans have relied on winning Texas’s electoral col...
Jun 01, 2023•55 min•Ep 247•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, May 25th, 2023 Representative Anna Eskamani serves on behalf of Florida’s 42nd district of Orange County in the state House of Representatives. We discuss her victories at the ballot box and her work to represent her constituents. Her campaign slogan is “Working for you. Fighting for us.” When serving in the minority of the Florida state legislature, you only pass legislation by working across the aisle. Anna is a firm believer in calling people in before calling them out, and on findi...
May 25, 2023•33 min•Ep 246•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, May 18th, 2023 Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones are co-authors of How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms. Chris is an associate professor of applied mathematics at Columbia University and the New York Times’s chief data scientist and Matt is a professor of history at Columbia. Together, they taught a course called “Data: Past, Present, and Future," and their book is an extension thereof. We discuss the history of how data is made; the relationshi...
May 18, 2023•42 min•Ep 245•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, May 11th, 2023 Judge Victoria Pratt was Chief Judge in Newark Municipal Court in New Jersey and the author of The Power of Dignity. She is currently the Executive Director of Odyssey Impact, an interfaith non-profit driving social change through innovative storytelling and media. We discuss procedural justice, municipal court reform, and increasing the public's trust in the justice system. Tough-on-crime laws are ineffective. Punishing people for wrongdoing does not change behavior. Ju...
May 11, 2023•39 min•Ep 244•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, May 4th, 2023 Craig Aaron is the Co-CEO of Free Press and Free Press Action. We discuss the civic information bill in New Jersey and the promise of centering civic information in the media. A vibrant multiracial democracy requires civic information media, which delivers the information that helps us live better lives in our communities. Journalism or civic media are a public good, and the public needs to invest in media along those lines. In New Jersey, bipartisan legislative support l...
May 04, 2023•45 min•Ep 243•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, April 27th, 2023 Jeff Sharlet is a journalist, best-selling author, and longtime observer and investigator of the Christian right. His latest book is The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. We discuss America's democratic bankruptcy, the martyrdom of Ashli Babbit, and the rightward shift of the mainstream. The notion of civil war was a fringe idea, but in recent years it has become mainstream. It was just a question of time and for some, it was already happening. Fascism does not r...
Apr 27, 2023•43 min•Ep 242•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, April 20th, 2023 Chloe Maxmin and Canyon Woodward are the co-authors of Dirt Road Revival: How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why our Future Depends on It. We discuss the importance of winning rural races in America. When Chloe ran for office in rural Maine, she knocked on over 20,000 doors and discovered that constituents feel a lack of representation in their daily lives. Democrats really stopped showing up and investing in strong organizing infrastructure in rural places, but it's po...
Apr 20, 2023•41 min•Ep 241•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, April 13th, 2023 Anat Shenker-Osorio is a renowned communications researcher and campaign advisor, the host of Words to Win By, and the Principal of ASO Communications. We discuss how to empower voters, the impact of repetition, and the importance of being clear on what you stand for. All candidates should repeatedly state what they stand for because repetition is an essential ingredient in making sure a message is heard. Negative messaging can often be counterproductive because when y...
Apr 13, 2023•43 min•Ep 240•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, April 6th, 2023 We’re sharing an episode of Drilled, a true-crime podcast about climate change, hosted and reported by award-winning investigative journalist Amy Westervelt. Four years ago, the Drilled podcast asked a question that changed how people thought about climate stories: What if we stopped acting like the climate crisis was inevitable and instead treated it like it truly is… the crime of the century? Now, the original true crime podcast about climate change is back with a new...
Apr 06, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, March 30th, 2023 Alana Sivin is the New York State Director of Criminal Justice Reform at FWD.us. We discuss the history of bail reform legislation, the subsequent roadblocks, and the truth behind the efficacy of this policy. Bail reform was passed to end a system of wealth-based detention of people who have not been convicted of a crime. Many of them are Black and brown. Verified public data shows that bail reform is not leading to a rise in re-arrest rates. It is also not contributin...
Mar 30, 2023•37 min•Ep 239•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, March 23rd, 2023 Joanna Schwartz is a professor of law at UCLA, where she teaches civil procedure and courses on police accountability. Her new book is Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable . We discuss the multiple levels of protection for police offers and how local and state laws can break us out of the qualified immunity maze. There is a broad systemic problem with holding police accountable when they abuse their power or violate the law. The Supreme Court and state and local...
Mar 23, 2023•45 min•Ep 238•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, March 16th, 2023 Laphonza Butler is President of Emily’s List, an organization that aims to help elect pro-choice democratic women to office. We're inspired by the organization's motto to "reject apathy and the status quo. Repeat daily." We discuss how women bring the challenges and dreams of their community to the policymaking table. Running for office is perhaps the ultimate form of civic participation. Bringing more women to policy making discussions is crucial, but it takes women t...
Mar 16, 2023•43 min•Ep 237•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, March 9th, 2023 Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider are co-authors of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School and co-hosts of the education podcast Have You Heard? We discuss the ideology behind the unmaking of public education and the dangers of losing one of our most prized public goods. One of the original visions of public education was about building individual democratic citizens for a polis, an American society. Schools are ...
Mar 09, 2023•51 min•Ep 236•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, March 2nd, 2023 Daniel Squadron is the co-founder and Executive Director of The States Project and also a former New York State senator. We discuss what it takes to win legislative majorities in state houses and why this is the essential ingredient to making change. State legislatures are the most important force in this country. When parties win legislative majorities, they can govern effectively. The good news is that tiny levels of new engagement make a seismic difference in state l...
Mar 02, 2023•48 min•Ep 235•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, February 23rd, 2023 Leah Goodridge has served on the New York City Planning Commission since 2021 and is the Managing Attorney for Housing Policy at Mobilization for Justice. She oversees a team that provides legal representation to tenants in eviction proceedings. We talk about housing in New York City, ranging from high rents and evictions to land use discussions. Tenant unions have advocated for tenants’ rights in New York and Albany, which pushed for right to counsel and new rent l...
Feb 23, 2023•34 min•Ep 234•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, February 16th, 2023 Gregg Colburn is the co-author of Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain US Patterns. He's also an Assistant Professor of Real Estate at the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments. We discuss the prevalence and variety of homelessness and the big ideas to tackle the housing crisis. About 5% of the population in the US will experience homelessness at some point in their life. Housing costs and other structural factors driv...
Feb 16, 2023•38 min•Ep 233•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, February 9th, 2023 Octavia Abell is the co-founder and CEO of Govern For America, which describes its mission as bridging the gap between governments and emerging leaders to build a pipeline of diverse and dynamic public sector talent. We discuss the power of public sector workers to be agents of change, whether that's public policy on climate or streamlining the process of getting a birth certificate. Government can deliver public policy that improves our daily lives. For example, civ...
Feb 09, 2023•37 min•Ep 232•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, February 2nd, 2023 Ruth Milkman is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and History at the CUNY Graduate Center and at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, where she chairs the Labor Studies Department. Her most recent books are Immigration Matters and Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat . Unions remain a voice for the voiceless, especially given that the playing field has been very strongly tilted in favor of employers for some time. Employers are very aggressively anti-union...
Feb 02, 2023•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, January 26th, 2023 Jared Yates Sexton is a self-described Hoosier, a Political Analyst, and host of the Muckrake Podcast. His latest book is The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis. We discuss our current era of neo-liberalism and what may be in store in the future. One of the most dangerous things that Reagan and Thatcher did on behalf of neoliberalism was convince people that government is impotent. This has eaten away at the authority of the state a...
Jan 26, 2023•44 min•Ep 230•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, January 19th, 2023 Victor Shi is a Gen Z activist, host of On the Move, co-host of iGen Politics, a junior at UCLA, and Strategy Director of Voters of Tomorrow. He was elected as the youngest delegate for Joe Biden in 2020 and previously interned at the White House and DNC. We discuss the power of the youth vote to determine elections and which issues motivate Gen Zers to go to the polls. Against the backdrop of voter suppression, especially in states like Texas, young voters struggle ...
Jan 19, 2023•38 min•Ep 229•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, January 12th, 2023 Danielle Moodie is a cultural connoisseur, a political junkie, and, in addition to Democracy-ish , also hosts the Woke AF Daily podcast. Wajahat Ali is a Daily Beast columnist, public speaker, recovering attorney, and author. His most recent book is Go Back To Where You Came From: And, Other Helpful Recommendations on Becoming American . We discuss the struggle toward a multiracial democracy and the role of civic action to achieve it. Despite many years of disinforma...
Jan 12, 2023•50 min•Ep 228•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, January 5th, 2023 Steve Phillips is the host of the Democracy in Color podcast and the author of How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good . We start off a new year of civic engagement and fighting for democracy with a conversation about his political leadership, thought leadership, and coalition building. The Confederate Battle plan of never giving an inch, ruthlessly rewriting the rules, distorting public opinion, silently sanction...
Jan 05, 2023•50 min•Ep 227•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, December 29th, 2022 We’re sharing a clip from an episode of Some of My Best Friends Are… Here’s a preview of another podcast, Some of My Best Friends Are, from Pushkin Industries. Harvard professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad and journalist Ben Austen are friends, one Black and one white, who grew up together on the South Side of Chicago. On Some of My Best Friends Are, Khalil and Ben, along with their guests, have critical conversations that are at once personal, political, and playful, ab...
Dec 29, 2022•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, December 22nd, 2022 Chris Kang is the Co-Founder and Chief Counsel of Demand Justice. He served in the White House for nearly seven years as Deputy Counsel to President Obama and Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. We talk about court reform from diversifying the bench of judges to expanding the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of the United States is actually the only court in the entire country that does not have a binding code of ethics. Congress has changed ...
Dec 22, 2022•38 min•Ep 226•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, December 15th, 2022 Jackie Salit and Thom Reilly are co-directors of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University and co-authors of The Independent Voter . Independents are making a statement about the culture, the practice, and the destructiveness of the current political culture. You have almost half the country identifying themselves as independents, but you have a system that is completely embedded with partisan bias. Jackie and Thom break dow...
Dec 15, 2022•48 min•Ep 225•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, December 8th, 2022 Chris Melody Fields Figueredo is the Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which seeks to strengthen democracy by building a national progressive strategy for ballot measures. We discuss ballot initiatives and how they put the issues directly into the hands of voters and out of the two-party system. It can really flip the script! Ballot measures are often higher vote-getters than candidates. They also transcend party lines. Medicaid expansion h...
Dec 08, 2022•45 min•Ep 224•Transcript available on Metacast Thursday, December 1st, 2022 Cecile Richards is the co-chair of American Bridge, former president of Planned Parenthood, a co-founder of Supermajority, and author of the book Make Trouble . We make sense of the midterms, take away some gold nuggets for democracy, and are reminded that grassroots organizing is all about the long game. A way to suppress democracy is by telling people it doesn't matter whether we vote or not. With widespread predictions that Republicans would sweep the midterms, in...
Dec 01, 2022•55 min•Ep 223•Transcript available on Metacast 
