Democracy in Danger

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,...

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?...

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 wh...

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 unrav...

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. Hedstro...

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 his...

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...

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...

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 form...

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 politi...

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...

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 suc...

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 sociologis...

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...

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 nee...

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...

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 s...

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...

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 de...

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 Vo...

Over the last 25 years, college tuition has almost doubled. Meanwhile, America’s K-through-12 education system has only become more fractured — with acute disparities in standards and resources at different schools sometimes just miles away from each other. But UVA president Jim Ryan has hope that with creative solutions across the board, learning can be democratized, and democracy itself enriched...

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, NYT journalist Eduardo Porter says, it was never sold as advertised. From the beginning, the myth cheated people of color and poisoned working-class solidarity. To mend this tattered republic, Porter tells Siva and Will, we nee...

Brazil is cursed. Or so it would seem, says media studies scholar David Nemer. Every three decades over the last 100 years, an authoritarian government rises to power. And the results are disastrous. Under Jair Bolsonaro, the “curse of the thirty years” continues, with covid deaths mounting and Brazilian institutions buckling. Find out what’s going on and what hope remains for democracy in South A...

In a largely unregulated social media ecosystem, a curious mom looking for info about vaccine mandates in public schools can end up feasting on the internet’s most insidious — and outlandish — conspiracy theories. Stanford researcher Renée DiResta joins Will and Siva to grapple with the tangled web of QAnon, antivaxxers and more. If the Jan. 6 riot in Washington is any indication, what starts in c...

Remember Silvio Berlusconi? Sex scandals, shady deals and a cult-like following marked the former Italian prime minister’s lasting grip on power. It’s a playbook with a long history and a troubling appeal nowadays, says NYU historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat. On our first episode back from the winter break, she walks Will and Siva through the characteristics of political strongmen — and the lessons they off...