Democracy Works

At the end of March, millions of Americans lost access to Medicaid as pandemic-era expansions to the program were rolled back. At the same time, North Carolina's legislature voted to expand Medicaid, marking a demonstration of bipartisan agreement in these polarizing times. This backdrop makes it a very interesting time to talk with Jamila Michener, who studies both the specific politics of Medica...

This week, we bring you an episode from Feet in 2 Worlds and its series Immigrants in a Divided Country, which explores the current political landscape from the perspective of immigrants.  In this personal audio essay, writer and audio producer Boen Wang goes looking for answers. He always thought his mom—an immigrant from Mainland China —was brainwashed by the Chinese Communist Party. His mom, on...

Juries have been at the center of some of the most emotionally charged moments of political life, especially in high profile cases like the trial of Derek Chauvin for George Floyd's murder in 2021. This week, we explore juries as a democratic institution. Our guest, Sonali Chakravarti, argues that juries provide an important site for democratic action by citizens and that their use should be reviv...

More than ever, civic learning is needed to ensure each and every person across this country has the necessary tools to engage as members of our self-governing society. However, schools are also a growing part of the culture wars. According to a 2022 National Education Association Survey, nearly half of schools reported challenges teaching about race and racism and practices related to LGBTQ stude...

People who want to improve the world often encounter problems of collective action (how to get many individuals to act in concert), of discourse (how to talk and think productively about contentious matters), and of exclusion. To get things done, they must form or join and sustain functional groups, and through them, develop skills and virtues that help them to be effective and responsible civic a...

Many of us can conjure moments when politics made us feel sad. But how often do those feelings translate into more serious forms of depression or other mental health issues? And if politics does make us depressed, what do we do about it? Christopher Ojeda has spent the past few years exploring these questions and joins us this week to talk about the relationship between depression and democracy. ...

Why has the underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in elected office proved so persistent? Some experts suggest that women lack sufficient ambition to run for office relative to men, while others say that districts with majority white populations do not provide adequate resources or opportunities for minority candidates to succeed. These approaches tend to treat women and racial minori...

How much news is too much? Or not enough? News Over Noise, the new podcast from Penn State's News Literacy Initiative explores that question and offers guidance on how to consume news that enhances your participation in our democracy without becoming overwhelmed by all the noise on social media and the 24/7 news cycle.  News Over Noise co-hosts Matt Jordan and Leah Dajches join us this week to dis...

We've had some incredible guests on the show in 2022. For our final episode of the year, we're taking a look back at what we've learned from them.  Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, Candis Watts Smith, and Jenna Spinelle revisit our episodes with: Jake Grumbach Jeffrey Sutton Francis Fukuyama Jamelle Bouie Lilliana Mason Jon Meacham Jessica Huseman Joanna Lydgate A programming note: Democracy Works wil...

A few days after the midterms, a Substack post from Dave Karpf caught our eye. In it, he takes up the question of how the Republican and Democratic parties should move forward after the election. This conversation covers party networks, Karpf's lessons from environmental organizing, and how to craft political messages in a changing social media environment.   Karpf is an associate professor in the...

Across op-ed pages and Substack newsletters,  college campuses have become fiercely ideological spaces where students unthinkingly endorse a liberal orthodoxy and forcibly silence anyone who dares to disagree. These commentators lament the demise of free speech and academic freedom. But what is really happening on college campuses? In his new book, Campus Misinformation , Penn State professor Brad...

Jamelle Bouie's writing spans everything from 19th century American history to 1990s movies, but he's spent a lot of time recently thinking about America's founders, the Constitution, and the still-unfinished work of making America a multi-everything democracy.  In that work, he's identified a contradiction that he believes is impeding democratic progress: "Americans take for granted the idea that...

We talked with Pennsylvania Attorney General (and now Governor-elect) Josh Shapiro back in 2018, at the height of efforts by state attorneys general to block actions from the Trump administration on issues from immigration to opioids. We discuss those efforts in this conversation and the role that Shapiro sees states playing in American democracy — a new meaning to the term "states rights." Lookin...

With hundreds of elections deniers running in the midterms, democracy is on the ballot this fall. The team at the States United Democracy Center is at the forefront of efforts to ensure free, fair, and secure elections in 2022, 2024, and beyond. Cofounders Norman Eisen, Joanna Lydgate, and Christine Todd Whitman join us this week to talk about how they're doing it in states across the country and...

Amid election deniers and political polarization, it's easy to overlook the times when democracy is actually working. We do that this week in a hopeful conversation about resident-centered government. Elected officials and administrative staff like city planners often have the best intentions when it comes to development and redevelopment, but political and professional incentives push them to pur...

The conversation about climate change has come a long way from the days of polar bears and melting ice caps, but as our guest this week shares,  there's still a long way to go in creating truly inclusive climate policy. In order to do that, those who are most impacted by environmental racism need to be involved in the policymaking process.  Rhiana Gunn-Wright is the director of climate policy at t...

It's no secret that liberalism didn't always live up to its own ideals. In America, many people were denied equality before the law. Who counted as full human beings worthy of universal rights was contested for centuries, and only recently has this circle expanded to include women, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people, and others. Conservatives complain that liberalism empties the common life of meani...

This episode is part of the series 2022 Midterms: What's at Stake? series from The Democracy Group podcast network. Think of it as an election administrator vibe check as we head into the midterms. Election officials are the backbone of our democracy, but also increasingly the face of fraud allegations from far-right groups and others who deny the legitimacy of elections that don't go their way. M...

The Democratic Party saw a surge in grassroots activism after the 2016 election, after George Floyd's murder, and most recently after the Dobbs decision. However, the party seems to be sticking to the same old playbook of fundraising emails and text messages, rather than building long-term organizational power. Our guests this week explore why that is and how the Democratic Party can use grassroot...

Following the Dobbs  v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Supreme Court decision, reproductive rights are heading to ballots in states across the country this fall. Are states the right venue for this and other issues? Our guest this week says yes and makes the case that state courts and constitutions are more democratic than their counterparts at the federal level. In Who Decides? State as Labo...

This week, we bring you an episode from Future Hindsight. Our own Chris Beem talks with host Mila Atmos about his new book, The Seven Democratic Virtues: What You Can Do to Overcome Tribalism and Save Our Democracy. In the book and in this conversation, Beem argues that American democracy is at a crisis point and to fix our politics, we have to change our culture first. We can all take part in cre...

COVID-19 showed just how essential high-speed Internet is to our everyday lives. It determines how many of us work, learn, and access news and entertainment. Yet, millions of Americans do not have reliable access to broadband and millions more can't afford to pay for the service that's available to them. Christopher Ali, the Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications at Penn State, unpacks these issues...

The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act shines a light on the administrative state. How will the billions of dollars for Medicaid, green energy, and other provisions be spent and turned into policy? With the help of people whose jobs are largely nonpartisan and non-political. Complaints about government bureaucracy are nothing new but has recently moved beyond rhetoric to a concerted attack on...

Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, Candis Watts Smith, and Jenna Spinelle are back after summer break to discuss the January 6 committee hearings, which we previously teased as " democracy's summer blockbusters ." Did they live up to the hype? Did they change public opinion — and does that matter? We also discuss the January 6 hearings and the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago in the context of democratic pedago...

It's no secret that there's a partisan divide in the media, but thus far, solutions to bridge that divide have been few and far between. Our guest this week had an idea that seems to be taking hold and building a readership across the political spectrum. Isaac Saul is the founder and publisher of Tangle , a non-partisan news and politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across th...