The Democracy Group

Ian Bremmer is a political scientist and he’s the founder and president of the research and consulting firm Eurasia Group. We discuss his latest book, The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats -- and Our Response -- Will Change the World . He argues that the major challenges humanity is facing are spurring us to create a new world order that works against these common threats. The climate crisis, dis...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Kevin Munger joins Lee to discuss the generation gap in American politics. Munger is the Jeffrey L. Hyde and Sharon D. Hyde and Political Science Board of Visitors Early Career Professor of Political Science and Assistant Professor of Political Science and Social Data Analytics at Penn State University. His research has appeared in leading journals...

The primary election season in this midterm election year is now over in most states. Turnout was often very low— less than 20% of registered voters showed up in many places— while the partisan divide was as wide as ever.  In this episode, we hear from leading political strategists, scholars, authors, and journalists about the American system for choosing candidates who will face each other in Nov...

“We have mental mechanisms that have been there since the Stone Age and no longer function in this environment” Short-term thinking, lazy reasoning and stereotyping, and too much focus on what’s bad (the ‘negativity bias’)… all are throw-backs to our last major evolutionary stage, when humans lived in a world of scarcity, danger and constant tribal fighting. In today’s more clement environment whe...

We’re back! Legal scholar Jedediah Purdy joins Will and Siva to help launch a new season focused on democracy, law and the people. Can Americans transcend gross inequality, neoliberal ideology, and the “politics of nihilism” taking root among their leaders? Looking to Frederick Douglass for inspiration, Purdy thinks so. His new book urges readers to reimagine and rebuild their body politic — to ru...

There's always another set of elections. So, let's set up for elections. Let's figure out how to mobilize people. Let's figure out how to engage them and answer the question, ‘Why they elected this person? What did we miss? What do we need to build? Which kind of program.’ I think using the streets is great, but definitely you need training… A lot of training. This is a long-term effort. It's not...

Tim Miller is an MSNBC analyst, writer-at-large at The Bulwark , and the host of "Not My Party" on Snapchat . Tim was communications director for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign and spokesman for the Republican National Committee during Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. He has since left the GOP and become one of the leaders of the “Never Trump” movement. He is author of Why We Did It: A Travelog...

In US politics bipartisanship is now the exception, not the rule. But the Millennial Action Project is pushing back: it trains young leaders to bridge the partisan divide and work together to solve America’s problems.  In this episode, we meet two members of the Millennial Action Project from opposite sides of the aisle. They are state representatives from Connecticut, Republican Devin Carney and...

A recording from our Twitter Space Event with Renew Democracy Initiative Hosts Justin Kempf , Host of Democracy Paradox Guests Evan Mawarire , founder of #TheFlag movement If you would like to listen and ask questions live, follow us @GroupDemocracy or subscribe to our newsletter are democracygroup.org/newsletter to be the first to know about upcoming events. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz compa...

Join us as podcast host Corey Nathan of Talkin’ Politics and Religion without Killin’ Each Other flips the switch by interviewing The Village Square's Liz Joyner and Vanessa Rowse about how we make pigs fly.  We were fast friends with Corey right from the start because of our shared goal to have constructive and respectful conversations about those taboo topics of politics and religion. Corey star...

This week, host Farai Chideya interviews longtime TV and film producer and now co-director of the Sundance award-winning documentary Aftershock, Tonya Lewis Lee and one of the film’s featured subjects, reproductive justice advocate Shawnee Benton-Gibson. Benton-Gibson’s daughter died in October 2019 after giving birth – one more fatality in a long epidemic of Black maternal mortality. Farai also s...

From pandemics, populism and climate change, AI and ISIS, inflation and growing tensions with China and Russia, we are faced with enormous challenges— some of which threaten our existence. In this episode we discuss how we are all influenced by our personal perspectives and prejudices— our frames— and how we can use mental models to see patterns, solve problems and go beyond a narrow lens of red v...

Amanda Renteria the CEO of Code for America, an organization of people-centered problem solvers working to improve government in a meaningful way. We discuss making government work better for everyday people by design . The first season of When the People Decide has officially ended, but we have a few bonus episodes for you that we’ll be sharing over the next few weeks. This first is a conversatio...

Amanda Renteria the CEO of Code for America, an organization of people-centered problem solvers working to improve government in a meaningful way. We discuss making government work better for everyday people by design . Good governance starts with getting the basics right, such as delivering clean water to all communities. Making government simple and accessible is also key. Currently it’s so comp...

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...

In this week’s episode of Politics In Question , Hans Noel joins Julia and James to talk about political parties. Noel is an associate professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University, where he conducts research on political coalitions, political parties, and ideology. He is the author of Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America , and a co-author of The Party Decides...

There are a lot of people quietly who are deeply frustrated with this war. Every rich person in Russia with one or two exceptions are frustrated with this war. I think many of the so-called liberal technocratic elites in the government are frustrated with this war. Lots of regional leaders are frustrated with this war. It's not just the vocal opposition. I think there's a quiet minority and maybe...

A recording from our Twitter Space Event with FairVote Hosts Justin Kempf , Host of Democracy Paradox Guests David Daley and Deb Otis from FairVote If you would like to listen and ask questions live, follow us @GroupDemocracy or subscribe to our newsletter are democracygroup.org/newsletter to be the first to know about upcoming events. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com...

Claire Atkin joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about her career and how Check My Ads is working to defund purveyors of disinformation. Additional Information The Great Battlefield Podcast More shows from The Democracy Group Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Environmental activist and author Bill McKibben warned the public about the perils of climate change and the damage human activity is causing more than forty years ago. Former South Carolina Republican Congressman Bob Inglis became a climate activist much later, but he is no less passionate. Both differ on politics and who to vote for,  but they agree on the goal of sharply reducing carbon emissio...

Inflation  is through the roof.  Stocks  are through the floor. Most economists say that a  recession  is likely to hit soon or is already here. Add to this the  economic impact  of the Ukraine invasion, an  entitlements crisis  with the possible bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security trust funds in the coming years, and today's weird housing market.  In this episode, we discuss all these, plu...

Center Co-Directors Bob Shrum and Mike Murphy join journalists Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns to discuss their latest book and the degree to which the two-party system has been strained to the point of disintegration. Featuring: Jonathan Martin - Co-Author, "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future"; National Political Correspondent, New York Times Alexander Burns...

We live in a world of political extremes, with the far right and far left denigrating each other on a regular basis. But could the future lie with politicians who appeal to everyone else?  Our guest on this show says yes. Former CIA agent and Republican congressman Will Hurd of San Antonio won three terms representing Texas’s 23rd district. He was told he could never it because it was bright blue,...

From COVID-19 policies to reproductive rights, conversations about freedom and liberty seem to be front and center in politics and the culture wars. This week, we take a deep dive into the philosophical underpinnings of these concepts and how different interpretations of them impact our ability to sustain a democracy. We also examine how bringing  the idea of freedom into political debates can obs...

This week, Our Body Politic presents a special episode where Farai exclusively speaks to former Watergate prosecutor, legal expert and MSNBC analyst Jill Wine-Banks about the House Select Committee’s investigation into the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Wine-Banks offers insight into the shocking evidence that is coming out of the ongoing public hearings, the real life harm election officials are f...