How music transcends political polarization
Last week, we heard from Aaron Maybin about the ways visual art relates to his conception and practice of democracy. This week, we are going...
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Democracy Works
Building and sustaining a democracy is hard work. It’s not glamorous and often goes unnoticed in the daily news cycle. On Democracy Works, we talk to people who are out there making it happe...
Episodes
20 of 84 episodesDoing the hard work of democracy in Baltimore
You might remember Aaron Maybin from his time on the football field at Penn State or in the NFL. These days, he’s doing something much...
How conspiracies are damaging democracy
From Pizzagate to Jeffrey Epstein, conspiracies seem to be more prominent than ever in American political discourse. What was once confined...
Defending the First Amendment and the Fourth Estate
We are back with new episodes this week, and we’re starting with an interview that we recorded in New York City earlier this summer. D...
Standing up for science and fighting the climate wars [rebroadcast]
For the last of our summer rebroadcasts, we are revisiting the conversation with Penn State’s Michael Mann, a world-renowned climate s...
Tracing the past, present, and future of protests
Since we started this show, we’ve had the opportunity to speak with several organizers, from Joyce Ladner in the Civil Rights movement...
A conversation about conversation [rebroadcast]
This week, we are revisiting another episode from the Democracy Works back catalog. This discussion is a nice companion to our episode with...
Politics and Polls: Blue state federalism
Democracy Works summer break 2019 continues with an episode from Politics and Polls, a podcast produced by the Woodrow Wilson School of Publ...
The Pledge: Are you scared of the cafeteria lady?
Our summer break continues this week with an episode of The Pledge, a podcast about people who are taking an active role in improving democr...
How Democracies Die author Daniel Ziblatt on the “grinding work” of democracy [rebroadcast]
Daniel Ziblatt Our summer break continues this week with a rebroadcast of one of our very first episodes, a conversation with How Democracie...
A democracy summer reading list [rebroadcast]
Democracy Works is taking a few weeks off for the summer. While we do, we are going to share some older episodes you might have missed, alon...
Answering your questions about democracy
Is the United States really a democracy? What will the EU look like in 50 years? What should 2020 candidates be doing to demonstrate civilit...
Congressional oversight and making America pragmatic again
Charlie Dent We tend to think about congressional oversight in very academic terms — checks and balances, the Framers, etc. But what does it...
Will AI destroy democracy?
Jay Yonamine Some political scientists and democracy scholars think that it might. The thinking goes something like this: inequality will ri...
The 2019 version of Democracy in America
Lindsay Lloyd. Photo by Grant Miller If Alexis de Tocqueville visited America today, what would he have to say about the condition of our de...
What neoliberalism left behind
Wendy Brown Much like our conversation with Patricia Roberts-Miller on demagoguery last week, neoliberalism is one of those fuzzy words that...
Demagogues are more common than you think
Patricia Roberts-Miller When you think of the word “demagogue,” what comes to mind? Probably someone like Hitler or another bomb...
What does the Mueller report mean for democracy?
Laura Rosenberger By now, you’ve no doubt head all about the report issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the drama in Washingt...
School segregation then and now
Crystal Sanders It’s been 65 years since the Brown v. Board of Education changed public schooling throughout a large portion of the Un...
What Serial taught Sarah Koenig about criminal justice — recorded live at Penn State
Sarah Koenig spent a year inside Cleveland’s criminal justice system for season three of the Serial podcast. Along the way, she met so...