Building and sustaining a democracy is hard work. It’s not glamorous and often goes unnoticed in the daily news cycle. On the Democracy Works podcast, we talk to people who are out there making it happen and discuss why that work is so important. We aim to rise above partisan bickering and hot takes on the news to have informed, intelligent, and thought-provoking discussions about issues related to democracy.
The show features interviews with leading experts by Jenna Spinelle and commentary and opinion from hosts Michael Berkman and Christopher Beem from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State and Candis Watts Smith of Duke University. It's a collaborative project between The McCourtney Institute and WPSU.
Democracy Works won the Circle of Excellence Award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education in 2020 and the People's Choice Podcast Award in the Government and Organizations category in 2018.
For more information and additional episodes, visit democracyworkspodcast.com or subscribe to Democracy Works wherever you listen to podcasts.
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The Republican National Committee's decision to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates prompted us to take a step back and consider the role of debates in a democracy. -
Americans owe more than $1 trillion in student debt and some members of the Millennial and Gen Z wonder whether they'll ever pay off their loans. This week, we take a step back to see how we got here and how student debt relates to trust in democratic institutions. -
Peter Pomerantsev returns to the show to discuss how misinformation and polarization are impacting Ukraine and the United States in similar ways. -
Pulitzer prize-winning writer Jon Meacham joins us this week to discuss what unity looks like in polarizing times, who in history inspires him most, his role in the changing media landscape and more. -
Lilliana Mason of the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University joins us this week to discuss her work on the radicalization of American politics and why political scientists have been slow to catch onto it. -
Rep. Ro Khanna draws from Frederick Douglass and John Rawls to create a vision for democratic patriotism, and has ideas for how technology can help make that vision a reality. -
Michael Berkman leads this week's interview on the evolution of Russia and Ukraine in the post-Soviet era to understand the origins of the current conflict between the countries. -
Foreign policy expert and Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan joins us this week to discuss crises in democracy in the United States and Ukraine. -
This week, we dive headfirst into free speech, cancel culture, academic freedom, and what role universities play in democracy. -
Thomas Main argues that illiberalism is the basic repudiation of liberal democracy, the very foundation on which the United States rests. He joins us this week to discuss how we got here and what we can do about it.
