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Democracy Works: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Penn State McCourtney Institute for Democracy
The Democracy Works podcast seeks to answer that question by examining a different aspect of democratic life each week — from voting to criminal justice to the free press and everything in between. We interview experts who study democracy, as well as people who are out there doing the hard work of democracy day in and day out. The show’s name comes from Pennsylvania’s long tradition of iron and steel works — people coming together to build things greater than the sum of their parts. We believe that democracy is the same way. Each of us has a role to play in building and sustaining a healthy democracy and our show is all about helping people understand what that means.
Latest Episodes
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- 2 weeks ago47 min
Federalism and power in Trump 2.0
This episode explores how the relationship between national and state politics changed from the first Trump administration to the second one, and how the administration is using its levers of power differently this time around to target companies, law firms, universities, and more. Our guest is Jake Grumbach, who has wide-ranging expertise in democratic institutions, labor, federalism, racial and economic inequality, and much more.Grumbach is an associate professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He has a new paper that examines what happened to a company's bottom line when it defied a Trump administration executive order about DEI programs. He previously joined us on the show in 2022 to discuss his book Laboratories Against Democracy: How National Parties Transformed State Politics, investigates the causes and consequences of the nationalization of state politics. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- Oct 5, 202641 min
How identity fuels political divides
From Brexit to the 2020 election, the United States and the United Kingdom seem more divided than ever as media, political polarization, and other factors combine to form what Mitchell Smith describes as "the Great Perceptual Divide."Smith joined Democracy Works to explore what this divide is, how it's impacting politics on both sides of the Atlantic, and other countries might offer a model for moving beyond it.He is Director of the School of International Affairs at Penn State and Professor of International Affairs. His book, The Great Perceptual Divide: Identity and Democracy in the U.S. and Britain, is available now from Bloomsbury Academic. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- Sep 21, 202650 min
Who pays for American democracy?
Our guest this week argues that you can't talk about the history of democracy in America without talking about the history of taxation in America. After listening to this interview, we agree and we think you will, too. Vanessa Williamson is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, and a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. She studies taxation and democracy in America. Her most recent book,The Price of Democracy, reveals the revolutionary power of taxation in American history. She is also the author of Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes, and with Harvard professor Theda Skocpol, “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. We discuss the origins of the anti-tax movement in America and why the story commonly told about the Boston Tea Party is wrong. Williamson also shares some of her work interviewing current and former IRS employees and how the agency can be revitalized to ensure that Americans can pay their taxes easily and fairly. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- Aug 31, 202648 min
Political status and the DSA summer
While we were away over the summer, it was hard to miss stories about Democratic primary elections and seeming rise of the Democratic Socialists of America — followed almost immediately about the challenges DSA candidates will face in November's election. For our first episode of the fall season, we talk with a social movement scholar about whether the DSA's policies can win over enough votes to win in a general election and why political coalitions don't always align with the structure of America's two-party system. Rory McVeigh is the Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame and and Director of the Center for the Study of Social Movements. He is the author of Politics and Privilege: How the Status Wars Sustain Inequality, along with William Carbonaro, Chang Liu, and Kenadi Silcox. The book investigates whether Americans are more likely to support a social-change organization if it explicitly opposes racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and religious bigotry or if it focuses exclusively on economic equality. Drawing on the results, they argue that privileged groups’ desire to preserve their status is the primary obstacle to forming progressive alliances. We discuss what these findings mean for the DSA, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party as we head into the midterms and the next presidential election cycle. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- May 18, 202638 min
How to create social change that sticks
Changing the world is difficult. One reason is that the most important problems, like climate change and democracy reform are structural. They are larger than any one person can solve on their own, yet we're bombarded with information about individual actions like attending a public meeting or lowering your carbon footprint. Do these individual actions even matter? Should we focus instead of fixing broken systems? For our final episode of the season, we explore how individual actions and structural reform can work together to create lasting social change on a range of issues, including democracy. Our guests offer a way out of the either-or thinking and a framework for creating lasting social change. In Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change, Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva, and Daniel Kelly show us how we can connect our personal choices to structural change and why individual choices matter, though not in the way people usually think. Brownstein and Kelly join us on the show to discuss examples of how individual actions leveled up to create larger-scale change, including Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the milk pasteurization movement in the early 20th century. We also discuss how the lessons from these movements can be applied to democracy reform campaigns like campaign finance reform and ranked-choice voting. Brownstein is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at John Jay College and Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Kelly is Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University, where he is also the Director of the Cognition, Agency, and Intelligence Center. This is our final episode before our summer break. Thank you to Brandon Stover for editing the show this year, to WPSU for production and promotional support, and to Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, Cyanne Loyle, and Candis Watts Smith for sharing their insights on the show. We'll see you in September! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- May 4, 20261h 4m
Talk Nerdy: Black Evidence with Candis Watts Smith
Democracy Works host Candis Watts Smith joins Cara Santa Maria on the Talk Nerdy podcast to discuss her new book, Black Evidence: A History and a Warning. From Reconstruction to Redemption, from the enactment of landmark civil rights legislation to the execution of the Southern strategy, from 2020’s multiracial protests to the swift elimination of policies etching out a more inclusive society, Americans regularly experience periods of racial reckoning followed by walloping retrenchment. In Black Evidence, Smith shows that this pattern is the result of an American habit: denying the truths about our society that Black people experience and remember. Smith then delivers a warning: the effects of this habit ripple out, dulling our ability to identify the signs of authoritarianism and heightening our tolerance for cruelty. Still, she shows how these same truths offer models to overcome our repeated predicament. Talk Nerdy host Cara Santa Maria is a clinical health psychologist, science communicator, podcaster, and Emmy Award-winning journalist. In addition to Talk Nerdy, she co-hosts the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast and coauthored Skeptics Guide to the Universe book. Subscribe to Talk Nerdy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- Apr 20, 202631 min
When politics enters the doctor's office
From the COVID-19 pandemic to debates over vaccines and the Make America Healthy Again movement, politics and medicine are intertwined in ways not seen in previous generations. When politics enters the doctor's office, what does it mean for the health of our democracy? Julianna Pacheco is working to answer that questions and joins Democracy Works host Chris Beem for a conversation about medicine and politics. They also discuss deaths of despair and how feeling hopeless can lead to political disengagement. Pacheco is professor and department chair of political science at the University of Iowa. She received a Ph.D. in political science from Penn State and postdoctoral training as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of Michigan. She is currently a Carnegie Fellow and part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program. Her research sits at the nexus of political science and population health. She is currently working on a book looking at the role of physicians on the polarization of health. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- Apr 6, 202646 min
The Declaration of Independence and democracy renovation
Danielle Allen's work straddles the line between past and present. On one hand, she's on the road this year talking about America's 250th anniversary in the context of her book on the Declaration of Independence. On the other hand, she's hard at work on Substack writing and talking about democracy reform (or renovation she calls it). She's also leading a coalition working to bring nonpartisan primary elections to Massachusetts through a ballot initiative this fall. Allen return to the show to discuss America's Semiquincentennial and what lessons today's democracy renovators can draw from the process that the Founders undertook to create the Declaration of Independence. We also discuss her work on Educating for American Democracy and Our Common Purpose, two national projects launched in 2021 that were the subject of her first appearance on the podcast. She talks about what's changed, for better and worse, in the past five years. Discussed in this episode: Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality - Allen's book on the Declaration of Independence The Renovator - Allen's Substack Coalition for a Healthy Democracy - group leading the Massachusetts nonpartisan primary ballot measure Educating for American Democracy Our Common Purpose Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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About Democracy Works
The Democracy Works podcast seeks to answer that question by examining a different aspect of democratic life each week — from voting to criminal justice to the free press and everything in between. We interview experts who study democracy, as well as people who are out there doing the hard work of democracy day in and day out. The show’s name comes from Pennsylvania’s long tradition of iron and steel works — people coming together to build things greater than the sum of their parts. We believe that democracy is the same way. Each of us has a role to play in building and sustaining a healthy democracy and our show is all about helping people understand what that means.
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