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.
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.
We aim to rise above partisan bickering and hot takes on the news to have informed, nonpartisan, thought-provoking discussions about issues related to democracy. The show has been recognized with a People’s Choice Podcast Award and a Circle of Excellence Award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
From fights over masks and vaccines to the loss of social connection, the year 2020 accelerated many of the trends that were already happening in America and created new obstacles for the country to overcome. In his book 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed, sociologist Eric Klinenberg takes on a journey back to that year and everything that happened in it through the eyes of seven New Yorkers, one from each of the city's boroughs.Klinenberg, who recently delivered the Colloquium on the Environment lecture for the Penn State Sustainability Institute, joins us on Democracy Works to discuss how the pandemic accelerated political polarization and distrust in institutions in America and what we can do to repair that damage before the next pandemic or other major crisis comes our way. The book and the podcast interview allow us to see 2020—and, ultimately, ourselves—with clarity and empathy. Klinenberg is the Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of Palaces for the People, Going Solo, Heat Wave, and Fighting for Air. He has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Wired, and This American Life. He recently visited Penn State to present the 2025 Colloquium on the Environment for Penn State Sustainability; watch his lecture here.
Last week's Wisconsin Supreme Court election put a spotlight on state-level politics and the way that national politics can influence what happens in the states. But there are a lot of other developments happening at the state level that you might have missed. We catch up on what's happening with Alex Burness, a reporter who covers state and local democracy and criminal justice issues for Bolts.
As the name suggests, Bolts covers the "nuts and bolts of power and political change, from the local up." The topics we cover in this episode include:
We also discuss how national politics are shaping decisions that state legislatures make — even when those decisions appear to go against policies that people in a state overwhelmingly support. For more on this dynamic, check out our episode with Jake Grumbach on his book Laboratories Against Democracy: How National Parties Transformed State Politics.
Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe how tech platforms have eroded over time. According to him, the process goes something like this:
First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Doctorow joins us in a collaborative interview with News Over Noise to discuss how enshittifiation has affected our ability to find information, engage in deliberative democracy, and more. We also discuss what coalitions are necessary to push back against enshittification and how science fiction can help us imagine a more democratic world.
Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, including The Lost Cause, a science fiction novel of hope amidst the climate emergency, and The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Production.
Doctorow's lecture on enshittification
As the lead investigator into both the 2017 racist riot in Charlottesville and the January 6 insurrection, Tim Heaphy has a unique perspective on the cynicism and anger that also fueled Trump’s return to the presidency. All three events, both the violent protests and the peaceful and lawful decisions made at the ballot box in November 2024, reflect an increasing lack of trust in institutions among a growing number of Americans. He reflects on his work and where we go from here in the book Harbingers: What January 6 and Charlottesville Reveal About Rising Threats to American Democracy
Heaphy joins us to discuss the divide between people who trust the system and people who don't and make the case for why a disengaged citizenry is the biggest threat to American democracy. We also discuss his reactions to the first few weeks of the Trump administration and the pardoning of people convicted in relation to January 6.
Heaphy served as the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2009-14. His previous experience included clerking for Judge John A. Terry of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and working for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.
Chris Beem, McCourtney Institute for Democracy managing director and research professor of political science at Penn State, talks with author Jonathan Rauch about why the current crisis in American Christianity is also a crisis in American democracy.
In his new book Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy, Rauch (a lifelong atheist) asks what happens to American democracy if Christianity is no longer able, or no longer willing, to perform the functions on which our constitutional order depends?
In the book and in this conversation, Rauch encourages Christians to recommit to the teachings of their faith that align with Madison, not MAGA, and to understand that liberal democracy, far from being oppressive, is uniquely protective of religious freedom. At the same time, he calls on secular liberals to understand that healthy religious institutions are crucial to the survival of the liberal state.
This episode is the third in a series of discussions Chris has hosted about religion, liberalism, and democracy. The first was with journalist Tim Alberta about the evangelicals and the MAGA movement; the second was with political theorist Alex Lefebvre about the role of liberalism in our daily lives. Those episodes come together in this conversation with Rauch.
It's easy to feel defeated in the face of political challenges, but this episode shows that everyone has the capacity to create positive change and contribute to a culture of peace in their communities. In her book "Peace by Peace: Risking Public Action, Creating Social Change," Lisa Silvestri shows how ordinary people addressed issues in their communities form the West Bank to Baltimore.
Silvestri found those stories through a process she calls "crowdsourcing hope" and found that deliberately seeking out peace led her to discover more and more of it. The book is grounded in the Ancient Greek virtue phronesis, which Silvestri explains in the interview. We also discuss how not all social action needs to be political — and why it might be better if it's not.
After the interview, Cyanne Loyle and Candis Watts Smith discuss the power of using what frustrates you as an impetus for change, and how finding common cause can be more effective at reducing polarization than finding common ground.
Silvestri is an associate teaching professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State. She likes to think, write, and speak about war, peace, politics, social justice, digital culture, democracy and civic life. She has contributed to outlets including The Washington Post andThe New York Times and has spoken at The 92nd Street Y and The South by Southwest Festival.
Instances of political violence around the 2024 election and vote certification on January 6, 2025 did not come to fruition the way some experts feared they would throughout last year. But that doesn't mean that we can forget about threats of political violence until it's time for the next election. In fact, political violence continues to rise in the United States and throughout western Europe.
Our guests this week, Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Nicole Bibbins Sedaca of Freedom House and the George W. Bush Institute, are two of the leading voices on how to prevent political violence and create a healthier democracy. They join us to discuss what causes political violence and what democracies around the world can do to prevent it by addressing both cultural and structural issues in politics.
After the interview, Chris Beem and Cyanne Loyle discuss whether non-violent protest movements can successfully combat political violence amid growing polarization and support for political violence from some elected officials and political leaders.
Kleinfeld and Bibbins Sedaca are the authors of the article "How to Prevent Political Violence," which appeared in the fall 2024 issue of The Journal of Democracy.
Journal of Democracy article: How to Prevent Political Violence
The results of the 2024 election — from Donald Trump's victory to the failure of democracy reform efforts like ranked-choice voting and citizen-led redistricting — took some in the pro-democracy movement by surprise. How could voters make decisions up and down the ballot that would weaken democracy? Scott Warren argues that it's because "democracy" has become too closely associated with the Democratic Party. He laid out the case in a Stanford Social Innovation Review article published shortly after the election and joins us on the show to talk about it.
Warren is a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently leading an initiative focused on exploring, researching, and convening a pro-democracy conservative agenda in the US, with a short-term focus on election trust. He founded the civics education organization Generation Citizen and led the organization from 2009-2020.
In the interview, Warren discusses how Generation Citizen's funding change after Donald Trump won the 2016 election and how he and his colleagues at SNF Agora are traveling across the country to bring conservatives into the democracy reform movement. Finally, we discuss how to talk about democracy in a way that resonates across the political spectrum — the subject of a Democracy Takes piece Warren wrote with Lilia Dashevsky.
This episode marks the first time that all five of our hosts (Michael Berkman, Chris Beem, Cyanne Loyle, Candis Watts Smith, and Jenna Spinelle) are together on one episode. It's also the first time we've all been together since the election. We take some time to reflect on changes in America's political party, the decline of liberal democracy in the U.S., and how to harness the good from social media amid growing extremism and misinformation.
Along the way, you'll hear from some of the guests who've appeared on the show this year:
From the entire Democracy Works team, best wishes for a happy holiday season! We'll see you in 2025.
Balazs Trencsenyi, co-director of Invisible University for Ukraine (IUFU), joins us to discuss the university's work to uphold education and democracy in Ukraine amid the country's ongoing war with Russia. IUFU, an initiative of Central European University was founded shortly after the start of the war in 2022. Since then, more than 1,000 students have taken online and in-person courses taught by faculty around the world.
Trencsenyi is a professor of historical studies at CEU and and director of the university's Institute for Advanced Studies. He is a historian of East Central European political and cultural thought. He's witnessed Hungary's democratic erosion firsthand and discusses Viktor Orban's rise to power and how he's slowly dismantled the country's democratic institutions.
IUFU received the 2024 Brown Democracy Medal from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy. Trencsenyi and IUFU student assistant Nataliia Shuliakova visited Penn State in October to accept the award.
Read the 2024 Brown Medal book from IUFU students and faculty
Watch the Brown Medal ceremony and lecture
We are part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
