AUDREY JAQUISS interviews RHIANA GUNN-WRIGHT, Climate Policy Director of the Roosevelt Institute. They delve into discussions on the intersection of climate policy with issues such as white supremacy, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and economic concerns. Gunn-Wright explores the importance of universality in climate policy and strategies for navigating reactionary political landscapes. 

Barbara McQuade, a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, discusses her new book Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America. Barbara argues disinformation is a threat to democracy. However, the larger threat is not from foreign adversaries, but those within the country who use disinformation for political gain. Still, the even larger attack comes from within ourselves. She argues we need a moral reckoning to preserve democracy in an era where disinformation and misinformation...

JONATHAN BLITZER, staff writer at The New Yorker, discusses his recent book Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis. According to Blitzer, immigration policy happens at the intersection of international relations and domestic politics. In this episode, he uses personal stories to help explain his points. JUSTIN KEMPF, host of the Democracy Paradox, interviews Blitzer about immigration, Central America, and the many people affected. ...

Join Secretary MARCIA LIMA and Penn Professor MICHAEL G. HANCHARD in a candid conversation on the pervasive nature of anti-blackness in Brazil and the United States. Lima currently serves as the Secretary of Affirmative Action Policies and Combatting and Overcoming Racism at the Ministry of Racial Equality in Brazil. This conversation examines parallels and disparities between the two countries in addressing systemic racism, as well as the ways in which the fight against racism is portrayed...

Interviewer: AUDREY JAQUISS. Director of the Institute for Global Sustainability and Professor at Boston University, BENJAMIN SOVACOOL, delves into the crucial concept of energy justice. Sovacool unravels its definition and examines the demographics and locations where it is most pertinent. Distinguishing energy justice from climate or environmental justice, he offers insights into the nuances of this evolving field. Sovacool shares policy recommendations aimed at achieving energy justice and...

Interviewer: JOSHUA ROSE. Associate Professor at Georgetown University, JOSHUA CHERNISS, explores the dynamic relationship between diversity of thought and democracy, acknowledging it as both a core element of democracy's existence while also a significant challenge to its sustenance. He challenges the assumption that democracy will endure, emphasizing the need for active reflection to safeguard its foundations. In this conversation, Professor Cherniss navigates the nuanced terrain of liberal...

Interviewer: JOSHUA ROSE. Philadelphia is a city grappling with complex dynamics surrounding policing, criminality, and a commitment to rehabilitation. HELENA VON NAGY, an Assistant District Attorney in the Municipal Court, delves into the intricacies of Philadelphia's criminal justice system, narrating her day-to-day experiences working at the heart of Philadelphia's legal landscape. She sheds light on the multifaceted world of criminal justice in the City of Brotherly Love.

Interviewer: MATTHEW BERKMAN. On the cusp of a crucial election for Virginia, political activist JOSH STANFIELD discusses the stakes in his second AMC podcast appearance in an interview with political scientist Matthew Berkman. With this being the first legislative election for both Congressional chambers under new maps designed after the 2020 census, the status quo has shifted – aligning with a period of significant political turnover. Stanfield emphasizes the lack of faith that Virginia...

Interviewer: JOSHUA ROSE. In his recent book, The Principle of Political Hope, political theorist LOREN GOLDMAN attempts to avoid the sense of inevitability that creeps into political thought, either as optimistic faith in unstoppable progress or pessimistic despair at a broken world. Engaging with thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, Ernst Bloch, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, Goldman holds up hope as a productive middle ground, combining belief in the possibility of a better...

Interviewer: AUDREY JAQUISS. The California legislature has passed two bills, now awaiting Governor Gavin Newsome’s signature, that potentially open up a new frontier in environmental law and climate action. As law professor MICHAEL GERRARD and Wharton professor ERIC ORTS explain, SB 253 would require that companies disclose their carbon emissions, and SB 261 their vulnerability to climate-related risks, in a standardized, verifiable way, making it more difficult for them to hide behind vague...

Interviewer: KIM FERNANDES. Our perspective on emerging technology such as A.I. is often future-oriented and technocratic, focused on how its design features might someday transform the world – and, above all, the advanced economies of the world – in ways wanted and unwanted. In their work at the Data & Society Institute, RIGOBERTO LARA GUZMÁN and RANJIT SINGH have focused instead on the current impacts of A.I. and other data-driven technologies on the lived experience of people in the...

Interviewer: MATTHEW BERKMAN. In a repeat of the debt-ceiling crisis of the Obama years, House Republicans are threatening to maintain the current $31-trillion limit on borrowing by the federal government, thus raising the specter of imminent default. Wharton Professor ERIC ORTS, in a return to the podcast, worries that this time Republican brinksmanship might signal an actual willingness to go over the brink. In his discussion with political scientist Matthew Berkman, he argues that the very...

Interviewer: RAFAEL KHACHATURIAN. Social justice movements are often defined by high-visibility moments that succeed in crystallizing new attitudes and enlarging the scope of national debate. What often follows, as media scholar and activist RACHEL KUO explores in her work, is a slow death by a thousand cuts: co-optation, backlash, internal discord and lack of resources, and the sheer capacity of pervasive state and corporate propaganda to reset the status quo. In her wide-ranging discussion...

Interviewer: ZACHARY LOEB. When high-profile data breaches or cyber attacks reveal the nation’s vulnerability to hacking, there are often loud calls for tighter cybersecurity. As scholar of science and technology REBECCA SLAYTON points out, however, in a world of limited resources and competing priorities, the degree to which we can secure our infrastructure is not absolute. In her conversation with historian Zachary Loeb, she discusses the ways that vulnerabilities change over time as...

Interviewer: ZACHARY LOEB. In the period following World War II and during the Cold War, the United States was the indisputable world leader in technological development, putting the U.S. government in a privileged position to shape technologies for its own economic and security ends. National security expert MELISSA FLAGG argues that since 2000 these circumstances have changed drastically: there are now many more actors in technological development, both in terms of countries across the...

Interviewer: MATTHEW BERKMAN. In the U.S., the institutionalization of the labor movement, with established unions following procedures set out by the NLRB through professional staffs and legal teams, has gone hand-in-hand with its decline. In the face of laws stacked against it, the movement’s growth often comes from upstarts that find new ways to harness the collective power of workers. In recent years, the most spectacular example of this has been the against-the-odds success of the Amazon...

Interviewer: ZACHARY LOEB. The concept of “smart cities” promises better living through data and the software that can use it in real time to control urban systems. Law and Public Policy professor SHEILA FOSTER argues that, among the diverse populations that live in cities, which lives are actually improved by this technology – and which are arguably made worse – very much depends on who gets to participate in their design, implementation, and oversight. In her discussion with historian of...

Interviewer: RAFAEL KHACHATURIAN. As with all aspects of American life, Black people were part of the digital revolution from the beginning. CHARLTON MCILWAIN’s work explores multiple strands of this history, in which African Americans appear as both creative subjects and objects of social control. In his discussion with political theorist Rafael Khachaturian, he tells of early pioneers who developed software and created networked digital communities before the Internet became widespread. In...

Interviewer: ZACHARY LOEB. In the original formulation of urban theorist Jane Jacobs, “eyes on the street” linked public safety to the inadvertent effect of people going about their business and, in the process, monitoring their shared surroundings. In her recent work, media studies professor SHANNON MATTERN has explored how certain technologies, under the umbrella of “smart cities” or “urban tech,” have encroached on this and other ways that people have long managed to live together in...

Interviewer: MATTHEW BERKMAN. In the tradition of C. Wright Mill’s The Power Elite, author AARON GOOD argues that political science needs to bring power back in and seriously consider the links between social elites and the continuity of U.S. policy from one administration to the next. In his discussion with political scientist Matthew Berkman, Good proposes a tri-partite model of the state that builds on conceptions of a “dual state” comprised of the democratic government and the more...

Interviewer: MELISSA TEIXEIRA. Author, journalist, and 2022-23 Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies MARILENE FILENTO reflects on the recent national election in Brazil that brought former president Lula da Silva back into power. In her discussion with Penn Assistant Professor of History Melissa Teixeira, she describes the response to Lula’s victory over the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro – both the ecstasy on the...

Interviewer: MATTHEW BERKMAN. Professor IAN LUSTICK returns to the podcast (see episode 1.15) to discuss the recent Israeli election, its implications, and the one-state reality that now tacitly guides political actors, Israeli, Palestinian and American alike. In his discussion with political scientist Matthew Berkman, he describes how both Jewish settlers and Palestinian leaders in the Occupied Territories are pushing to declare the territories officially annexed, albeit with different...

Interviewer: MATTHEW BERKMAN. While its place in the mythology of the nation’s founding suggests to many that Virginia must itself be a democracy, political activist JOSH STANFIELD points out that in practice it has fallen far short of that ideal. Governed at first by an oligarchy of white planters, and then during the twentieth century by the corporate-friendly Byrd Machine, it has known only brief interludes of revolt against the entrenched interests controlling the commonwealth. In his...

Series: Democracy and Emergent Technology. Interviewer: ZACHARY LOEB. Even as awareness has risen of disinformation deliberately spread by authoritarian regimes, the forms it takes have become more subtle and insidious, warns digital and foreign policy specialist JESSICA BRANDT. The Russian government, for instance, has shifted away from troll farms and toward amplifying conspiracy theories originating in Western countries themselves; and away from obviously fake news toward misleading...