Burnt by Democracy: Youth, Inequality, and the Erosion of Civic Life (University of Toronto Press, 2023) by Dr. Jacqueline Kennelly traces the political ascendance of neoliberalism and its effects on youth. The book explores democracy and citizenship as described in interviews with over forty young people – ages 16 to 30 – who have either experienced homeles ... Show More
Mar 1
Trish FitzSimons and Madelyn Shaw, "Fleeced: Unraveling the History of Wool and War" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Not everything about wool is warm and fuzzy. Wool, for millennia the cold climate textile fiber, has a long relationship to war, both in terms of supporting it and causing it. Wool's strategic value in wartime, a position it gained over centuries, and contrived shortages of same ... Show More
1h 9m
Feb 2024
Lisa Herzog, "Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023)
For better or worse, democracy and epistemology are intertwined. For one thing, politics is partly a matter of gathering, assessing, and applying information. And this can be done responsibly or incompetently. At least since Plato, a leading critique of democracy has focused on t ... Show More
1h 7m
May 2023
Jacqueline Mondros and Joan Minieri, "Organizing for Power and Empowerment: The Fight for Democracy" (Columbia UP, 2023)
Jacqueline Mondros and Joan Minieri's book Organizing for Power and Empowerment: The Fight for Democracy (Columbia UP, 2023) draws on extensive research to portray how social-action organizations have evolved over the past twenty-five years, building power in the struggle for soc ... Show More
32m 25s
Mar 2022
Adele Webb, "Chasing Freedom: The Philippines Long Journey to Democratic Ambivalence" (Sussex Academic Press, 2022)
In conversation with Duncan McCargo about her new book Chasing Freedom: The Philippines Long Journey to Democratic Ambivalence (Sussex Academic Press, 2022), Adele Webb offers a spirited defence of what she calls 'democratic ambivalence': the mixed feelings many Filipinos harbour ... Show More
28m 49s
May 2023
Jacqueline Mondros and Joan Minieri, "Organizing for Power and Empowerment: The Fight for Democracy" (Columbia UP, 2023)
Jacqueline Mondros and Joan Minieri's book Organizing for Power and Empowerment: The Fight for Democracy (Columbia UP, 2023) draws on extensive research to portray how social-action organizations have evolved over the past twenty-five years, building power in the struggle for soc ... Show More
32m 25s
Mar 2023
Raina Lipsitz, "The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics" (Verso, 2022)
The mushrooming rolls of the Democratic Socialists of America, Marxist explainers in Teen Vogue, and the outsized impact of the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all herald a new, youth-inflected radical politics.
The Rise of a New Left: How Youn ... Show More
37m 7s
Dec 2023
1. The Future of Democracy
This year's BBC Reith Lecturer is Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, Oxford University. He will deliver four lectures called “Our Democratic Future,” asking how we can build a politics that works for all of us with systems which are ... Show More
58m 8s
Oct 2020
TURNOUT Episode 1: ‘Democracy is a group sport’
The right to vote can sometimes be described as a “struggle,” a “fight,” even a “war.”But how did this come to be and who has been fighting to make every generation’s path to the ballot a little less arduous? On this episode of Turnout, Katie Couric goes back to the beginning, to ... Show More
34m 22s