Rumor Has It
Why Now? With Claire Potter, Episode 15
A conversation with historian Christopher Elias about his book, "Gossip Men."...
Read More
The American University of Afghanistan and Me
At a moment of tragedy and upheaval, sociologist Jeffrey Goldfarb found new colleagues and students on the internet
Due to unforeseen circumstances, I am teaching at the American University of Afghanistan in exile....
Read More
The Foggy Future of Brazilian Democracy
The recent coup in Brazil challenged the country’s democracy even more than January 6 did in the United States
The consequences of January 8 for Brazilian politics may be much more severe and have not yet fully unfolded. ...
Read More
Why Does a Powerful Nation Form an Alliance with a Minor Power?
The India-Armenia arms deal opens a window on the value of asymmetrical alliances
India-Armenia relations have been actively developing in recent years. In a series of consultations and meetings, India and Armenia have signed defense deals, a significant development in the global arms trade. For India, a great power, this was the first export deal of its weapons, while Armenia, a minor power, ...
Read More
All the News That’s Fit to Print
Why Now? With Claire Potter, Episode 12
A conversation with historian Kathryn McGarr about American journalism, foreign policy, and her new book....
Read More
American Democracy in Crisis: Q & A on Tocqueville, Douglass, Dewey, and Arendt
Liberal institutions, abolition democracy, and civic virtue
If we think about the way that liberalism anchors democracy, it largely relies on rights and institutional design. Just as a descriptive matter, it’s the case that the institutions that have been designed and the regime of rights that has been conceived, including the regime of human rights that has ...
Read More
Hannah Arendt: Insurrection and Constitutionalism
The democratic project is both unfinished and unstable
Even though the post-war consensus over the meaning and value of specifically liberal democratic institutions seems more fragile than ever—polls show that trust in government experts and elected representatives has rarely been lower—democracy as furious dissent flourishes as rarely before, in vivid and vehement outbursts of anger at remote elites ...
Read More
Inventing and Implementing a World We Wish to Share
How John Dewey’s notion of social intelligence can remake contemporary politics
For Dewey, the notion of social intelligence is that human beings are able to shape and change the world through the understandings that they gain from the fund of human knowledge that exists: old ideas combined and related through the world as we experience it, and latched onto something new. ...
Read More
Alexis de Tocqueville on Democracy and Its Culture
The dangers of a new tyranny of a minority in our time
On the central problems of race, gender and sexuality, and class, Tocqueville is not the best of guides in considering today’s crisis of democracy in America. Nonetheless, I still think that Tocqueville has much to offer in understanding America and the present crisis in our democracy....
Read More
How Gas Stoves Became Political
Past Present Podcast, Episode 358
In this episode, Natalia, Niki, and Neil discuss the political controversy over regulating gas stoves....
Read More
If Republicans Can’t Elect a Speaker, What Else Can’t They Do?
Kevin McCarthy’s epic fail reveals Nancy Pelosi’s legacy to the Democratic Party
Nancy Pelosi’s greatest strength as a liberal was in her mastery of the possible while at the same time accommodating dissenters, idealists, and change-makers to this fact of life. This is what she taught her caucus....
Read More
Verdi, Dante, and Dahlia Lithwick
A conversation with Slate's Supreme Court reporter about her new book, "Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America"...
Read More
