This is Democracy

In today's episode, Jeremi and Zachary have the opportunity to talk with special guests Steven Nadler and Lawrence Sharpiro. They discuss their exciting new book: When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People as well as the topic of moving towards a more open, evidence based, and logical form of thinking in society. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "The Apparition". Steven Nadler is Vilas Research Professor and the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi of Amsterdam (Yale, “Jewish Lives” series, 2018); A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton, 2011); The Philosopher, the Priest and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes (Princeton, 2013); Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, 1999; 2nd ed. 2018); and Rembrandt's Jews (Chicago, 2003, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize). He is also the author, with his son Ben Nadler, of the graphic book Heretics! The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy (Princeton, 2017). His most recent book is Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die (Princeton, 2020). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Lawrence Shapiro is the Berent Enç Professor of Philosophy at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research spans philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology. Within philosophy of mind he has focused on issues related to reduction, especially concerning the thesis of multiple realization. His books include The Mind Incarnate (MIT, 2004) and The Multiple Realization Book (co-authored with Professor Thomas Polger.) His book, Embodied Cognition (Routledge Press), received the American Philosophical Association’s Joseph B. Gittler Award for best book in philosophy of the social sciences (2013). His recent interest in philosophy of religion resulted in The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural is Unjustified (Columbia University Press, 2016). Drs. Nadler and Shapiro recently co-authored an exciting new book: When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People (Princeton University Press, 2021).  This episode of This is Democracy was mixed and mastered by Isaiah Thomas and Ean Herrera

Jeremi and Zachary, with special guest, Professor Stephen Vladeck, discuss the Shadow Docket in response to the recent controversial Texas Law that largely restricts access to Abortion. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "The Right to Choose". Stephen I. Vladeck holds the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas School of Law and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts, constitutional law, national security law, and military justice. Professor Vladeck has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Texas Supreme Court, and various lower federal civilian and military courts; has testified before numerous congressional committees and Executive Branch agencies and commissions; has served as an expert witness both in U.S. state and federal courts and in foreign tribunals; and has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession.  Vladeck is the co-host, together with Professor Bobby Chesney, of the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is CNN’s lead Supreme Court analyst and a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is an executive editor of the Just Security blog and a senior editor of the Lawfare blog. This episode of This is Democracy was mixed and mastered by Ean Herrera

Jeremi and Zachary, with special guest, Prof. B. Venkat Mani, discuss the refugee crisis in reaction to recent events in Afghanistan Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "The Airplane With the City Clinging to its Wheels". B. Venkat Mani is a Professor of German and World Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is also a Senior Fellow in Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity. He was born and brought up in India and migrated to the US as for graduate education. He researches and teaches German literature, literature of migrants and refugees, and world literature. He is the author, among others of Cosmopolitical Claims(2007) and the multiple award winning Recoding World Literature (2017). He has co-edited a A Companion to World Literature (Wiley Blackwell 2020).  His work on racial, ethnic, and religious minorities with a focus on migration has also appeared in  The Wire (Hindi), Inside Higher Ed,Telos, and The Hindustan Times. His most recent article is: "Empires Slay, Publics Pay: The Global Refugee Crisis Unfolding in Afghanistan,” Hindustan Times (Aug 22, 2021): https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/empires-slay-publics-pay-the-global-refugee-crisis-unfolding-in-afghanistan-101629631940164.html.  This episode of This is Democracy was mixed and mastered by Morgan Honaker.

Jeremi and Zachary, with special guest, Steven Pedigo, discuss the results of the recently published U.S. Census and what it means for society. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "It Is A True Sonnet". Steven Pedigo is a Professor of Practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, and the inaugural director of the LBJ Urban Lab. Pedigo has advised more than 50 cities and regions across the world on how to build more creative, innovative, and inclusive communities. This episode of This is Democracy was mixed and mastered by Oscar Kitmanyen and Ean Herrera.

Jeremi and Zachary, with their guest Steve Sonnenberg, discuss the topic of mental health during the global pandemic. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "In the Park with the Wide Fountain".  Steve Sonnenberg, MD, is a psychiatrist and medical humanities and ethics scholar. He serves as professor and associate chair for education in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Dell Medical School. He also holds the Paul Woodruff Professorship for Excellence in Undergraduate Studies in the School of Undergraduate Studies, where he chairs the faculty panel of the Bridging Disciplines Program “Patients, Practitioners, and Cultures of Care.” That program is designed to prepare healthcare undergraduates with the tools they will need later, as providers, to create a healthcare system where health is a human right and structural disparities in care are eliminated. This episode of This is Democracy was mixed and mastered by Ean Herrera.

Jeremi and Zachary, with their guest Shoshana Krieger discuss the challenges in finding affordable rent in big cities. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "They Say a House is Just a Metaphor".  Shoshana Krieger is the Project Director of Building and Strengthening Tenant Action (BASTA) at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. BASTA organizes Austin renters to work with their neighbors to ensure that all Austinites have access to safe and affordable housing by facilitating the development of tenant associations and building renter power in Austin. BASTA targets slumlords who profit off of renting substandard properties, the conditions of which negatively impact the health of families. Prior to her work at BASTA, Shoshana was a staff attorney at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County (NLSLA) and a tenants rights organizer at Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES). Shoshana has a J.D. and M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA. This episode of This is Democracy was mixed and mastered by Isaiah Thomas and Will Shute.

Jeremi and Zachary, with guest Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols, draw upon perceptions of historical pandemics to learn how our nation can move beyond COVID-19. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "This Peaceful Dawn". Christopher McKnight Nichols is Director of the Center for the Humanities and the Sandy and Elva Sanders Eminent Professor in the Honors College at Oregon State University, where he is an associate professor of history. An Andrew Carnegie Fellow, Nichols is best known for authoring Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age (Harvard, 2011, 2015), and he is editor or author of five other books, including the recently published Rethinking American Grand Strategy (Oxford, 2021). His next book, co-edited and co-authored, is Ideologies and U.S. Foreign Relations: New Histories (out from Columbia University Press in 2022). This episode of This is Democracy was mixed and mastered by Sofia Salter.

Jeremi and Zachary, with guest Alan McPherson, discuss what we can learn from the long history of democratic efforts in Cuba, and how many of them were caused by America's foreign policy. Zachary sets the scene with his poem titled "Certainly Probable". Alan McPherson is Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy at Temple University. He has written and edited 11 books, the most recent of which is Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet’s Terror State to Justice.

Jeremi, Zachary, and guests Drs. Robert Edelman and David McDonald discuss the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, and the politics attached to the international sports competition. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "They say that sport unites the world". Robert Edelman is Professor of Russian History and the History of Sport at the University of California, San Diego. He has written four books including: Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sports in the USSR and Spartak Moscow: A History of the People’s Team. He has consulted on documentaries for HBO, PBS, ESPN and CBS. Together with Christopher Young from the University of Cambridge, he is co-editor of the University of California Press’s new series Sport in World History, and is co-editor with Wayne Wilson of the The Oxford Handbook of Sports History.  He is the co-director with Young of an international research project on the history of Cold War sport under the auspices of the Cold War International History Project.  The first of two conference volumes, entitled The Whole World Was Watching was recently published by Stanford University Press.   David McDonald is the Alice D. Mortenson/Petrovich Distinguished Chair in Russian History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of, among many titles: Divided Government and Russian Foreign Policy, 1900-1914 and “Sport History and the Historical Profession,” in R. Edelman et al., eds., The Oxford Handbook to Sport History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 61-78.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary talk with Wendy Davis and Eric Cervini about their perspective on voter intimidation, and their lived experience with the "Trump Train" incident in 2020. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "I Knew We Had Arrived". Wendy Davis represented the 10th district in the Texas Senate from 2009 to 2015. She was previously on the Fort Worth City Council. Wendy Davis was serving as a surrogate for the Biden-Harris campaign and was present on the bus when the Trump Train harassed its occupants. The October 30 attack barred her from campaigning for herself and for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris when the Biden-Harris campaign decided to cancel scheduled events due to safety concerns. The former Texas state senator and 2020 congressional candidate remarked that the bus incident was further evidence of a rising temperature in American politics, and that she had never experienced this kind of intimidation before in all the many campaigns she’d run and opposed. After the October 30 attack, Davis considered speaking out about her experience but did not immediately come forward because she feared for her safety.Dr. Eric Cervini is an award-winning historian of LGBTQ+ politics and culture. His first book on queer history, The Deviant's War, was a New York Times Bestseller, an Editors’ Choice, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history. It won the Publishing Triangle’s Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction and was voted the “Best Read of 2020” at the Queerties. As an authority on 1960s gay activism, Cervini serves on the Board of Directors of the Harvard Gender and Sexuality Caucus, and on the Board of Advisors of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of gay American history. His award-winning digital exhibitions have been featured in Harvard’s Rudenstine Gallery, and he has presented his research to audiences across America and the United Kingdom.