Another Way, by Lawrence Lessig

What happens when news must compete? How does that affect the news? In this episode, we talk to Ben Smith, a journalist and entrepreneur who played a central role in the transformation of media through social media. His book, Traffic, tells that story better than any other just now.

NYU Stern School of Business Professor Jonathan Haidt discusses the impact of social media on youth, regulation of social media platforms, feeling safe in academic environments, navigating sensitive discussions in academia, identitarianism and its impact on media, and the early days of the internet and the importance of regulation.

Markus Prior, Princeton Professor, discusses the architecture of public media and how it affects politics. They explore the evolution of technology, the rise of broadcast television, the emergence of cable news networks, and the challenges of identifying political interest. They also discuss whether voters are willing to bear short-term costs for long-term benefits, using the example of addressing climate change.

There was a time when the presumption of democracy — that the people were rational and guided our democracy to reasoned conclusions — was true. Or tru-ish. In this episode, we speak with the authors of one of the most important work studying this relatively healthy period, Ben Page and Robert Shapiro. Their 1992 book — The Rational Public — presented an enormous amount of evidence demonstrating how democracy worked. We discuss what made that working possible.

The premise of the first part to this season is that our broken democracy can be fixed. The solutions are clear and achievable. Many of them would be enacted if the Democrats regained sufficient control of our government. But in this part, we explore why these solutions won't be enough. We can right the overturned tables for sure; but there's a gash in the hull that will make even these changes not enough.

The obscure rules of the Senate are an important part of the dysfunction of American democracy today. In this episode, we speak to a former Secretary for the Majority of the United States Senate and, for the last two years of the Obama administration, the Deputy Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs at the White House, Martin Paone. There is perhaps no one in America with a better sense of how our Senate works — or doesn't work — or with a better intuition about how to fix it.

Nick Troiano, Author of The Primary Solution, proposes electoral reforms such as nonpartisan primaries, ranked choice voting, and independent redistricting. They discuss the problem of gerrymandered districts, the decline in voter participation due to polarization, and the need for primary reform in improving democracy.

Harvard Law Professor Nick Stephanopoulos discusses his conception of representativeness and alignment in democracy. The podcast explores the challenges of achieving alignment between the political system and the people it represents. It also touches on the impact of media polarization, the role of moderates in American politics, policy alignment, and the implications of the electoral college. The speaker expresses frustration with publishing and emphasizes the importance of democracy reform.

Jen Heerwig, researcher studying the effects of the voucher experiment in Seattle, discusses the influence of campaign donations, vulnerabilities of voucher and matching fund systems, impact of the democracy voucher program in Seattle, challenges in analyzing voucher effects, and the potential benefits of a voucher pilot program in campaign financing.

The single best reform for the way we fund campaigns would be democracy vouchers. In this episode, we speak to the man who heard about this idea and then made it real in Seattle.