Episodes
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In a conversation with Andrew Keen, Yuval Levin, Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, explores the critical transition from the 1950s- a decade often seen as a conservative period of economic prosperity- into the 1960s, a turbulant era marked by confrontations over race, gender, and shifts in the politcal landscape of the Republican and Democratic Parties.
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In this episode, host Andrew Keen and historian Matthew Continetti explore the pivotal moments in the history of American conservatism, starting in 1964. Continetti elaborates on the ideological foundations of American conservatism, emphasizing its roots in the political traditions of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The conversation delves into the marginalization of conservative thought during the New Deal era and the eventual resurgence of conservatism in the mid 20th century.
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Author and broadcast journalist, Ray Suarez, born into a Puerto Rican family newly settled in New York City in the 1950s, speaks with Andrew Keen about American immigrant experiences in the late 20th and 21st centuries. Extolled as a welcoming democracy built by immigrants, they were both hailed and despaired over - needed for labor and growth but feared for the different cultures they brought to the country. Invoking both personal and broad societal reflections, Suarez describes the historic tension in the powerful American immigrant dream between reality and mythology: aspirations and acceptance sort after by unwanted outsiders.
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Elizabeth Saunders, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and author of The Insiders' Game: How Elites Make War and Peace, speaks with Andrew Keen about democracy and foreign policy. The conversation focuses on the tension between elites and democracy, power and accountability and domestic priorities and global responsibilities between the 1950s and 1970s. In the era between the Korean War and Vietnam domestic tensions reverberated through foreign policy decisions made to promote democracy in the cold war era.
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In this episode host Andrew Keen sits down with Peter Wehner to discuss the intersection of faith and politics and the rise of the Evangelical movement in the Republican Party. Pete reflects on his early caution of the dangerous intertwining on faith and politics, his concerns about the religious impact on the Republican Party, and the shift towards more authoritarian tendencies within the party. He explores the connections among figures such as Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, and Donald Trump, tracing the evolution of the Republican Party's conservative ideologies and its current state.
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In conversation with Andrew Keen, the American historian Jacob Heilbrunn, outlines the continuous history of the close association of conservative views and the Republican Party in the early to Mid-Twentieth Century. He describes the party's support of strong anti-immigrant racial differences in the 1920s, hostility to the New Deal, support of the anti-Communist campaign of Senator McCarthy in the 1950s, and support of Donald Trump and his isolationist perspectives, now and in the recent past.
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For this episode, host Andrew Keen sits down with James Kirchick, journalist and author of the New York Times bestseller Secret City: the Hidden History of Gay Washington. They discuss the historical exclusion of gay individuals within American democracy, with a particular emphasis on the challenges - from legal persecution to professional exclusion, and social stigmatization, Kirchick and Keen explore how political attitudes towards gay rights have evolved, intertwining with broader cultural and political shifts. Kirchick describes the gradual inclusion of homosexuals in the democratic process, highlighting key moments of setbacks and progress over the past century. The conversation explores significant events such as the Kinsey report in 1948, the Alger Hiss case, McCarthyism, and the political landscape during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The emergence of homosexuality as a national political issue, alongside movements like gay liberation and the AIDS crisis, had a profound impact on American politics and society. When America openly accepted homosexuals into its civic and cultural life, it marked a significant enhancement of its democracy.
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In this episode we delve into Jeffrey Rosen's latest work The Pursuit of Happiness. As the President of the National Constitution Center and a Professor of Law at George Washington University, Rosen brings a unique perspective on America's democratic foundations. Through an exploration of classical writers and America's own philosophers and political founders, Rosen and Keen engage in a discussion on the challenges facing American democracy and law today.
We ask crucial questions: How closely do America's democratic institutions align with the ideals of the founding fathers? What insights can we glean from the evolution of American law and government practices over centuries? And, perhaps most importantly, what elements from our past are essential for sustaining and enriching American democracy?
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Testing American Liberalism in the Cold War Years
In this episode journalist and historian James Traub delves into the paradoxical nature of liberalism in the post war years. The continuation of New Deal social and economic reforms charactarized a society of consensus in fulfillment of democratic ideals in the Cold War years. However, the illusory impression was built on the continuiation of Jim Crow systems in the South deepening racial inequity in the rest of the country. Resistance stirred underneath consensus and the illusion of an expanding liberalism and democratic enhancement.
James Traub is an American journalist and scholar specializing in international affairs.
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In conversation with Prof. Sarah Snyder, an historian of Cold War international relations, Andrew Keen examines the relationship of democratic goals with the realities of American foreign policy. As the world's great post-war democratic and capitalistic power, the U.S. opposed Russia and China through strategic foreign aid and international interventions - often with non-democratic regimes. Internal divisions and controversies about the role of the United Nations, international human rights initiatives and racial divisions in the U.S. however challenged that post-war consensus.
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The democratic divide in post WWII: advance abroad, retreat at home. In this episode, Andrew Keen speaks with Dr. Carol Anderson, professor of African American Studies at Emory University. They discuss America in the post World War II years when America emerged as the world's leading democratic country. That claim was belied by the reality of a flawed and unfulfilled democracy at home. Black Americans, who joined the military in great numbers and fought with great distinction, returned to Jim Crow America and discrimination in many parts of the country. It continued practices of oppression and blocked the expansion of global post-war Human Rights doctrines from applying to the United States.
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American Democracy Transformed: A Conversation with Kevin Baker on the Interwar Era's Cultural and Political Evolution
In this episode, host Andrew Keen discusses with writer and editor, Kevin Baker, the multifaceted changes and growth of American democracy. Significant cultural innovations, technological advancements, and societal shifts occurred between the two World Wars. Baker emphasizes America's transformation into a cultural and political powerhouse during this period, where its arts and politics gained global recognition and when American culture including literature, music, and cinema, played a pivotal role in shaping societal views and politics.
Kevin Baker graduated from Columbia University in 1980 and has since pursued a career as a writer and editor. His writings include novels like "Sometimes You See It Coming" and "Dreamland" forming part of his New York City of Fire trilogy.
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Fighting for Equity: African-American struggles in the '20s and '30s.
In this episode, host Andrew Keen talks to Jill Watts author of The Black Cabinet, about the untold story of African Americans and politics during the age of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Jill Watts is an author and a Professor Emeritus of History at California State University San Marcos where she teaches United States social and cultural history, African American history, film history, and digital history.
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Women's Political Rights | Dr. Allida Black
Allida Black speaks with host Andrew Keen about the history of women in politics and the impact of their noteworthy political and social activism, which dates back a time well before the Women's Right to Vote.
Dr. Allida Black is a historian, author, and editor of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers.
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In this episode of How to Fix Democracy, host Andrew Keen engages in a conversation with the author and historian Richard Norton Smith, delving into a discussion about the Hoover presidency and its profound relevance for the United States during a time of upheaval and economic depression.
Author and historian Richard Norton Smith enjoys national recognition as an expert on the American presidency. After graduating from Harvard in 1975, he began his career as a White House intern and subsequently served as a speechwriter for Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts. Smith held the position of Director at various prestigious institutions, including the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center, and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
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The Legacy of FDR | Paul Sparrow, former Director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, speaks with Andrew Keen about the immense challenges and legacies of FDR and his administration. Sparrow maintains that Roosevelt saved American democracy from an existential crisis caused by the Great Depression and the failure of previous administrations to provide for the welfare of the public. In this episode of How to Fix Democracy, Sparrow delves into the deep complexities of the 32nd U.S. President who employed the powerful resources of his mind and personality.
Paul Sparrow is a writer, historical consultant, and the former Director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. Before moving to the FDR Library, he was the Deputy Director and Senior Vice President for Broadcasting and New Media at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. He was a founding partner in the University of Maryland’s Future of Information Alliance and a pioneer in interactive digital media. Prior to his work at the Newseum, Sparrow was an Emmy-Award winning television producer, and showrunner for Discovery, TLC, Fox, and PBS. He began his television career at KPIX, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco.
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FDR and the Great Depression | In this episode of How to Fix Democracy, author and historian Derek Leebaert provides a revisionist account of President Franklin Roosevelt and four members of his Cabinet. According to Leebaert, the 1920s were beset by economic distress and labor unrest that culminated in the Great Depression. Supported by Frances Perkins, Harold Ickes, Henry Wallace and Harry Hopkins, the Roosevelt presidency provided new solutions to much of America’s endemic vulnerability, inequality, and instability. Leebaert describes the President as a deeply complex leader—a man of steely ambitions —who worked with the four Cabinet officials to escape the Depression and prepare the United States for world leadership.
Derek Leebaert won the biennial 2020 Truman Book Award for "Grand Improvisation". His previous books include "Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy from Korea to Afghanistan" and "To Dare and to Conquer: Special Operations and the Destiny of Nations", both Washington Post Best Books of the Year. He was a founding editor of the Harvard/MIT journal International Security and is a cofounder of the National Museum of the U.S. Army. He holds a D.Phil from Oxford and lives in Washington, D.C.
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American Isolationism and the Shifting World Order in the 1920s and 30s | In this 3rd episode of the season, host Andrew Keen talks to Robert Kagan, the distinguished Brookings Institute scholar of foreign policy, about America’s dramatically changing place in the world during the Twenties and Thirties. According to Kagan, at the end of World War I Europe expected American democracy to lead a new world order. The Versailles Treaty, designed to engage America in post-war Europe, failed to gain domestic support. America, the world’s leading economic powerhouse, retreated into its heartland of domestic concerns: consumer consumption, fears of anarchy, socialism, and communism as well as immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe and Asia. The U.S. Senate, led by conservatives, reinforced America’s isolationist foreign policy throughout the 1920s. The domestic power only shifted to the White House and State Department in the late 1930s when the dangers of European fascism threatened America’s stability and power.
Robert Kagan is the Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. He is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post and the author of several books, including "The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941" and "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order". Kagan served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the policy planning staff, as principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.
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The Scopes Trial and the Fight for the Freedom to Teach | In 1924, John Scopes, an instructor in a public school in Dayton, Tennessee, was indicted for violating the Tennessee Butler Act for teaching evolution in a publicly funded school. Strong personalities and strong beliefs clashed in the courthouse as they engrossed and even inflamed the country. Clarence Darrow, America's most famous litigator dramatically clashed with Williams Jennings Bryan, populist, presidential nominee and evangelical believer. The "trial of the century," as it was called, revealed profound cultural and religious issues. Despite Darrow's passionate espousal of free speech and civil liberties, Scopes was found guilty. The conviction was overturned but the issues were hardly resolved. Controversies over public education have continued to reverberate in America, reaching deep into each decade from the 1920s to today. Historian and legal scholar Edward Larson illuminates that history and relevance for us today.
Larson holds the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law and is University Professor of History at Pepperdine University. Originally from Ohio with a PhD in the history of science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and law degree from Harvard, Larson has lectured on all seven continents and taught at Stanford Law School, University of Melbourne, Leiden University, and the University of Georgia, where he chaired the History Department. Prior to becoming a professor, Larson practiced law in Seattle and served as counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, DC.
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American Democracy in the Aftermath of World War I | In the first episode of Season 5, How to Fix Democracy host Andrew Keen sits down with Adam Hochschild, historian, journalist, and award-winning author of “American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis." Hochschild takes us on a journey to America in the aftermath of World War I – a country divided by labor strife, xenophobic fear of immigrants, and massive violations of civil rights. Both provincially insular and dynamically modern, Hochschild introduces us to an America nostalgic for an idyllic pre-war normalcy that can never be recaptured.
How to Fix Democracy Season 5 covers 100 years of American democracy between 1924 and 2024. The season uncovers the complexities of U.S. history and asks our distinguished guests why it remains the most iconic and yet misunderstood democratic system in the world. This season is brought to you by the Bertelsmann Foundation and Humanity in Action. Watch the episode videos at howtofixdemocracy.org and listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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