129 | Solo: Democracy in America

The first full week of 2021 has been action-packed for those of us in the United States of America, for reasons you're probably aware of, including a riotous mob storming the US Capitol. The situation has spurred me to take the unusual step of doing a solo podcast in response to current events. But never fear, I'm not actually trying to analyze current events for their own sakes. Rather, I'm using them as a jumping-off point for a more general discussion of how democracy is supposed to work and how we can make it better. We've talked about related topics recently with Cornel West and David Stasavage, but there are things I wanted to say in my own voice that fit well here. Politics is important everywhere, and it's a crucial responsibility for those of us who live in societies that aspire to be participatory and democratic. We have to think these things through, and that's what this podcast is all about.

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Apologies to Alexis de Toqueville, who wrote an important book whose name I stole, and who is mentioned nowhere in this episode.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(427)

119 | Musa al-Gharbi on the Value of Intellectual Diversity

119 | Musa al-Gharbi on the Value of Intellectual Diversity

In the service of seeking truth, there would seem to be value in intellectual diversity, both in keeping ourselves honest and in the possibility of new ideas coming from unexpected quarters. That's tr...

19 Loka 20201h 16min

118 | Adam Riess on the Expansion of the Universe and a Crisis in Cosmology

118 | Adam Riess on the Expansion of the Universe and a Crisis in Cosmology

Astronomers rocked the cosmological world with the 1998 discovery that the universe is accelerating. Well-deserved Nobel Prizes were awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, and today's guest Adam R...

12 Loka 20201h 18min

117 | Sean B. Carroll on Randomness and the Course of Evolution

117 | Sean B. Carroll on Randomness and the Course of Evolution

Evolution is a messy business, involving as it does selection pressures, mutations, genetic drift, and the effects of random external interventions. So in the end, how much of it is predictable, and h...

5 Loka 20201h 20min

116 | Teresa Bejan on Free Speech, Civility, and Toleration

116 | Teresa Bejan on Free Speech, Civility, and Toleration

How can, and should, we talk to each other, especially to people with whom we disagree? "Free speech" is rightfully entrenched as an important value in liberal democratic societies, but implementing i...

28 Syys 20201h 43min

115 | Netta Engelhardt on Black Hole Information, Wormholes, and Quantum Gravity

115 | Netta Engelhardt on Black Hole Information, Wormholes, and Quantum Gravity

Stephen Hawking made a number of memorable contributions to physics, but perhaps his greatest was a puzzle: what happens to information that falls into a black hole? The question sits squarely at the ...

21 Syys 20201h 27min

114 | Angela Chen on Asexuality in a Sex-Preoccupied World

114 | Angela Chen on Asexuality in a Sex-Preoccupied World

Sexuality is, and always has been, a topic that is endlessly fascinating but also contentious. You might think that asexuality would be more straightforward, but you'd be wrong. Asexual people, or "ac...

14 Syys 20201h 8min

113 | Cailin O'Connor on Game Theory, Evolution, and the Origins of Unfairness

113 | Cailin O'Connor on Game Theory, Evolution, and the Origins of Unfairness

You can't always get what you want, as a wise person once said. But we do try, even when someone else wants the same thing. Our lives as people, and the evolution of other animals over time, are shape...

7 Syys 20201h 19min

112 | Fyodor Urnov on Gene Editing, CRISPR, and Human Engineering

112 | Fyodor Urnov on Gene Editing, CRISPR, and Human Engineering

Not too long ago nobody carried a mobile phone; now almost everybody does. That's the kind of rate of rapid progress we're seeing with our ability to directly edit genomes. With the use of CRISPR-Cas9...

31 Elo 20201h 20min

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