Podcasts by How to Fix Democracy
Since its origins, democracy has been a work in progress. Today, many question its resilience.
How to Fix Democracy, a collaboration of the Bertelsmann Foundation and Humanity in Action, explores practical solutions for how to address the increasing threats democracy faces. Host Andrew Keen interviews prominent international thinkers and practitioners of democracy. Their conversations are designed to provoke discussion and curiosity about the state and future of democracy across the globe.
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Jill Watts from 2023-11-10T14:54
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 ...
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Allida Black from 2023-10-24T17:58
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 activi...
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Richard Norton Smith from 2023-09-20T12:58
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 ...
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Paul Sparrow from 2023-08-15T15:29
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...
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Derek Leebaert from 2023-07-24T20:17
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...
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Robert Kagan from 2023-07-10T19:53
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 Institu...
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Edward Larson from 2023-06-08T13:45
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 A...
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Peter Wehner and Jonathan Rauch from 2022-04-19T17:09:19
The crisis of the American Right | Authors Peter Wehner and Jon Rauch recently published a New York Times Opinion piece entitled “What’s Happening on the Left is No ...
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Cheryl Welch and Arthur Goldhammer from 2022-03-16T19:59:46
Tocqueville's Take on Democracy | Harvard University professors Cheryl Welch and Arthur Goldhammer are world-renowned experts and translators of the work of Alexis de Tocqueville. They kick off Sea...
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Jon Alexander from 2021-12-22T12:07
The roles of citizens | Jon Alexander is the founder of The New Citizenship Project and speaks in this interview with host Andrew Keen about the...
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Patrick Radden Keefe from 2021-12-09T15:06:35
Democracy in pain | Patrick Radden Keefe is a writer and investigative journalist whose recent book, Empire of Pain Listen
David van Reybrouck from 2021-11-24T15:15:33
Examining elections | David van Reybrouck is a Belgian author, historian, archaeologist, and the National Endowment for the Humanities / Hannah Arendt Center Fellow at Bard College in New York. ...
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Claudia Chwalisz from 2021-11-10T18:45:41
Innovating democracy | Claudia Chwalisz is the Innovative Citizen Participation Lead at the OECD Directorate for Public Governance. In this interview, she talks with host Andrew Keen about the i...
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Darryl Pinckney from 2021-10-20T13:30:39
The state of American democracy | American novelist, playwright, and essayist Darryl Pinckney takes host Andrew Keen on a tour d’horizon of the state of American democracy, from the current poli...
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Danilo Türk from 2021-09-15T10:47:03
Democracy delivering results | On the occasion of the International Day of Democracy, host Andrew Keen sat down with Danilo Türk, former President of Slovenia and currently President of Club de ...
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Hélène Landemore from 2021-09-08T09:56:19
Fostering collaboration | Hélène Landemore is Professor of Political Science at Yale University. In this interview, she talks with host Andrew Keen about a wide range of innovations and influenc...
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David Stasavage from 2021-08-16T09:09:38
Non-western democracies | David Stasavage is the Dean for Social Sciences at New York University, and the author of The Decline and Rise of Democracy. Stasavage and host Andrew Keen go over some...
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DeLesslin "Roo" George-Warren from 2021-07-28T10:45:38
A political wilderness? | DeLesslin “Roo” George-Warren is a queer artist, researcher, and organizer from Catawba Indian Nation and a Humanity i...
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Roya Hakakian from 2021-07-09T14:06:20
Roya Hakakian is a writer and poet and the author of A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious. Talking just before July 4th, host Andrew Keen speaks with Roya Hakakian ab...
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Bonus Episode: Live with Dr. Carol Anderson from 2021-06-23T19:00
On June 1st, 2021, we hosted a live session of How to Fix Democracy with Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University, to discuss recent v...
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Wietse Van Ransbeeck from 2021-06-18T12:03:08
Wietse Van Ransbeeck is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Citizen Lab, a Brussels-based company that works with governments to enable public participation in decision-making. With host Andrew Keen, ...
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Astra Taylor from 2021-06-04T14:49:43
Democracy through the camera lens | Astra Taylor is an author and filmmaker whose documentary What is...
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Nanjala Nyabola from 2021-05-14T09:50:43
What is global citizenship? | Nanjala Nyabola is a writer, political analyst, and activist based in Nairo...
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Abdul-Rehman Malik from 2021-04-21T16:54:50
Devil’s curse of migration | Abdul-Rehman Malik is a journalist, community organizer, and Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in Islamic Stu...
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Margaret Atwood from 2021-04-07T09:08:52
Democracy, citizenship, and dystopian fiction | Margaret Atwood is an award-winning author, who has written numerous best-sellers including the 1...
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Tom Malinowski from 2021-03-24T12:52:34
Can America lead again? | Tom Malinowski is the U.S. representative for New Jersey's 7th congressional district and was formerly the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, ...
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Bianca Wylie from 2021-03-10T15:13:43
Smart cities, smart citizens? | Bianca Wylie is co-founder of Digital Public, co-founder of Tech Reset Canada, and Senior Fellow at the Centre f...
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Richard Bellamy from 2021-02-12T11:23
Active, equal, and collective | Richard Bellamy is Professor of Political Science at University College London and the author of Citizenship: A ...
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Adrienne Clarkson from 2021-01-27T13:07:21
Citizenship and belonging | Adrienne Clarkson is the co-founder of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship and the former Governor General of Can...
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Adam Hochschild from 2020-12-09T14:12:35
The contradictions of human nature | Adam Hochschild is an award-winning author, historian, and journalist. In this interview, hosted by Andrew ...
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Daniel Markovits from 2020-11-24T14:06:25
Human capital-ism | Daniel Markovits is Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School. In this interview with Andrew Keen, he explains how the accumulation of human capital--the skills and...
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Anne-Marie Slaughter from 2020-11-10T13:59:21
Laboratories of democracy | Anne-Marie Slaughter is the CEO of New America, a think tank in Washington, DC. In this interview, she discusses wit...
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Ian Bassin from 2020-10-27T12:48:18
Crisis of confidence | Ian Bassin is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Protect Democracy, a non-profit created to fight threats to democracy in America. Bassin explains some of the factor...
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Mark Blyth from 2020-10-13T16:15:06
Mark Blyth is William R. Rhodes Professor of International Economics at Brown University. In this interview, he discusses how our economics are rife with anger and frustration. Blyth’s “angry-no...
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Peniel Joseph from 2020-10-01T09:37:47
Political power without capital? | Peniel Joseph, Professor of Public Affairs and Barbara Jordan Chair in...
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Arlie Hochschild from 2020-09-16T14:54:56
Listening to others | Arlie Hochschild is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California,...
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Robert H. Frank from 2020-09-01T07:07:55
Winner take all | Robert H. Frank is the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management Emeritus at Corn...
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Walter Scheidel from 2020-08-18T08:04:46
Four horsemen of leveling | Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and the Catherine R. Kennedy and Daniel L. Grossman Fellow in Human Bi...
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Maya MacGuineas from 2020-08-04T15:41:27
This is when you want deficits | Maya MacGuineas is the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Respo...
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Adam Tooze from 2020-07-21T09:01:42
System attrition | Adam Tooze is Director of the European Institute & Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History at Columbia University. In this interview with Andrew Keen, he discusse...
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Stephanie Kelton from 2020-07-07T09:13:04
Describing the deficit | Stephanie Kelton is a Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Stony Brook University focusing on monetary policy and public finance. In this interview, she explains ...
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Rebecca Henderson from 2020-06-24T08:39:48
Us later, not me now | Rebecca Henderson is the John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University Business School. In this interview, hosted by Andrew Keen, she explains how she...
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Gabriel Zucman from 2020-06-19T14:58:50
All about taxes | Gabriel Zucman is an Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality at the ...
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Sir Paul Collier from 2020-06-09T11:35:35
Redistribute productivity | Sir Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and a Professorial Fellow of St Antony’s College, ...
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Gideon Rachman from 2020-06-05T16:52:11
Individual choice | Gideon Rachman is the chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times. He was previously at the Economist for fiftee...
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Richard D. Wolff from 2020-05-26T17:15:33
Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs ...
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Helen Thompson from 2020-05-22T15:33:07
Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge, talks with host Andrew Keen about the impact capitalism has on the health of democr...
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Amity Shlaes from 2020-05-12T13:05:15
Amity Shlaes is a best-selling author, Chair of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, and Presidential Scholar at The King’s College in New York City. Her ...
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Sarah Miller from 2020-04-28T12:48:19
Sarah Miller, Executive Director of the American Economic Liberties Project, talks with host Andrew Keen about trust-busting. From the Gilded Age and the New Deal...
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Sir Angus Deaton from 2020-04-14T18:36:32
In this episode, host Andrew Keen sits down with distinguished economist, Sir Angus Deaton, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of International Affairs, Emeritus,...
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Raghuram Rajan from 2020-03-31T13:02:59
Raghuram Rajan is the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Previously, he was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve...
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Branko Milanovic from 2020-03-17T14:00
Presidential Scholar at CUNY and author of Capitalism, Alone, Branko Milanovic kicks off the second season of How to Fix Democracy. He discusses elements of different capitalist...
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Larry Diamond from 2019-12-20T13:30
Considered one of the world’s leading experts on democracy, Larry Diamond, senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, believes democracy worldwide...
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Annika Savill from 2019-12-06T13:30
Annika Savill, Executive Head of the UN Democracy Fund admits that the word “democracy” doesn’t appear anywhere in the UN charter, but finds it exists in the dema...
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Richard Stengel from 2019-11-25T14:41:59
Prior to the 2016 election, Richard Stengel, former managing editor of Time Listen
Leon Botstein from 2019-11-08T17:39:55
Leon Botstein, music director and conductor, scholar, and president of Bard College in upstate New York, had once thought that the Berlin Wall would never come do...
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Ralph Nader from 2019-10-25T16:03:09
Consumer advocate, lawyer, and former U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader believes that democracy is about civic organization, not just public opinion. In his...
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John Ralston Saul from 2019-10-15T19:08:35
Canadian political philosopher and writer John Ralston Saul discusses how the crisis in democracy today is self-inflicted and intentional. The people, he says, ha...
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Rob Riemen from 2019-09-27T18:18:09
Rob Riemen, Dutch philosopher and founder of the Nexus Institute, names Baruch Spinoza, the 17th century philosopher, as one of the first great minds to understan...
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Carl Gershman from 2019-09-16T16:45:07
Carl Gershman, founding president of the National Endowment for Democracy, recalls how the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States marked a turning point,...
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Constanze Stelzenmüller from 2019-09-16T16:24:55
Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Constanze Stelzenmüller discusses how domestic problems have led to disruptions in foreign policy—turning partners into rivals...
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Maria Ressa from 2019-08-30T14:05:44
Rappler CEO and co-founder Maria Ressa got her start as a journalist in the Philippines in the 1980s and has seen the pendulum of democracy swing in both directio...
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Yascha Mounk from 2019-08-16T15:07:16
Yascha Mounk, associate professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS and expert on the rise of populism, describes three main challenges to democracy: the stagnation of living...
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Norman Ornstein from 2019-08-16T15:04:38
Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has been immersed in U.S. politics since the late 1960s and has watched the evolution of t...
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Cornell Brooks from 2019-08-02T15:52:51
For Cornell William Brooks, former president of the NAACP and current professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, democracy is not an ethereal concept fr...
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Laura Rosenberger from 2019-08-02T15:48:20
Director of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy and former White House and State Department official, Laura Rosenberger views democracy from a national security perspectiv...
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Edward Luce from 2019-07-19T17:00
Washington commentator and columnist for the Financial Times Ed Luce recounts the many misunderstandings we've had over the past few decades. From the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the coll...
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Sheri Berman from 2019-07-19T14:24:54
Sheri Berman, professor of Political Science at Columbia University's Barnard College offers a historical perspective of democracy, along with some very useful definitions of concepts like illib...
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Anne Applebaum from 2019-07-09T16:52:35
Historian and journalist Anne Applebaum sat down with Andrew Keen during the opening dinner of the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Washington Symposium in April 2019 for...
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Sir Malcolm Rifkind from 2019-06-21T15:51:18
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, interviewed at the Aspen Ministers Forum in Kansas City, sees the challenges to liberal values as tied to, but separate from, the challenges to democracy. He explains how ma...
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Mete Coban from 2019-06-07T14:42:46
Mete Coban is a Councillor for Stoke Newington in the London Borough of Hackney and Chief Executive at My Life My Say, a youth-led, non-partisan charity focused on increasing participation in de...
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Tzipi Livni from 2019-06-07T14:39:45
In our second interview from the Aspen Ministers Forum in Kansas City, former Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel Tzipi Livni offers her view on democracy’s condition. ...
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Madeleine Albright from 2019-05-24T12:59:13
From Kansas City, where she was holding the Aspen Ministers Fo...
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Angelos Chaniotis from 2019-05-10T17:04:16
This episode reaches back in time to revisit the origins of democracy with Greek historian and classics scholar Angelos Chaniotis. Host Andrew Keen asks: why democracy began in Athens and what w...
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Earl Lewis from 2019-04-26T17:30
Earl Lewis shares with Andrew Keen that his students give him hope for the future of democracy. In their discussion, Dr. Lewis explains that through his work at the Center for Social Solutions h...
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Ivan Krastev from 2019-04-12T15:30
Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, sits down with Andrew Keen. In a thought-provoking discus...
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Norman Eisen from 2019-03-29T15:48:58
From Prague, where he served as Ambassador from the United States, Norman Eisen discusses the ups and downs of democracy in the Czech city over the course of the 20th century. Democra...
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Moisés Naím from 2019-03-15T15:56:22
Moisés Naím, distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, explains the trend of “one vote, one person, one time,” or, how some democratically-elected leaders undermine...
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Soraya Chemaly from 2019-03-15T15:24:29
Soraya Chemaly, author, activist, and director of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project, challenges the idea that democracy in the United States was ever unbroken, unpacks the negative and som...
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Adrian Wooldridge from 2019-03-01T16:59:43
Eurosceptic and anti-Brexit, The Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge argues that democracy must find a middle ground between the elites and the populists. However, even this middle g...
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Carol Anderson from 2019-02-15T16:53:14
Andrew Keen talks with Carol Anderson, Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Emory University, about the flaws in American democracy and why she's still hopeful for the future.
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David Runciman from 2019-02-08T14:38:36
Andrew Keen interviews David Runciman, professor of politics at Cambridge University and host of the Talking Politics podcast, who believes that democracy is in a midlife crisis, and what comes ...
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Michael Ignatieff from 2019-01-23T19:06:06
Andrew Keen interviews Michael Ignatieff, the rector and president of the Central European University in Budapest, an institution that has come under attack by Viktor Orban’s government in Hunga...
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