Series Introduction

In this series introduction co-hosts Nicole Anderson and Julian Knowles define democracy and introduce the topics and big questions raised throughout the series. Catch a glimpse of what some of our experts, including Michael Crow, Kate Crawford, Peter Schlosser, Adam Nocek, Jeffrey Cohen, Evan Berry, Judit Kroo and a host of others, are saying about the recent challenges democracy faces in the 21st century.

Visit us online at https://futuresofdemocracy.com/

Executive producers and project concept: Nicole Anderson, Julian Knowles
Series writers and researchers: Nicole Anderson, Julian Knowles
Production, sound design, and original music: Julian Knowles
Project funders/supporters: The Institute for Humanities Research, Arizona State University.  PBS: Public Broadcasting Service

Transcript

The Futures of Democracy Podcast – Series 1, Trailer preview
Authors: Nicole Anderson and Julian Knowles (2022)
Publisher: PBS - Public Broadcasting Service
 
Nicole Anderson 0:00 
Welcome to the Futures of Democracy.

MONTAGE BEGINS

Obama  0:05 
Understand, democracy does not require uniformity. Our founders argued, they quarrelled, eventually they compromised.
 
Christopher Wylie  0:17 
It's incorrect to call Cambridge Analytica a purely (sort of) data science company

Obama  0:23 
But they knew that democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity.

Christopher Wylie  0:32 
It is a full service propaganda machine

Obama  0:35
The idea that for our outward differences, we're all in this together, that we rise or fall as one  

Trump
The radical left

Biden
Will you shut up man?

Trump  0:43 
Who’s on your list Joe? 
The whole post office scam, don't blame it on the post office. You could see him setting it up.

Obama 0:52  
There have been moments throughout our history that threatened that solidarity.
 
MONTAGE ENDS

Nicole Anderson  1:00 
Welcome to the Futures of Democracy. Is democracy in crisis, or are we simply at a turning point? Join us, Nicole Anderson and Julian Knowles, as we go head to head with world leading experts each week, on the state of world democracies in the 21st century.

Julian Knowles  1:24 
So unsurprisingly, perhaps, when we speak about ‘tearing at the fabric of society’, there's a breakdown of trust that we're seeing between citizens and government, where authority is no longer trusted in the same way that it once was.

Kate Crawford  1:37 
So, we've hit a very difficult moment in history where the things that we need, which would require trusted institutions and strong national and international governance, is at a time when we do not have those capacities. And to me, this is the biggest problem that we face - is that the Democratic needs that we have, we don't have easy solutions.

Adam Nocek  1:56 
There's something that people already know to be true, is the tech companies have far too much power. You know, there's an inordinate concentration of power within tech companies. And this is so much so that they operate largely outside of state control, which is one of the reasons we see sort of the emergence of new technological sovereignties that are, you know, unevenly affecting global populations.

Michael Crow  2:19 
If you think that democracy is something that you're given, and it doesn't have to be maintained or protected, or it doesn't have to be evolved, or it doesn't move forward, then you've made a very, very significant error.

Judit Kroo 2:30 
So, in some ways, the capitalist motto of efficiency finding is in direct conflict with the role of democracy to bring services, or to bring the possibility of a good life, to all of its citizens.

Michael Crow  2:48 
It turns out that the media at the moment has become obsessed with where we're divided. And they spend no time on where we are in alignment, or where we have shared public values, or how we're still making progress towards a shared public value. So, all of us are being mentally overwhelmed by negative, negative, negative, and we're being mentally overwhelmed by extremists. 

Jeffrey Cohen  3:09 
I would say at this moment, I feel like the corrosive effect of social media has really eroded our ability to be true democratic citizens. We’re not as invested in a participatory, fully engaged, fully free practice of democracy at this moment and social media with its tendency to push people towards extremes, I think, has been corrosive.

Peter Schlosser  3:38 
We seem to be in a declining state of democracy since about three decades. A recent report stated that about 45% of the world is democratized. So, looking at all that taken together, I am concerned that we don't have the governance mechanisms in place that would allow local to global societies to make the decisions that are needed to move humankind into a safe future.

Evan Berry 4:08 
It's not whether democracy is the best form of government. It's about whether the democratic institutions that we have are appropriately suited to the environmental challenges that we face.

Nicole Anderson  4:24 
So, what is democracy? No matter which form of democracy a country or nation state adopts. In a nutshell, democracy can be defined as a system of government that enables regular, free and fair elections in which all adult citizens, regardless of class, ethnicity, race, gender or sexuality, have the right to vote and possess basic civil liberties, such as freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and association, and the right to inclusiveness, equality and liberty. 

It is this definition of democracy that many political experts argue is under threat, more so than at any other time in western democratic history. Why? Well, because in recent years, the operations and the health of our democracies have profoundly shifted as a result of the recent confluence of social media, concentrations of communication infrastructure and media ownership, questions of internet governance, rights to privacy and access to data, uncertainties about truth and evidence, and increased racial and gender divisions. Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) describe these divisions in their book ‘How Democracies Die’ as an “intensified polarization”. They also argue that extreme polarization can kill democracies. Given these recent influences and challenges to democracy, some of the questions we ask in this series are, how do we understand the unique challenges presented by recent world developments that have divided the USA and other Western democratic countries? How do we recognize its unique attributes, values and vulnerabilities? What does a democracy look like that does not divide but unites? And is this at all possible? Is there and how do we ensure a sustainable future for democracy? 
 
Join us. Nicole Anderson and Julian Knowles, as we explore these questions and more in the Futures of Democracy podcast series.

Subscribe to us on your favorite podcast service so you can be alerted to new episodes when they arrive. Or visit us on the web at https://futuresofdemocracy.com/

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Transcript copyright Nicole Anderson and Julian Knowles (2022). All rights reserved. Free for educational use with attribution.