We spend so much of our time these days squabbling over what's right in front of us,

the latest provocation that we see on Twitter, the latest political crisis,

the latest thing that a politician we don't like said,

the latest outrage that we hear about happening from people we don't like, the latest

triumph from people we do like.

It's hard sometimes to step back and to have conversations about the ocean that we're actually

swimming in.

You know the old parable of the two young fish who

are swimming along and the old fish swims past them and says, how's the water today, guys?

And as the old fish swims away, one of the young fish says to the other young fish,

hmm, what's water? It's hard to have those conversations about the water,

about the things that we don't necessarily pay attention to in our day-to-day life.

One of those things is the nature of the democracy that we live in,

how it's structured, and how parties control it.

That's a conversation for today.

It's a conversation whose time never seems to come,

but that's more urgent than ever.

It's a conversation that ruffles feathers at the highest levels of politics.

It's a conversation that is, in short, uncomfortable.

Welcome to this week's episode, a beautiful, brainy, technocratic, wonk fest about how to fix American democracy.

President Joe Biden is pushing through some big, audacious reforms, infrastructure, huge spending bills.

He's really shooting for the stars. And yet, part of the

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