Hello again, I'm Marvin Alney. On today's To the Point, we'll hear about America's first effort to rebuild Afghanistan in our own image, starting in 1951.

COVID, climate change, and race relations have Andrew Bessovich asking, what's next? After the Apocalypse.

But first, California's recall election, however it comes out, is it out of date? A Relic of Past Reforms?

Joe Matthews, as getting rid of it, would not be good enough the whole system needs to change.

He's a columnist and editor at Sokolow Public Square. He's also co-president of the

Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy. Joe Matthews, great to have you with us. Great to be with

you, Warren. What's that forum? What is that? It started as a network. Myself and a Swiss

Swedish journalist, the Global Democracy

Correspondent for Swiss Broadcasting, Bruno Kaufman.

You and I met in 2006.

We both wrote a lot about, and he broadcasted a lot about direct democracy, but we realized

we had very little data about how direct democracy works in all different parts of the world.

We knew, both knew it was growing, and we decided to start a network, first a journalist and

scholars, and it eventually grew to, you know, include academics, to activists and local

officials and a lot of election officials all over the world.

It turns out, you know, more than 110 countries have direct democracy,

usually at a local or regional level.

And we have big forums in places from, you know, Tunis to Montevideo.

And we've also birthed an NGO based in Germany and Korea that, you know, Tunis to Montevideo. And we've also birthed an NGO based in Germany and Korea that

supports direct democracy work all over. We have a think tank in Liechtenstein and a new

foundation to fund projects based in Switzerland and a group of, a group for sort of our election officials and have broken off and

with leadership from the mayors of Angang, South Korea, and Taipei.

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