What happens when we don't trust democracy?

Civics 101

NHPR

Education, History, Supreme Court, American History, Elections, Democracy, Society & Culture, Government, Civics, Politics, Social Studies

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You can't preserve what you don't understand.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Nick, I have a confession to make.
0:04.7	I knew you ate those plums, Hannah.
0:07.2	No.
0:08.2	I was saving them for breakfast, you know.
0:10.4	It's not the plums.
0:12.2	It is worse than the plums.
0:14.7	Worse than the plums.
0:16.2	All right, here we go.
0:30.7	Before I was a journalist, I never, and I mean never, did any research before I voted.
0:34.1	All right, grand scheme of things, Hannah.
0:35.0	There's more.
0:35.8	Uh-oh.
0:42.7	The chances of my knowing who my congressional representatives were at any given time was quite slim.
0:46.7	I could not have told you the real difference between the House and the Senate.
0:50.9	If the president was writing executive orders, I wouldn't have known.
0:57.6	Nick, I probably could have told you two out of the 27 amendments.
1:06.0	The amendments, Nick. It's a grim picture, Hannah. I'm not going to lie. But we, as in, you know,
1:12.9	you and I, we do have an outsized investment in these things. You're a different person now. I am.
1:19.6	And Nick, the reason I call this a confession, it's not just because I'm the host of a civics podcast. I feel genuinely vulnerable, admitting how vulnerable I once was. Because now I've got my armor.
1:30.0	I know what is going on around here.
1:31.9	I know when something goes wrong around here.
1:35.1	I know what I can do about it.
	...

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