What Next - Was Democracy Voted Out?
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Belief in democracy was, until quite recently, taken for granted in America. But what if democracy is less a static noun, and more of a dynamic ideal we (could be) working towards?
Guest:
Osita Nwanevu, contributing editor at The New Republic, columnist at The Guardian, author of “The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding.”
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Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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Transcript
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| 1:04.7 | If there's one thing I think every person in America, left, right, and center can agree on at the moment, it's this. |
| 1:16.2 | Democracy has a real problem. |
| 1:22.1 | Some people think we have too much democracy, some folks too little. |
| 1:26.3 | But Ossita Nguanevu, who just wrote an entire book on democracy, |
| 1:31.0 | he sums up democracy's problem with one word. |
| 1:35.1 | Cynicism. |
| 1:36.1 | Cynicism. |
| 1:36.7 | I would say. |
| 1:37.6 | Cynicism, yeah. |
... |
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