What Next - Was Democracy Voted Out?
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2025
⏱️ 25 minutes
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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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| 0:32.6 | If there's one thing, I think, every person in America, left, right, and center can agree on at the moment, it's this. |
| 0:45.9 | Democracy has a real problem. |
| 0:51.8 | Some people think we have too much democracy, some folks too little. |
| 0:56.0 | But Osita Nguanevu, who just wrote an entire book on democracy, he sums up democracy's |
| 1:01.9 | problem with one word. |
| 1:04.8 | Cynicism. |
| 1:05.6 | Cynicism. |
| 1:06.3 | I would say. |
| 1:07.2 | Cynicism, yeah. |
| 1:08.3 | I feel like democracy has a really bad PR problem. Evidently it does, because the people |
| 1:14.2 | who say they're opposed and are kind of winning right now. The evidence that democracy's opponents |
| 1:21.1 | are winning right now is everywhere. Like, you may have seen that YouTube show surrounded in your |
| 1:27.2 | feed, the one |
| 1:28.3 | featuring the journalist Mehdi Hassan. He's sitting in the middle of a circle of 20 far-right |
| 1:33.2 | conservatives. One by one, they debate him. It went poorly. |
| 1:38.3 | And a general Francoist. Well, yeah, I am a General Franco supporter. He was awesome. He was so |
| 1:42.5 | super cool, quite frankly. Because the whole thing... And you don't believe in democracy. I don't believe in democracy. What are you doing here at... This guy, Connor, was the one who really went viral. We may have to rename the show because you're a little bit more than a far right Republican. Hey, what can I say? I think you can say, I'm a fascist. Yeah, I am. |
... |
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