The Democracy Group

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Best of 2024: City Controller Rachel Heisler Work as the City’s Watchdog | An Honorable Profession Dec 09, 2024

Show notes

We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from An Honorable Profession podcast, with hosts Debbie Cox Bultan and Ryan Coonerty.

In this week’s episode, host Ryan Coonerty speaks with Pittsburgh, PA, City Controller Rachael Heisler. Heisler explains the role of the controller, which consists of three core functions: accounting, accounts payable, and auditing. She also discussed her role in making sure that tax dollars are used responsibly and effectively and that they are spent in accordance with legislation that was passed and contracts that were signed. They talk about the challenges of urban budgets as office buildings and downtowns remain empty in the aftermath of the pandemic, as well as how to build trust within your community, fight for what is right, and campaign in swing states. Tune in to learn about Controller Heisler’s approach to her role in government and as a community leader, how she has stood against antisemitism, and why she has so much hope for Pittsburgh’s future.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• [01:04] Pittsburgh Controller Rachael Heisler, her role, and why the City Controller is especially important in Pittsburgh.

• [03:08] Navigating the interplay of holding office members accountable while serving in office.

• [05:40] Delivering tricky news in a swing state.

• [08:55] What Controller Heisler would like to see change in Pittsburgh’s working environment.

• [12:14] Her career path up to this point which started in education before she fell in love with public service.

• [16:13] Why running for office is truly the most humbling thing you could do.

• [18:41] Pittsburgh community members attunement with maintaining the city’s fiscal health.

• [19:41] How Controller Heisler experienced moving from a Deputy role to occupying the position of Controller.

• [22:38] Her approach to speaking out against antisemitism in Pittsburgh and why she believes this is important.

• [30:47] Sentiment in Pittsburgh leading up to the elections and the incredible energy on the ground.

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An Honorable Profession Podcast

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Best of 2024: End Climate Silence: Genevieve Guenther | Future Hindsight Dec 04, 2024

Show notes

We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from the Future Hindsight podcast, hosted by Mila Atmos.

We discuss deepening our understanding of the climate crisis, the urgent need for decarbonization, and our role in speaking truth about phasing out fossil fuels.

Genevieve Guenther is the founding director of End Climate Silence and affiliate faculty at The New School. Her most recent book is The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It.

Genevieve’s civic action toolkit recommendations are:

Call your elected representatives and demand policies to phase out fossil fuels.

If extreme weather comes up in conversation, connect the dots to climate change and say: “We really need to phase out fossil fuels so we can halt global heating.”

Follow Genevieve on X:

https://x.com/DoctorVive

Read The Language of Climate Politics:

https://bookshop.org/shop/futurehindsight

Follow Mila on X:

https://x.com/milaatmos

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Future Hindsight Podcast

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Best of 2024: Ambitions for Actblue with Regina Wallace-Jones | The Great Battlefield Dec 02, 2024

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We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from The Great Battlefield podcast, with hosts Nathaniel Pearlman.

Regina Wallace-Jones joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about her career in tech, politics and business and her current role as CEO of ActBlue, a nonprofit fundraising platform for progressives, and where she wants to take it.

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Best of 2024: How to combat political extremism | Democracy Works Nov 27, 2024

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We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from the Democracy Works podcast, hosted by Jenna Spinelle, Christopher Beem, Michael Berkman.

Cynthia Miller-Idriss, one of America's leading experts on the far right, joins us this week to discuss what draws people to political extremism online and offline — and what we can do to combat it.

Miller-Idriss is the director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University and author of the book Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right. As you'll hear, PERIL takes a public health approach to preventing violent extremism and provides tools and resources to help communities create resilient democracies.

In the interview, Miller-Idriss discusses how extremism and political violence are linked to our desire for community. This dynamic means that extremist ideas can pop up in seemingly innocuous places from martial arts groups to online wellness communities. She says understanding this dynamic is key to moving people away from extremist spaces and into constructive communities.

Miller-Idriss visited Penn State as part of the Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminar exploring the theme, "Birthing the Nation: Gender, Sex and Reproduction in Ethnonationalist Imaginaries."

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Best of 2024: Dr. Jonathan Haidt on After Babel: "The Fragmentation of Everything" | Village SquareCast Nov 25, 2024

Show notes

We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from the Village SquareCast podcast, hosted by the Village Square.

We wanted you wonderful SquareCast listeners to know that we didn't plan for this episode to drop on Leap Day and we didn't plan on it being (we kid you not) Episode 100. But both things just happened. At the very least, we think that's a sign that you really ought to listen. Were we "the universe has a plan" maximalists, though, we'd say it means you need to quit your day job and follow bridge builders like Jon Haidt and The Village Square around like Jack Kerouac groupies.

You pick. Here's our blurb to help inform your imminent life choice:

What if, at a pinnacle of our civilization’s technological achievement, everything just broke — the institutions we’ve come to rely upon in navigating a modern complex world, the shared stories that hold a large and diverse democratic republic together, and even a common language through which to navigate the rising tide of crisis. According to renowned social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt, this describes our current reality, one that he calls “After Babel.” In this new normal, we are scattered by a digital environment into feuding tribes that are governed by mob dynamics and driven by a minority of ideological outliers, made stupid at warp speed by group think, and — thanks to social media — armed with billions of metaphorical “dart guns” with which to immediately wound “the enemy” in ways that are hardly only metaphorical. What could go wrong?

Our very special guest, Dr. Jonathan Haidt, will delve into the profound impact of social media on democratic societies, dissecting the intricate web of challenges it poses to civic trust and civil discourse. Don’t miss this chance to hear from one of the foremost thought leaders of our time — one who has generously given his counsel to The Village Square, and countless efforts like ours — on this existential challenge of our time. Read Why the Past Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid in The Atlantic and learn more about Dr. Haidt by clicking the MORE button, below.

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Best of 2024: The Real Threat | Bad Watchdog Nov 20, 2024

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We continue our Best of 2024 episodes with an episode from the Bad Watchdog podcast, hosted by Maren Machles.

For the past few episodes, Maren has explored the reality of immigration detention, uplifting the conditions in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) centers where thousands are held under the presumption that they may be threats to national security. In the season finale of Bad Watchdog, we return to where we started, with the DHS’s counterterrorism mission. Maren breaks down the current landscape of terrorism in the United States, where the most dangerous threat isn’t posed by those who’ve crossed our borders illegally, but by homegrown, far-right, violent extremists. And, as Maren learns, domestic violent extremism isn’t just a problem across the country — it’s a problem in DHS’s own ranks as well.

Domestic terrorism experts Daryl Johnson and Alejandro Buetel walk Maren through the rise of far-right violent extremism in the U.S. and interrogate whether DHS is taking the threat seriously. Maren discusses both shortfalls and potential solutions for how DHS could address far-right violent extremism with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty’s Spencer Reynolds. POGO Senior Investigator Nick Schwellenbach shares his investigation into just how many Oath Keepers are or were employed at DHS. And Maren connects with people who are working to make this broken system more humane, including activists Arely Westley and Berto Hernandez, Las Americas Director of Cross-Border Strategies Crystal Sandoval, former POGO Senior Researcher Freddy Martinez, and POGO Senior Paralegal Lance Sims.

To report waste, fraud, or abuse in the federal government, please visit us at https://www.pogo.org/send-us-a-tip.

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How strong is support for democracy? | Democracy Works Nov 18, 2024

Show notes

Democracy Works host Michael Berkman, director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy and professor of political science at Penn State talks with Christopher Claassen, a political scientist at the University of Glasgow, about how to measure support for democracy across countries and across generations.

Claassen grew up in South Africa and was 16 when the country held its first democratic elections. His interest in democracy continued through college and into his career as a political scientist. Today, he is a professor of political behavior at the University of Glasgow. One area of his research focuses on how to measure support for democracy. In a recent paper, he and colleagues developed 17 survey questions that cover all eight components of liberal democracy as defined by the V-Dem project in an effort to refine what people mean when they say the support or don't support democracy.

Berkman and Claassen also discuss how support for democracy is part of the 2024 U.S. election. Note that this interview was recorded in late October 2024 before the election took place.

Referenced in this episode:
McCourtney Institute for Democracy Mood of the Nation Poll
Episode with Cynthia MIller-Idriss on communities and political extremism

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Tangle: Independent, Non-partisan News. Isaac Saul | How Do We Fix It? Nov 13, 2024

Show notes

Do you believe what you see in newspapers, websites and on TV? Most Americans don't trust the people who are supposed to truthfully report the news. A new Gallup poll says Americans have record-low trust in mass media. Only one-in-three adults has a "great deal" or a "fair amount" of confidence in the media to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly."

More than 150,000 readers each day turn to Tangle, a website read by liberals, conservatives and independents. Every day Tangle tackles one current debate in American politics, and summarizes arguments from left, right, and center. All Sides Bias Checker gives Tangle a "middle" rating, which means the site neither leans left nor right.

Our guest, politics reporter Isaac Saul, started Tangle in 2019 as an independent, ad-free, nonpartisan newsletter. He grew up in Bucks County Pa. — one of the most politically divided counties in America — where he was exposed to a huge range of political opinions and values. As a young journalist, Isaac learned the media ecosystem was broken when he found that he wasn’t being judged based on his writing, but where it was being published.

On Tangle "you will encounter a wide range of views, including some you really disagree with," Isaac tells us.

"We're trying to be a big tent news organization and we are succeeding at that... Our readership is split almost evenly between conservative and liberal readers."

"I'm working from the premise that the reds and blues don't understand each other," he says. "I really do want to bring people under one roof with a shared set of arguments to analyze and talk about, and a shared set of facts to work from."

About this show: Every couple of weeks we release a new episode hosted by Richard Davies about the work, the ideas, and the people of Braver Angels, a remarkable band of brothers and sisters who get together across political divides in person and online: Reds and Blues who do battle against toxic polarization. In this show we speak with a fellow traveler of this effort.

Links to news sites that feature a range of opinions on a single issue:

Tangle, All Sides, and Ground News.

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Has the Senate been disrupted? | Politics in Question Nov 11, 2024

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In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Lee and James explore the role of the Senate and the dysfunction we see today with Sean Theriault. Theriault is a Professor at the Department of Government at the University of Texas, Austin and the author of Disruption?: The Senate During the Trump Era (Oxford University Press, 2024).

Do we need the Senate? What has caused gridlock in the Senate? What would the Senate look like during a second Trump term? These are some of the questions Sean, Lee, and James ask in this week’s episode.

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Political Tribalism: Hatreds We Love | The Politics Guys Nov 06, 2024

Show notes

Mike talks with Stephen J. Ducat, an author, political psychologist, psychoanalyst, and former psychology professor in the School of Humanities at New College of California. They discuss Professor Ducat’s most recent book, Hatreds We Love: The Psychology of Political Tribalism in Post-Truth America.

Topics Mike and Stephen discuss include:

- why tribal loyalty often overrides material self-interest

- demonizing outsiders to reinforce in-group virtue

- conservative disgust vs liberal disdain

- the ‘malignant, intuitive genius’ of Donald Trump

- the dark side of political purity

- the importance of being morally multi-lingual

The Politics Guys on Facebook | X