Annotations for Framing Elements: Intro

This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational and intersectional unheard voices living in the world's most influential democracy.

[Music] This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world's most influential democracy.

[Music] Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. Today's episode is going to focus on a topic that's been in the news quite a bit, and a topic that's ever present in American national security and foreign policy, but a topic we don't talk enough about, the role of dissent. What role dissenters within the policy establishment play.

These dissenters are often known as whistleblowers. We'll discuss that topic as well. But our real focus is on the role of individuals who are intimately involved with national security and intelligence, defense, the State Department, elsewhere, and their role in bringing to the public attention about misdeeds and deviations from constitutional authority and the appropriate uses of power.

We have with us two historians who have done more to elucidate and write about these issues than anyone else, Hannah Gurman and Kaetan Mistry. Hannah teaches U.S. history and American studies at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She's the author of The Dissent Papers, The Voices of Diplomats, and The Cold War and Beyond, which is a book I learned a lot from, an editor of A People's History of Counterinsurgency, and the co-editor of this new wonderful book called Whistleblowing Nation.

Hannah, thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

We have also, Kaetan Mistry, who is a historian of the U.S. and the world and teaches at the University of East Anglia in England. He has authored Waging Political Warfare, The United States, Italy, and the Origins of the Cold War, which is really quite a fascinating story. I encourage people to read Kaetan''s wonderful work on this early important moment in the Cold War. He's edited Reforms, Reflection, and Reappraisals, the CIA and U.S. Foreign Policy since 1947, and he's the co-editor with Hannah, of again, this wonderful book, Whistleblowing Nation.

Kaetan, thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having us.

Before we turn to our discussion of dissent and national security, we have, of course, our scene-setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri. What's the title of your poem, Zachary?

"Cross of Gold."

Wow, I didn't know we'd have William Jennings Bryan joining us today. Okay, Zachary, let's hear it.

"Aristotle wrote of the golden mean in a land of Grecian fields, and so too did the centuries proclaim moderation, my underlings, my dears. A scale is never balanced if the masses are uneven, and the tide can never come here if it never pulls from there. If the water is never gone, it will never reach the pier. And so too did the sages write of living in the middle, and so too did the poets sing of overzealous love. But what is there to do in life if virtue is a dove? Sometimes is there not a moment for a sudden movement, a second for a second path? A period for a period of change, and a time for a time of shift and sin? For is it not that the scale is never a truly balanced ship, that the oceans are only calm because they often overflow, that the sages were radical in their steady consultation, that the poets could never leave overzealous love for moderation? The cross of gold could martyr the farmer. Aristotle will smother his innocence, and moderation will suffocate the truth."

Wow, Zachary, that covers quite a lot there, and I love the movement from Aristotle to moderation and the truth. What is your poem about?

My poem is really about the importance of radicalism and dissent in policymaking, but also in life and society in general.

Right, except at home, right? No dissent at home? I think there's actually too much dissent at home, and that's a good thing. Hannah, let's start with you if we could. This incredible book that you and Kaetan have edited with so many authors looking at dissent and the search for truth in national security.

Echoing Zachary's poem, how do we understand this relationship between secrecy and dissent, and why is there such an almost ever-present tension in American national security?

Sure. Well, first, I wanted to comment a little bit on the poem, because one thing that strikes me, a question that we were working through as we navigated the complexities of whistleblowing was whether or not it is a radical act. I think one of the points that we wanted to underscore, and one of the discoveries that we made, is that in many respects, whistleblowing is an act of desperation, but it is not necessarily radical.

[Music] This Is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional, unheard voices living in the world's most influential democracy. [Music]

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. This week we have with us one of the foremost scholars, philosophers, and public intellectuals in the world, writing about a topic that's very close to us. I think every day, where history matters for us every day, which is how we think about memory and the ways in which memories of the past, particularly memories of a traumatic, guilt ridden, difficult past, the ways those memories are used or not used to improve or limit our democracy. In other words, what is the role for historical memory in addressing past injustices?

Susan Neiman, who is our guest today. Susan has written some of the most important work on this. She is the director of the Einstein Forum in Berlin. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and that's central to a lot of her work. But she studied philosophy at Harvard and the Freie Universität in Berlin, was a professor of philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv University before moving to Berlin, moving back to Berlin for the Einstein Forum. She is the author of numerous books of contemporary philosophy and political philosophy as well, a number that I just like to mention, Evil and Modern Thought, particularly relevant, perhaps to our world today. Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, I'm not sure that I'm a grown-up idealist, but at least give one a try. [Laughter]

You probably are if you're doing this podcast.

[Laughter] Thank you, Susan, that makes me feel a lot better. And her most recent book, the book that's really going to be at the center of our discussion today, which is really a phenomenal book. Both Zachary and I have read it: Learning from the Germans' Race and the Memory of Evil. It has just come out, in paperback, with a brand new final section, at least for now, on the Black Lives Matter movement, and how it relates to Susan's really in depth discussion of historical memory in Germany and the United States over the last century.

Susan, thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure. Before we turn to our discussion, as always, we have our scene-setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri and today's poem is actually a bilingual poem from Zachary. This is the first of your bilingual poems in one hundred and twenty or so [episodes], I think. Zachary, what is the title of your poem?

"Herbst ich erinnere mich," or "Fall I remember." Let's hear it.

"Fall, I remember. You sneak up on us from behind the orchard fence. You seem cold and distant until the signs at the gas station begin to freeze. Herbst, ich erinnere mich an dich, der alte Mann in dem Supermarkt mit kaltem Haar, zwischen geöffnet und geschlossen Hoffnung. Fall, I remember you like a blessing, a prayer for the lost souls in tandem with the damp leaves trodden underfoot. The air is burning now. The earth is burning. The fires are so hot they feel as if they could be frozen. Und dann von hinter der Regalen hat ein Mann deinen Arm berührt. And then from behind the shelves, a man has touched your arm. He is memory. Er ist die Erinnerung. And there are the eyes of your underlings, and the eyes of the mistreated ones, and the eyes of your fathers, and your mothers and your great, great forgotten ones. Es gibt die Schuld deines Land. There is the guilt of your country. Es gibt die Schuld deiner Hand. There is the guilt of your hand. Wie kommt das Ende der Geschichte mit dem Ende der Erinnerung? Wie kommt das Ende der Erinnerung mit dem Ende der Zeit? Wie kommt das Ende der Schuld mit Erbst, mit Zärtlichkeit?"

That was really powerful. Very powerful. I think you should translate that last section for us and tell us what your poem's about.

Well, so I'll answer the latter question first. So my poem is really about how we think about historical memory and guilt. And it's particularly about this moment we find ourselves in in the fall of 2020, right before the presidential election, sort of thinking about our history and how it's going to affect our future.

And the last six lines of the poem in German translate roughly as how does the end of history come with the end of memory? How does the end of memory come with the end of time? How does the end of guilt come with fall, with tenderness?

It evokes a little bit of T.S. Eliot, right? Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Well, I was also thinking, Zachary, I don't know if you know, there's a fairly well known poem of Rilke. I don't know its title anymore, but it starts with es ist herbst, it's fall. Do you know that?

I think I may have come across it, but I was definitely going more T.S. Eliot.

But yeah, I prefer T.S. Eliot to Rilke myself, actually. But that, his herbst poem, is a good poem.

It is. You know, I'm glad you mentioned that, Susan. I read it years ago. I'm going to go back and find it when we're done and maybe put it up on the website with the link to your book. That's really, really wonderful. Susan, building on Zachary's poem and the sort of haunting elements of memory, maybe you can take us through a little bit about why you wrote this book, Learning from the Germans. It's a deep, thoughtful, intellectual book, but it's also a very personal book, which I loved.

Thank you. Yeah, it's not an academic book, although sometimes I call myself a recovering philosophy professor. [Laughter] But much of it's written in the first person.

This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world's most influential democracy.

[Music] Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week we're going to discuss the topic of participatory democracy.

How have and how can people be more involved in our democracy, not just when it comes to voting, but to day-to-day activities to make our democracy more full, more rich, and more real for people. We're going to focus on a particular moment in our history when a young group of citizens came forward with a statement about the importance of participatory democracy, a statement that inspired hundreds of thousands of people and continues to inspire many people. This is the Port Huron Statement of 1962, written by Students for a Democratic Society.

And we have with us one of the foremost scholars of participatory democracy and Students for a Democratic Society and the Port Huron Statement, Dr. Vanessa Cook. Dr. Cook received her PhD in U.S. history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015. She wrote a fantastic dissertation that I in part supervised and had the opportunity to learn from.

It's a dissertation that's been published as a really wonderful book that I encourage everyone to read. The book is titled Spiritual Socialists, Religion and the American Left, and it's about those issues and much, much more with some fascinating figures who contributed to our democracy in all kinds of ways. She's written articles in the Washington Post, Dissent Magazine, Religion and Politics, and she's currently the Defense POW MIA Accounting Agency Historian, in residence, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Missing in Action Project.

Vanessa, thank you for joining us this morning.

Oh, good morning. Thank you for having me.

Before we turn to our discussion of participatory democracy and the Port Huron Statement, we have, of course, Mr. Zachary Suri's scene-setting poem. Zachary, what is the title of your poem this morning?

"Port Huron Revisited."

Let's hear it.

"We are people of this generation, housed now in, we are people of this generation, do not forget the oceans of incalculable transgressions and the memory of the maimed millions. We are people of this generation, housed now in absurdity and the phosphorescent orbs of radioactive civility. We are people of this generation, standing by obelisks we're not sure make any sense to us now in a sea of so many sanctimonious automobiles. Mark them as the godly idols of our time. We are people of this generation, housed now in, and the black-white haze of centuries of ambiguous certainty. We are people of this generation, sleep, float, remember. We are people of this generation, housed now in absurdity and the windswept deserts of parking lot dystopias. We are people of this generation, standing now on a bluff overlooking the harbor, observe the Lady of Liberty, wonder what oxidized horror she holds beneath the crown. Thus is the spirit of white giant at the reflecting pool, the names in white crawling along the black marble wall."

I love all the imagery there, Zachary, from the parking lots to the Statue of Liberty. What is your poem about?

My poem is really about the sort of dissatisfaction with American society and the current sort of American political discourse that drove so many young people to the radical political movements of the 1960s. And I think what's so startling today is how relevant many of their concerns and their criticisms of American society are to young people like myself today. And...that was really what my poem was about, was connecting those two generations and those two time periods.

I love the intergenerational element of that, Zachary. Our podcast is designed to be intergenerational.

Well, and the first line of the Port Huron statement is, we are people of this generation, which is such a poignant and powerful statement in and of itself.

Well said.

Vanessa, can you give us some background on this Port Huron statement of 1962? Who wrote it and what was the message that they were trying to promote?

This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world's most influential democracy.

[Music] This is Democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics, and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next. Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy.

This week we are going to discuss a perennial topic of congressional politics and a perennial debate within our democracy, one that's becoming perhaps more important than it's been in a long time. The question of whether the U.S. Senate should continue to have a rule for a filibuster, which allows a minority, a small minority, in the Senate to prevent legislation and other matters from moving forward.

This is, as I said, an age-old question. It's central to American legislation in American politics, and we're very fortunate to have with us one of the leading scholars of Congress in general, and this topic, among many others.

My friend and colleague, Sean Theriault. Good morning, Sean. Good morning, Jeremi.

Sean is a professor in the Department of Government here at the University of Texas at Austin. As I said, he is an internationally recognized, widely published author and speaker on the various pathologies of the U. S. Congress. Sean has written five outstanding books, many of which have won awards.

He began his illustrious career with the book The Power of the People, appropriately titled for a Scholar of Congress. I guess that's the aspiration of Congress more than the reality. He then published a really prescient book in 2008: Party Polarization in Congress, then another book that I really enjoyed reading. I read this book on the prize committee years ago–The Gingrich Senators–really, one of the best books at explaining how Newt Gingrich and his generation transformed the U. S. Congress.

And then more recently, The Great Broadening. And just this last year, a really important book for educating all of us about these topics, Congress: The First Branch. Sean also writes widely in every major newspaper. He appears on all kinds of news shows.

We could call you, Sean, Mr. Congress. How does that sound?

I'll take that moniker, although Congress isn't so popular these days, Jeremi.

[Laughter] Yeah, well, I think it's safe to say, Sean, you are more popular than Congress.

Thanks, Jeremi.

Before our conversation with Sean, as always, we have our scene setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri.

Zachary, what is the title of your poem today?

With a single speech.

Well, let's hear it.

“It is a kind of arrogance that we think ourselves so sacrosanct that we build for our posterity, a temple of democracy, and hand any old fool a key. It is a kind of arrogance that we think ourselves so chosen that we steal votes from cities, for a slew of empty prairies, to send their any old Tom, Harry, Dick, and Larrys. It is a kind of arrogance that we think ourselves so holy that they can stand among the rubble that they burned right to the ground; and with their fist hollowed oaken desk of storied Asia's pound, and cry out for the freedom of ten hours for their mouths to sound. It is a kind of arrogance that we think are stars so well foretold to turn away the crying of a child for the banknotes, pristinely rolled. To rest our eyes on empty promises, where they rest in rot and mold, and wake up in a stupor, still in the middle of our speech. And sing to the great portraits about the horror to impeach. But the old poets of the tattered haunts, they know it all too well, and can recall of every second to you in a cafe with a screech, as their voices swell. Old men cannot solve our problems with a single speech.”

Zachary, that's lovely. What is your poem about?

My poem is really about the irony that we consider ourselves such an important and original democracy. And we think ourselves so great that we don't actually need to maintain our democracy and perform the basic maintenance of democratic institutions. And even while we have these very archaic institutions, like the filibuster, embedded in our very houses of government.

Well, that's just a fantastic opening for our conversation. Sean, is the filibuster an archaic element of Congress?

So first Jeremi, how dare you make us go after Zachary! [laughter] If I ever sign up to do this show again, I'm going to mandate that he go last, so I don't have to follow that! [laughter]

You're not the first guest to say that. So you should listen to your guests, Jeremi. How dare you sucker punch us off! [laughter]

This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. "This week we're going to examine a question that's at the forefront of our news in the future of our society and draws on a long history. Economic stimulus packages in American history. How have they been used in the past by the federal government? What have we learned? And how will that history inform the experience of the most recent economic stimulus package, the 1.9 trillion dollar package passed by President Biden and the Democrats in the House and the Senate."

We're joined today by a good friend and one of the foremost historians of precisely these issues, Julian Zelizer. Good morning, Julian. How are you today?

Julian Zelizer is one of the leading experts of modern American political history, particularly the influence and role of Congress in American history. He's the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, class of 1941, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He's the author and editor of 19 books on American political history. Whenever I say that, I feel like I'm woefully insufficient. Among his many important books that I recommend to everyone, still one of my favorites, his first book, Taxing America: Wilbur D. Mills, Congress and the State, 1945 to 1975, explains how Congress does appropriations, which is very relevant to what we're talking about today. The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress and the Battle for the Great Society. We'll discuss this a little bit today. Lyndon Johnson's congressional programs, and particularly his efforts to alleviate poverty and inequality in American society. Fault Lines: A History of the United States since 1974, which was co-authored with historian Kevin Cruz. And most recently, a book I encourage everyone to read, Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party. Julian discussed that book with us on this podcast a few months ago.

This is Democracy, a podcast about the people of the United states, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. This week we're going to discuss the transatlantic alliance and in particular NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an organization that I think historians agree is one of the most, if not the most successful alliance in the history of the world.

And today we're going to discuss why this alliance exists and what role it's played and how we should think about the future of this alliance, if it has a future, and its relationship to democratic relations across societies and alliances on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. A very important issue for politics and international diplomacy.

We're joined by two friends and scholars and teachers who have written some of the most important work on NATO, two people who have taught me much of what I know about this alliance, Joshua Shifrinson and James Goldgeier. Hello gentlemen.

Josh Shifrinson is an associate professor of international relations in the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. His first book, which is a wonderful book with a bright yellow cover, I can see it on my bookshelf now, it always stands out on your bookshelf because of the bright yellow color and the brilliance of what's inside of it, Rising Titans, Falling Giants, How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts, a really thoughtful explanation of how countries, big countries deal with shifts in international power. Related to this, Josh has written numerous articles, particularly on NATO, on the durability of NATO, on its expansion at the end of the Cold War, and various related issues.

James Goldgeier is a professor of international relations and the former dean of the School of International Service at American University, and he survived his deanship and remained an active scholar. I think no one has ever done that before. Jim, you're the only one who's managed that. He's also the Robert Bosch Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institute, and he serves as chair of a committee that I have great reverence for, the State Department Historical Advisory Committee, which helps us to get documents that we as historians can use for our research. Jim has written numerous books. I think still the best book on the period from the end of the Cold War to 9-11, America Between the Wars, that he co-wrote with Derek Chollet, also Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia After the Cold War, that he co-wrote with now-former Russian Ambassador Michael McFaul. And particularly for our subject today, Jim wrote the first, and I still think the best book on NATO expansion, Not Whether But When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO.

This is democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week we're going to discuss the Vietnam War and its legacies, its continuing legacies in American society, in global policy, and particularly in light of a recent set of conflicts that produced similarly controversial outcomes for American society and global policy, the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are very fortunate to be joined by a friend, colleague, distinguished author, and distinguished scholar, Mark Lawrence.

Mark is the director of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum here in Austin, Texas, which is the best presidential library, and I say that without any bias at all. Mark is also a professor in the UT Department of History, and he has taught courses on American and international history and various other topics. He's written three fantastic books.

His first book, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam. His second book is a wonderful narrative history of the Vietnam War as a whole, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History, and it's the only history of the Vietnam War I've seen that is truly concise. It's very hard to write a concise history of the Vietnam War.

And Mark's most recent book, the book that has just come out that we're going to talk about today, is on the Vietnam War and its legacies. It's called The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era. Mark, congratulations on your book, and thanks for joining us.

This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues. And how to have a voice in what happens next.

This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues. And how to have a voice in what happens next.

This is democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. Today we are talking with a great author, good friend, and really outstanding thinker about a topic that we all confront every day. What is good leadership? How do we understand what it means to be an effective leader, as well as a persuasive and ethical?

In the world of social media, the world of flaming the world of difficult, difficult issues and difficult opposition to getting anything done. Our guest, Mark Updegrove, has written a number of books on presidential leadership. And his most recent book is really an. Excellent elegant study of John F. Kennedy and uses John F. Kennedy in many ways as a window into the possibilities and the limits of leadership in our world. It's a book. I hope you all will pick up and read. It's an eminently readable and deeply researched book. It's called Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency. Mark, thank you for joining us.

It is nice to be able to have a conversation. Mark is a presidential historian. He's the author, as I said, of five books on the presidency; he's also interviewed, I believe, just about every living president, except for Donald Trump. Is that correct Mark?

Mark serves now as the president and CEO of the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation, I get to consider him a neighbor. We don't see each other often enough. And, before that, he was the director of the LBJ Presidential Library.

Mark is also a presidential historian on ABC News. And, earlier in his career, among other things, he was a publisher of Newsweek. And if you read his newest book, you'll find out that he had a very close relationship with Hugh Sidey, who was the, I guess, the editor of Time Magazine. Is that correct, Mark?

He was, you know, he was the Washington bureau chief. Jeremi, but it was such an out, it had such an outsized power. He might as well have been the editor of Time Magazine as John Kennedy, knew as so many other presidents that he just had an incredibly important vantage point on the presidency.

This is Democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you, a podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

This is democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

This is Democracy, a podcast about the people of the United states, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

 This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics, and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues. And how to have a voice in what happens next.

[Music] This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues, and how to have a voice, and what happens next.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. Every one of our episodes each week is special, but this one I really feel is super special, if I can say that, because we have on not only someone whom Zachary and I deeply respect, but someone who really has now written a book that tells a story that I think is so moving and so relevant and so uplifting for our time. And I can't think of a moment in our recent history when we've needed an uplifting story more than today.

We are going to talk today with Dr. Ruth Simmons, who has just published a fantastic book that I recommend to all of our listeners, Up Home: One Girl's Journey. And it is quite the journey that Dr. Simmons has had. She has been a pioneer in so many ways.

She is the former president of Smith College, then she was president of Brown University, and then after retiring from those two jobs, she came back to her native Texas and was the president at Prairie View A&M University, which is a historically black college and university, Texas's oldest historically black college and university.

And as I was telling Dr. Simmons before we started the recording, I have a few students in Austin now who were students of hers, and they speak with her with a reverence that is rarely heard for university administrators and leaders. It's really quite, quite extraordinary.

As we'll discuss, and as Dr. Simmons describes in beautiful detail in her book, she did not start out in an elite position. She did not start out with privilege. She grew up in Grapeland, Texas, the child of sharecroppers, and Dr. Simmons was the 12th child of her parents and grew up in poverty that most of us have never experienced.

And it's really quite an extraordinary story. Dr. Simmons, thank you for joining us today.

It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

We will start, of course, with our scene-setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri. Zachary, what's the title of your poem today?

Well, it's one that's very appropriate for fall, “If the leaves could speak.”

You're just rubbing in the fact that you actually get a beautiful fall in New Haven.

I am, yes. Well, I'm going to be feeling the brunt of winter very soon. I think I have a right to rub it in for a few days.

Fair enough, fair enough. Well, let's hear your poem, Zachary.

“I wonder sometimes if the leaves could speak. What they would say of the glory they seek in learning to fly as they fall. If we should ask of them all, what right do you have to hope? If each one would be able to state and not for a minute hesitate. There is no reason or rhyme. I hope only because I remember a time when hope was illegal and wonder a crime. I hope sometimes for the world to freeze so I can ask of each hailstorm and autumn breeze what keeps you alive in the frost and the swift answer tossed. I keep going because I am going to keep the soil I plowed under my own two feet. The fruits of fields I've sown I shall reap. Wonderful is the coldness of this, the steely-eyed whisper that's almost a kiss that sees a truth that is most certainly true, but won't let them rest without paying her due. We are not eternal, but our hope can last and heal our wounds, a wonderful cast. Hold still so the dreams will be real.Hold still so the children can hear. Hold still so the gashes can heal.”

Wow, Zachary, you're channeling your inner Walt Whitman today.

Perhaps.

What's your poem about?

My poem is about the power of hope and curiosity even in circumstances that not only seem to leave no space for those, but seem to actively try to suppress and undermine hope and curiosity.

Well, I think that's a perfect place to turn to our distinguished guest, Dr. Simmons.

I was so moved by how you started your book in describing your experiences as a young child in what sound to me as circumstances that were almost impossible to learn and maybe circumstances where there was reason not to have hope. Can you describe for us how you grew up and how you managed to have hope in these difficult circumstances?

Well, first, may I just say how much I enjoyed Zachary's poem, and I even took note of some phrases that I want to hold on to for a while. Thank you, Zachary.

Thank you.

This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues. And how to have a voice in what happens next.

This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues. And how to have a voice in what happens next...

This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues. And how to have a voice in what happens next.

Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy. This week we're going to discuss a term that is thrown around almost every day in newspapers and political discussion, but a term that is rarely defined or historicized, and that term is free trade. The United States calls itself a free trade nation. Whether that's true or not is something we'll discuss, but more significantly we'll discuss what free trade really means, and how a group of thinkers, pioneering thinkers and political activists and policy makers in the 19th century pioneered a new way of pursuing free trade with certain ideals of peace attached to it.

We'll understand and talk about what it was that they meant and what it means for us today as we understand our own world. We're fortunate to be joined by a friend and really wonderful scholar, Marc Palen. Marc is a historian at the University of Exeter, and his new book that we're going to talk about is called Pax Economica: Left Wing Visions of a Free Trade World. It was just published in early 2024 by Princeton University Press. It's already been featured in the New Yorker magazine, one of my favorite magazines, as one of the best new books out in the last year. Marc has written on this topic before, his dissertation that he wrote at the University of Texas at Austin. And his first book is called The "Conspiracy" of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle for Empire and Economic Globalization. Marc also writes frequently for major newspapers and magazine, including Le Monde in France, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, New York Times, and the Australian Eye. So he covers at least three continents, if not more, in his writing.

This is democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

This Is Democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues. And how to have a voice in what happens next...

This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week we're going to talk about Southern politics. Not just in their contemporary valence, which we will get to, but historically. What have been the natural issues that have divided Southern politics through the last century and a half? What are the areas of difference, the areas of conflict? How have these areas of conflict and difference over time evolved? And how does the long history of Southern politics affect the way we think about democracy? About race? About justice? About power in our democracy today?

We're very fortunate to have a friend and distinguished colleague joining us this week. This is Professor Bryan Jones from the Government Department at the University of Texas at Austin. Bryan, thank you for joining us.

I hope many of you know Professor Jones's work. Bryan Jones holds the J.J. Jake Pickle Regents Chair in Congressional Studies. And as I said, he's a professor in the Department of Government.

He's one of the leading scholars of decision-making organizations and politics in American democratic politics. He's written a number of important articles and books. I cannot name them all or that would take up the entire time of the podcast, but I will name a few.

A few of my favorites. A book that Bryan wrote in 1994, Reconceiving Decision-Making in Democratic Politics. Another book in 2001, Politics and the Architecture of Choice. And then most recently, the book that we will focus on today, hot off the presses, The Southern Fault Line: How Race, Class, and Region Shaped One Family's History. And I encourage all of our listeners to read this book. It has so much to say about the history of our democracy in the South and of our contemporary issues as well.

This is Democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today's important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world's most influential democracy.

Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy, our first new episode of 2020 of the new decade. And we are so fortunate this morning, we are discussing Congress and war powers, an issue that's been in the news really for 240 years in American history, and an issue that's certainly at the center of American attention today. And we have with us, probably the person who's studying these issues most deeply as a historian, Clay Katsky. Clay, welcome.

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Nice to have you on with us. Clay is finishing his PhD here at the University of Texas, and he's writing his dissertation on Congress's role in managing and dealing with presidential war powers, particularly in the 1970s and 80s. And so we're so fortunate to have him here. He knows more about this subject than anyone else. He's also a fantastic teacher. And so we're delighted to have you here, Clay. Before we turn to our discussion with our expert, with Clay, we have our scene-setting poem. I haven't had a chance to say that in a little while, our scene-setting poem with Zachary Suri. What's the title of your poem today?