COMING THIS FALL

THE DEMOCRACY TEST

A Six Part Series Launching September 2018

The presidency of Donald Trump has sparked a national conversation in America. Is our democracy at risk? Across the country, scholars, activists and citizens are taking stock.  With an eye on how democracies have failed throughout history, and on the rise of authoritarian leaders across the globe, they ask the question …can it happen here? From a deepening of hyper partisanship and political intolerance, to a heightened distrust in public institutions, to the erosion of the political norms that support the architecture of American democracy, they ask us to pay attention to the warning signs of democratic decline and what we can do to prevent it.

‘The Democracy Test” will give a broad and diverse national platform to this work. Over the course of six weeks, we’ll examine the faultlines of American democracy. Our guests will bring the kind expertise needed to understand what is truly unique in this moment of our nation’s history, what brought us here, and what it would take to emerge with an even stronger understanding of what democracy means in America and how we can more toward an even stronger expression of  its ideals.

We are halfway to meeting are funding goal to produce this series.

Please help us get all the way there.

Just click on the DONATE Button to the right, and thank you!

Truth, Politics & Power Archives

For the first year of the Trump Presidency, Truth,Politics and Power produced timely programs on the changes brought in by the new administration.  They are still relevant today. Here are of our favorites. Visit our EPISODES page  for links to all episodes.

The Politics of Denial

March 2, 2018 

Episode 49 Legions of lobbyists and lawyers obscured the facts on tobacco and cancer for decades  Neal Conan talks with writer Alan Schwarz, who found that the football industry followed the same pattern, and with Science Historian Naomi Oreskes, on how climate deniers are following tobacco’s lead, and that the result, will be global calamity.

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The Politics of Gun Control

February 23, 2018   

Episode 48 How a  duty for community self defense evolved into an individual right to bear arms and how the laws changed with weapons technology and the rise of the National Rifle Association. Plus a conversation on restrictions on research into guns and gun deaths.

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Presidents, Politics and the FBI

February 9, 2018 

Episode 46 President Trump and his allies have launched a campaign to discredit the FBI and, by extension, the Russia Investigation.   Former FBI Agent Asha Rangappa on the culture of the bureau.  NPR’s Ron Elving on it’s political history of the FBI, and Garrett Graff, on how the bureau’s changed since 9/11.

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America First

February 2, 2018 

Episode 45 It’s how President Trump describes American trade policy.  “America First”.  Neal Conan asks whether the slogan more accurately describes a nationalist revision of American foreign policy that threatens to make the world more chaotic and more dangerous.

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The Politics of Disaster

September 29, 2017

Episode 30 How federal policy contributes to catastrophe, how an enormous flood in 1927 changed the way Americans think about the size and role of government , and the secret history of FEMA, the agency created to manage the ultimate disaster…nuclear apocalypse.

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