To close off season 2, we hear from Professor Lilly Goren about the relationship between popular culture and politics. We cover examples across television, cinema, and literature to illuminate what political themes we often consume in our everyday lives without even realizing. We work through themes of nostalgia, gender construction, and “the anti-hero” to begin considering how we should treat popular media and its appropriate role in politics today.

This month we hear from Professor John Barry Ryan about polarization in the United States and its significance to communication and compromise in politics today. Specifically highlighting the issues of gun violence and climate change, we explain why Americans appear so far apart and how this often results in policy inaction. We discuss the nature of American democracy and its limits in order to sort out its potential to mitigate collective action problems. 

We sit with Professor John Emery to discuss just that! Covering his research on war ethics, we list the ways in which war has become simultaneously dehumanized and never-ending within the 21st century. Considering the United States’ conceptualization of “enemy”, its interventions across the Middle East, and a growingly belligerent and nuclear armed Russia, could “feelings” maybe hold the answer? 

To kick-off Season 2, we hear from Eastern European Politics scholar, Sarah Wilson Sokhey. Outlining Russian politics and citizenship, we discuss just how immune the Russian state is from public opinion. By examining past protest within Russia, we breakdown current public opinion in Russia and explore its potential to force an end to the war.

Drawing parallels between 20th century Alabama and today, we ask what has changed and what hasn’t when it comes to violence against racial minorities, as well as against Americans in general. Despite their obvious harm, we attempt to raise the possibilities that might also arise to combat them. 

Breaking down the roots of civil war, how they escalate, their consequences, and what to do about them, this episode applies poli sci theories to understand ongoing dilemmas in Haiti, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, …and possibly the United States. 

On episode 8, we speak with Professor Jesse Acevedo about his research on migration and remittances. Covering the movement of people and money across the Americas, we debunk assumptions behind migration and offer a path towards engaging questions of immigration in moving forward. 

On episode 6, we talk with Dr. Emily Ray about how and why environmentalism still faces difficult hurdles, even in the face of impending doom. 

In this special episode, Molly sits down with Owen to hear about his work on performative citizenship and how respectability factors into the way race matters to U.S. citizenship today. 

On episode 4, we hear from Dr. Tyler Reny regarding the way racial groupings, Trump’s rhetoric, Blue Lives Matter, and COVID all interact with one another to affect the way people feel about and participate in politics today….and potentially in a post-pandemic world. 

We talk with Dr. Carew Boulding about whether or not the United States is facing unprecedented challenges, and if Bolivia’s recent history holds any lessons for the United States' current democratic crisis.