55 Voices for Democracy – The Podcast

"I realized that everything I learned in terms of communication, creativity, strategy and planning at university can also be used for good...for the rights of people with disabilities," states Raul Krauthausen. The inclusion activist and podcaster compares inclusion and accessibility laws in the US and Germany, and explains how Germany's reckoning with its fascist past still affects institutional structures today. Raul Krauthausen is the founder of a series of initiatives focusing on diversity and inclusion, among them SOZIALHELD*INNEN (Social heroes), which advises individuals and businesses on considering people with disabilities as a target group for their products and services. He is also the host of several podcasts.

"Until we start thinking about what people's lives are really like and not just shame them for how they vote, we're not going to have a healthy democracy," argues Sarah Jaffe. The labor journalist talks about working people's disillusionment with politics, and why seemingly incoherent protest movements shouldn't be disregarded. Does today's labor shortage give workers bargaining power? Sarah Jaffe's book Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted and Alone was published in 2020 to wide acclaim.

"One of the things that is so fascinating about last night's midterm elections is how young people really showed up," states Geraldo Cadava, professor of history and Latina and Latino studies at Northwestern University. In this episode, he gives his fresh take on the 2022 midterm elections and discusses the diversity of the Latino community in the U.S. along with the influence religion, race, and identity have on Latino voters. Geraldo Cadava is the author of The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump (2020), and Standing on Common Ground (2013).

While politics can involve seemingly abstract decisions, "literature can remind us of the stakes at human level," argues Boris Dralyuk. In this episode, the translator, author and editor-in-chief of Los Angeles Review of Books talks about translators giving voice to the voiceless, and the raison d'etre of literary criticism in today's fragmented cultural landscape. Boris Dralyuk's debut poetry collection My Hollywood and Other Poems came out in April 2022 on Paul Dry Books.

"Some of the tension and voter suppression we are experiencing right now is not a result of us losing, it is a result of us winning," states LaTosha Brown, community organizer and co-founder of Black Voters Matter. In this episode, she talks about the specific mechanics that suppress Black votes, the importance of activating Black voters, particularly in rural areas, and the power marginalized groups and young voters hold to change democracies. LaTosha Brown and Black Voters Matter have been credited for significant voter registration efforts in several elections, among them the 2020-21 U.S. Senate election in Georgia.

What makes a city a home for people with different backgrounds? How has the pandemic impacted city planning and urban architecture? In this episode, the 2022 Thomas Mann Fellow, architect and author Doris Kleilein looks at the benefits of L.A.'s 'laissez-faire urbanism' compared to more regulated approaches in Europe. She argues that "the built visibility of a culture or minority is key to becoming part of society." Kleilein's research focuses on how city planning can propose new forms of living together in a changing heterogenous societies. Kleilein heads the architectural book publishing house JOVIS in Berlin, and co-edited the book "Post-Pandemic Urbanism" in 2021.

What can be done against online hate speech and deep fakes? Host Tom Zoellner talks to the political scientist & 2022 Thomas Mann Fellow Dr. Christoph Bieber about internet regulation in Europe and the U.S. Is there reason to be optimistic when it comes to our digital present and future? Bieber is professor of Political Science at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies in Bochum, Germany, where he among other things researches the effect of online communication on political actors.

The Brazilian origins of his mother Júlia were initially a source of shame for Thomas Mann, but that changed in the 1920s "as his understanding of his role in society and democracy changed," claims Dr. Veronika Fuechtner. The Professor of German Studies at Dartmouth talks about the role of racial and sexual ambiguity in Mann's writing and why he emigrated to the U.S. rather than to Brazil. Fuechtner has co-authored A Global History of Sexual Science 1880-1960 (2017) and is currently completing a monograph on Júlia Mann and Thomas Mann's construction of race and "Germanness."

This episode focuses on what novelist and writer Rosecrans Baldwin calls "the city state Los Angeles." In his recent best-selling book Everything Now: Lessons From the City-State of Los Angeles, the award-winning author shares his thoughts on one of the United States' most confounding metropolises – "not just a great city, but a full-blown modern city-state." Together with our hosts, Baldwin addresses issues such as the housing crisis, city planning and what can be learned from comparing L.A.'s infrastructure to another highly fascinating metropolis: Berlin. Baldwin is the winner of the 2022 California Book Award.