Democracy in Danger

When we launched this podcast a year ago, we made it clear we weren’t going to produce a show about “Democrats” in danger. But in the United States, one political party epitomizes the antidemocratic moment: Republicans remain devoted to a corrupt leader, intent on suppressing the vote and hostile to racial justice. This week, we wrap up Season Two with a hard look at the GOP — with help from a historian, a political scientist and a former Republican congresswoman who has dared to call out President Trump.

Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister in 2014, promising economic growth and a respite from the corrupt and calcified Congress Party. But Modi’s Hindu nationalism has hardened along with his will to govern. He has stifled dissent, taken over almost every government institution and adopted policies that are hostile to Muslims. Now India is reeling from a devastating surge in covid infections and deaths. Where did Modi come from? And can he be stopped? A historian and two journalists offer some answers.

Three pillars hold up autocracy in Russia, journalist Masha Gessen says: media control, sham elections and downright terror. But the opposition movement spearheaded by imprisoned activist Alexei Navalny has struck at the heart of all three. Gessen explains how — and measures the power of democratic aspirations in a country struggling against corruption with hope, against the past with visions of a happier future.

Ukrainians took to the streets twice in 10 years to defend their fledgling democracy. The first time, it seemed an election might be stolen. Then the government broke a pledge to bring the country closer to the European Union — and the people pushed back. Now Ukraine is mired in conflicts with separatists in the east and with Russia over its hold on Crimea. But even as Putin wages war on this former Soviet republic, the long-term outlook for Ukraine is strong. Harvard historian Serhii Plokhii explains why.

In Germany, like much of Europe, the antidemocratic forces of the far right have been gaining ground, even as chancellor Angela Merkel has kept extremism at bay in her own coalition, with often shrewd and at times brave politics. As she prepares to retire, can she cement a legacy of benevolent pragmatism and keep her country’s noisy fringe from coopting the opposition? Two experts on German politics help us explore Merkel’s legacy and what it means for the rest of the European Union — and the United States.

Citizenship determines who is in and who is out, who has a voice in a democracy and who doesn’t. But for the one million young people who have grown up in the United States undocumented, feeling like they really belong here remains a dream deferred. This time, we hear from two of them living in limbo. Plus, legal scholar Amanda Frost unearths the unsettling stories of Americans who have had their citizenship taken away — because of their politics, their race, even because of whom they choose to marry.

As states prepare to redraw their congressional districts, some will benefit from the prison-industrial complex: There are more people behind bars in America than in any country, and inmates are disproportionately Black and Latino. This week we’re replaying an interview about mass incarceration with Yale historian Elizabeth Hinton, who says minority communities suffered disproportionately from successive “wars” meant to save them — from poverty, from crime, from drugs — but which criminalized them instead.

Mexico’s murder rate has almost tripled in 15 years, even as the country has enjoyed a robust multiparty electoral system, a growing economy and a vibrant civil society. This mixed fate is common across Latin American democracies, as they struggle to overcome a past marred by U.S. imperialism, and face the problems of the present: violence, inequality and agonizing migrations. But, says sociologist Gema Kloppe-Santamaría, there is common ground on which the Americas, together, can build a better future.

Most top carbon-emitting nations, like the United States, are wealthy democracies. Yet climate change is hurting poor countries first and destabilizing their societies — with rising seas, more frequent hurricanes and harsh droughts, leading to mass migration. Science journalist Kendra Pierre-Louis says buying an electric car won’t help much. What we need, she tells Will and Siva, is far more than good individual choices: a wholesale structural shift, international reparations and a healthy dose of shame.

The toxic waste that seeps into rivers taints everything downstream, spoiling lakes and oceans, killing flora and fauna, altering the air we breathe and raining back down. Information works the same way, media scholar Whitney Phillips says. Fueled by human passions, falsehoods permeate the mainstream media, undermine trust and hurt vulnerable people most. To untangle this trash, she argues, we need to think ecologically, too: looking not only to coders but faith leaders, teachers, even healthcare workers.