For World Refugee Day, we talk with Jana Mason, Senior External Relations Advisor at the Washington, D.C. office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR-the UN Refugee Agency) about the root causes of forced migration and the global refugee crisis, and what we can do to take action on important issues facing refugees.

Why do we have to run an obstacle course when we go to vote every two years in federal elections? How can Congress strengthen American democratic institutions and the right to vote by implementing new policies and procedures that will protect voting rights, limit corruption, expose "Dark Money" in politics, and make the political process more transparent? What can be done to address systemic disenfranchisement and voter suppression of historically minoritized and marginalized groups in the United States? In this episode, we talk with Congressman John Sarbanes about what it will take to secure voting rights for every American and restore confidence in elections and government. Congressman Sarbanes chairs the Democracy Reform Task Force, which has assembled HR1, the For The People Act, to reform and strengthen our democracy.

In this episode, we talk with Jim Acosta, CNN anchor for weekend programming and the network's chief domestic correspondent, about the critical role of a free press as necessary noise in a functioning democracy. Acosta weighs in on the implications of the January 6, 2021 violent attacks and the ongoing insurrection for democracy in America and why we need a bipartisan commission to investigate. "If we don't, we will have one political party deny what happened on January 6," says Acosta, and we're likely to see future protests or attempts to overturn results in future elections if one party doesn't like the outcome.

In this episode we talk with Walter Shaub, who leads the Ethics and Accountability Initiative at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), about what elected and other government officials, and the public can do to create and implement long-lasting reforms to shore up the barricades against authoritarianism.

"America is on the move again," declared President Joe Biden in a joint session of Congress on April 28, 2021 and on the eve of the 100th day of his administration. In this episode, Caitlin Tully, a first-year Finance major in JMU's College of Business, moderates a discussion with economic policy experts Flint Engelman, Americans for Prosperity, and Ben Ritz, Director of Progressive Policy Institute's Center for Funding America's Future about the presidential administration's economic policy priorities and impacts on Americans.

The theme of Earth Day 2021 is action on Climate Change. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Tobias Gerken, assistant professor in the School of Integrated Sciences and Technology at JMU whose research focuses on environmental and atmospheric science. He explains some of his novel research on land–atmosphere coupling and feedback and with NASA's project on Atmospheric Carbon and Transport and the Department of Energy's GreenOcean Amazon project. Dr. Gerken shares how this research impacts our understanding of climate modeling, the extent of environmental destruction from climate change, and advice for policymakers for making informed decisions about climate policy.

According to a recent Pew Research Center study, there is a record number of women serving in the 117th Congress. We talk with Dr. Kira Sanbonmatsu, Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University and Senior Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, about breaking barriers to women's representation in policy and decisionmaking processes, and the impact of women realizing their full political potential.

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Charley Willison, a National Institutes of Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard University Department of Health Care Policy, about the politics and governance of homelessness in the United States and what can be done to address the national homelessness crisis.

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Kristin Wylie, associate professor of political science at James Madison University, about political violence against women, the state of women's political representation and participation, and reforms to address structural barriers that prevent women from running and serving in office.

Does President Joe Biden have a mandate to enact his policies and agenda? Why are presidents drawn to mandate rhetoric? What can we learn from presidential communications about the logic of presidential mandates? How do popular and media conceptions of mandates differ from those of presidents and their teams? Although political scientists have been pretty adamant that mandates aren't real, the idea of an electoral mandate remains powerful. Dr. Julia Azari, associate professor of political science at Marquette University, joins us to discuss the logic of presidential mandates, achieving policy and legislative agendas, government responsiveness and collective representation.