Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

By Burt CohenSociety & CultureNewsPolitics
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Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen episodes

  • Critical Race Theory: Scopes Trial Redux?
    In the Scopes Trial of 1925, William Jennings Bryan spoke against teaching evolution, saying “I have all the information I need to live and die by.” Today’s intense fight against teaching Critical Race Theory is more of the same. To many Americans who have been economically hurt, disoriented, and confused by the rush of change, the familiar simplicity is both a safe retreat and a weapon to be used against actual experts. On this show historian Chuck Holden looks at the many examples in our history of rejecting education and knowledge in a serious turn away from democracy. And Trump gave permission for Americans to be incurious and to mock the educated. The opposition to teaching CRT is about pushing back against a scary new world. Democrats don’t need to educate them, we need to listen.
    1 hr
  • Rabbi in The West Bank Calls for Torat Tzedek, An End to Settler Brutality
    Violence in the West Bank has ramped up markedly in recent days. Jewish settlers there see the barbaric and evil acts of October 7th as a green light. They’re not just vigilantes, they are subsidized by the Israeli government and are working with the Israeli police. On this show, Edmonton journalist Jeremy Appel talks of one brave  West Bank Rabbi, Arik Ascherman who seeks to restore traditional Jewish values of justice and stop the harassment, violence, and expulsion of Palestinians there.
    1 hr
  • The Left Can Win a Moral Revival
    The corporate powers in the late sixties were seriously freaked out by the powerful momentum of the left. So along came the 1971 Powell Memo, which was a battle plan to retake power. And it worked. On this show, economist professor Michael Zweig talks about his new book Class, Race, and Gender: Challenging the Injuries and Divisions of Capitalism. He explains how virtually all social and environmental issues share the same root. Give a listen.
    1 hr
  • Powerful Left-Labor Coalition Emerging
    Used to be labor unions were seen as being limited to white working class men and as such lacked power to make real change. With the wins by the UAW and writers union, writing in the New Republic author Raina Lipsitz provides tangible evidence of a new powerful coalition of victorious labor, reproductive rights, and climate activists. And she says try as they might, the moral panic pushed by the shrinking far right won’t cut it with average Americans, who are notably supportive of the new left-labor unity.
    1 hr
  • Heather Cox Richardson: Yes, Democracy Is Awakening
    In a democracy, we have a right to our own say over how we are governed: that’s what history shows is the impetus behind populism, both right and left. It says: we are experiencing economic injustice; how do we get out?  On this show Heather Cox Richardson discusses her reasons for optimism with host Burt Cohen. And she explains the continued appeal of Donald Trump.
    1 hr
  • Horror and Absurdity: Revisiting Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5
    One entire generation held the book and the author in reverence. And with Tom Roston’s new book The Writer’s Crusade and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse Five a new generation is discovering the unique importance of Kurt Vonnegut’s vision of war and of humanity’s potential. At the time  Vonnegut wrote this classic World War Two fiction mixed with nonfiction,  PTSD was unknown. Today we ask what is sane and what insane about war. Roston’s book about a book shares what Vonnegut meant by the cryptic phrase “So it goes.” And he examines the depression with which Vonnegut lived.
    58 min
  • The Right’s Latest Target: Unmarried Women
    You may have heard the story: King Cnut sat on the seashore and tried to command the tide not to touch his feet, yet the sea ignored him. Such may be the case with the right wing’s war against unmarried women in general and Tayor Swift in specific. They’re terrified of her power and success. On this show The Nation’s Jeet Heer dissects the cultural right’s frenzied crisis of masculinity. Demoralized and desperate: anti-“woke” is just not working. But that’s all they have. Give a listen.

    58 min
  • The Mystery that is Cuban History
    For over 60 years, North Americans have been kept in the dark about our neighbor Cuba. On this show Professor author Lisandro Perez talks about what his new book reveals. In The House on G Street traces generations of a family of well to do Cubans. He describes that history that hasn’t been told of the nation’s “Compromised Sovereignty.” Why are so may Cubans Republicans? Give a listen.
    59 min
  • Wealth Supremacy is On Autopilot: Time to Change
    In the current American version of capitalism, all of us are “thingified:” our only value being as digits on the way to corporate profits. This reflects a core bias in the system toward serving the very richest. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In her new book Wealth Supremacy; How the Extractive Economy and Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises, author co-founder and former president of Business Ethics magazine Marjorie Kelly explains how capitalism can and must evolve to serve the common good. For more than just the wealthiest few.
    1 hr
  • The Useful Struggle for American Democracy
    Democracy and oligarchy: since our founding it’s been a long balancing act. In his new book Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy, author historian Timothy Shenk tells of how such incredibly diverse people as Mark Hanna and Phyllis Schlafly productively helped hammer out what makes capitalism and democracy coexist. This history provides tools useful today.
    1 hr

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