“We think about [Democracy] happening someplace else … and how I think about it and encourage students to think about it: it’s there yes … but it’s also in you.” – Timothy Shaffer, PhD

Today I interviewed Timothy Shaffer, PhD

Timothy J. Shaffer is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies and director of the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy at Kansas State University. He is also principal research specialist with the National Institute for Civil Discourse at the University of Arizona. Connected to these efforts, Shaffer also serves as the associate editor of the Journal of Deliberative Democracy, as a country expert on deliberative democracy with the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem Institute) research project, and as a co-director guiding the work of the Deliberative Pedagogy Lab, an international project focused on applied scholarship about the ways that deliberation can transform higher education educational approaches and environments.

As an interdisciplinary scholar and practitioner of deliberative democracy, civic education, and small group communication, Shaffer focuses on the role of civic professionals in institutional settings such as local government, higher education, and non-governmental organizations in relationship with diverse communities. Through his scholarship, he contributes to discussions within fields such as communication studies, higher education, and civic studies where themes of citizenship, professionalism, community, and civic life are explored.

He received the Early Career Recognition Award from the International Association for Research on Service Learning and Community Engagement.

In this episode we speak about:

To catch up with our guest:

“The fundamental principle of a testing desert is: you’re in a county and there’s not a single test site. … About 40% of rural counties in the United States are testing deserts.” – Dr. Sema Sgaier of the Surgo Foundation

Today I interviewed Dr. Sema Sgaier.

Dr. Sema Sgaier is Co-founder and Executive Director of Surgo Foundation, a privately funded action tank whose mission is to bring precision to solutions that save and improve lives by integrating behavioral science , data science, and artificial intelligence.  Previously at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, she led large-scale health programs in India and Africa. She is faculty at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the department of Global Health at the University of Washington. Her research interests include methodologies to understand human behavior, novel data systems and analytic approaches, and management practices to drive innovation within large-scale global health programs. She was selected as a Rising Talent by the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society. She is on the board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Alumni Network. Sema has a PhD in neuroscience.

In this episode we speak about:

Then Queens Marie comes up with a plan to get the CCVI in federal hands using toilet paper.

To catch up with our guest:

“To me what movement work means is creativity.” – Jeannine Cook

Today I interviewed Jeannine Cook,

For the last 10 years Jeannine Cook has worked as a trusted writer for several startups, corporations, non-profits, and influencers. In addition to a holding a master’s degree from The University of the Arts, Jeannine is also a Leeway Art & Transformation Grantee and a winner of the South Philly Review Difference Maker Award. Jeannine’s work has been recognized by several news outlets including Vogue Magazine, INC, MSNBC, The Strategist, and the Washington Post. She recently returned from Nairobi, Kenya facilitating social justice creative writing with youth from 15 countries around the world. She writes about the complex intersections of motherhood, activism, and community. Her pieces are featured in several publications including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Root Quarterly, Printworks, and midnight & indigo. She is the proud new shopkeeper of Harriett’s Bookshop in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia.

In this episode we speak about:

Then Melania asks for a book recommendation for Donald.

To catch up with our guest:

“You’re not a rockstar and I’m not an angel either, and that’s why we need each other, and that’s why we need empathy, actually.” – Fritz Breithaupt

Today I interviewed Fritz Breithaupt.

Fritz Breithaupt is a provost professor at Indiana University, Bloomington since 1996, since 2010 as a full professor of Germanic Studies, an adjunct professor of Comparative Literature, and an affiliate professor of Cognitive Science. He co-founded the European Union Center at Indiana University in 2005 and served as its co-director until 2007. In Germany, he is most well known outside of academic circles as a columnist for ZEIT Campus magazine and the author of the recurring feature “Frag den Prof” (“Ask the professor”). In 2009-10, he was the distinguished Remak Scholar of Indiana University. He has twice (in 2003 and 2009) won the grant of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, which is “granted in recognition of a researcher’s entire achievements to date to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future.”

His 2017 book The Dark Sides of Empathy, which we will talk about today, offers an analysis of Donald Trump’s technique to draw empathy to himself. The book appeared on the German bestseller list in February 2017 (Spiegel-Bestseller Liste).

In this episode we speak about:

Then my DAD comes in and tells Fritz that he wrote the book of his life.

To catch up with our guest:

“We get into this weird thing, that if politicians don’t get made fun of

Today I interviewed Mark Eaton of The Capitol Steps.

The Capitol Steps began as a group of Senate staffers who set out to satirize the very people and places that employed them.

The group was born in December, 1981 when some staffers for Senator Charles Percy were planning entertainment for a Christmas party. Their first idea was to stage a nativity play, but in the whole Congress they couldn’t find three wise men or a virgin. So, they decided to dig into the headlines of the day, and they created song parodies & skits which conveyed a special brand of satirical humor.

In the years that followed, many of the Steps ignored the conventional wisdom (“Don’t quit your day job!”), and although not all of the current members of the Steps are former Capitol Hill staffers, taken together the performers have worked in a total of eighteen Congressional offices and represent 62 years of collective House and Senate staff experience.

Since they began, the Capitol Steps have recorded over 35 albums, including their latest, The Lyin’ Kings. They’ve been featured on NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS, and can be heard twice a year on National Public Radio stations nationwide during their Politics Takes a Holiday radio specials.

In this episode we speak about:

Then Melania talks to Mark’s impression of Bill Clinton about the best way to sneak around the White House and George W. Bush about the pluses and minuses of a second term.

To catch up with our guest:

“Somebody described our comedy shows as going to Chippendales because it’s so rowdy. These women don’t want to leave.” – Mona Shaikh

Today I interviewed Mona Shaikh.

Mona Shaikh is a stand-up comedian, host, emcee and producer of Minority Reportz. She most recently emcee’d the Women’s March in SF in Jan 2019 and made history by being the first South Asian/Middle Eastern Female Comedian to perform in front of over 50,000 people! She’s been featured in LA Times, Newsweek, The Guardian, LA Weekly, New York Post, Huffington Post, Washington Post and BBC. She can also be seen regularly on The Young Turks, The Stephanie Miller Show on SiriusXM and Mo’Kelly Show on IHeartRadio. Mona has also headlined in Dubai, Portugal as well as London. In addition to being seen all around Los Angeles at major comedy clubs as The Comedy Store, Flappers Comedy Club, The Laugh Factory, Ice House Pasadena, Hollywood Improv and many more, she hosted the Hollywood Improv for Comedy Juice night with Dane Cook. She became the first Pakistani female Comedian to be selected for the Laugh’s Factory Funniest Person in the World Competition and made history by becoming the first Pakistani female Comedian to headline Hollywood Improv.

In this episode we speak about:

And then Melania asks a question, which escalates to Mona and I going on a rant that might get us death threats.

To catch up with our guest:

“I’ve been asked over the years a lot for the potential of humor to bridge these divides and I have not figured out a way it work. …. Unless you’re someone who is willing to targets the machinery that creates the division in the first place.” – Dannagal Young

Today I interviewed Dannagal Young.

Dannagal G. Young (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, 2007) is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Delaware where she studies the content, audience, and effects of political humor. She has authored over forty academic articles and book chapters exploring themes related to political entertainment, media psychology, public opinion, and misinformation. Her latest book “Irony and Outrage” examines satire and outrage as the logical extensions of the respective psychological profiles of liberals and conservatives (Oxford University Press, 2020: available here).

Young is a Research Fellow with the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication and was awarded the University of Delaware’s Excellence in Teaching Award  in 2014. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center and an Affiliated Researcher with the University of Arizona’s National Institute for Civil Discourse (NICD).  Young is also a co-editor on the 2019 NICD volume: “A Crisis of Civility: Political Discourse and its Discontents”

In this episode we speak about:

Then my character Melania Trump asks how we can make Donald more funny.

To catch up with our guest:

“Call-out culture impoverishes our pools of meaning because we don’t get to share what everybody is thinking. Because some people are intimidated by the brutality with which an unfolding thought is received.” – Loretta Ross

Today I interviewed Loretta Ross.

In this episode we speak about:

To catch up with our guest:

“I have choices. I’m responsible for my happiness.” — Mary Goggin

Today I interviewed Mary Goggin, the creator of the solo show Runaway Princess.

In this episode we speak about:

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“Everyone has a story to tell and when its your personal story you’re selling yourself, too. And that, to me, is a very easy sell.” — Rick Kaempfer

Today I interviewed Rick Kaempfer and David Stern of Eckhartz Press.

Rick Kaempfer is the co-founder and publisher of Eckhartz Press. In addition to being the publisher, he is the author of several Eckhartz Press releases, inclucing “EveryCubEver”, “Father Knows Nothing”, “Records Truly Is My Middle Name” (with John Records Landecker) and “The Living Wills” (with Brendan Sullivan), Rick has been published several times before (including a novel “$everance” and a how-to-book about radio called “The Radio Producer’s Handbook”). He was also a member of the media for more than twenty years as the producer of two highly acclaimed radio shows (Steve Dahl & Garry Meier and John Records Landecker), and still covers the industry as the media critic for the Illinois Entertainer. He has watched the media landscape change over the past thirty years from a front row seat, and is excited to use that experience as the publisher of Eckhartz Press.

David Stern is the co-founder and publisher of Eckhartz Press, and the author of “The Balding Handbook”. After a 20+ year sales and marketing career, and a ten year stint as a principal in a Chicago advertising agency, Stern comes to Eckhartz Press uniquely qualified to tackle the realities of an ever-changing publishing landscape. He and Kaempfer have been collaborating in one form or another since they met at the University of Illinois in the early 1980s (when both must have been mere children). Stern is also one of the officers of Eckhartz Press’ parent company Just One Bad Century, Inc, and proud to call himself a life long (“City Boy”) Chicagoan.

In this episode we speak about:

To catch up with our guests: