The Round Table: A YVote Podcast

The Round Table: A YVote Podcast

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The Round Table: A YVote Podcast episodes

  • With moderate solutions, it feels like two steps back, one step forward
    Inica shares her concern that defeating Trump is the only thing the Democratic Party is worrying about and standing for right now. She expresses concerns about Biden staying silent and not talking about the issues he plans on focusing on when in office. Once we get closer to Nov, voters are going to want more clarity on what specifically Biden is going to do to reverse the past four years and to allow for a better next four years. She shares her concern that the campaign isn’t ready to answer those questions because they can’t satisfy everyone.
    1 min
  • Democratic nominees are going to be attacked as radical leftists whatever their politics are
    One of the biggest things the primary was focused on was electability. Calvin Cullen shares his strong beliefs that the establishment part of the Democratic Party was wrong to feel the party couldn’t nominate a Bernie Sanders or an Andrew Yang because they’d be called radical leftists and that would kill the ticket. The reality is that attack ads are inevitable—Biden and Harris are getting them and will continue to. ANYONE will be called a radical leftist because that’s just a buzzword the right uses these days.
    1 min
  • I think the election is going to be a whole lot closer than people think
    Calvin Cullen, creator of the podcast CC’s World based in Birmingham Alabama, notes that when it comes to electoral strategy, he feels Biden boxed himself into a corner when he committed to picking a woman. He feels Biden should have focused on policies more than identity, and that this pick in fact signifies an avoidance of focusing on policy. Overall, he anticipates this being a verrrry close election.
    1 min
  • Sounds Like Comma-la

    At this week's Round Table,  Inica, Olivia, Riya, and Sara spoke with Calvin Cullen, college student, Birmingham Coordinator for Take Back Our Republic, and creator of CC’s Word, a weekly opinion podcast about current events and the politics of the day.  We spoke about, wait for it, Joe Biden’s newly announced vice presidential pick, Kamala Harris, and the implications of the choice. Yes, everyone is talking about this but we dig a bit deeper, as usual. We talk about the value of detaching from individuals and attaching to policies, being skeptical of mainstream news--which serves the establishment of both sides, and doing independent research. Thanks for joining us!

    26 min
  • We have expertise in knowing your students and that’s the most valuable thing
    Divya and Eliza of Real Talk note that where they as students come in is in helping teachers know what exactly students are going to be most receptive to in civil discourse. They underscore that they don’t have all the expertise—they’re still students themselves. What they DO know is how to engage high schoolers in a space that is student led, how to do things that are relevant to them, and how to create a space that people feel is truly open to discussion, which is something that many classrooms lacking. Many teachers ARE trying to do these things in their classroom, and are aware of the need for civil discourse, they just don’t know how to do it well.
    1 min
  • REAL TALK is an acronym for our core principles
    Divya and Eliza use REAL TALK as an acronym to explain their core principles for productive discussions, like E for Embrace Discomfort and K for Know Yourself. This is coupled with a core curriculum of seven lessons that cover core skills that connect what happens in rue classroom with what is really applicable for learning about civic engagement. Too often, there’s not a connection btw classroom content and what students really want and use.
    1 min
  • In a debate there’s usually two sides, but life can rarely be reduced to two perspectives
    Real Talk cofounders Divya and Eliza find that there are elements of debate that are really effective—and some that are less so. One really valuable aspect is the ability to take on perspectives that you don’t necessarily agree with and go through logical reasoning and learn to listen really well so you can point out logical fallacies. A lot of what they are trying to do through Real Talk is create opportunities to apply really core skills of debate, argumentation, listening, thinking critically about sources of evidence into conversations that are really productive and that have the purpose of understanding, not winning.
    1 min
  • The culture of conversation in classrooms isn’t as productive as it could be
    Real Talk cofounders Divya and Eliza found that living in a liberal area, people were focusing on one side of the debate and were scared of bringing up other perspectives, even ones they didn’t believe in. Although the point of the discussion was to learn from multiple perspectives, that wasn’t what they were getting in the classroom. They recognized the need for additional instruction about how to facilitate and hold space for challenging conversations. They founded Real Talk to meet this need, working with fellow students and teachers to bring more instruction and structure to what NGP calls deliberation.
    1 min
  • When bipartisanship happens, it often doesn’t connect with peoole
    Frances Lee noted that conflict leads, conflict is the story, conflict is exciting. so the issues that generate conflict get attention. When legislation gets worked out in a bipartisan way, it gets little attention. Do most Americans know much about the legislative response to the pandemic in the spring and the bipartisan agreement around it (as opposed to the conflict around current negotiations)? When bipartisanship happens, it often doesn’t connect w people so they don’t even know it occurred.
    1 min
  • You’ve got to be ready for disappointment as an activist in US politics
    Frances Lee of Princeton shared with us that in her class on Political Ambition, she teaches about how politics takes patience and perseverance and you have to be armed against the failure of your fondest hopes. So you push and push and yet you achieve less than you’d hope—that’s the norm in politics —BUT if you reflect on the course of U.S. history, you can see that a great deal of change has been made in many areas. As such, one can take some comfort from the successes achieved, while recognizing they were all hard fought for and difficult to achieve
    1 min

About The Round Table: A YVote Podcast

From the publisher's feed

The Round Table provides a platform for conversation and engagement of civically-minded young people from different parts of the country. We strive to model civil dialogue across various divides--socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, political, and regional. We aim to challenge norms and represent all kinds of diversity--especially of perspective and ideas--enabling listeners to “hear” our thinking.