Future Hindsight
Future Hindsight is a weekly podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for everyday citizens.
Building a Black Future: Christopher Paul Harris
Thursday, November 30th, 2023 Christopher Paul Harris is Assistant Professor of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of To Build A Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care. We discuss why addressing our society’s hard-wired prejudices must be a substantial part of our endeavors toward a truly multicultural democracy. Central to building a Black future is reframing and recreating institutions from the perspective of those who have been historically marginalized. …
Have the Conversation: Neal Rickner
Tuesday, November 21st, 2023 Just in time for Thanksgiving, Neal Rickner joins us to talk about the American Values Coalition, a growing community of Americans who are empowered to lead with truth, reject extremism and misinformation, and defend democracy. Get some pointers to dialogue across political divides and across the table. First, have the courage to have the conversation. As much as hiding in the kitchen sounds preferable, we’re going to engage on the issues one relationship at a time. …
Unions and Democracy: Theda Skocpol
Thursday, November 16th, 2023 Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University and co-author of Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters are Turning Away from the Democratic Party. We learn how unions are true laboratories of democracy and why their demise has eroded our democratic culture. Unions were at the heart of local communities well beyond bargaining for contracts. They were part of recreational and social life, and even the churches were …
Cooperation Democracy: Bernard Harcourt
Thursday, November 9th, 2023 Bernard E. Harcourt is Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University -- and he was also our very first guest on the podcast! Bernard's most recent book, Cooperation: A Political, Economic, and Social Theory, offers the blueprint for a society based on cooperation. The idea of creating a space that benefits the stakeholders, rather than the shareholders, has a long history. Cooperatives offer a robust way of being. …
Shaping Collective Memory: Hajar Yazdiha
Thursday, November 2nd, 2023 Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and the author of The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. We discuss the role of collective memory in the myth-making of American exceptionalism. Collective memory is the way that we remember history and that becomes central to our idea of who we are as a people. It’s a …
Everytown for Gun Safety: Nick Suplina
Thursday, October 26th, 2023 Nick Suplina is Senior Vice President for Law & Policy at Everytown for Gun Safety. He was previously an advisor for New York State’s Attorney General. We discuss how 10 years of grassroots organizing has changed the political calculus on gun safety legislation, starting with the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Although progress is slow, 15 Republican senators did vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022. This was made possible because of 10 years worth …
Making Government Responsive: Sam Oliker-Friedland
Thursday, October 19th, 2023 Sam Oliker-Friedland is the Executive Director of the Institute for Responsive Government and a former Department of Justice voting rights litigator at the Civil Rights Division. We discuss the promise of automation for good governance and democracy. There is a lot of good pro-voter legislation being implemented in states from Nevada to Michigan, Pennsylvania to New York. The success of automatic voter registration laws are fertile ground for better public policy making and better governance across …
Tyranny of the Minority: Steven Levitsky
Thursday, October 12th, 2023 Steven Levitsky is Professor of Government at Harvard University. Together with Daniel Ziblatt, he is co-author of How Democracies Die and has just published Tyranny of the Minority. They argue that reforming American institutions to become more democratic will help us achieve a multiracial democracy—and in the process save democracy itself. We are on the cusp of a multiracial democracy, but to get there we need to reform our constitution and end counter-majoritarian institutions. Majorities should …
Radical Acts of Justice: Jocelyn Simonson
Thursday, October 5th, 2023 Jocelyn Simonson is Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, a former public defender, and the author of Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People Are Dismantling Mass Incarceration. We discuss how certain radical acts of justice challenge the legitimacy of the criminal system and form the underpinning of a new collective legal thought. The four pillars of this work comprise of court watching, community bail funds, participatory defense, and people’s budgets. Bail funds are pulling …
The Fear of Too Much Justice: Stephen Bright & James Kwak
Thursday, September 28th, 2023 Stephen Bright and James Kwak are co-authors of The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts. Stephen Bright has been an advocate for death row inmates for four decades and was the long-time director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, where James Kwak is the immediate past chair. We do not have a level playing field between the prosecution and the defense. Inequality and injustice in …