Future Hindsight

Thursday, March 16th, 2023

Laphonza Butler is President of Emily’s List, an organization that aims to help elect pro-choice democratic women to office. We're inspired by the organization's motto to "reject apathy and the status quo. Repeat daily." We discuss how women bring the challenges and dreams of their community to the policymaking table. 

Running for office is perhaps the ultimate form of civic participation. Bringing mo...

Thursday, March 9th, 2023

Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider are co-authors of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School and co-hosts of the education podcast Have You Heard? We discuss the ideology behind the unmaking of public education and the dangers of losing one of our most prized public goods. 

One of the original visions of public education was about building individ...

Thursday, March 2nd, 2023

Daniel Squadron is the co-founder and Executive Director of The States Project and also a former New York State senator. We discuss what it takes to win legislative majorities in state houses and why this is the essential ingredient to making change. 

State legislatures are the most important force in this country. When parties win legislative majorities, they can govern effectively. The good news is t...

Thursday, February 23rd, 2023

Leah Goodridge has served on the New York City Planning Commission since 2021 and is the Managing Attorney for Housing Policy at Mobilization for Justice. She oversees a team that provides legal representation to tenants in eviction proceedings. We talk about housing in New York City, ranging from high rents and evictions to land use discussions.

Tenant unions have advocated for tenants’ rights in ...

Thursday, February 16th, 2023

Gregg Colburn is the co-author of Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain US Patterns. He's also an Assistant Professor of Real Estate at the University of Washington’s College of Built Environments. We discuss the prevalence and variety of homelessness and the big ideas to tackle the housing crisis.

About 5% of the population in the US will experience homelessness at some...

Thursday, February 9th, 2023

Octavia Abell is the co-founder and CEO of Govern For America, which describes its mission as bridging the gap between governments and emerging leaders to build a pipeline of diverse and dynamic public sector talent. We discuss the power of public sector workers to be agents of change, whether that's public policy on climate or streamlining the process of getting a birth certificate.

Government can ...

Thursday, February 2nd, 2023

Ruth Milkman is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and History at the CUNY Graduate Center and at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, where she chairs the Labor Studies Department. Her most recent books are Immigration Matters and Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat.

Unions remain a voice for the voiceless, especially given that the playing field has been very strongly tilted in favor of...

Thursday, January 26th, 2023

Jared Yates Sexton is a self-described Hoosier, a Political Analyst, and host of the Muckrake Podcast. His latest book is The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis. We discuss our current era of neo-liberalism and what may be in store in the future. 

One of the most dangerous things that Reagan and Thatcher did on behalf of neoliberalism was convince people that gover...

Thursday, January 19th, 2023

Victor Shi is a Gen Z activist, host of On the Move, co-host of iGen Politics, a junior at UCLA, and Strategy Director of Voters of Tomorrow. He was elected as the youngest delegate for Joe Biden in 2020 and previously interned at the White House and DNC. We discuss the power of the youth vote to determine elections and which issues motivate Gen Zers to go to the polls. 

Against the backdrop of vote...

Thursday, January 12th, 2023

Danielle Moodie is a cultural connoisseur, a political junkie, and, in addition to Democracy-ish, also hosts the Woke AF Daily podcast. Wajahat Ali is a Daily Beast columnist, public speaker, recovering attorney, and author. His most recent book is Go Back To Where You Came From: And, Other Helpful Recommendations on Becoming American. We discuss the struggle toward a multiracial democracy and the rol...

Thursday, January 5th, 2023

Steve Phillips is the host of the Democracy in Color podcast and the author of How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good. We start off a new year of civic engagement and fighting for democracy with a conversation about his political leadership, thought leadership, and coalition building.

The Confederate Battle plan of never giving an inch, ruthless...

Thursday, December 29th, 2022

We’re sharing a clip from an episode of Some of My Best Friends Are…

Here’s a preview of another podcast, Some of My Best Friends Are, from Pushkin

Industries. Harvard professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad and journalist Ben Austen are friends, one Black and one white, who grew up together on the South Side of Chicago. On Some of My Best Friends Are, Khalil and Ben, along with their guests, have critica...

Thursday, December 22nd, 2022

Chris Kang is the Co-Founder and Chief Counsel of Demand Justice. He served in the White House for nearly seven years as Deputy Counsel to President Obama and Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. We talk about court reform from diversifying the bench of judges to expanding the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court of the United States is actually the only court in the entire count...

Thursday, December 15th, 2022

Jackie Salit and Thom Reilly are co-directors of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University and co-authors of The Independent Voter. Independents are making a statement about the culture, the practice, and the destructiveness of the current political culture. You have almost half the country identifying themselves as independents, but you have a system that is...

Thursday, December 8th, 2022

Chris Melody Fields Figueredo is the Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which seeks to strengthen democracy by building a national progressive strategy for ballot measures. We discuss ballot initiatives and how they put the issues directly into the hands of voters and out of the two-party system. It can really flip the script!

Ballot measures are often higher vote-getters t...

Thursday, December 1st, 2022

Cecile Richards is the co-chair of American Bridge, former president of Planned Parenthood, a co-founder of Supermajority, and author of the book Make Trouble. We make sense of the midterms, take away some gold nuggets for democracy, and are reminded that grassroots organizing is all about the long game. 

A way to suppress democracy is by telling people it doesn't matter whether we vote or not. With...

Thursday, November 23rd, 2022

Andrew Koppelman is the author of Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed. It’s a fascinating history of this idea and an excellent lens for understanding so much of American life and politics. 

The core idea of liberalism is that people ought to be able to live as they like and libertarianism appeals to that desire for freedom. The question is how do ...

Thursday, November 10th, 2022

Rebecca Cokley is a disability-rights advocate and the first U.S. Disability Rights Program Officer for the Ford Foundation. From 2009 to 2013, she served as an appointee in President Barack Obama’s White House. We discuss the lived experience of being disabled in America. It's an important conversation that truly exposes the inequities of our society.

We don't live in a society that allows for equ...

Thursday, November 10th, 2022

Thaddeus Johnson is a former police officer, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, and Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice & Criminology at  Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. This broad-ranging conversation discusses law enforcement and empowering communities and citizens so we can all be safer.

Public safety falls under a much larger umbrella than ...