How to Fix Democracy - What is Local is Global |Featuring Richard Stengel

What is Local is Global |Featuring Richard Stengel

11/25/19 • 19 min

Prior to the 2016 election, Richard Stengel, former managing editor of Time magazine, witnessed the rise of disinformation firsthand from his position as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. He believes that consuming media with caution could be a powerful antidote to efforts to deceive us, and is skeptical that governments attempting to “counter” disinformation on social media platforms is the correct approach. From the limits of free speech laws to legislation erring on the side of privacy, Stengel and host Andrew Keen discuss what does and doesn’t work in the information wars.

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The Art of Listening | Featuring Leon Botstein

Leon Botstein, music director and conductor, scholar, and president of Bard College in upstate New York, had once thought that the Berlin Wall would never come down. And he found the revolutions surrounding 1989 “frightening” because they could lead to the ascent of unregulated capitalism and the release of suppressed nationalism. Botstein explains that democracy “is harder than people expected” and worries that we are spending too much time staring at our smartphones and “mesmerized by nothing” rather than finding meaning and value by our own activity.

Referenced in the interview: https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/college-behind-bars/

Next Episode

"Fed or Free" is a False Choice| Featuring Annika Savill

Annika Savill, Executive Head of the UN Democracy Fund admits that the word “democracy” doesn’t appear anywhere in the UN charter, but finds it exists in the demands of people everywhere who are working to hold their governments accountable. She tells Andrew Keen that, as a former journalist, she is passionate about facts and worried about clickbait and “tidbits of information without verification.” She also offers the concept of “citizens’ assemblies” as an alternative for referenda, and muses about exploring the relationship between “linguistic echo chambers” and democracy.