America Votes; Democracy Wins (Maybe)
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
11/24/22
•48m
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The US mid-term elections are (almost) over. We know the headlines: Democratic Senate, Republican House, many election deniers denied election. Democrats win by not losing; Republicans prove that when bad candidates deserve to lose, they do. Perhaps most importantly—after all the sturm und drang of the last election cycle—voters voted, ballots were counted, winners celebrated and losers conceded. In other words, America had a normal election.
But is it too early to say that democracy has healed itself? Is the absence of wild allegations of fraud too low a bar for a country that likes to think of itself as the gold standard for representative democracy? What are the implications of the massive amounts of money—almost $17 billion—that candidates raised and spent during their campaigns? Does the way-too-early launch of the 2024 presidential election cycle signal that politicking, rather than governing, is what American politicians are best at?
We invited Richard Gephardt, former Democratic congressman and long-time party leader, and Scott Miller, one of America's most successful political strategists, to sift through the evidence and speculate on the future of democracy in America.
This material was originally recorded during a Tällberg webinar and has been lightly edited for this podcast.
Previous Episode
Worth Repeating: Live and Let Live
November 17, 2022
•25m
2020 will be remembered as the Pandemic Year, when a deadly pathogen somehow moved from bat to human—and the rest is history still being written. Six out of 10 infectious diseases are zoonotic: everything from COVID and the other coronaviruses to rabies, West Nile, even the plague. In a Croesus-like effort to break the cycle, Denmark recently killed 17 million farmed mink to try to prevent further human infection—but that seems immoral as well as stupid.
Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka has a better idea. Dr Gladys, as she is known, believes that zoonotic disease is controllable by simultaneously working to improve the health of humans and animals, at the points where they meet. Her work, primarily with the mountain gorillas of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, has contributed not only to resurgence in the gorilla population, but also to an improvement in the health and welfare of the human communities that live around the Park.
She explains her approach in this episode of New Thinking for a New World.
Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is a winner of the 2022 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Globbal Leadership Prize.
This episode was originally published on December 17, 2020
Next Episode
Worth Repeating: Can Tech Save Us?
December 1, 2022
•35m
Our world has become a weird combination of dangerous, existential challenges and of almost magical, potential solutions. On the one hand, we see accelerating, deadly climate change, proliferating famine, pandemics, war, and growing political and social tensions that could threaten life as we know it. On the other hand, we are witnessing amazing advances in robotics, nanotechnology, genomics, neuro-technology, life sciences and beyond that could be pathways to a more robust, resilient, and prosperous future.
Which is it going to be? Are we doomed or can we save ourselves? Can all those fabulous innovations be transformed into practical realities at the necessary speed and scale, and in ways that allow mankind to flourish?
Scott Cohen believes the answer is a resounding, “Yes!!” He co-founded New Lab, an American based initiative to bring together entrepreneurs, engineers, and inventors to solve some of the world's biggest challenges. And “solve” doesn’t mean someday: it means now. Listen as he discusses how he and his colleagues at New Lab are doing exactly that.
What do you think?
This episode was originally published on August 04, 2022.
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