The Round Table: A Next Generation Politics Podcast
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. The Round Table is 100% created and edited by young people committed to building a more just and joyous world.
Beyond the Headlines: Media’s Impact on the 2024 Election
Amplifying Civic Voices at the Intersection of Culture and Advocacy
Transformative in All Ways Unleashing Your Inner Play
Passionate Voices in Imperfect Moments Make a Difference
Women Leading in Tech and Policy: Breaking Barriers
Unity’s Key, But Celebrate Our Unique Identity
The Sky is the Limit
Voting Down, Voices Up: Empowering Participation
There's No Such Thing as Irreversible Harm
Reviving the Excitement: Making Voting & Elections Fun Again!
We Are at the Beginning of a Renaissance of New Art Forms
How Can We Help Students Get into the Driver's Seat and Be the Drivers for Change?
AI is not Going to Replace Journalists
Write The Narrative With Us Rather Than For Us
Stories Are The Best Way to Break Through Stigmas
80% of a Speech is the Delivery
Surviving But Maybe Not Thriving
The Stolen Labor That Built our School
No one is dealing with root issues..so prison becomes a revolving door
Don't Let Anyone Take Your Narrative and Twist It
Community does not mean agreement, community means understanding
Media Literacy in a Maelstrom
If I Was A Young Person Now, I'm Not Sure If I Would Believe In Democracy
How Do You Do It All--Or Not
What can we do to make our community better RIGHT NOW?
Systems Of Inequality Are Still Alive
A Voice for the Voiceless
Having A Touch Of Humanity Can Get You A Long Way
How we pursue the common good together
Am I Being A Golden Rule Voter?
We're Exposed To Different Slices Of Information Each Day
Having the right mindset is the biggest thing
Young People Need to Speak Truth to Dysfunction
An Innovative Way To Address Public Policy
Call This Decade the Tipping Point 20s
The Margins Are A Place of Radical Imagination and Resilience
My job is to give students the tools, not to tell them how to use them
Fiscal Responsibility Means Prioritizing
The importance of relatability: combining education and culture
Getting Beyond Always Wanting To Be Right
People Are Less Divided Than We Think
Next Gen Telepathy: Understanding The Other Side of the Rainbow
I've Been Fighting For Equality All My Life
Be a Media Activist, Not Just a Consumer
Activism Isn't A One Time Thing
To Change the System, You Need To Know the System
The Power of Meeting People Where They Are
Be Relentless in Demanding a Seat at the Table
Why Do I Have To Put My Trauma on Paper To Get Into College?
Compromising On Issues, Not Values
Using Evil Marketing Skills for Good
Running For Office Is Your Birthright
Altered States Lead to Altered Minds
We’ll Say Mission Accomplished When We Have a World In Which Every Kid Can Just Be a Kid
Black-On-Black Education
One Voice Sounds Good But a Chorus Sounds Better
Politics Is My Holy Grail
Having a Seat at the Table
Fascinated by the Biology of the Brain
More Than Just Books
We All Should Have Gotten More Sleep!
What To Expect As We Become A Majority Minority Country
The Power of Stories to Transform Lives (Including Your Own!)
Changing the Narrative, Instilling a Sense of Pride
We’re super polarized —and it’s not as bad as we think
Make a Mark with The People’s Money
A Radical Vision of Young People Leading
The Centrality of Bipartisanship
How do we reoccupy shared reality?
Super Engaged Citizenry is the Path to Collective Liberation
Know Your Country and Yourself
The power of a dual perspective
Don’t let your hesitation stop someone else’s revolution
Everyone has a role to play in democracy
The Gift of Storytelling
Being registered changes the whole political landscape
Another Form of Jim Crow
Politics is the Elephant in the Room
Now history is solved, with a happy ending in Unit 8...
A Born Contrarian
Getting Beyond Being Seen as “Just a Kid”
From Divesting to Dirt Roads
Words Words Words
Assume Good Intent
The stories we tell shape our collective sense of what’s possible
Facing the Music
Citizening is a Full Contact Sport
Democracy's Children
We Have To Fiercely Guard Our Hope
You Have To Make Those 40 Minutes Fun
Modern Elders and Old Souls
Information Antibodies
The Second We Start To Dehumanize People, We’ve All Lost
MAPping a Cross-Partisan Future
Being a thriving people in a thousand years time
On the Other Side of Divides
Our Schools, Our Thoughts
Computer Science is my passion, my life’s work, my job, my hobby, and my calling
Get to the grassroots of what people care about
Is Voting the Great Equalizer?
How can we make voting more accessible–and irresistible?
Anything That’s Good For the People is Good for the Soul
The Restorative Power of Taking Pictures
The learning comes in the struggle
Imagine what we could do if we brought everyone together around a dinner table?
Don't Close The Door Behind You
Democrat is the Default
No podcast this week but...
Go to people you disagree with to find the maps
To Have A Choice-Filled Life
Being an artist is being an observer of life
The Best of Both Worlds: Electoral College Reform
Voting should be a stimulant for democracy
Journalism Is In My DNA
There’s no substitute for listening to people
Why Can’t You Pronounce My Name?
A people-powered approach to journalism–and elections
Schools Weren’t Built For What We’re Asking Them To Do
More art, less algorithm
Nothing builds trust better than doing work together
No one should have to be a refugee
Is the quill mightier than the sword?
It’s Not Enough To Know, You Also Have To DO Things
What does it mean to be Civic Ready?
Introducing the Most Promising Solution to Election Reform that You’ve Never Heard Of
Correlation is not Causation
Oh My God, There’s a War
The Deep Power of Listening
In government, you can’t 80/20 your customer
Integrated, segregated, or complicated?
Learning Virtue Isn’t a Passive Activity
Do the work, the play, and the party
This Is Not the Way Kids Are Meant To Interact With One Another
Could Ethics Change Everything?
Political Division: Perspective from Overseas
WE are the missing link
The Band Is Back Together
Water water everywhere and not enough drops to drink
Can You Tell Me How to Get (Past) Sesame Street?
Time to Make Decisions
Shocking the system
American Holidays: Celebration or Colonization?
The Meaning in the Middle
Righting Humanity
Beyond the End of History
The Future is in Our Hands
Survival of the Squiddest
Wait, history isn’t just names and dates?
Whoever thought I’d say, I can’t wait to go to school today?
Reproducing Injustice
On the Road To Heal American Divides
BIPOC Mental Health Matters
Back to School with COVID
Math isn’t just about crunching numbers
Beyond Nail ‘Em and Jail ‘Em
bending the (economic, political, social, and cultural) curve
Restorative Justice is a Creative Act
Revolutionizing the learning space is my love language
Democracy can’t simply be handed down
Justice In and Beyond the Classroom
Resisting the Divides, Bridging to a Brighter Future
Where Do We Rank?
We Need To Live in the Gray
The Quest for Nuance
We Are the Leaders We’ve Been Waiting For
What are we enforcing?
Trying to put the civil in discourse
Deliberation Across the Nation
What Is Normal Should Be Interrogated
The Power of Starting Young
Teachers have never paid so much attention to mental health
The Venn diagram btw deeper learning and progressive education
The power of authentic assessment
The difference deeper learning makes
What IS deeper learning?
Why We Should Have Time To Eat In School
Beyond "The Lost Year"
Why some of the most powerful political movements of recent decades have been on the Right
New government programs tend to be very controversial at first
The rise and fall of the imperial presidency
Transformative Presidencies: Never Let A Good National Emergency Go To Waste
The Avengers of Politics
Planning has already started for the 2030 Census
The pandemic upended the 2020 Census
Racial and ethnic identity are more fluid than we acknowledge
What demographic changes can we expect?
Why teens should care about the Census
The Citizenship Question
To get an accurate Census count requires public trust
The long and thorny history of the Census
There has never been a perfect Census
2020 may be over but the Census isn't
Maybe your grandparents aren’t on TikTok
Why young people love Bernie
Embrace the strategy of SIFT
What’s entailed in social media readiness
A big part of media literacy is emotional literacy
Can Technology Be More Thoughtful--and Can We Be?
The projects Macon is proudest of
Bringing on the digital revolution
Barack Obama’s secret sauce
How tech can extend & amplify the work of The White House
The Sum of Our Parts
The importance of keeping space safe for dissent
What makes counter speech work
How can we collectively combat hate speech
It’s REALLY hard to define hate speech
Yes, you’re racist
The Anthropology of Online Communities
Countering Dangerous Speech
Creating a More Civically-Connected Citizenry
Maybe we need emojis for in person conversations
Hard conversations are necessary
The personable charm of local radio
Local news plays a vital role in our democracy
We have an incredible responsibility to get the news right
The question for public media should be “how well are we meeting the demands of the public”
Digital media is many different things
It’s Off to Venus
Getting an Education Through Our Ears
How do you quantify the success of a movement?
This Is How We Get Now Out of Never
I didn’t come into education to run an elite school on the Upper East Side
We had to figure out how to help the school community heal
We wanted to make sure students had some normalcy
“You don’t get trained for this in principal school"
What We Are Inaugurating
Power of, by, and for the People
Our Nation, Divided
Just a simple “hello” in the hallway can make someone’s day
Beyond safe spaces
How can we challenge the status quo & build beyond it?
We must incorporate more stories that represent diverse points of view
Who gets to belong and who feels marginalized
Identity: the cornerstone of a good classroom
Lack of dialogue leads to lack of trust
Every college is a microscope of politics at the national level
Adjusting to college—in a pandemic
Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here
We Need To Develop Authentic Relationships Across Divides
Currently, I feel like our society is a war zone
We are a nation founded on a principal idea
There’s ideally a marriage between what one teaches and how one teaches
We take for granted what we think of as history
Fighting For History--And For Ourselves
Covid has compounded the backlog in immigration hearings
There’s a lot the President can—and can’t—do for our 11 million undocumented immigrants
Joe Biden has said on Day 1 he’s going to address DACA
I wanted to cover issues of justice as they affect people
Immigration...We All Got Here Somehow
Power is more helpful than help
The hope was that if you didn’t talk about it, it would go awat
I definitely think there’s a thing that starts in youth and metastasizes over the life course
I feel like we’re expanding and contracting all at once
People supporting the work of girls vs the work of boys are pitted against each other
Those closest to the problems are closest to the solutions
The Opposite of Hopelessness is Power
We are in a fight for democracy
Maybe we need a National Unity Day
Sometimes the entire foundation of our nation feels like broken promises
American holidays are like a fast food ad
Different holidays mean different things to different communities
Almost every American holiday has a dark truth that has been sugarcoated
Aspects of our culture change with us over time
How do we grapple with competing truths about our holidays?
We have an unstable and falsified foundation of history that is starting to crumble
Our national heroes are so much more complex than I understood in elementary school
What did you learn about Thanksgiving growing up & how has your understanding of the holiday changed
#RedefineThanksgiving2020
One of the greatest problems with today’s media is echo chambers
Issues should dictate our approach to voting and the media can influence that
I’m hopeful the COVID crisis will go away but other issues will endure
As young Americans, you are disproportionately disadvantaged in voting
As a political science scholar, I am mystified that parties don’t do more to mobilize populations
In a democracy, we should try to get as close to full participation as we can
Did you pay much attention to the Supreme Court hearings and did you learn much from them?
How Can Record Breaking Voter Turnout Be Sustained?
Are there any judicial reforms you would or wouldn’t like to see?
I don’t think the media reaction was completely out of bounds, but it was misleading
Justice Barrett is gifted at looking at every side of every legal question
How the media can shape the way you generate opinions
Why Originalism?
Understanding Originalism
A beacon for democracy
Bridging the gap
What happens now?
The wave of mail-in ballots has come
Now we wait...
The US election is a seismic moment globally
There Will Be Litigation
Susan Lerner’s 2020 Predictions
The World Is Watching Us
Don’t make the mistake of thinking democracy runs on autopilot
How to make an impact on this election even if you can’t vote just yet
What Makes This Election Night Different Than All Other Election Nights?
Media companies need to stop being so polarized and focus on what’s really happening
We need to get information from debates that we are not getting
Likability is something that DOES matter to voters
Burlington Beyond Bernie
It's A Shame Nothing’s Happening In The News…
There’s a happy medium btw the Court being too loud or too quiet
Young people don’t often think about SCOTUS-what can we do?
Teenagers should grow their understanding of the law
My initial interest in the law was pretty random
RBG is Gone. Now What?
We have to be willing to reward people who aren’t pure
A lot of politics comes down to incentives
Everyone in Washington is very smart and very important—just ask them!
Journalists Should Avoid Bias
It’s not about you as the journalist, it’s about the readers
My goal is to help readers feel like they’re here with me
I don’t think age is a determinant or skill or quality
You come at it with the knowledge that you can’t cover everything
As a journalist today, you can’t say anything without expecting some kind of attack
Politics reaches into every aspect of our everyday lives
Time To Wake Up To Politics
It’s a powerful tool for leveraging the fact that you exist
We represented a lot of the historically underrepresented groups
The Census was the most diverse workplace I’ve ever been part of
I don’t think I’m different from someone who emigrated here
I feel more empowered by the Census than I do by voting
The key question is how do we get people to be excited to fill out the Census?
It only makes sense to be counted so we can get $$ to invest in our communities
The big learn there was it isn’t just classroom or school-based issues causing inequities.
I see education policy as a route to correct some of the evils I’ve experienced.
Making Sense of the Census
I use social media but it is a very, very scary place
The top media shared on Facebook tends to be conservative
Are you American enough?
Facebook has a tendency to create policies without thinking them through
There’s a meaningful distinction between moderation and mediation
It’s important to protect the right of people to criticize those in power
What constitutes hate speech depends on what country you’re living in
Most platforms are concerned with building trust and improving their reputations
Every part of your experience affects your work
I sort of fell into writing about media
Will Facebook really do it?
Don’t let the structures silence you
There’s actually time to do a lot of cool stuff in school if you get rid of the annoying stuff
One of the things we learned is that zero structure doesn’t work
You can’t have 2600 answers to the question of what time does school start
You can’t punish your way into compliance at the level that is needed
It’s important to teach people about the science if you want them to follow it
We’ve had so many difficult conversations...
To Open or Not to Open? That’s the 130,930 Question
Malcolm is our Imam and w/o him, Islam in the U.S. would be very different
We need a human rights framework focused on the dignity of all human beings.
I felt very limited by a civil rights framework
I am very much a student of Malcolm X
What makes a successful campaign?
For years I lacked understanding of how politics and power worked in practice
Movement Building for Human Rights
Even champions of women don’t hire women in the numbers we’d like
What it will take to have a truly representative government
Government tends to be ageist
Too often we focus on the individual instead of the team or movement
We’ve never had a female Vice President in U.S. History—and it’s time to
How do you identify diverse candidates w/o being tokenistic?
Our demographic makeup shouldn’t dictate if people get to be an ambassador
Who is trying to make our government representative of the people?
How inclusive IS America?
We’re not the first population to deal with a pandemic or economic hardship
Is a paper you labored over less authentic than something you dashed off?
As a child, I thought Judaism was a man in the sky who punished people.
What’s important to understand about Trump is that he comes across as an authentic politician
There’ve been a lot of great lines written in history that you’ve never about
If the moment’s not amazing, no one’s ever going to hear the soundbite
The final great truth of effective speechwriting is show don’t tell
Barack Obama shared who he was and people were electrified by it
There are a few keys to really good speechwriting
I always wanted wanted her voice in my head
Michelle’s stories, ideas, and language were always the beating heart of any speech
Michelle constantly asks what is the deepest, most important truth I can tell right now
2 failed jobs, 3 losing campaigns—and then I was hired by the Obama Campaign
The Making of a Great Speech—and a Great Speechwriter
Nothing is wrong with “anyone but Trump” as a unifying call
With moderate solutions, it feels like two steps back, one step forward
Democratic nominees are going to be attacked as radical leftists whatever their politics are
I think the election is going to be a whole lot closer than people think
Sounds Like Comma-la
We have expertise in knowing your students and that’s the most valuable thing
REAL TALK is an acronym for our core principles
In a debate there’s usually two sides, but life can rarely be reduced to two perspectives
The culture of conversation in classrooms isn’t as productive as it could be
When bipartisanship happens, it often doesn’t connect with peoole
You’ve got to be ready for disappointment as an activist in US politics
Real Talk--with the cofounders of it
Government is a set of handcuffs for those who desire bold change w/o broad support
We look at how legislation gets enacted in American politics
We don’t think Millennials all think the same way but we do think we have shared values
Limitless Parties: Lawmaking in a Polarized Era
The word “donor” feels scary to a millennial
The basis of OneFiveTen is generational collective action
That compromise around coronavirus is the exception not the rule tells us a lot about politics today
Follow the Money: Creating Generational Wealth
In Congress, we’re supposed to have debate & people are supposed to negotiate
No doubt we are going against the grain of where the country is moving right now
My work focuses on how to make Congress more responsive and more representative
Looking at the nuts and bolts of our democracy
Whether objectivity exists is a debate historians have been having for a long time
I use students’ energy to animate the classroom
The creation of “smashmouth partisanship”
Why Is the House Burning?
I wanted to be able to guide the research questions I answered
There is an age old American conflict btw federalism and anti-federalism
What’s Criminal About the Criminal Justice System
There’s been a huge improvement in discourse around police brutality
There’s a huge difference btw the moment we’re in now and the moment we’ve been in before
What we have to understand is how we got here
This Moment--and What We Can Learn from Movements
The 2 things that help women make change are education and the ability to make a livelihood
Building Hope, Brick by Brick
Don’t let preconceived ideas about journalists prevent you from contributing.
I am fortunate to stand on the shoulders of women who fought battles for us
What do Donald Trump, Mike Pence & Barack Obama have in common?
Where do you draw the line btw political strategizing & deliberate misinformation?
Since we’d been appointed by President Obama, he wanted to get us out of the way as soon as possible
A Woman of Conviction
The only way people can stay home is if lots of other people aren’t
Our response to the pandemic is grounded in fear, is racist, is narrow, and is ineffective.
Maybe we SHOULDN’T be sheltering-in-place
Getting people to create relationships across differences is key
Change does happen
The founders did a good job of some things—and they did plenty of things wrong
There used to be a lot more bipartisanship in the U.S.
Bridging Divides, Building Knowledge
We have to avoid tyranny of the minority
I want to be in a room with as much diversity as possible
Gen Z is totally different than millennials & the media often misses that
Unleashing the Gen Z Youthquake
The Round Table: Our Aims and Aspirations
The more intersectional you are, the more able you are to serve everyone
At its crux, Global Girlhood is exploring authentic, nonhierarchical global citizenship
Girlhood Gone Global
My mother used to always say, “let your work speak for you.”
If you haven’t struggled, you don’t know the pleasure of reward
“I know that whatever solution I choose has a consequence”
The People's Mayor
“I knew by the way they walked through the door that this was the org we wanted to work with”
There are over 70 million displaced people & only 3% have access to higher ed
Global Refugee Education--in a Pandemic
The upcoming election: an example of govt moving too slow for the moment that we’re in
“Shelter in place is a luxury many don’t have”
The Inside Scoop on NYC City Council
Coronavirus has been a huge lesson in privilege
The Civics of COVID-19
Most people don’t think about the courts but they influence everything
#JudiciarySoWhite: Towards A Fair and Just Judicial System
India does not have a very robust health system in place
Corona virus is the only thing the news is talking about in India
All About India--and Covid-19
Stand up if you know what the president does?
Vote--By Design
The Democratic Party itself is incredibly divided
To put it simply, the American people—we’re sort of stupid
Making Sense After Super Tuesday
Can fire be racist?
What’s the deal behind Stop (Question) and Frisk?
Is the format we currently have for debates the best one?!?
Really the debate is show business
As a debater, I’ve been taught to avoid ad hominem attacks—but that’s not the case onstage
Debaters debating debate
What can we in the U.S. learn from other countries in considering punishment vs rehabilitation?
“There’s a stigma that people who do drugs deserve to die”
The roots of the opioid crisis started 20 years ago...
This Is Your Podcast on Drugs
We need to support refugees the way we support our own people
As a society we’ve turned a blind eye to refugees
International Human Rights: refugees and refugee education
Because we’re such a young country, we tend to be very ahistorical in everything
What is the “proper way” for a black person to protest in the U.S.?
Why does Black Lives Matter matter? with Michael Jackson
Seeds definitely broke me, but it put me back together in a much better place than I was
Polarization and Cross Partisanship: Episode VI with Seeds of Peace
Did you experience any polarization in the student body?
SEGL in a nutshell
Marrying Ethics and Global Leadership: Why You Need to Know about SEGL
If students don’t have foundational understanding, they’re kinda screwed
Media Literacy and Media Bias Part V with Joel Breakstone
So I was sitting in the party meeting, and I was frustrated because nobody knew me or looked like me
If you've ever heard the word gerrymandering, you've probably pulled up a picture of my district
Is Voting Caring?: Youth Political Participation Today
Do you believe everyone, regardless of whether they are involved in the criminal justice system, should retain their right to vote?
Polarization and Cross Partisanship: Episode V with The Purple Project for Democracy
International Human Rights Part I: Conversation with Sam Moyn
Putting more justice in criminal justice
What's Happening in Hong Kong--and Why It Matters
Polarization and Cross Partisanship: Episode IV with Casey and Marley of Project Divided
Freedom of Expression: Rights and Wrongs
Polarization and Cross-Partisanship: Episode III with David Greene of Better Angels
Youth Climate Action: Beyond the Strike
Polarization and Cross-Partisanship: Episode II with Maodan Tohouri of Depolarize
Impeachment: What Does It Mean and (Why) Does It Matter
Special Election Edition: Voting Today in the USA
Polarization and Cross-Partisanship: Episode I
Olivia on Media Literacy
Media Literacy and Media Bias: Part IV Synthesis
Media Literacy and Media Bias: Part III with Peter Loge
Media Literacy and Media Bias: Part II with Howard Schneider