TED Talks
TED: How AI and democracy can fix each other | Divya Siddarth
We don't have to sacrifice our freedom for the sake of technological progress, says social technologist Divya Siddarth. She shares how a group of people helped retrain one of the world's most powerful AI models on a constitution they...
TED Talks
TED: Democracy works — we just need better leaders | Lindiwe Mazibuko
South Africa transitioned to democracy in the 1990s with a visionary constitution, but the promises of that constitution are largely unfulfilled to this day. Public leader Lindiwe Mazibuko explores how poor leadership failed to deliver a...
TED Talks
TED: A crash course in making political change | Katie Fahey
You don't need political power to make real change, says activist Katie Fahey. She tells the story of how she led a successful movement in Michigan to end gerrymandering — the practice of drawing district lines to favor one political...
PBS
A Conversation With ‘We The Corporations’ Author Adam Winkler
Adam Winkler, author of our October pick for the NewsHour-New York Times book club, Now Read This, joins William Brangham to discuss “We the Corporations,” and William announces the November book selection.
PBS
Michael Beschloss chronicles American 'Presidents of War'
"When it came to involving the nascent republic in military conflict, one of the founding fathers' biggest fears was that American presidents would be reckless and aggressive to suit their own agendas. Judy Woodruff sits down with...
PBS
How Retired Supreme Court Justice Stevens Would Amend the Constitution (April 21, 2014)
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens talks to Judy Woodruff about his new book, "Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution." In his book, the 94-year-old liberal justice calls for major changes to the...
PBS
Justice Scalia Writes How-to Read Guide for Interpreting the Law (August 9, 2012)
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says the key factor for a judge's ruling is finding where the balance resides in a case. Margaret Warner interviews Justice Scalia about his new book, "Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal...
PBS
40 Years Later, The Era Is Still Not A Part Of The Constitution
Forty years ago, Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment, guaranteeing protection from discrimination on the basis of sex -- but it has never been ratified as a constitutional amendment. Now a campaign to ratify the ERA is gathering...
PBS
Could the Electoral college system ever change?
President-Elect Donald Trump captured the White House by winning the Electoral College, even as Hillary Clinton won about half a million votes more than Trump. In response, some are calling for a national popular vote to decide the...
Crash Course
Legal System Basics: Crash Course Government and Politics
This week Craig Benzine takes a first look at the judicial branch. It's pretty easy to forget that the courts, and the laws that come out of them, affect our lives on a daily basis. But how exactly these decisions are made and where each...
Crash Course
Judicial Decisions: Crash Course Government and Politics
Today, Craig Benzine is going to dive into the factors that influence judicial decisions. As you may have noticed, the Supreme Court recently handed down some pretty big decisions on same-sex marriage (in Obergefell v Hodges) and the...
Crash Course
Sex Discrimination: Crash Course Government and Politics
Today, Craig is going to talk about employment discrimination, and we're going to focus primarily on women in the workforce. Discrimination against women tends to be handled somewhat differently in the courts as they are not a minority....
Crash Course
Congressional Leadership: Crash Course Government and Politics
This week Craig Benzine explores the leadership structure of congress. We’ll break out the clone machine to examine the responsibilities of the speaker of the house, the majority and minority leaders as well as the majority and minority...
Crash Course
How Presidents Govern: Crash Course Government and Politics
This week Craig Benzine talks about how the president gets things done. Filling the role of the executive branch is a pretty big job - much too big for just one person. It's so big that the president employs an entire federal...
TED Talks
TED: The shift we need to stop mass surveillance | Albert Fox Cahn
Mass surveillance is worse than you think, but the solutions are simpler than you realize, says lawyer, technologist and TED Fellow Albert Fox Cahn. Breaking down the crude tactics law enforcement uses to sweep up massive amounts of data...
Crash Course
Supreme Court of the United States Procedures: Crash Course Government and Politics
This week Craig Benzine talks about what happens when a case makes it to the Supreme Court of the United States (or the SCOTUS). We're going to focus on court procedure today. We talk about how to petition to get your case heard, how...
Crash Course
Congressional Delegation: Crash Course Government and Politics
In which Craig Benzine teaches you about delegation, and informal powers. What are all these federal agencies about? Well, the president has a lot of stuff to do as the chief executive, and as much as Americans like to talk about...
Crash Course
Political Campaigns: Crash Course Government and Politics
So political campaigns are a pretty big deal in the United States. For instance the 2012 presidential election clocked in at the most expensive ever - at around $6 billion dollars! Needless to say, money plays a very big role in American...
Crash Course
Equal Protection: Crash Course Government and Politics
Today, Craig is going to talk about the most important part of the Constitution - the Fourteenth Amendment. In particular, we're going to discuss the "equal protection" clause and how it relates to our civil rights. So we've spent the...
Crash Course
Search and Seizure: Crash Course Government and Politics
This week Craig talks about police searches and seizures. Now, the fourth amendment says that you have the right to be protected against "unreasonable searches and seizures" but what exactly does this mean? Well, it's complicated. The...
Crash Course
Freedom of the Press: Crash Course Government and Politics
Today, Craig is going to finish up our discussion of the First Amendment with freedom of the press. Like an individual's right to free speech, the press has a right, and arguably responsibility, to tell the public what the government is...
Crash Course
Reconstruction Crash Course Black American History
At the end of the Civil War, the United States was still a very divided place. 700,000 people had died in a bitter fight over slavery. Reconstruction was the political process meant to bring the country back together. It was also the...
Crash Course
Congressional Decisions: Crash Course Government and Politics
This week Craig breaks out the crystal ball to try and figure out why our congresspeople do the things that they do. We’ll talk about the three motivating factors of congressional decisions - constituency, interest groups, and political...
Crash Course
Bureaucracy Basics: Crash Course Government and Politics
This week Craig Benzine discuses bureaucracies. Bureaucracies tend to be associated with unintelligible rules and time-wasting procedures, but they play an important, though controversial, role in governing. From the FDA to the EPA,...