The Social Contract - History of a Big Idea: ...

We discuss the vision of an everyone-a-changemaker society. Now is the moment to step up to protect healthy civil society in America by making the mechanisms and the rituals for participation in local politics more robust and more meaningful. Michael's civic action toolkit recomm ...  Show more

We discuss why Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is running for Senate in Michigan and what kind of Senator he aspires to be. A public health expert with deep understanding of the healthcare system, Dr. El-Sayed believes that Medicare for All can be a realistic future. Abdul's civic action tool ...  Show more

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." The opening sentence of 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Roussau's The Social Contract poses a central question for all of us. Why do we live under conditions of inequality, violence, dependency and general unhappiness (jus ...  Show more

Should governments fund the arts? In The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), Michael Rushton, Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Affairs and a Professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, e ...  Show more

Danielle Allen and Mark Fagan say that when tested, thoughtfully deployed, and regulated AI actually can help governments serve citizens better. Sure, there is no shortage of horror stories these days about the intersection of AI and government—from a municipal chatbot that told ...  Show more

The idiom of contemporary politics is a kind of philosophical hodge-podge. While there’s plenty of talk about the traditional themes of freedom, justice, equality, and autonomy, there is also an increasing reliance on ideas like misinformation, bias, expertise, and propaganda. Th ...  Show more