Introducing our Fall 2024 Podcast Fellowship Cohort

New semester, new cohort! 🎉 🙌

We welcome five students from around the country who are all about storytelling, civic engagement, and, most importantly, creating their own podcasts! These Gen Z leaders are ready to get to work!

Sophie Nguyen is a high school senior from California. As a student journalist, she is passionate about delivering the news to her community, and she is excited to expand content variety through The Democracy Group Podcast Fellowship. Specializing in digital democracy and user experience, she looks forward to pursuing a podcast that brings more attention to the topic.

Dashiell Quinn is a high school junior from Santa Fe, New Mexico. He likes listening to how a non-democratic nation such as China is governed because if you're going to protect democracy you need to know what you're protecting it from. Through the fellowship, he hopes to gain the ability to speak articulately, confidently and rhetorically.

Sabrina Tomei Gonzalez is a high school senior at Fairfield Ludlowe High School in Connecticut. She is very interested in public policy and political science and hopes to pursue those interests in college. She is excited to produce an informative and entertaining podcast that shows youth voices on current events.

Claire Baek is a high school junior at Chantilly High School in Northern Virginia. She has been involved with print journalism at her school since her freshman year, serving as the sports editor during her sophomore year and the art and entertainment editor during her junior year. She is passionate about projecting diverse student voices and hopes to bridge the gap between students and politics through her podcast.

Jenny Marquez is a junior at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School in Los Angeles, California. At school, she's the Online Editor-in-Chief for her school's publication, The Pearl Post, and a co-host for her school's publication's student-run podcast, Room 22. Through this fellowship, she hopes to grow her podcasting skills and learn more about the impact and importance of democracy.

A huge thank you to the Bridge Alliance Education Fund for supporting the podcast fellowship!

TDG Fellowship: Democracy Beyond Borders

On the topic of fellowship, our Spring 2024 fellows produced a variety of niche podcasts that you might find interesting, including Democracy Beyond Borders by Aprile Kim. Democracy Beyond Borders seeks to explore the complexities of democracy in the modern world and examine the impact of American policies beyond the country's borders. Give this a listen and stay tuned for more fellowship updates!

Learn More

From The Democracy Group, here are some of our favorite podcasts this week, check them out!

Democracy Fix: Building Radically Transparent and Inclusive Elections ft. Julie Wise

If you're curious about what goes on behind the scenes in our elections, this episode is for you! It features a conversation with King County, Washington Director of Elections Julie Wise about ensuring all voices are heard in an election and building an inclusive, transparent democratic process.

The Politics Guys: The Politics of Gen Z

Joined by PRRI CEO Melissa Deckman, this episode explores the political activities among Gen Z women through the rise of women's political participation and how it compares to historical participation. It also takes a glimpse into what the future of politics in America looks like. Give this a listen!

Politics in Question: Why do Americans use primary elections to select candidates for office?

This episode holds the answer to questions you may have about America and democracy, including the difference between open and closed primaries, how primary elections changed through the years and most importantly, how the U.S. became the only democracy in the world that gives its voters a voice in candidate selection.  

FEATURED EXPERTS

Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other: Anne Applebaum on The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer-prize-winning historian, staff writer at The Atlantic and senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. She has authored many critically acclaimed books, including Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World and Gulag: A History. She has lectured at Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Columbia Universities among many others.

The Great Battlefield: Thom Hartmann on The Demise of the Middle Class

Thom Hartmann is a talk show host, radio personality, author and businessman. Hartmann has been hosting a nationally syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, since 2003 and hosted a nightly television show, The Big Picture, between 2010 and 2017. He has authored numerous books, of which several have been translated into other languages, including ADHD: A Hunter in a Farmer's World, The Hidden History of American Democracy and The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.