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Vox Podcast Host Presents ‘Flip the Script’

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Sean Rameswaram, host of Vox’s Today, Explained podcast and a UCLA alumnus, shared tales of his academic and professional journey at a Feb. 19 “Flip the Script” gathering hosted by the UCLA Luskin undergraduate program. Rameswaram discussed the power of media to effect social change and invited students to the stage to share their own experiences. Before he joined Vox, Rameswaram’s career path took him to the radio organizations CBC, NPR, PRI and WNYC, and these experiences taught him how to actualize change through media, he said. As a teenager, he felt distressed by wars launched during the George W. Bush administration and the constant bombing of brown people, he said. But he found comfort in public radio. “Here are people investigating the reasons behind this conflict. Here are people trying to have a respectful conversation with everyone involved. Here are people not trying to condition my thoughts about it, but educate me,” he said. “Public radio became a second home to me.” Now, as the host of Today, Explained, he aims to make sense of the news, especially to younger demographics. In every episode, Rameswaram and his team aim to cover an issue that impacts people’s lives, and “the subtext of every episode is vote,” he said. With this call to action, he said he hopes more people will feel inspired to enact change in their communities. — Myrka Vega

See more photos from the event on Flickr.

 

Gilens Argues for Increasing Democratic Representation Through Public Policy

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In an episode of the P.S. You’re Interesting podcast, UCLA Professor of Public Policy Martin Gilens discusses economic and political inequalities within democracies. Gilens’ research has found that “how much political influence a person has depends highly on how much income or assets they own. … Once you take into account the preferences of interest groups and the well-to-do, what middle-class Americans want bears almost no relationship to what the government actually does.” Despite levels of economic inequality that are the “highest in our history,” Gilens argues that Americans “shouldn’t accept the current degree of inequality and lack of responsiveness of the government to its citizens as something inevitable or out of our control.” Gilens’ solution of “more democracy” consists of facilitating engagement of citizens in the democratic process, including Election Day holidays and automatic voting registration, and forcing government decision-makers to respond to the preferences of citizens.

Listen to the podcast