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How to Fix Democracy with Leon Botstein

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Since its origins, democracy has been a work in progress. Today, many question its resilience. The Bertelsmann Foundation and Humanity in Action have teamed up with Andrew Keen, author of How to Fix the Future, to launch How to Fix Democracy: a video and podcast series exploring practical responses to the threats facing democracies around the world. Host Andrew Keen interviews prominent thinkers, writers, politicians, technologists, and business leaders who enlighten and challenge us as we seek the answers to How to Fix Democracy.

Host Andrew Keen joins the President of Bard College, Leon Botstein.

“The most difficult thing about democracy is that it does something people don’t want to do, and that is to take responsibility for their own lives.” | Leon Botstein, scholar and music director and conductor, explains that democracy “is harder than people expected” as the distance between expectations for democracy and reality is so wide. He worries that we are spending too much time staring at our smartphones and “mesmerized by nothing” rather than finding meaning and value by our own activity. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the most incredible outcome, Botstein believes, was “a kind of descent into both vulgarity and unfreedom.”