COVER STORY
Democracy
Kurt Andersen and former secretary of state Madeleine Albright look at how art influences democracy and how democracy feeds creative expression.

Channeling President Clinton
Anna Deavere Smith is a playwright and professor. She also plays the national security advisor on the NBC’s The West Wing. In 1996 she interviewed Bill Clinton, George Bush the elder, and others who were shaping the election; and then she performed selections of those interviews verbatim, exactly as she heard them. Anna Deavere Smith talks with Kurt and samples her mimicry of President Clinton.
Read more about Anna Deavere Smith
Go to The West Wing’s website

Jefferson's Dome
We all know Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence. But he was also the architect of some of our country’s best political buildings. Architecture critic Karrie Jacobs explores how Jefferson’s love of the dome changed how Americans think of political space. With production assistance from Sean Tubbs.
See an interactive tour of Jefferson's Academical Village
Go to the Empire State Plaza site
Go to a site on the history of state capitol buildings

Mumbo Jumbo
What happens when people in power attempt to suppress an outburst of cultural energy? That’s the conflict at the center of Ishmael Reed’s comic novel Mumbo Jumbo. Reed and the Jazz scholar Robert O’Meally talk about how Jazz terrified politicians who saw the music as a virus sweeping the nation, mixing up races and classes. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell
Go to the Circle Association's Ishmael Reed site
Learn more about Reed's latest book
Go to Columbia's Center for Jazz Studies website

Let the People Decide
With the success of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governorship in California, we may be increasingly comfortable choosing our leaders from the ranks of pop culture and entertainment. At the same time museum curators and television producers are letting us vote to guide things they used to do on their own. Jake Warga looks at the merging of entertainment culture and democracy, and wonders whether he really wants art made through a popularity contest. Produced with support from Hearing Voices.

Listen to the The Most Wanted Song
Listen to The Most Unwanted Song
Go to the Dia Center's Komar & Melamid page
Go to the Mulatta Records website
Go to the Seattle Art Museum website
Go to the American Idol website
Read about Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone

SPECIAL GUEST
Madeleine Albright
Madeleine Albright is a foreign policy expert appointed by President Clinton as American Ambassador to the United Nations, and then as Secretary of State. Born in Czechoslovakia, she and her family came as refugees from the Communist government, and she grew up in Denver. Her memoir, Madame Secretary, recounts her life and her years as the highest ranking woman ever to serve in US government.
Read and listen to more about Madeleine Albright's memoir
Go to the Albright Group's website

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Commentary
Democracy Day
Read the full text

Billy Collins/Walt Whitman
Billy Collins just completed his term as Poet Laureate of the United States. Collins reads from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself and talks about the challenge of writing poetry about big things like democracy. Produced by David Krasnow.
Read the full text of Whitman's Song of Myself, 16
Go to the Big Snap Billy Collins site

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