Burt Cohen
35 episodes listed below
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Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Bert Cohen turns arguments about democratic decline into concrete conversations about surveillance, institutional power, civil liberties, and political history.
Bert Cohen treats democracy as something tested through everyday systems of power. Keeping Democracy Alive uses focused guest conversations to connect civil liberties and public institutions with digital surveillance, concentrated wealth, religious nationalism, climate policy,…
A map app becomes a Fourth Amendment problem, and your pocket starts looking like a witness.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A radio legend becomes a story about culture, memory, and the politics underneath both.
The episode treats WBCN as more than a station and instead as a cultural and political force. Charles is folded into a longer account of the station's reach, its listeners, its early freedom, and the way commercial success still left room for chaos, humor, and invention.
A blunt look at how spectacle displaced issues and reshaped American politics.
This episode frames low culture as a political signal, showing how image, ratings, and spectacle came to matter more than issues in American life.
A grounded conversation about moral courage, rights, and starting small when speaking up.
Burt Cohen frames the conversation around moral courage and the pressure people feel to keep their heads down. Alina Tugend answers by focusing on rights, preparation, and the practical judgment that has to come before action.
A sober look at religious nationalism and the tensions it creates.
Bert Cohen and Catherine Stewart keep the conversation grounded in religious nationalism, church-state separation, and the idea that the movement is heading toward a clash with the constitutional order.
A sober look at how fear becomes policy and how that war on dissent keeps repeating.
The episode treats fear as a political instrument: weak leaders invent enemies, inflate danger, and use that panic to shrink freedom. Bert Cohen keeps the argument anchored in history, moving from Truman and McCarthy to Vietnam and the war on terror with a steady, civic-minded…
A grave, plainspoken defense of press freedom as a democratic survival issue.
The episode treats press freedom as a working democratic test rather than a slogan. It argues that when Trump is in power and the press appears to flinch, more people end up believing lies, and it frames that as a danger that reaches well beyond any one newsroom.
A sober look at why young men are drawn to fascism, and what democracy can do about it.
Burt Cohen frames the conversation around a hard civic question: why young men are drawn to fascism, and what can be done about it. Craig A. Johnson answers with history, memory, and plain talk, linking Donald Trump's campaigns to older patterns of recruitment, patriarchal…
A sharp look at how redevelopment talk can hide displacement, extraction, and the language of progress.
The episode treats architecture as a ledger of power: who gets displaced, who profits, and who gets to call destruction progress. Burt Cohen and Kate Wagner move from Boston's West End to Gaza through urban renewal and development language, and the point is plain enough:…
Combative civics for an unstable political moment.
Homespun conservative reactions to public disorder.
Antiwar interviews without institutional politeness.
Georgia politics, climbing fast.
Practical tech, local questions, plain answers.
Campaign mechanics, without the polish.
Investigative journalist Radley Balco discusses threats to press freedom and free speech in the incoming Trump administration.
Host Bert Cohen interviews Emily Barr, a broadcast media veteran, about threats to press freedom under the Trump administration, focusing on FCC overreach and political interference.
Amy Friedman discusses Home and Away: Poetry, Stories, and Art, the 10th collection of youth writing from POPs and the Pathfinder Network.
Bert Cohen and historian Denise Lin explore how governments become what they claim to fear.
Bert Cohen and journalist Oliver Haynes focus on France’s snap election, the European Parliament vote, and the rise of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National.
Burt Cohen interviews Chara Torres-Spellicy about her book 'Corporatocracy,' examining whether corporate power now exceeds democratic power in America.
Young people have unique power to shape future elections
The humble millionaire who loaned half a million to an unknown
Bert Cohen frames this KDA Keeping Democracy Alive episode around Trump’s break with Europe, NATO strain, and the pressure on Ukraine as Washington shifts away from post–World War II alliance commitments.
Burt Cohen opens by comparing Netanyahu's Project 2035 with the better-known Project 2025.
Burt Cohen opens Keeping Democracy Alive with a warning that Donald Trump’s return looks like a "hostile takeover," then asks Sam Pizzigati why progressives should stop playing defense.
He interviewed Charlie Kirk on his show. But what about Gavin Newsom? Bold and aggressive? Kind of w
Ross Benesch argues that 1999 marked a “sea change” in American culture, with his book 1999: The Year Low Culture Rocked America and Kick-Started Our Bizarre Times linking that moment to the present.
Greed gets put on trial.
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a George Washington University law professor, argues in Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance that smartphones, Ring cameras, smart cars, and AI are turning ordinary life into evidence.
Bert Cohen opens in alarm at Trump and Republican control of the presidency, the House, and the Senate.
Bert Cohen opens by arguing that Trump was sent by God to rule America.
Burt Cohen and journalist Alina Tugend focus on “The Trump Era and the Psychology of Moral Courage,” using examples from January 6, the Wells Fargo scandal, and ICE detentions to ask why people speak up or stay silent.
Burt Cohen opens with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and compares it to past campaign lines like “peace and prosperity,” “morning in America,” and Lincoln-era appeals.
Bert Cohen frames this Keeping Democracy Alive episode around the July 13 assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania and asks whether the raised-fist, blood-on-the-face image changes the 2024 race.
One thing I have learned from history is that we never seem to learn from history.
Elizabeth Minnick, author of The Evil of Banality on the Life and Death Importance of Thinking, joins Bert Kohn on Keeping Democracy Alive to unpack Hannah Arendt’s phrase 'the banality of evil' and apply it to Trump, book bans, and political lying.
Burt Cohen and Washington Monthly politics editor Bill Scher discuss why Trump's trade war raises prices, creates uncertainty, and leaves Democrats divided about how to answer it.
Bert Cohen frames the episode around Donald Trump’s second-term victory and asks Paul Glastris of Washington Monthly what Democrats can do after a 2024 loss and a “circular firing squad.” Glastris points to the January-February-March Washington Monthly issue, “10 New Ideas for the Democratic Party to Help the Working Class and Itself,” and argues the party needs policy changes, not just better messaging.
Burt Cohen opens with a blunt question about why young men get pulled toward fascism and what can actually be done about it.
Bert Cohen and returning guest Arnold Skip Isaacs focus on the Trump administration’s removal of thousands of Pentagon photos, including images tied to DEI, women, Black service members, and the Tuskegee Airmen.
Ellen M.
Charles Laquidara describes how WBCN at 104.1 FM debuted in March 1968 with Cream’s “I Feel Free” and became Boston’s first FM rock station in stereo.
Bert Cohen and Johan Norberg frame the episode around Norberg’s Washington Post question, “Is it America’s fate to decline and fall?” as the U.S.