Gun sales in America took off in the Cold War, and they’ve grown exponentially. Two experts on the culture of firearms in the United States say this phenomenon has a lot less to do with the Second Amendment than it does with the marriage of economics and politics.

Activist and analyst Agnieszka Graff joins us from Warsaw to break down the surprising outcome of Poland’s national elections. She says the country’s feminist movement — and the visual arts — played a vital role in challenging the ruling party’s authoritarian creep.

In 2016, she won a critical Supreme Court case affirming abortion rights. Now that effort has been all but undone. Still, Amy Hagstrom Miller says she will keep fighting for abortion as a human right that is fundamental to the democratic project.

The faith Americans have in the federal bench has hit rock bottom. And that might be a good thing, says NYU constitutional law professor Christopher Sprigman. He says it’s high time to strip the high court of its stranglehold on democracy, one case at a time.

Sally Hudson brings an economist’s eye to her work as a lawmaker. Maybe that’s one reason the math on ranked-choice voting makes so much sense to her. With Hudson’s help, we revisit the state of democracy in our home state and assess the new governor’s first month in office.

The Haitian Revolution once held out the promise of radical democracy. But internal strife and global oppression has thwarted its fulfillment for two centuries and counting. Three UVA scholars walk Will and Siva through that complex history, and the current unrest in Haiti.

Denying ecological devastation in the Amazon, ridiculing opponents, and playing down the coronavirus pandemic are all part of the Bolsonaro toolkit. Sound familiar? Media studies scholar David Nemer takes us on a haunting tour of his native country’s political landscape.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees religious freedom, but also freedom from religion — an idea that rankles many white Evangelicals who would like to see America remade in their own image of Christianity. Religion scholar Matt Hedstrom speaks with Siva and Will about the ideology of Christian nationalism and its harder-core variety, dominionism. Arguably, Hedstrom says, it’s not traditional religious piety but a muscular resistance to pluralism that lies at the core of this belief system.