Exploring paths to improve the health of democracy with James Fishkin

Air Dates: August 18-24, 2025

For more than a decade, now, the world has been experiencing a process of “democratic backsliding,” while alternatives to governing by popular consent have gained popularity—even in the West.  James Fishkin offers a path to improving not just the health of democracy, but the effectiveness of liberal democratic governments. 

Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Deliberative Democracy Lab. He is best known for developing Deliberative Polling®, a practice of public consultation that employs random samples of the citizenry to explore how opinions would change if they were more informed. His work on deliberative democracy has stimulated more than 100 Deliberative Polls in 28 countries around the world. It has been used to help governments and policy makers make important decisions in Texas, China, Mongolia, Japan, Macau, South Korea, Bulgaria, Brazil, Uganda and other countries around the world. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge.

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. Check your local public television listings for airtimes near you! An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 2:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. and Mondays at 4:30 a.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a project of the Pell Center at Salve Regina University. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.