Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Generation Z, the young Americans born after 1996, accounted for one-tenth of eligible voters in the 2020 election. This percentage will grow significantly in 2024.
Engaging this generation of citizens in the democratic process will define the direction of our democracy for decades to come. We know Gen Z is more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation, and it is on track to be the most well-educated generation in American history. They are also more digitally savvy, having virtually no memory of the world as it existed before smartphones.
Podcasts are a perfect way to engage Gen Zers, given technology has driven them to move on unless they are instantly engaged. Podcasts are convenient, good at exploring complex topics in an easily digestible way, and if done effectively can have mass appeal to Gen Z.
One way to do that is to have podcasts produced by Gen Z for Gen Z. With this in mind, The Democracy Group, a collective of 17 podcasts on democracy and civic engagement, has launched a new initiative to help high school and college students make their voices heard on connected topics.
The network’s podcast fellowship will pair students with mentors from The Democracy Group to develop a concept for a podcast and record a trailer and at least one full episode. In addition to one-on-one coaching, students will have access to a library of on-demand content about how to produce and promote podcasts that build community and provide educational value to listeners.
“This fellowship will give younger generations the opportunity to share their perspective and help bridge generational divides in politics,” said Jenna Spinelle, founder of The Democracy Group. “I’m so excited to hear what the students come up with.”
The fellowship is open to any high school or college student or group of students working as a team. Applications are due Oct. 21, and acceptance notifications will be sent Nov. 28. The first cohort will begin the program in January.
The Democracy Group is an initiative of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State. The program is supported by a gift from the Bridge Alliance (which operates The Fulcrum). And by partnering with Tink Media and Mucktracker, The Democracy Group’s ability to share expertise on podcast marketing and production is considerable.
The Fulcrum encourages our Gen Z readers to learn more about how they can apply at democracygroup.org/fellowship and become a generation that is engaged and involved in the evolution of our democracy for this century.
The future of our democracy depends on the engagement of young Americans and we must do everything we can to excite, encourage and educate young leaders to be the citizens our nation needs. America is stronger if we use our civic voices to strengthen our democracy
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.