E.J. Dionne has the unique perspective of studying the horse race and the big picture of American politics. He writes a twice-weekly column for the Washington Post and appears regularly on NPR, but he’s also a senior fellow at Brookings and professor in Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown University.

I talked with him about the relationship between partisan politics and democracy, the need for empathy across the political spectrum, and a few policy ideas to help make America more democratic.

Listen to the interview with Dionne on the Democracy Works podcast, produced by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State and WPSU Penn State. We could have talked all day and hope to return to some of these topics in future episodes.

New episodes of Democracy Works are released every Monday. Subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app.