Meet Jenna Spinelle from Democracy Works and When The People Decide

With a growing network of podcasts and organizations that create educational content about democracy, civic engagement and civil discourse, we caught up with one of our hosts and The Democracy Group Founder Jenna Spinelle about the podcasts Democracy Works and When The People Decide, the story behind The Democracy Group podcast network and instilling hope in uncertain times.

Q: Tell me about yourself and your podcasts When The People Decide and Democracy Works.

Jenna: I'm Jenna Spinelle. I am the founder of The Democracy Group podcast network and I host the podcasts Democracy Works and When The People Decide, both are productions of The McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State which is also the sponsor of The Democracy Group. The shows are very different even though they're both produced by the McCourtney Institute. 

Democracy Works is an interview-style show. It features usually one guest per week that I interview and that is bookended by analysis and commentary from my co-hosts, Michael Berkman, Chris Beem and Candis Watts Smith.

When The People Decide is a narrative or documentary-style series that's all about grassroots politics and how everyday people shape democracy. The first season was about ballot measure campaigns and the second season was about folks who are strengthening democracy at the local level.

Q: What brought you to the podcasting sphere and ultimately created The Democracy Group network?

Jenna: Unlike a lot of people in podcasting, I did not come from a radio background or broadcast journalism though I do have a background in journalism but more on the print side. My first jobs were at local newspapers and when I joined the McCourtney Institute, my co-hosts Michael and Chris on Democracy Works had wanted to start a podcast for a while but didn't know what to do, what equipment to buy, or how to make it happen. And I really didn't either if I'm being honest. I reached out to WPSU, which is our NPR affiliate here in central Pennsylvania and their team was fantastic in the beginning about helping us conceive the format and the structure of the show and think about theme music and all those things that none of us had ever done before. They were fantastic. 

I sort of grew into the role over time. If you listen to some of the early Democracy Works episodes, the interviews are definitely kind of rough. I've gotten better over the years of doing it. I remember going into the studio for the first interview and sitting down in the booth, putting on the headphones and realizing I've never done this before and this will be interesting to see how it goes. Things have only gone up from there, thankfully. But it's been a great experience for all of us and helped put the McCourtney Institute out and on the map a little bit more publicly, and made connections for us far outside of the university, including with all of the shows in The Democracy Group which started as a way to amplify a lot of the one-off cross-promotional efforts that happened in podcasting. 

I wanted to create an opportunity for a lot of podcasts in this space, to help spread the good work that they were doing to others, help grow their audiences and maybe have some collective impact that each individual show wouldn't be able to have on their own, like putting panels together for conferences and events. We've since launched a student fellowship program that is a collective effort among all of the shows. It's been great to see those collaborations go even further than I thought they would when the network started.

Q: Would you say that your experience working on Democracy Works naturally inspired you to create When The People Decide?

Jenna: When The People Decide was in some ways my pandemic project. When everybody was stuck in their houses with not a lot to do, I had this idea about ballot measures for a while when I heard them come up in various contexts on Democracy Works but never had the time to dig into both ballot measures and grassroots politics more broadly before COVID. Whenever the idea of direct democracy or citizens directly influencing the government came up on Democracy Works or in other places, it was brushed off to the side like this is not going to make an impact. 

Democracy is about elections and legislators and institutions and those sorts of things. But there was this whole other side to it that I thought had a lot of really rich stories to tell, in some cases, David and Goliath kind of stories — like individuals or groups of everyday folks coming together to push for change on an issue that they care about. So those stories are at the heart of When The People Decide. It was the extra time over the course of the pandemic years that allowed me to dig into finding those stories and doing all kinds of background research. I think I checked out every book on ballot measures from the Penn State library and really dug into it. I'm really proud of how both of the seasons turned out.

Q: How has podcasting as a medium helped get your message out not only on topics of ballot measures and grassroots politics but also on democracy-related issues?

Jenna: One of the goals that I always have is how I can create content that makes people feel a sense of hope. And I don't mean that in the sense that I'm going to sugarcoat anything or try to paper over some of the very real problems that exist in our democracy. But I do think it's also the case that other media outlets tend to over-emphasize the conflicts and the problems. I'm a hopeful person by nature so I'm always thinking about how I can inspire others to become involved in their community or in issues that they care about, or even feel a little bit more informed. Hope doesn't always have to come in the form of taking action. Sometimes it's just hearing a different perspective, or thinking about something a different way, taking a step back from the day to day news headlines and understanding the underlying causes of how did this problem get this way, or what are some of the factors at play here. The goals I'm thinking about are how to create content that will make people feel hopeful and inspired to learn more or to take action to strengthen our democracy, which is the collective enterprise that we're all in together.

‍Q: Looking ahead, would you say that you’re closer to achieving the goals you set out a few years back?

Jenna: I think so. I've heard from listeners all over the world who tell me that they have they feel hopeful after listening to both Democracy Works and When The People Decide, we see it come through in listener surveys. I hear it when I visited classrooms to talk to students. I hear it when people come up to me in the grocery store or I've been recognized at conferences because people recognize the sound of my voice and they tell me how much they love the show. And that's flattering on some level but it's also a real validation of the fact that this content does get out there and people do listen and it is having an impact now. We're never going to compete with the CNNs or the New York Times of the world and reach millions of people — I mean never say never — but I think that even if it's only a few hundred or a few thousand people, that’s still more than what have felt that way had they not listened or watched what we're doing. So that's enough to keep me going. 

Discover the top episodes selected by our hosts

Democracy Works: Wynton Marsalis on democracy as jazz and The Ever Fonky Lowdown

Democracy takes center stage on Wynton Marsalis’s latest album, The Ever Fonky Lowdown and his forthcoming work, the Democracy Suite. However, he’s been thinking about the connection between jazz and democracy for his entire career. We are thrilled that he took a few minutes to talk with us about it this week. Listen to this episode while you wait in line to vote or for something to take your mind off the election while you’re waiting for the results to come in.

‍