Trump, the Republican party and Project 2025 are echoing Orbán's autocratic playbook - along with strategies of other leaders who got elected democratically and then turned their nations into autocracies. Key steps: pack courts and agencies with their cronies, slander and intimidate the media, and denigrate their opponents as "evil" and "vermin." Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority, tells us why it could take years to rescue America's democracy - even if Trump loses the upcoming election.

Sesame Street changed TV by using music to help kids learn how to spell and how to share. Singer-songwriter Anya Rose and the group Ants on a Log write social action songs to help children in primary school learn edgier lessons, about problems from environmental pollution to racist and sexist behavior - inspired in part by 60s satirist Tom Lehrer. After hearing these tunes, the 9-year-olds in your family might feel inspired to research a problem in your own neighborhood - and then write your members of Congress about it!

Now that Judge David S. Tatel has retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, he feels freer to warn us all: the Supreme Court is threatening America's democracy by inventing spurious legal doctrines and grabbing more power for itself. There are also lighter moments in this revealing interview, as David pulls the curtain aside and tells us how the judges on this powerful court really do their work. Spoiler alert #1: It used to involve a red children's sand pail. Spoiler alert #2: Because David is blind, he used to hire "readers" who rattled off every word of laws, books and briefs out loud to him, at such mind-boggling speeds that most people couldn't understand them.

David Tatel - who retired recently from the U.S. Court of Appeals - has led what he calls a "braided life" that intertwines hardship and accomplishment. With his wife, Edie, he describes how he struggled to hide his gradual loss of sight from friends and colleagues alike - including tricks like counting rows and seats in a movie theater and following the clicks of high heels. Meanwhile, David became an accomplished lawyer who fought landmark civil rights cases. You can read their full story in David's new book, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice. David will return in Part 2 to take us behind the scenes of the second most important court in the nation.

Lewis Simon's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting, in collaboration with colleagues, helped spark an international scandal and topple a corrupt dictator in the Philippines; he tells us in this episode how they did it. Lew also gives us remarkable insight into how he could do his work - taking notes as people got beaten to death and blown up in front of him, in countries like Cambodia and Bangladesh - and survive emotionally. And finally, a roving correspondent talks honestly about the toll that constant traveling took on his spouse. After hearing Lew, you might think differently about what reporters face when they tell you the latest from Ukraine and the Middle East.

Next time you hear details of the horrific wars in Ukraine and Gaza, think about how you're learning them: journalists are risking their lives to report from the front lines. Lewis Simons won the Pulitzer Prize during decades of reporting on the Vietnam war and other conflicts across Asia. He lived by a motto: "Whatever the threat or danger, I had to be there."

Now Trump and the Republican party are following their autocratic playbooks, whether by design or by instinct: pack courts and agencies with their cronies, slander and intimidate the media, and denigrate their opponents as "evil" and vermin. Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority, tells us why it could take many years to rescue America's democracy - even if Trump loses the next election.

When you learned about the American explorers who claimed to discover the North Pole, the answer seems to be, "Yes." In fact, the fabled drama of Robert E. Peary and Frederick Cook was an early example of how powerful newspapers - in this case The New York Times and New York Herald - spread fake news (although critics still debate whether the newspaper owners knew it was fake or didn't bother to corroborate the explorers' stories). Journalist Darrell Hartman tells us life and death tales from his recent book, Battle of Ink and Ice, that shed light on the perils of vanity and competition for fame and profit.