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What's The Antidote To Political Apathy?

Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode Seven Deadly Sins

About Dave Meslin's TED Talk

Activist Dave Meslin says even though we're apathetic about local politics, we're hardly sloths.

About Dave Meslin

"As long as we believe that people, our own neighbors, are selfish, stupid or lazy, then there's no hope."

Dave Meslin is a community coordinator in Toronto. Some of his projects include 2006's City Idol contest, which put a fresh face on council elections; co-editing Local Motion, a book about civic projects in Toronto; and Dandyhorse and Spacing magazines. He also founded the Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto (RaBIT). His latest crowdsourcing project is called 100 Remedies for a Broken Democracy.

CORRECTION: In the original broadcast of this segment, we said around 36,000 people elected Washington, D.C.'s mayor in the 2014 election. The actual number is 96,666.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

NPR/TED Staff