30/09/2026
Your new WOWcast is here! This week, we sit down with the renowned political scientist Maria Popova, and the discussion couldn’t be more timely. A child of communist-era Bulgaria, Maria got her undergrad and PhD degrees in the U.S after the Berlin Wall fell. She then settled in Canada, at McGill University, where she is a professor of political science and an expert on the transformation process in Eastern Europe, and the subsequent democratic backsliding and weaponization of the judiciary in the region. It’s been “one of the biggest shocks of her academic career” that she’s now seeing these same crises playing out in the U.S., a place she’d viewed as the pinnacle of mature democracy.
In our conversation, Maria talks about the strongman playbook for using the legal system as a cudgel to settle personal and political scores, the insidious ways conspiracy theories take root in and undermine democracies, and Donald Trump’s assault on traditional friends and allies like Canada. She also has some practical advice on what we can do to stop the backsliding and protect our civic institutions and freedoms. Link to episode in comments.
