“This Day” Live: The Next Realignment, presented by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation
“This Day” Live: The Next Realignment is a live conversation from Radiotopia’s history podcast *This Day*, presented with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. Host Jody Avirgan and historians Nicole Hemmer, Kellie Carter Jackson, and Alex Lovit will examine the democratic realignment taking place in American politics, asking how shifts in race, class, power, voting rights, education, religion, economic inequality, and competing ideas of democracy are changing the country’s political coalitions.
The discussion will connect current developments with earlier turning points, including the emergence of America’s first political parties, expansions of voting rights, civil-rights struggles, and Supreme Court decisions that altered who held political power. Special guest Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II will join the panel. The event is part of the “Democracy, Under Construction” partnership between *This Day* and the Kettering Foundation, which also includes conversations released through the *This Day* and *The Context* podcast feeds.
When: October 19, 2026
Schedule: Doors open at 6:00 PM, with the show beginning at 7:00 PM. The page lists one 7:00 PM showtime.
Venue: The Howard Theatre, 620 T Street NW, Washington, DC 20001
Ages: All ages
Tickets: Price not available
Host: Jody Avirgan is the host of *This Day* and the founder of Roulette Productions. He has also produced or hosted projects including *Summer Album / Winter Album*, *What Now with Trevor Noah*, ESPN’s *30 for 30 Podcasts*, and the FiveThirtyEight politics podcast, and has worked on programs such as *The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs*, *The Line*, *Death at the Wing*, *On the Media*, *99% Invisible*, and *Freakonomics*.
Lineup: Nicole Hemmer is a Vanderbilt University associate professor of history and director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency. Her work focuses on media, conservatism, and the presidency. She wrote *Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s* and *Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics*, and is a CNN columnist and former co-founder of the Washington Post’s *Made by History* section.
Lineup: Kellie Carter Jackson is the Michael and Denise Kellen ’68 Associate Professor and chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. Her specialties include slavery, abolitionism, the Civil War, and political violence. She is the author of *We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance* and *Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence*, and serves as historian-in-residence at Boston’s Museum of African American History.
Lineup: Alex Lovit is a senior program officer and historian at the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, where he hosts and produces *The Context*. His work explores democracy’s history and future, including citizen engagement, government accountability, inclusive democracy, and authoritarian threats. He holds degrees from Amherst College and the University of Michigan, where he earned a PhD in history focused on 19th-century political history.
Special guest: Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II is a bishop with the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, a Kettering Foundation senior fellow, and a professor of public theology and public policy at Yale Divinity School, where he founded the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy. He co-chairs the Poor People’s Campaign, helped lead the Forward Together Moral Movement and its Moral Monday protests, and previously served as senior pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church and president of the North Carolina NAACP. Barber is the author of five books, including *White Poverty: How Exposing Myths about Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy*, and has received honors including a MacArthur Fellowship.
Format: Live panel conversation and historical discussion.
Run time: Not specified.
Note: The event is presented by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation in collaboration with *This Day* as part of the “Democracy, Under Construction” series.