**This episode was immediately popular in the Beyond Politics podcast (please subscribe to it!!!), so we are bringing it to our Great Ideas Listeners**  Today, in America, the system is blinking red. Experts are sounding increasingly dire alarms that our politics have become so distorted by anger, partisanship, lies, manipulation, and disinformation – not to mention deliberate steps to subvert American elections – that American democracy itself is in real peril. There may be no more widely respected  expert on election law and the role of disinformation that Rick Hasen.  He's a Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of  California, Irvine and is Co-Director of the Fair Elections and Free  Speech Center. Dr. Hasen also served in 2020 as a CNN Election Law  Analyst, and is the author of numerous books and articles, including  op-eds and commentaries in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Politico, and Slate. His most recent book is “Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics—and How to Cure It.”