Could this ancient Greek idea make us better citizens? | Scott Reich

0:00The Athenians understood something profound. Democracy is not self-executing. Citizens are not simply born. They are made.

0:13You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. In ancient Athens, young citizens spent two years training to understand and defend democracy before they earned full civic rights. The writer Scott Reich believes that idea holds a lesson America has never quite learned. He sees the country facing a crisis of connection and says it shows up in how many Americans feel about the country itself. If democracy needs citizens to care about one another, Why have we never built a system that actually trains people to do that? Many young people today feel what I call cynical patriotism.

0:59They love our country, but they don't quite yet feel it belongs to them. And can we blame them? In his talk, Scott makes the case for what he calls a fourth founding for America, one that would reshape not just the country's laws, but us, its citizens. Imagine all young Americans, 18 to 24, devote a year of service to the country. Not just in the military, teachers in classrooms, people working in local governments, charitable organizations, disaster relief efforts, getting involved in the community. And in return for strengthening the civic infrastructure of the nation, we make a reciprocal commitment.

1:42Scott's conviction is personal. His young son has a rare disorder and needs around-the-clock care. The therapists, teachers, and neighbors who have shown up for his family opened his eyes to a side of community that many never see. That's coming up right after a short break.

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4:03And now our TED Talk of the day. I'm a historian who studies moments and events that define how we relate to each other. And I believe that the key to renewing American democracy is 2 ,500 years old and hiding in plain sight. Not in a constitution, not in a court decision, not in a political movement, but in a simple idea about what it means to be a citizen. In my view, the United States has already experienced three founding moments. In 1776, the Declaration established the moral creed of equality. In 1787, the Constitution created the framework of the republic. In 1865, the Civil War forced the nation to expand freedom.

4:53But the more I've studied our history, the more convinced I've become that we missed a founding, one that reshapes citizens themselves. And I believe that today America needs that missing chapter. We need a fourth founding. Let's go back 2 ,500 years to ancient Athens, where modern democracy was invented, and people immediately, of course, began saying, this will never last. There's something crucial about Athenian democracy that we often overlook. You see, Athenians did not assume that citizens would naturally possess the virtue required to govern themselves. They trained it. Beginning in the fourth century BCE, Athens required its young citizens to participate in a two-year military and civic service program known as the Ephibia.

5:47Eighteen-year-olds would enter training corps and learn the laws of the city and what it meant to defend democracy, not just with weapons, but with judgment. As part of this program, these young citizens would stand together and recite an oath in which they pledged to leave the city not less, but greater than they received it. Only upon completing this program did these individuals gain full civic rights. The Athenians understood something profound. Democracy is not self-executing. Citizens are not simply born, they are made. Now, let me share something personal. I have a young son named Eli who suffers from a rare brain disorder called Fox G1 syndrome that leaves him unable to walk or talk and in need of 24-7 care.

6:43The day he was diagnosed changed our lives forever. But in time, something else happened too. We began to see a side of community and citizenship that many rarely see. Therapists who show up week after week with patience and skill, teachers helping kids whose progress is measured not in grades but in inches, neighbors who drop off cookies on your doorstep without asking, families that form incredible networks of support. When you live inside that world, you begin to understand something that the founders of democracies have always known. A society only works when people feel responsible for one another in practice.

7:34If democracy needs citizens to care about one another, why have we never built a system that actually trains people to do that? America has faced moments like this before, like during World War II when Congress passed the GI Bill, based on a simple idea. Citizens serve the nation, the nation serves citizens in return. The results were transformative. Pathways to home ownership, expanded access to education, the birth of the modern middle class. Today, America faces a different crisis. Not a world war, but a crisis of connection, loneliness, distrust, polarization, a quiet erosion of civic belonging.

8:23Many young people today feel what I call cynical patriotism. They love our country, but they don't quite yet feel it belongs to them. And can we blame them? We built a system that guarantees rights, but not the civic routines needed to sustain it. So what's this idea? What is a fourth founding? Imagine all young Americans, 18 to 24, devote a year of service to the country. not just in the military, teachers in classrooms, people working in local governments, charitable organizations, disaster relief efforts, getting involved in the community. And in return, for strengthening the civic infrastructure of the nation, we make a reciprocal commitment, a modern GI bill for civic service, pathways to education, job training, opportunities, pathways to home ownership, a launchpad for young people toward lives of independence, connection and purpose.

9:26Service becomes the on-ramp to citizenship. And the best part of all is we don't have to start from scratch. We already have a lot of the building blocks in the form of programs like Teach for America, ROTC, AmeriCorps, conservation programs and more. What we lack is scale and shared national expectation. Here's what that looks like in practice. Picture a young woman. Let's call her Emmy, because that's my daughter's name, and she's here today. Let's pretend that Emmy is 19. She's living in Phoenix, unsure of her future. She signs up for her year of service. On her first day, she meets her cohort, a kid from rural Iowa, a first-generation student from the Bronx, somebody whose parents immigrated from Nigeria, another whose family has been in West Virginia, for generations.

10:20Emmy gets assigned to a public school. She starts tutoring kids just a few years younger than she is, and she begins to feel responsible for somebody else. She understands and learns what it means to show up. And her peers, whom she has not met through screens or headlines, but through working side-by-side or working in other programs, restoring wetlands, helping patients navigate hospitals, expanding digital access. And over the course of this year, something shifts for Emmy. She becomes more confident in herself. She develops a sense of ownership, not only over her own future, but over that of the country.

11:00We pair this with civic education. We teach our young people not just what democracy offers us, but what it requires of us, what we need to do to be part of a community, helping people recognize themselves in one another, because empathy is a key ingredient of citizenship itself. And at the end of that year, we fulfill our promise back to Emmy. Job opportunities, opportunities to move into different professions and pathways to housing, a bridge into adulthood. Now, imagine millions of young Americans going through this program year after year. Across geography and ideology, they are united by shared service.

11:44they build things together, solve problems together. They begin to recognize themselves in one another. The founders of American democracy understood the need for laws and liberty. But what the Athenians understood is that democracy also requires citizens to feel responsible for one another. That is what's missing in modern America. We don't need to reinvent patriotism. We need to rebuild participation. A fourth founding will not begin with a speech or a slogan. It will begin when we collectively decide that we want to practice the virtues of our citizenship together, not merely possess it. And if we do that, then one day we will be looked back upon as the generation that decided to cast aside an era of division so we can live up to that creed in our founding documents and be able to answer the question about what we did with our democracy in the same spirit as those young Athenians of long ago.

12:47We left it not less, but greater than we received it. Thank you.

12:58That was Scott Reich speaking at TED Democracy Philadelphia in 2026. If you are curious about TED's curation, please visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Aspen Fitzgerald Dorsey, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Shu Han Hu, Debbie Rolfe, Emma Taubner, Connor Titsworth, Tansika Sungmar Nivang, and Hannah Yu. Additional support from Isabella Aslarona, Daniela Ballarezzo, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban Chang, Christopher Faze Bogan, Cinnamon Horn, Lainey Lott, Matthew Polis, and Yadi Vasquez.

13:45Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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