Civics In A Year
What do you really know about American government, the Constitution, and your rights as a citizen?
Civics in a Year is a fast-paced podcast series that delivers essential civic knowledge in just 10 minutes per episode. Over the course of a year, we’ll explore 250 key questions—from the founding documents and branches of government to civil liberties, elections, and public participation.
Rooted in the Civic Literacy Curriculum from the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University, this series is a collaborative project supported by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Each episode is designed to spark curiosity, strengthen constitutional understanding, and encourage active citizenship.
Whether you're a student, educator, or lifelong learner, Civics in a Year will guide you through the building blocks of American democracy—one question at a time.
Episodes
254 episodes
The Declaration At 250
The Declaration of Independence is 250 years old, but it refuses to sit quietly on a shelf. We end Civics in a Year by asking one question that cuts through politics and posture: what does the Declaration mean 250 years later, and what does it ...
Jefferson And Madison and the University of Virginia
Jefferson wrote his own epitaph, and the choice still startles: “Father of the University of Virginia” makes the cut, while “President of the United States” does not. That single detail opens a window into how seriously Jefferson took education...
Washington’s Final Act of Statesmanship: Confronting Slavery
George Washington sits at the center of American civic memory, but the hardest truths about him often sit at the edges of what we’re taught. We talk with Dr. Paul Carrese about Washington as an owner of enslaved people and the complicated story...
Roger Sherman, The Founder We Missed
He signed all four major American revolutionary documents, helped craft the constitutional structure we still argue about, and yet most people can’t tell you a single detail about him. We’re talking about Roger Sherman, the “forgotten founder t...
Hamilton’s Moral Reckoning
Hamilton is easy to caricature: the brilliant operator, the relentless Federalist, the guy who never stops pushing. But the closer you look, the more the story bends toward something unexpected: a late-in-life moral awakening shaped by pride, c...
How The Massachusetts Constitution Shaped American Government
John Adams has a branding problem. If your mental picture comes from a musical, a miniseries, or the vague sense that he “wanted to be king,” we put that claim on trial by reading his work where it matters most: the Massachusetts Constitution o...
Benjamin Franklin And The Bold Experiment Of Pennsylvania’s 1776 Constitution
Pennsylvania tried something in 1776 that still tempts us today: push democracy to the front of the line and assume the people will keep government honest. With Dr. Beienberg, we walk through the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 and Benjamin F...
Lore of the Founding: Cicero And The Duty To Serve
A republic doesn’t collapse all at once. It frays in public, and it frays in private, through shortcuts that feel justified, norms that stop being enforced, and citizens who decide it’s safer to sit things out. That’s why we end our Lore of the...
Lore of the Founding: Cato And Give Me Liberty, Give Me Death
One Roman name keeps popping up wherever people argue about freedom, tyranny, and what a citizen owes a republic: Cato. We follow Cato the Younger from the final days of the Roman Republic, when Julius Caesar’s rise forces a brutal choice betwe...
Lore of the Founding- Julius Caesar
A republic can look stable right up until the moment it isn’t. We sit down with Joanna Kenti to trace how Julius Caesar rises through Roman politics, builds personal loyalty through war, and finally dares the republic to stop him. Along the way...
Lore of the Founding- Founding of the Roman Republic
A king gets exiled, a republic gets born, and the story is so brutal it still shapes how people talk about tyranny today. We dig into Rome’s founding legend with Joanna Kenty, starting with the Roman monarchy, the reign of Tarquin the Proud, an...
The Lore of the Founding: Checks And Balances in Rome
A republic doesn’t fail only because of enemies at the gates. It can fail because someone inside decides the rules are for other people. That’s the tension we wrestle with as we explore checks and balances, starting with the Federalist 51 idea ...
What is Juneteenth and Why Do We Celebrate?
Juneteenth isn’t just a date; it’s a lesson about how freedom can be promised on paper and still withheld in practice. I’m joined by Clint Smith, the New York Times bestselling author of *How the Word Is Passed* and a staff writer at The At...
Lore of the Founding- An Introduction
America’s founding didn’t spring from a blank page. It grew out of a loud, messy argument that had been running for centuries about how people should govern themselves, and Joanna Kenty helps us follow that argument back to its classical roots....
The War Powers Act Explained
The Constitution draws a bright line that most of us never hear clearly: Congress declares war, and the President commands the military. So why does modern American conflict so often start without a formal declaration, and why does the “command...
How Primaries Pick Candidates And Reshape Elections
Primaries decide far more than most voters think and the process that was supposed to make politics cleaner may be one reason it feels uglier. We sit down with Dr. Sean Beienberg to unpack what primary elections actually are, why they took off ...
The Senate Filibuster Explained
The filibuster gets treated like an ancient feature of the U.S. Senate, but the version that drives today’s gridlock is surprisingly modern. We sit down with Dr. Sean Beienberg to unpack how a procedure that’s not even named in the Constitution...
Mary Todd Lincoln Unmasked
Mary Todd Lincoln gets talked about like a stereotype: the spender, the problem, the punchline. That story falls apart the moment you place her where she actually lived, in a White House worn down by constant crowds and a nation tearing itself ...
How Lorraine Waxman Pearce Turned The White House Into A Museum
The White House looks permanent on TV, but its history has to be protected one object at a time. We’re joined by Leslie Calderone, Director of the White House History Digital Archives at the White House Historical Association, to introduce a na...
How The U.S. Capitol Historical Society Keeps Democracy Real
The U.S. Capitol is one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, but many Americans don’t realize there’s an organization dedicated to preserving its story and turning that history into practical civic education. We sit down with Roswel...
Elizabeth Willing Powel
A woman in Philadelphia tells George Washington, plainly, that the country needs him to serve again and she does not write for personal gain. That single moment opens a much bigger story about how influence works when you cannot vote, cannot ho...
Social Media And Modern Elections
A single TikTok can redefine a candidate faster than a week of traditional ads, and that reality is changing American elections in real time. We sit down with educator Spencer Burrows to trace how campaign communication evolved from “earned med...
D-Day: What Does Courage Look Like When History Is Watching
D-Day gets reduced to a date and a diagram, but the truth is messier, riskier, and far more human. We sit down with historian Dr. Michael Butler to talk about June 6, 1944 not just as the Normandy invasion, but as a moment when thousands of ord...
The Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket
The Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” sounds like a secret back hallway of law and that’s exactly why it triggers so much public suspicion. We sit down with Spencer Burrows, an 11th grade dean, AP US Government teacher, and civic engagement coord...
How Eleanor Roosevelt And JFK Turned Conflict Into Partnership
Eleanor Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy don’t sound like a natural pairing and that’s exactly why we wanted to sit with this story. We talk with presidential historian Barbara Perry of UVA’s Miller Center about her forthcoming book, Reconcilable ...