Civics In A Year

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, not as résumé polish, but as the infrastructure of self-government. We follow the long road from early dreams of a national university to the state-level strategy th...

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 behind his decision to free those he legally could through his 1799 will. It’s a conversation that doesn’t look away from the moral contradiction at the founding, and it al...

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, collapse, and a real confrontation with faith. We sit down with Dr. Beienberg to follow Hamilton’s religious trajectory from early piety to a long stretch of indifference, then to a peri...

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 that shouldn’t be forgotten,” and we’re making a serious case for bumping him into the Founders’ top tier based on impact, not celebrity. 

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 of 1780, the oldest functioning written constitution and a direct ancestor of the U.S. Constitution. We’re joined by Dr. Beienberg to trace what Adams actually argues for and...

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 Franklin’s surprisingly central role in a state charter that deserves way more attention in any conversation about the American founding, state constitutions, and the roots of U.S. const...

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 Founding series with Cicero: Rome’s sharpest talker, a brilliant lawyer, and a painfully human political figure who tried to hold the Roman Republic together while it...

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 between compromise and principle. Cato’s answer is extreme and unforgettable, and it raises the same question that keeps resurfacing in American politics: what does “republican v...

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, we unpack the real-world pressures behind the legend: dispossessed farmers, bitter factional conflict, escalating political violence, and the way “temporary” exceptions to...

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, and the moment one crime becomes the final straw that makes Romans swear off kings forever. It’s not clean hero worship. It’s a reminder that unchecked power can turn private ...

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 that still cuts through every civics debate: human beings are not angels, so a government must be designed to control itself.

We tell two Roman Republic stories that make t...

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 Atlantic, to trace why so many Americans grew up barely hearing about Juneteenth and what changes when we finally tell the story plainly.

We walk through the history that m...

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.

We talk with Joanna, a former classics professor and civic education writer, about what “classical history” actually means beyond “great books.” Sh...

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 “commander in chief” argument keep winning in practice?

We sit down with Dr. Sean Beienberg to unpack the War Powers Act, also known as the War Powers Resolution of 1973, and the l...

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 in the early 20th century, and how they replaced the old convention system where party leaders and delegates negotiated nominees behind closed doors. If you’ve ever heard “smoke-f...

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 ends up acting like a standing 60-vote requirement for most legislation.

We start with the basics: what a filibuster is, what it is supposed to do, and why the classic ima...

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 apart in the Civil War. We sit down with Vicky Middleswarth, Education Coordinator at the Mary Todd Lincoln House, to look at what Mary did, why she did it, and why so many people were determ...

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 name most Americans have never heard: Lorraine Waxman Pearce , the first curator of the White House.

We go back to the moment that quietly set everything in motion: Jacqueline Kenn...

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 Roswell Encina, president and CEO of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, to talk about what it really means to “own” the people’s house and why the Capitol’s hi...