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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.
151 Episodes
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A national emergency remade American politics—and we follow the fault lines from the Great Depression to the digital age. With Dr. Sidney Milkis, we unpack how Franklin Roosevelt turned crisis into a lasting partisan realignment and built the modern presidency as an institution with its own staff, strategy, and voice. From Social Security to the Executive Office of the President, the New Deal didn’t just add programs; it rewired how citizens see power, how parties compete, and how leaders com...
We track how the Progressive Era broke the grip of local party machines, elevated public opinion, and strengthened the presidency, reshaping both major parties. Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson anchor the story as primaries expand and conventions recede into ceremony. • limited, decentralized party machines shift toward national agendas • industrialization and foreign policy drive demand for federal action • direct democracy tools weaken party gatekeepers • primaries rise, conventions lose real p...
A French magistrate walked into an American prison and came out with a blueprint for democratic life. We follow Alexis de Tocqueville’s unlikely journey—from an official study of penitentiaries to a lasting analysis of how habits, values, and local participation keep freedom alive—and we connect his sharpest insights to the choices we face today. We start with the ruse that made his research possible: a tour of U.S. prisons that opened the door to courts, churches, town meetings, and newspap...
What if the biggest threat to freedom isn’t a tyrant but our quiet decision to sit out civic life? We dive into Alexis de Tocqueville’s striking idea of “individualism” as a democratic habit of withdrawal—not mere selfishness—and trace how that mindset can hollow out participation, invite overreach, and make liberty feel ornamental instead of lived. With Dr. Zachary German from the Institute of American Civics, we unpack why Tocqueville saw this tendency as an intellectual mistake and how he...
A public park can teach a nation. We head to the National Mall with Jeremy Goldstein from the Trust for the National Mall to trace a civil rights tour that links the MLK Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial into one living civics lesson. From the first glimpse of Dr. King carved out of stone to the bronze plaque marking where “I Have a Dream” rang out, we unpack how place turns moments into movements. Jeremy pulls back the curtain on how memorials happen: citizen...
Freedom doesn’t last on parchment alone. We sit down with Dr. Daniel Mahoney to trace why Tocqueville believed that religion—understood broadly and charitably—quietly underwrites the habits that make a republic work. Laws matter, but mores matter more, and the moral culture of a people determines whether constitutions breathe or break. Moving from Puritan townships to the American founding, we explore how early communities paired local self-rule with moral seriousness, teaching citizens to de...
A French traveler saw something in America that Americans often miss: a Constitution that works precisely because it limits what anyone can do. We dive into Tocqueville’s sharp reading of federal design and put it to the test in the age of Andrew Jackson—where states’ rights, nullification, and a rising presidency collide. The result is a surprisingly balanced verdict: admiration for divided power, suspicion of centralized administration, and a sober warning about how quickly charisma can tur...
Why did a fledgling republic across the Atlantic make constitutional democracy work while France kept crashing into chaos? We pull on that thread with Tocqueville as our guide, following his journey from “prison inspector” to one of the sharpest observers of American civic life. What he learned here wasn’t a hack or a hero story. It was a layered culture of limits—town meetings, federalism, courts, and religious humility—that slowed power down just enough for freedom to last. We explore how ...
The easiest story about American parties is also the least helpful: that Democrats and Republicans simply “flipped.” We take you past that cliché and into the moving parts that actually reshape coalitions—where parties win, what they believe, and who stands with them. With Dr. Beienberg back for our series finale, we connect 19th-century moral politics to modern social debates, show how FDR’s New Deal turned federalism into the defining party divide, and explain why New England and the Pacifi...
Step onto America’s front yard with us and see the National Mall with fresh eyes. Guided by Jeremy Goldstein of the Trust for the National Mall, we unpack how this open, ticketless landscape functions as a park, a museum, and a civic classroom—where design choices, inscriptions, and sightlines quietly teach us what a nation values. The conversation moves from the big lawns and First Amendment spaces to the intimate details that most visitors miss: hidden plaques, international friendship gard...
Power doesn’t disappear in politics; it moves. We dig into how American political parties migrated from tightly controlled organizations to looser coalitions where candidates build their own machines, then fight for the right to wear the party label. With Henry Olsen—senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a leading analyst of elections and populism—we unpack the long arc from Martin Van Buren’s Albany Regency to today’s primary-driven era, where voters decide nominees and, i...
Ever wonder why some elections change everything while others fade into noise? Henry Olsen joins us to map the hidden mechanics of political realignment—the moments when voter coalitions reorganize around a new set of priorities and lock in policy for a generation. We trace the through-line from 1800’s fight over federal power, through the New Deal’s 1932 transformation, to the Reagan recalibration of 1980, and then confront the unsettled present where no coalition has yet earned durable rati...
Politics didn’t always reward performance over prudence. We dive into how Abraham Lincoln—once a young Whig and later the face of a new Republican coalition—used a strong party system to win, govern, and preserve a fragile constitutional order without mistaking power for purpose. From the 1860 convention drama to a cabinet of rivals, we unpack how parties once acted as talent scouts and guardrails, elevating character, experience, and coalition-building over pure spectacle. We walk through L...
A letter smuggled from a jail cell shouldn’t carry this much power, yet King’s words still light a fire under the American conscience. We sit down with Dr. Michael Butler, Keenan Distinguished Professor of History, to explore why Letter from Birmingham Jail is more than a moral protest—it’s a tightly reasoned civic argument rooted in theology, the Constitution, and lived experience. From the Good Friday arrest and the injunction he chose to break, to the eight clergymen who branded his work “...
Step onto America’s front yard with us and see the National Mall as you’ve never seen it before: a living civics classroom where design, memory, and the First Amendment share the same lawn. Our guide is Jeremy Goldstein, Vice President of Programs at the Trust for the National Mall, who brings decades of educator insight to the story of how this open park became a stage for democratic life. We trace the Mall’s surprising evolution from swampland and canals to the ordered vistas of the 1902 M...
A single constitutional question remade American politics: could Congress restrict slavery in the territories? We follow that thread through the 1850s to watch a new party cohere from scattered movements—Free Soil organizers, anti-slavery Whigs, and a critical mass of anti-slavery Democrats—into the Republican Party. Along the way, we unpack how a tight platform and disciplined rhetoric outperformed louder but looser alternatives, and why Lincoln’s Cooper Union argument cast Republicans not a...
A nation doesn’t break in a single moment—it fractures across pulpits, newspapers, courtrooms, and party halls until the old order can’t bear the strain. We walk through the pivotal decades when the politics of slavery hardened from reluctant tolerance to militant defense, reshaping every institution in its path and forcing parties to choose sides. We start with a shift in moral language: from calling slavery a “necessary evil” to branding it a “positive good,” championed by John C. Calhoun....
A party built to check presidential power, unite a restless coalition, and knit the country together with roads and banks—then shattered by the nation’s defining moral crisis. That’s the arc of the Whig Party, and we walk it step by step with clear context and plain language. We start with the name itself—borrowed from Britain’s anti-monarchy tradition—and the animating idea that Congress, not the presidency, should drive national policy. From there, we unpack how Henry Clay and Daniel Webste...
A party wasn’t just born—it was engineered. We follow the rise of the Jacksonian Democrats from a murky Era of Good Feelings into a disciplined machine that reshaped American politics. With Dr. Sean Beienberg, we unpack how Martin Van Buren built modern party architecture around a strict, Jeffersonian reading of the Constitution, why Henry Clay’s national vision split old coalitions, and how a “corrupt bargain” story fueled a populist revolt against centralized power. We dig into the constit...
A young republic rarely gets to choose its identity in peace and quiet. We step into the charged crossroads where Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton wrestled over what “self-government” should actually look like, and how much power the federal center needs to keep a sprawling nation intact. Their clash was not just personal—it was a blueprint fight that forged the first party system and set the tone for the American presidency. We draw a vivid line from biography to belief: Hamilton, th...
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