Civics In A Year

254 Episodes

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The Declaration At 250

2026-07-0425:52

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 require from us right now? We start with ASU President Michael Crow, who argues that the United States is still early in a long, messy democratic story. His “second inning” metaphor reframes the semi-quincentennial as a marker, not a finish line, and i...

Jefferson And Madison and the University of Virginia

2026-07-0321:30

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 that finally produces UVA in Charlottesville, with Jefferson politicking, drafting plans...

Washington’s Final Act of Statesmanship: Confronting Slavery

2026-07-0229:39

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 also refuses to flatten history into easy heroes or easy villains. We trace what ...

Roger Sherman, The Founder We Missed

2026-07-0120:23

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. We walk through Sherman’s improbable rise from shoemaker to self-taught lawyer to one of Connecticut’s most i...

Hamilton’s Moral Reckoning

2026-07-0115:32

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 period in which he uses Christian language as a blunt political instrume...

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