How 19th-Century Politics Fractured Over Slavery And Gave Rise To Republicans

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 Declara...

4 Jul 25min

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...

3 Jul 21min

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 ...

2 Jul 29min

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 a...

1 Jul 20min

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 lat...

1 Jul 15min

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 ma...

30 Jun 31min

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 Penn...

29 Jun 19min

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 t...

26 Jun 41min