These Are the Times: Thomas Paine and the Power of Common Sense

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 Juli 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 Juli 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 Juli 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 Juli 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 Juli 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 Juni 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 Juni 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 Juni 41min