Civics In A Year

The Center for American Civics
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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.

  1. 18 HR AGO

    Presidential Pets And Public Power

    A dog on the White House lawn can do what a policy speech can’t: make power feel personal. We’re taking a sharp, surprisingly civic look at presidential pets and why these “small” stories shape how Americans see leadership, character, and credibility. From carefully curated photo ops to messy headlines that remind us the White House is also a home, pets have become part of modern political communication.  We walk through some of the most telling examples in presidential history, starting with Franklin D Roosevelt’s Scottish terrier, Fala, and the famous moment Roosevelt used humor about his dog to reinforce confidence during wartime. Then we move to one of the most politically important pet stories ever told on television: Richard Nixon’s 1952 Checkers speech, where a family dog becomes the emotional centerpiece of a career-saving argument. Along the way, we connect the dots to the rise of the “public presidency” and how media rewards relatability.  We also explore how the pet narrative evolves through the TV era and into the 21st century with Reagan’s ranch image, George H W Bush’s wildly popular dog Millie, Barack Obama’s promise of Bo, and the constant attention around President Biden’s dogs. And yes, we make room for the weird ones too: John Quincy Adams’ alligator and Calvin Coolidge’s raccoon Rebecca. If you care about civics, presidential history, media influence, and how voters form trust, this is a surprisingly revealing place to look.  Subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review with your favorite presidential pet story. Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    9 min

  2. 1 DAY AGO

    Challenger And The Words That Followed

    I can still picture the classroom TV, the countdown, and the way excitement turned into silence 73 seconds after liftoff. The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster wasn’t just a news event for a lot of Americans, it was something we witnessed as kids, especially because a teacher was onboard. When that kind of shock hits a country in real time, the next question becomes painfully simple: what do you say now? That night, President Ronald Reagan made a choice that still matters in civics, leadership, and crisis communication. He set aside the State of the Union and delivered a brief national address that spoke directly to schoolchildren. I walk through what made the Reagan Challenger speech work: clear acknowledgment of grief, restraint on technical details, and a focus on shared meaning instead of easy answers. We also unpack the lines that shaped public memory, including “The future doesn’t belong to the faint-hearted. It belongs to the brave,” and why naming the astronauts shifted the moment from history to human beings. We end with the question Reagan put at the center of the nation’s recovery: do we keep exploring after loss? If you care about public rhetoric, presidential speechwriting, NASA history, or how leaders speak during national tragedy, this is a tight, unforgettable example. Subscribe for more from Civics in a Year, share this with someone who remembers that day, and leave a review with the line from the speech that stayed with you most. Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    6 min

  3. 2 DAYS AGO

    MLK's I Have A Dream Speech

    The I Have a Dream speech is one of the most recognizable moments in American history, but the version most of us carry around is often the shortest and safest one. We sit down with returning guest Dr. Michael Butler to rebuild the speech from the ground up: the Birmingham campaign, the political pressure on President John F. Kennedy, and the urgency created by Medgar Evers’ assassination in Jackson, Mississippi. When you place August 28, 1963 back into its real world, the “dream” lands differently. We also dig into the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom as a feat of coalition-building, not a foregone conclusion. Dr. Butler spotlights Bayard Rustin’s central role, the risks organizers faced, and the way the march was meant to prove broad interracial and interfaith support for a federal Civil Rights Act. Then we talk about what it was like to hear King live at the Lincoln Memorial, including the Black church tradition behind his cadence and the way he weaves the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and Scripture into a single moral argument. Most importantly, we don’t skip the reality check that comes before the famous lines. King names police brutality, voter suppression, poverty, and the “bad check” America hands to Black citizens, and he says “justice” long before he says “dream.” We unpack how that fuller meaning gets lost, how King was controversial in his own time, and why the FBI treated him as dangerous enough to intensify surveillance through COINTELPRO. If you care about civic education, teaching US history honestly, or understanding the civil rights movement beyond sound bites, this conversation is for you. Subscribe for more history that keeps its context, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review. What line from King’s speech do you think Americans most need to hear in full today? Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    28 min

  4. 5 DAYS AGO

    Barack Obama: A More Perfect Union

    A campaign firestorm pushed Barack Obama to a crossroads in 2008: offer a quick political defense or step into the country’s oldest argument about who “We the People” really are. We choose the second path and unpack “A More Perfect Union,” his Philadelphia speech that threads together constitutional language, American history, and the unresolved realities of race and citizenship. If you care about civic education, U.S. politics, or why national unity keeps feeling out of reach, this conversation gives you a clear framework for thinking instead of another round of slogans.  We start with the setting and the stakes. Speaking at the National Constitution Center, Obama anchors his case in the Preamble’s promise to “form a more perfect union,” arguing the Constitution was built to be improved rather than treated as finished and flawless. That idea opens the door to the hardest part of the speech: naming slavery as an original sin and describing American history as a repeated effort to close the gap between ideals and reality.  From there, we break down how Obama confronts the Jeremiah Wright controversy, condemns offensive remarks, and still refuses to reduce a person or a community to a single moment. We explore his willingness to hold competing truths at once: anger in the Black community, resentment among working- and middle-class White Americans, and the danger of pretending any of it can be wished away. Finally, we follow the speech’s turn from reflection to action, where unity becomes a practical requirement for tackling crumbling schools, unequal opportunity, and economic policies that reward the few.  If this helped you think more clearly about polarization, progress, and the work of democracy, subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review. What line from the speech still feels most relevant today? Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    9 min

  5. 6 DAYS AGO

    Bill Clinton’s Oklahoma City Memorial Address

    A truck bomb in Oklahoma City killed 168 people, including 19 children, and left the country grasping for words that wouldn’t make the wound worse. Four days later, President Bill Clinton delivered a memorial address that still feels like a blueprint for how leaders can face domestic terrorism without feeding panic, revenge, or division. We treat that speech as more than a historical artifact and ask what it teaches about civic leadership when the nation is grieving and angry at the same time. We walk through how Clinton structures the message: he starts with loss, keeps the children at the moral center, and then carefully shifts from mourning to meaning. Instead of casting the bombing as war or blaming an outside enemy, he frames it as an assault on democratic life itself, on peaceful disagreement, participation, and respect for human life. That choice matters because it protects national identity from becoming a weapon, and it shows how a president can speak to grieving families in the room while also steadying a shocked public watching from afar. We also dig into the line that still lands hardest: a warning to “be careful about the words we use.” Clinton links political rhetoric to civic responsibility, arguing that language can either reinforce human dignity or create a climate where violence becomes easier to justify. From there, he emphasizes justice through the rule of law, not revenge, and defines unity as a choice rooted in shared commitments, not sameness. If you care about presidential rhetoric, crisis communication, domestic extremism, or the fragile glue that holds democracy together, this is a powerful case study. Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who loves history and civics, and leave a review with the line from the speech you think matters most today. Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    10 min

  6. 13 MAY

    Nixon’s Resignation Address

    Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    10 min

  7. 12 MAY

    From Timeline To Threads: How Civics Really Works

    A timeline can tell you what happened. It can’t always tell you what it meant, or why the meaning keeps changing. We’ve spent months building a foundation in civics: the Declaration of Independence and its claims about equality, unalienable rights, and consent; the Constitution and its structure; and the core mechanics of American government like separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, and the rule of law. We’ve followed those ideas as they collide with reality through Supreme Court cases, political parties, and moments of national crisis from the early republic through the modern presidency. But there’s a problem with treating political history as a straight line: the closer you are to events, the harder it is to separate reaction from impact. So we’re making a deliberate shift. Instead of racing forward president by president, we’re slowing down and pulling on threads that cut across time, focusing on the people, relationships, and recurring conflicts that reveal how power actually works. Expect episodes that lean into historical drama and civic insight: iconic rivalries like Hamilton vs Burr, the complicated bond between Adams and Jefferson, the politics of image around figures like Jackie Kennedy, and stories that sit outside the spotlight but reshape civic life. We’ll also widen the lens with themes like Juneteenth and gerrymandering through place and geography, while building toward a big question that ties the whole project together: what does the Declaration mean 250 years later? If you want civic education that helps you make sense of the present, not just memorize the past, come with us into this next phase. Subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review telling us which rivalry or overlooked figure you want us to cover next. Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    9 min

  8. 11 MAY

    Keynes Vs Hayek

    The Great Depression isn’t just history. It’s the moment we keep dragging into today’s fights about stimulus, deficits, inflation, and what government should do when millions can’t find work. We sit down with Dr. Nicholas O’Neill from Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership to make the Keynes vs Hayek divide clear, concrete, and rooted in the world that shaped it.  We rewind to a time when “economic crisis” often meant weather, harvest failure, and the price of bread, then follow the shift into industrial capitalism where recessions look like collapsing demand, shuttered factories, and mass unemployment. From there, we walk through the 1920s boom, speculative bubbles, tightening monetary conditions, the 1929 crash, and the deflationary spiral that turned fear into bank failures and prolonged joblessness.  Hayek’s Austrian economics warns that manipulating money and credit can corrupt price signals and lock in bad decisions, making downturns worse. Keynesian economics argues the opposite danger: when uncertainty spikes, people and firms can hoard cash, starving the economy of spending and trapping it in high unemployment unless public policy jump-starts demand through countercyclical fiscal spending. We also clear up a common myth about the New Deal, then land on an unexpected civics takeaway: Keynes and Hayek modeled serious, respectful disagreement in private letters, even while arguing in public.  Subscribe for more conversations that connect economics, history, and civic life, and if this helped you think more clearly, share it and leave a review. Where do you land on Keynes vs Hayek, and why? Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum! School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Center for American Civics

    24 min
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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    The Center for American Civics
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    221
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Civics In A Year
  • Show Website
    Civics In A Year
  • Provider

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