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NHPR

How do landmark Supreme Court decisions affect our lives? What does the 2nd Amendment really say? Why does the Senate have so much power? Civics 101 is the podcast about how our democracy works…or is supposed to work, anyway.

Civics 101

Off-year elections -- as in, not a presidential or a midterm -- have fairly dismal voter turnout. Yet they matter a great deal. Most of our lives are lived at the local, not the national, level. So why do so many skip their state and local elections?

We spoke with Luis Lozada, the CEO of Democracy Works, to understand why people don't show and why they should.

Democracy Works is a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to helping America vote. Click here to access their free tool, TurboVote, to help you check your registration, find your polling place, get personalized reminders for every election, and more.

CLICK HERE: • Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
 • To see Civics 101 in book form, check out 
A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works • by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
 • Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast,
 Outside/In • - we think you'll love it!

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why are so many voters sitting out this week?

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has published a Mandate for Leadership since 1981, making policy recommendations to the federal government. The latest edition is part of something much bigger: Project 2025. The newest Mandate is part of a four-pillar project designed to fundamentally change the federal government from the inside. Though President Trump and his team spent his third presidential campaign claiming they had nothing to do with it, Trump is no longer distancing himself from Project 2025. So let's dig in. 

Our guide to Project 2025 is the former director of factcheck.org and author of A Guide to Project 2025, Eugene Kiely.

For more information on Project 2025, you can access the full policy playbook at the link above or by clicking here. You can watch the fourteen hours of instructional videos obtained by ProPublica here. More information about The Heritage Foundation and its stated values and goals can be found at their website. 

CLICK HERE: • Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
 • To see Civics 101 in book form, check out 
A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works • by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
 • Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast,
 Outside/In • - we think you'll love it!

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Project 2025: What it is and what it's doing

This episode is a crossover with our sister NHPR podcast, Outside/In.

What do pastries have to do with environmental justice? Cat butts with the climate crisis? And what US president ate a half-chewed piece of salmon leftover from a bear on reality TV?

Grab a pencil (and maybe a pint?) and get ready for the inaugural Outside/In trivia episode we’re calling “Natural Selection.” We’ve got a game called “Guess That Animal!” We’re testing our panel’s knowledge on the environment in movies and music. And, maybe, we’ll learn a thing or two along the way about environmental policy, past and present.

CLICK HERE: • Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
 • To see Civics 101 in book form, check out 
A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works • by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
 • Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast,
 Outside/In • - we think you'll love it!

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Who's the most outdoorsy president? (A trivia crossover)

In this episode, we give a brief explanation of what's behind the current government shutdown. The, we explain all the ins and outs of government shutdowns. Have they always been part of our legislative process? How do they happen? And what happens when they happen? Our guest is Charles Tiefer, professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law.

CLICK HERE: • Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
 • To see Civics 101 in book form, check out 
A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works • by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
 • Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast,
 Outside/In • - we think you'll love it!

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The government is shut down....again. But what does that mean?

Today we’re bringing you an episode of What Could Go Right from our friends at The Progress Network.

Each Wednesday on What Could Go Right, hosts Zachary Karabell and Emma Varvaloucas converse with diverse experts to have sharp, honest conversations about what’s going on in the world, even during difficult times. In this episode, Nick spoke with Emma and Zachary about the state of civics education in the US, as well as how we can start to talk to each other civilly in an increasingly polarized political landscape.

You can listen to What Could Go Right here or, as they say, wherever you get your everything.

CLICK HERE: • Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
 • To see Civics 101 in book form, check out 
A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works • by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
 • Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast,
 Outside/In • - we think you'll love it!

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What Could Go Right: Whatever Happened to Civics?

Did you know cartoonists were on Nixon's enemies list? Or that LBJ prevented a cartoonist from getting a medal when he made a cartoon against the Vietnam War? Today we talk about the history of editorial cartoons and political satire, from "Join or Die" to the Obama fist bump, from Thomas Nast to Jimmy Kimmel. Our guide is New Yorker cartoonist Tom Toro, author of And to Think We Started as a Book Club.

To see the illustrations we discuss in the episode, click here. 

 

CLICK HERE: • Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
 • To see Civics 101 in book form, check out 
A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works • by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
 • Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast,
 Outside/In • - we think you'll love it!

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What are the rules for making fun of politicians?

Click here to listen to part one of our airing of the grievances if you haven't yet! Today we tackle charges 13-27 against the King, as well as comparisons that have been made between George III and Donald Trump. 

Our guide is once again Craig Gallagher from Colby-Sawyer College, who breaks down what exactly got the colonists so darn mad. 

Make sure to listen to our episode on the modern-day effects of the declaration on the Native American community.

CLICK HERE: • Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
 • To see Civics 101 in book form, check out 
A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works • by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
 • Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast,
 Outside/In • - we think you'll love it!

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Grievances in the Declaration (part 2)

The American public has long been on the lookout for unsteadiness in the leader of the free world. It's important to us (or, historically, has been) that the president seems, well, well. If not robust. Of course, the president is a human, and as such is not immune to malady. 

So why do we care so much about the president's health? Are they under obligation, legal or otherwise, to keep us in the loop? What happens when they don't?

Our guide today is clinical ethicist Joel Wu.

CLICK HERE: • Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
 • To see Civics 101 in book form, check out 
A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works • by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
 • Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast,
 Outside/In • - we think you'll love it!

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Can the president legally hide their health status?

"He" has done bad things. Twenty seven of them. And these things were so bad that the colonists used them to demonstrate that they had no choice but to become an independent nation. King George III was, in their eyes, a despot. So what did he do?

Today we talk about grievances 1-12 in the Declaration of Independence. We will cover the rest, as well as modern-day parallels, in a few weeks. Our guest is Craig Gallagher, professor at Colby-Sawyer College.

To hear about the entire Declaration of Independence, please listen to our episode on it here.

CLICK HERE: • Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
 • To see Civics 101 in book form, check out 
A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works • by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
 • Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast,
 Outside/In • - we think you'll love it!

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Grievances in the Declaration (part 1)

Congress appropriates funds, the executive branch ensures those funds are spent and spent wisely. That is how it works. It is not, however, how it is working right now. The Trump Administration has, in recent months, repeatedly and often successfully frozen the funds that Congress assigned to certain departments and agencies. Jobs have been lost, research shelved, life-saving care ended, budgets and plans thrown into disarray.

So why and how has this happened? Why were we funding education, science, medicine and foreign aid in the first place? Our guide to this tumult is Samuel Bagenstos, professor of law at the University of Michigan and former Chief Counsel at both the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

 

CLICK HERE: • Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
 • To see Civics 101 in book form, check out 
A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works • by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
 • Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast,
 Outside/In • - we think you'll love it!

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why does the government fund things, and what happens when it stops?

The SAVE Act passed the House in April, 2025. As it awaits consideration in Congress, we spoke with Jason Carter from the Carter Center. Yes, like that Carter. Jason is asking why Congress is working on a vanishingly rare problem: noncitizen voting. The SAVE Act, if it becomes law, will require additional proof of citizenship for all Americans seeking to register -- or reregister -- to vote. The goal? To stop all noncitizens from voting -- which rarely happens.

CLICK HERE: • Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
 • To see Civics 101 in book form, check out 
A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works • by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
 • Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast,
 Outside/In • - we think you'll love it!

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fixing a problem that doesn't exist

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