Civics 101

Recently, news about Justice Clarence Thomas's decades-long friendship with a wealthy Republican megadonor, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts and generosity he's received from that friendship, has led to increased scrutiny into whether Supreme Court justices are as unbiased and uninfluenced as they claim. It's also revealed how, unlike most other federal officials, we rely on the good faith of the justices to hold themselves accountable. Helping us untangle this is Tonja Jacobi, professor of law and the Sam Nunn chair in  Ethics and Professionalism at Emory University School of Law. Don't miss the reporting from ProPublica on Justice Thomas's relationship with Harlan Crow, called "Friends of the Court."    WIN A NEW CAR OR 25K IN CASH DURING NHPR'S SUMMER RAFFLE! GET YOUR TICKETS 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!

The federal government has always had debt. How much is too much, and how do politicians exploit it? This episode originally dropped in August 2022, but since the subject is in the news, we've been getting lots of questions about it!SUPPORT OUR WORK - DONATE TO CIVICS 101 TODAY!Since our nation's founding, the federal government has borrowed money from other governments, private investors, and businesses in order to operate. Over the last century, the debt ceiling, a Congressional cap on how much debt we can have, keeps getting higher and higher. We talk about how the national debt works, how it's been used as political leverage, and how that impacts the health of our economy. Louise Sheiner, senior economics fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Michael Dorf, Constitutional law professor at Cornell Law, help us make sense of trillions of dollars in debt.  WIN A NEW CAR OR 25K IN CASH DURING NHPR'S SUMMER RAFFLE! GET YOUR TICKETS 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!

What can we do with these invisible magnetic waves in the sky? Today we explore what we can say on the air. Are radio and television stations allowed to air their opinions in addition to the news? From 1949-1987 all broadcast media was beholden to the Fairness Doctrine; a law that enforced impartiality and civil discourse. So why did we have this law? How did it work? Why did it end? And finally, what are the arguments for and against bringing it back?Our guest is Larry Irving, who was counsel to the Telecommunications subcommittee when the doctrine was codified into law (and subsequently vetoed) in 1987.  WIN A NEW CAR OR 25K IN CASH DURING NHPR'S SUMMER RAFFLE! GET YOUR TICKETS 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!

Ryan Willard is the co-host of The Ten News, a news podcast created for 8-12 year-olds. He shared some of the ways his team frames complex and controversial topics so that they're appropriate and comprehensible to younger ears. You can hear their show wherever you get your podcasts, or at their website. WIN A NEW CAR OR 25K IN CASH DURING NHPR'S SUMMER RAFFLE! GET YOUR TICKETS 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!

Gilbert Paul Carrasco, a legal history expert, Kate Masur, a historian of the Reconstruction era, and Kidada Williams, an African American history scholar, dive into the tumultuous legal landscape of Reconstruction. They discuss how laws both upheld racial hierarchies and fueled the Black freedom struggle. The trio explores landmark cases like Dred Scott, the promises and challenges of Reconstruction Amendments, and the ongoing fight for voting rights. This insightful conversation sheds light on the complex relationship between legislation and civil rights during a pivotal time in American history.

Reconstruction has long been taught as a lost cause narrative.  The true story is one of great force. The great force of a powerful activist Black community that strived to establish a multiracial democracy and achieved great successes and political power. The great force of a violent white community that exploited, abused and murdered those of that Black community who would assert their civil and human rights. The great force of a federal government that was there and then wasn't. This episode is your introduction to that true story.Our guides to this era are Dr. Kidada Williams, author of I Saw Death Coming and Dr. Kate Masur, author of Until Justice Be Done. WIN A NEW CAR OR 25K IN CASH DURING NHPR'S SUMMER RAFFLE! GET YOUR TICKETS 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!

The Reconstruction Era, a period in American history at the end of and immediately following the Civil War, is one of the single-most important and instructive periods in American history. It has also, historically, been one of the least taught. Why is that, and what are we missing when we don't learn about it? A lot.In this, the first in a three-part series on Reconstruction, we speak to Mimi Eisen of the Zinn Education Project about America’s first Civil Rights Era and why most of us don’t know enough - or anything at all - about it. WIN A NEW CAR OR 25K IN CASH DURING NHPR'S SUMMER RAFFLE! GET YOUR TICKETS 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!

What is defamation? Libel? Pre-trial discovery? Actual malice? Today we go into everything tied to the recently settled Dominion Voting Systems vs Fox News Network defamation lawsuit; including slander, libel, discovery, settlement, and the "whackadoodle email." Our guide through the world of defamation legalities is Jane Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. We talk about why these lies were presented to the public, and the possible reasons why Dominion chose to settle instead of continue with the trial. WIN A NEW CAR OR 25K IN CASH DURING NHPR'S SUMMER RAFFLE! GET YOUR TICKETS 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!

How free are we? Are some countries more free than we are? What does freedom even mean?In this episode in our "US vs" series, we talk with the co-author of the Human Freedom Index, Ian Vasquez, about how we rank in our measure of liberty. Then we do a deep dive into Freedom of the Press with Jenifer Whitten-Woodring, co-author of the Historical Guide to World Media Freedom: A Country-by-Country Analysis.Here are some links to other episodes we've done that explore our ever-changing tally of who gets those freedoms in the first place:Declaration RevisitedThe Bill of RightsThe 19th Amendment WIN A NEW CAR OR 25K IN CASH DURING NHPR'S SUMMER RAFFLE! GET YOUR TICKETS 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!

A social media app with 150 million American users is under intense scrutiny by the U.S. government. The threat is "sell or be banned," but how and why can the government do that? What does this kind of business restriction look like? We talked to Steven Balla of George Washington University to get the low down on regulations and bans in the United States. WIN A NEW CAR OR 25K IN CASH DURING NHPR'S SUMMER RAFFLE! GET YOUR TICKETS 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!