Civics 101

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, once upon a time called food stamps, helps nearly 42 million Americans every month. While the 2025 government shutdown showed us what happens when SNAP dries up, we have yet to see the effects of major new legislative changes to the program. So what, exactly, is SNAP? How does it work? Who gets it? Why do we have it to begin with, and what does it look like now? Our guide is Sarah Bleich, Professor of Public Health Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. CLICK HERE:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today we talk about the myriad procedures involved in getting the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed in record time. How do discharge petitions work? What did HR 581 do exactly? How did it get through the Senate so quickly? And while we're at it, why did it take a record seven weeks to swear in a new representative? CLICK HERE:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein spent nearly a decade making a twelve-hour documentary on the American Revolution. This is what they learned from the thousands of stories and events that resulted in the United States of America. It's a story of world-changing ideas, contradictory figures, myths that do us no good and what it means to be in pursuit of a more perfect union. You can watch Ken Burns The American Revolution on PBS, PBS.org and the free PBS app. CLICK HERE:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In sixty years, we have gone from 2 billionaires in the United States to just under 2,000. How on earth did that happen? Today, Timothy Noah from the New Republic takes us all the way from our framers fearing excessive wealth to the country's first (potential) trillionaire. To learn about their proliferation, their desires, and their outsized effect on American policy, check out his article, How the Billionaires Took Over. CLICK HERE:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. CLICK HERE:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. CLICK HERE:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"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:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In

It's another edition of Civics 101 Trivia! This time, it's also the swan song for one of our own. Senior Producer Christina Phillips, our mastermind of minutiae and all things related to taxes, joins us to convene a final round of her trademark trivia. Here is the link to the FOIA documents about the government's involvement in Hollywood productions. CLICK HERE:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In

In 2015, the Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land. However, for the first time in over five years, Kim Davis (an opponent of same-sex marriage) petitioned for a writ of certiorari to overturn Obergefell. Is there a possibility the court will revisit its finding? How does this decision compare to other recently overturned decisions like Roe v Wade? And is even talking about this a problem in itself?? Talking us through the situation and possible scenarios is Danaya Wright, Professor in Constitutional Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. CLICK HERE:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In

This is the decision that said the fundamental right to marry is protected under the 14th Amendment. How did it come about? What was the status of marriage before June of 2015? And why is the government so involved in the marriage business anyways? This episode features the voices of Melissa Wasser from the Project on Government Oversight and Jim Obergefell, the named party in Obergefell v Hodges. CLICK HERE:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In

Our Constitution provides for its own changes -- the framers knew that, while they worked hard, the law of the land was neither perfect nor should it be entirely immutable. So they included Article V, which allows either Congress OR the states to amend the Constitution if enough people agree. We've never had a constitutional convention of the states before, but that doesn't mean we won't. There's currently a movement trying to make it happen -- we dig into the why and how of this totally legal but very difficult path to change. CLICK HERE:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In

On Monday, August 11th, Trump announced a takeover of Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan police. He also deployed National Guard troops and federal agents to the streets, all in the name of cracking down on crime. We called on political scientist and historian Dan Cassino to help us understand what happened, why it's legal and what could happen next. CLICK HERE:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In

It’s a weird time to be an environmental scientist. The proposed cuts to federal science funding in the United States are profound, and if they come to pass, it’s not clear what American science will look like on the other side. But for many researchers, science is much more than a career: it’s a community, lifestyle, and sometimes even a family business. This episode was produced by our fellow NHPR podcast Outside/In. You can check out photos and more related to this episode right here. CLICK HERE:A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works Outside/In