Plain-language civics with historical teeth.
Civics 101 explains the rules, loopholes, and historical accidents behind American public life. Taxes, elections, presidential succession, milk regulation, lobbying, and religious leadership become concrete stories about power, responsibility, and everyday consequences.
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Civics 101 is built around the civic question that seems obvious until someone actually tries to answer it. The show starts with the everyday surface of a topic, then digs into the law, history, incentive, or institutional habit underneath. That can mean explaining how federal income taxes became a routine part of middle-class life. It can mean tracing the 25th Amendment through assassination, vacancy, resignation, and presidential incapacity. It can also mean following a gallon of milk into disputes over state power, federal regulation, private rights, public health, and misinformation. The pace is brisk. The tone is conversational without becoming casual about the stakes. Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice often work through topics by asking the question a listener might actually ask, then tightening the definition one turn at a time. Jokes and pop-culture references appear, but they usually function as a doorway back into civic structure. Recent episodes show the range: election nationalization, lobbying, gas prices, religious leadership in public life, and a field trip through 1776. The show likes history because history explains why the current rule looks so strange. It also likes corrections, caveats, and “yes, and” revisions when current events expose a missing piece. That makes it more useful than a static civics lesson. It is not trying to flatten politics into neutral trivia. It is trying to show how power actually moves through offices, ballots, courts, agencies, leaders, and citizens. Sponsor reads and feed inserts can interrupt the flow, but the editorial core is clear. Civics 101 suits listeners who want public affairs explained in human terms. It respects curiosity. It assumes the listener can handle complexity, as long as the path through it is well marked.
Made for: For listeners who follow politics but want the operating manual: voters, students, teachers, news readers, and anyone who wants clearer explanations of American institutions without a lecture-hall tone.
What sets it apart: Civics 101 makes abstract systems concrete by tying policy language to scenes, examples, and consequences. Its strength is the back-and-forth clarification: a question, an answer, then the sharper follow-up that reveals what the rule actually does.
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.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Civics 101 makes government legible by tracing rules and programs from their institutional origins to their effects on ordinary life.
Civics 101 turns large public systems into questions that can be followed from rule to consequence. Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice use a conversational explainer format, moving among their own questions, archival audio, and guest contributions.
That missing $20 from your paycheck meets a wartime tax song with Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Income tax becomes a story about war, propaganda, withholding, and the machinery behind your paycheck.
This Civics 101 episode turns income taxes into a story about scale, persuasion, and bureaucracy. Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice start with the ordinary questions people face when they file, then move into the wartime push that helped turn income tax from a class tax into a…
A clear look at how the 25th Amendment grew out of succession crises.
Civics 101 treats the 25th Amendment as a practical answer to presidential succession, linking it to moments when the question mattered, from John F. Kennedy's assassination to Gerald Ford taking office after Richard Nixon resigned.
A Philadelphia visit uses 1776 to trace the procedural and political struggle behind independence.
Philadelphia gives this episode a concrete setting for thinking about how independence moved from conviction to process, with 1776 used as the guiding lens.
A thoughtful look at faith leaders, civic action, and Dr. King's four-step campaign method.
Civics 101 moves past the familiar separation-of-church-and-state argument and asks how faith leaders should think about politics, or about right and wrong. The discussion starts wide, but it settles into Dr.
A civics primer that treats lobbying as the machinery of influence.
Nick Capodice opens with a comic crisis of purpose, then uses it to frame a plainspoken look at lobbying, with Hannah McCarthy steering the basics and asking the right questions.
A clear civic briefing on the reported U.S. strike in Caracas and the capture of Nicolas Maduro.
Civics 101 makes a quick programming turn toward a fast-moving story: the U.S. military strike in Caracas, Venezuela's reported death toll, and the capture of Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores.
SNAP is explained through food, health, and the people who depend on it.
Civics 101 uses SNAP to frame a nutrition program against real lives, not abstractions. The episode sets nearly 42 million monthly participants in view, then narrows to Samantha Bandy, a working single mother with a medical condition who is trying to hold a job, raise her…
Civics 101 hosts Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice break from their usual format to explain the U.S.
This episode of Civics 101 begins a deep dive into the grievances section of the Declaration of Independence, explaining its structure and significance.
Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy introduce a live episode of Civics 101 at the Moakley Courthouse, discussing the often-used but rarely defined concept of the rule of law.
This episode of Civics 101 covers the second half of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence, explaining how King George III's actions justified the colonies' separation from England.
Civics 101 hosts Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice explore the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which serves 42 million Americans monthly.
Of the 13,556 bills proposed in the 115th Congress, just 443 became law, and Civics 101 hosts Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy trace how that happens.
["Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice open by noting that about 90% of Americans use TurboTax or a human preparer because filing now asks about kids, remote work, tuition, student loans, inheritance, EVs, charity, and housing.", "With Beverly Moran of Vanderbilt University and Eric Toder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the episode traces federal income tax from the 16th Amendment in 1913 to World War II withholding and the rise of payroll tax.", "The clearest examples are the mortgage interest deduction, the earned income tax credit, the child credit from the Balanced Budget Act of 1993, and employer-paid health insurance that became tax-exempt during wartime wage caps.", "The episode argues that U.S.
Civics 101 re-airs its 2022 25th Amendment episode after a Truth Social post from President Trump about Iran pushed presidential inability back into the news.
This episode explores the federal regulation of milk through the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance and the tensions between government oversight, public health, and individual rights.
This episode explores the concept of nationalized elections in America, using historical anecdotes about 19th-century election corruption and reforms to discuss how elections have changed.
Nick Capodice corrects his earlier claim that the president has little effect on gas prices, exploring the nuanced relationship.
Civics 101 uses the musical 1776 to connect Independence Hall in Philadelphia with Nick Capodice’s lifelong attachment to the film, including his claim that he has watched it more than any other movie.
Civics 101 asks what faith leaders think their civic role should be when politics and religion keep overlapping in the United States.
Civics 101's "Are you really mad?
Civics 101 explains the recent US military strike in Venezuela, capture of Nicolas Maduro, and the implications for American democracy.
Historian Holly Brewer discusses the origins of anti-monarchical sentiment in early America, tracing it back to a 17th-century letter by Benjamin Franklin's grandmother.