Alycia Asai
335 episodes listed below
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Civics & Coffee delivers bite-sized U.S. history with clear, engaging storytelling — all in the time it takes to drink your morning cup of coffee. Host Alycia brings America’s past to life with well-researched episodes that are approachable, human, and impossible to forget.In 2026, Civics & Coffee dives into the Gilded Age - a transformative era of booming industry, powerful presidents, labor uprisings, immigration waves, inequality, and social reformers. From national crises like the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 to personal stories of figures such as Rutherford B. Hayes, Lucy Webb Hayes, and the Exodusters, each episode uncovers the people, tensions, and turn...
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · June 2026
Civics & Coffee brings U.S. history scholarship into approachable conversations about power, memory, diplomacy, representation, and political legacy.
Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast works best as an approachable American history interview show with a clear interest in books, public memory, and political consequence.
You want George Washington, Camp David, and Christmas movies treated like evidence.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A wartime symbol becomes a grounded story about labor, memory, and civic participation.
Past, Present & Future: Rosie the Riveter Reporting for Duty treats Rosie less like an icon on a wall and more like a symbol carried by ordinary people who stepped into wartime work.
A thoughtful history conversation that traces the research behind The Missing Pages.
Civics & Coffee frames Alison Richman's The Missing Pages as a conversation about grief, love, art, and research, with Alicia keeping the focus on how the novel is built as much as what it says.
A serious Mount Rushmore conversation about myth, power, and Indigenous dispossession.
Matthew Davis and Alicia treat Mount Rushmore as more than a landmark. The episode looks at American mythmaking, federal ambition, and the harm built into a national symbol, then widens the frame through Borglum's earlier work at Stone Mountain and Doan Robinson's push to use a…
A clear look at how women's textile work moved between labor, trade, and identity.
This episode follows how knitting and weaving passed through women's lives as labor, knowledge, trade, and identity. Dr. Nicole Narek adds a psychologist's eye to textile history, and the discussion works best when it connects cloth making at home to larger questions of economy,…
A thoughtful look at how late-1980s New York helped shape the citys modern identity.
Jonathan Mahler uses late-1980s New York to frame the rise of modern New York, and the conversation keeps that shift in clear view. The strongest stretch comes in the contrast between the post-World War II city, shaped by manufacturing, shipping, strong labor unions, public…
A thoughtful interview about how feminism, backlash, and reform keep colliding in American history.
Civics & Coffee uses this conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Cobbs to follow a long American argument over women and reform, with Fearless Women as the frame.
A clear portrait of Charles Diggs Jr. and his role in Selma and beyond.
House of Diggs offers a focused look at Charles Diggs Jr. and the reach of his political work, with Alicia guiding Dr. Marion Orr through the book's account of Michigan's first Black member of the U.S. House.
A grounded look at Camp David, presidential power, and the machinery that keeps both moving.
This episode treats Camp David less like a famous hideaway and more like a working part of presidential life. Charles Ferguson gives the story its authority, drawing on his role as chaplain and official historian to follow the retreat from wartime communications to the White…
Phoebe Judge narrates true crime history and interviews the authors who uncovered it.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Dana Schwartz narrates the violent lives of monarchs, warlords, and queens.
Tracy Wilson and Holly Frey narrate overlooked history, from Courbet's realism to IUD regulation.
Mike Duncan narrates Rome's full history solo, from Aeneas to Romulus Augustulus's exile in 476.
This episode examines the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, established in 1879 by Richard Pratt to assimilate Indigenous children through cultural erasure, including forced haircuts, English-only policies, and new names.
This episode segment introduces Lucy Webb Hayes, exploring her role as a quietly radical First Lady, her impact on political wives, and her involvement in the temperance movement during the Gilded Age.
This segment discusses the 1876 Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia as a metaphor for the Gilded Age, highlighting America's emergence as an industrial power post-Civil War, featuring new technologies like the telephone, and noting the fair's private funding due to economic challenges.
This episode introduces James Garfield, focusing on his election as the 20th President and how his death overshadowed his life, with references to related media like the Netflix series Death by Lightning.
This segment introduces the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, featuring a presidential proclamation by Rutherford B.
This episode segment explores Rutherford B.
This episode introduces a two-part series on Rutherford B.
This episode explores the Nez Perce War of 1877, focusing on Chief Joseph's surrender and the tribe's desperate flight from the U.S.
This episode explores the Exodusters movement of 1879, where freed African Americans migrated from the South to Kansas, prompting a Senate investigation led by Daniel Voorhees into civil rights abuses.
Dr.
This episode explores the pivotal 1876 presidential election of Rutherford B.
Civics and Coffee welcomes historian John Garrison Marks to talk about Thy Will Be Done and George Washington's contested legacy.
In this Friendsgiving special, host Alycia moderates a roundtable with history podcasters Kenny, Howard, and Jerry, discussing topics from the American Revolution to presidential quirks.
Host Alicia reflects on the legacy of the Reconstruction era in American history, analyzing its constitutional achievements, pervasive violence, and ultimate collapse.
Alicia welcomes painter and author Alison Richman.
Alicia welcomes Dr.
Richard Bell argues in Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast that the American Revolution in The American Revolution and the Fate of the World was a global conflict, not only a fight between Patriots and Loyalists.
Alicia talks with historian Dr.
Alicia welcomes Rachel Lee Perez to discuss her book, The Real Jaws.
Heather Ann Thompson traces how Bernard Goetz’s December 1984 subway shooting of four Black teenagers became a turning point in New York City media, politics, and gun culture.
Dr.
Matthew Davis links Mount Rushmore to the July 3rd, 2020 Trump speech, the Lakota origin story at Wind Cave, and the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.
Jonathan Mahler says The Gods of New York grew out of reporting on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, which pushed him back into the New York of the 1980s.
This episode explores the Posse Comitatus Act, a law passed during the Gilded Age that limits military involvement in civilian law enforcement.
This episode explores the Gilded Age industrialists like J.P.
Alicia welcomes Dr.
Charles Ferguson, author of Presidential Seclusion, traces Camp David from Roosevelt's search for a secure retreat within two and a half hours of Washington, D.C.
This episode explores the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law that allows the president to detain or deport nationals from a country the U.S.
A historian explores the untold story of Rosie the Riveter through the lens of Richmond, California, where Henry J.
Host Alycia interviews author Shannon McKenna Schmidt about her book on Lady Bird Johnson's 1964 campaign.
Host Alycia introduces a series on historic U.S.
Host Alicia interviews Eden Collinsworth about her book on Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for U.S.
This episode explores the yellow fever epidemic of 1878 in Memphis, its spread, and the national response.
Host Alycia interviews Dr.