149 episodes listed below
The founding era, one audience question at a time.
Constitutional Chats gives an invited guest the opening word, then hands the floor to students, panelists and audience members with questions about the American founding. Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Abigail Adams, Georgia's part in the Revolution and the Irish who took part all come up, often timed to an anniversary.
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Constitutional Chats is the question-and-answer series from Constituting America, a civics organization, and it keeps the American founding at its center. The shape is consistent. A guest is welcomed, sometimes thanked for years of support, and invited to give a few opening comments before the floor opens. Then the questions start: from students, from panelists, and from audience members whose names are read out with what they asked. Not every question gets reached, and the hosts say so at the close. Cathy Gillespie does much of the welcoming and steering. Janine Turner comes in with announcements, including one about short films the organization has been making for social media. The era stays fixed; the angles move. A conversation with Tony Williams, held the day after Jefferson's birthday, turns to religious liberty as a natural right and to Jefferson's work in state government. Diana Carlin speaks from a few miles from where Abigail Adams wrote her 'Remember the Ladies' letter, and the talk covers how women of the period were educated at home and how a tutor's circle brought John and Abigail together. Thomas Kidd is asked what Patrick Henry meant by liberty or death, and the answer goes to how sensitive the colonists were to British tax programs. Joe Crowley, who says up front that he is not a historian, describes penal laws that made it illegal to speak Irish, play Irish music or be Roman Catholic, and the hedge schools where children were taught the faith. The Georgia conversation with Stan Deaton hits a gap in the record. Jefferson left thousands of letters, but for Georgians there is no such trove, so their individual motives have to be pieced together. A discussion with Bob Pence turns to John Morton, whose vote decided Pennsylvania's delegation at a moment when the Declaration needed unanimous support. Anniversaries set much of the agenda. Jefferson's birthday, St. Patrick's Day and the 250th anniversary of Abigail Adams's letter each shape the episode that falls on them, and the country's 250th is a steady point of reference. The register is warm and openly patriotic, with room for small informalities, like a mic that will not cooperate or a questioner noting that the turn is over despite getting no 'fun music'. The organization's other projects come up too, from an online essay study to an auction. So do classrooms, with one teacher and all her students given a shout-out at the close. The show is less a narrated history than a record of people asking invited guests exactly what they wanted to know. The easiest way in is to pick a figure, whether Jefferson, Henry or Abigail Adams, and start there.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants founding-era history taken one figure or event at a time, through direct questions and plain answers, and who enjoys a warm, celebratory register. It also fits a teacher looking for civics conversations that students take part in.
What sets it apart: One interviewer does not carry the questioning. Students, panelists and audience members share it, and many episodes are tied to an anniversary, from Jefferson's birthday to St. Patrick's Day.
Constitutional Chats are hosted by Janine Turner, Cathy Gillespie, student ambassadors, and experts who join us weekly to discuss hot-topic issues! The audience is not on camera, but you may ask questions!
Dorchester Heights sends you chasing Fort Ticonderoga's place on the map, one panel question at a time.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Tony Williams connects Jefferson's radical patriotism with liberty, religious freedom, and the Declaration.
Thomas Jefferson's birthday frames this Constituting America conversation on Jefferson and liberty, with Tony Williams presenting him as Enlightenment-educated and as a leading advocate of American and human liberty during the Revolution.
John Morton's Pennsylvania vote turns consent of the governed from principle into action.
Consent of the governed comes into focus here through the political choices that made independence possible. Ambassador Bob Pence links John Locke and other philosophers to the American debate before turning to John Morton, whose deciding vote in Pennsylvania's delegation helped…
Diana Carlin grounds Abigail Adams's famous appeal in the education and wartime responsibilities that gave it force.
Abigail Adams's call to "remember the ladies" gives the episode its center, but the conversation is strongest when it keeps that phrase tied to the life around it.
Dr. Thomas Kidd gives Patrick Henry's liberty-or-death line sharper institutional and faith-related stakes.
Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" lands here as more than a famous revolutionary phrase. The episode frames it as a political argument about taxation by a legislature in which colonists had no representatives, with Dr.
A St. Patrick's Day discussion of Irish religious persecution, migration, and America's constitutional foundations.
Congressman Joe Crowley frames Irish participation in the American Revolution and the founding through a story of migration shaped by religious intolerance.
Georgia's path toward revolutionary unity runs through Caribbean ties, taxation, representation, and limited evidence.
Georgia's role in the American Revolution comes through as a study in distance, interest, and political choice. The episode shows why unity with Philadelphia, New York, and Boston was not automatic: Georgia's mercantile and economic ties to the Caribbean made its position look…
A clear, grounded look at how artillery and geography shaped Washington's campaign around Boston.
Washington's command around Boston comes through as a practical problem of terrain, water, and guns. The episode lays out how the Continental Army could hem in the British by land while the Royal Navy still held the harbor, making artillery the missing piece in Washington's…
John Hood uses Moores Creek Bridge to connect Revolutionary resistance with representation, religious freedom, and colonial government.
John Hood's conversation on the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge uses the engagement as a way into the larger Revolutionary argument: why Americans in Virginia, North Carolina, and other colonies resisted British rule, and how different communities entered…
Curious facts, kid-sized and quiz-ready.
A discussion with a Navy captain about the U.S.
Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America Episode 298 centers on Thomas Jefferson, the day after his 283rd birthday, and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
["Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America centers on Bob Pence's essay about the \"consent of the governed,\" John Locke, and the Declaration of Independence.", "Kathy and Janine host Bob Pence, addressed as Ambassador Pence, because he wrote the study essay and brings a diplomatic and historical lens.", "Pence treats \"consent\" as the episode's thesis, arguing that the American founding depends on when people grant, limit, or withdraw authority.", "He links Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, John Morton's Pennsylvania vote, and Jefferson's \"long train of abuses and usurpations\" into one argument about lawful power."]
Dr.
Constituting America's Constitutional Chats centers on Patrick Henry's Liberty or Death speech near its 251st anniversary and March 23, 1775.
["Joe Crowley says seven Declaration signers included three born in Ireland, and more than 23 U.S.
Stan Deaton says Georgia was the 13th and last mainland colony, founded in 1733 and only a 13-year royal colony when the Stamp Act arrived in 1765.
Robert Allison connects Dorchester Heights, Fort Ticonderoga, and Henry Knox's 300-mile cannon haul to the British evacuation of Boston on March 17, 1776.
John Hood uses Constituting America's 250th-anniversary discussion of the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge to show how the February 27, 1776 fight fit into the British Southern strategy.
Henry Olson, speaking with Constituting America, reads George Washington's 1796 farewell address as a live argument about faction, foreign alliances, and moral self-government.
An interview with author Tony Williams about his new book on the Declaration of Independence and its enduring debate.
An expert discusses the Second Continental Congress and the lesser-known founding father John Witherspoon.
Professor Dunn discusses the misunderstood and overrated nature of Marbury v.
A discussion on the balance between individual rights and government power, focusing on how regulations are created and enforced under the Constitution.