Most Americans need help to file our tax return each year - about 90% of people use technology like Turbo Tax, or hire a human tax preparer.  Why does it feel like it takes degree in accounting, or the money to pay someone with a degree, or computer software, just to comply with the law? 

We talk about why our income tax system is the way it is: full of complexity, difficult to navigate, and extremely personal. It's a system where things like who you work for, what kind of resources you have, and how you spend your money, are directly connected to how much you owe the government each year, and what the government provides for you in return. So how did we get here? 

Helping us untangle this history is Eric Toder, Institute fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute, Beverly Moran, Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University, where she focuses on federal income taxation, including individuals, partnerships, tax-exempt organizations and corporate, and Joe Thorndike, Director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts.  

Stay tuned for our follow up episode on how to do your taxes successfully, and correctly - we'll talk about the IRS, enforcement and compliance, and the rise of tax preparation software. 

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Many Americans were taken by surprise when a whole new branch of the military - the U.S. Space Force - was launched during the Trump administration. But this branch of the military wasn't created on a whim, and its mission is more complicated than you might expect. 

On this episode, we unpack the history of the militarization of space, the creation of the Space Force, and ask the question: is it here to stay? 

Our guest is Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb, Associate Professor of Strategy and Security Studies at US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.

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"Public housing" did not exist prior to the Great Depression. So it wasn't until Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal that the government had the chance to impose segregation at the highest level. The effects of segregation policy in housing continue to this day in the United States. Akira Drake Rodriguez and Richard Rothstein are our guides to how and why the government did it.

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Atlanta was the first city to erect public housing in the United States. It started with Techwood Homes, an all-white development that went up in 1936. Sixty years later it would be torn down, along with others of the now-neglected developments that were the promise of FDR's New Deal. Akira Drake Rodriguez leads us through the story of how residents of public housing in Atlanta worked with, against and despite housing policy in their city.

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This episode is the culmination of our series on famous federal court trials in US history. 

In April of 1967, Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Clay) refused to step forward at a draft induction ceremony in Texas. His opposition to serving in Vietnam launched a sequence of trials and appeals that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It's a case about conscientious objection, protest, America's shifting views of the war, and how athletes have the unique role of "soldiers without a weapon."

This episode features Winston Bowman from the Federal Judicial Center, and Jeffrey Sammons from the NYU History Department. 

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• 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.
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Today Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is publicly revered across the nation, a symbol of civil and human rights worthy of a memorial holiday. Federal and state legislatures have agreed to honor this man. That agreement took awhile. The final state to acquiesce, New Hampshire, resisted the holiday until 1999. The story of that resistance reveals a public sentiment about King and the Black Freedom Struggle that is far from the reverence of today. This is the story of how a man becomes a national symbol, and the fight to make that so.

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Ever wonder what life is really like for those who work to support a politician’s career?  In September 2022, Hannah McCarthy sat down with Huma Abedin for a show called Writers on a New England Stage. This is an excerpt from their conversation. Huma discusses her memoir, Both/And, and describes what it's like to work alongside and advise a former First Lady, Secretary of State and presidential nominee. You can catch the whole conversation at nhpr.org.

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You've probably heard about The Red Scare - the panic around the perceived threat of communism during the Cold War. But The Lavender Scare is lesser known. This was a time when the federal government investigated, persecuted and fired thousands of LGBTQ+ employees, calling them security risks and threats to the country. 

In this episode of Civics 101, we'll dive into the origin and timeline of the Lavender Scare, meet the man who pushed back and started a movement, and learn about the ripple effects we're still seeing today.

Guests:

Historian Dr. Lillian Faderman,  author of Woman: The American History of an Idea

Professor David K. Johnson. His book, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government, became the basis for a documentary film that was broadcast nationwide on PBS.

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• 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.
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How does something go from an annual tradition to a mandated day off? Who decides to make a holiday official? Today we're taking a look at everything from Christmas to National Walk Around Things Day, from our twelve official federal holidays to some day made up by a sock company. Our guides to the holiday season are Jeff Bensch, author of History of American Holidays, and JerriAnne Boggis, Executive Director of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire.

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Today we answer this question from a listener, "Is Santa a criminal?"

We get to the bottom of the myriad actions of the jolly old elf, and whether he could reasonably be tried for civil and criminal violations, including but not limited to trespassing, breaking and entering, voyeurism, stalking, surveillance, burglary, tax evasion, bad labor practices, emotional distress, and (in one instance) involuntary manslaughter.

Taking us through this complex web of charges is Colin Miller, professor at University of South Carolina School of Law. 

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