We get a lot of questions here at the show. While we try to answer them in some form or another with our full-length episodes, we’ve always wanted a way to answer you directly. So we launched Ask Civics 101! It’s facilitated by New Hampshire Public Radio host Peter Biello and we’re doing it every week. Send your questions to us at [email protected] and we’ll get to the bottom of things for you.

Our inaugural episode addresses a question (and critique) that we’ve received for years here at the show. It's an oft-lobbed claim. "We're not a democracy, we're a republic." And it's half true! We are a republic. But we're also a democracy.

What does that actually mean, and why is the question important? For our first-ever Ask Civics 101, we're answering this not-so-straightforward question: what are we?