Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast
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 turning points that shaped modern America.
Whether you’re a longtime history lover or just history-curious, Civics & Coffee offers context without the homework and storytelling without the fluff. Grab your mug and join the conversation, one cup at a time.
Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast
Inside The Gods of New York: Johnathan Mahler on the Decade That Remade the City
In this episode, I sit down with Jonathan Mahler, author of The Gods of New York, to explore the four years that transformed America’s greatest city—and foretold the divisions that would come to define the nation.
From Wall Street’s boom to the crack epidemic, from Howard Beach to the Central Park jogger case, from ACT UP to Spike Lee, the New York of 1986–1989 was a city teeming with conflict, creativity, and change. Mahler paints a vivid portrait of a metropolis at war with itself: between greed and grit, privilege and poverty, rebirth and decay.
Together, we discuss how this pivotal era gave rise to figures like Donald Trump, Al Sharpton, Ed Koch, and Rudy Giuliani—and why the battles of 1980s New York still echo in today’s America.