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Welcome to Consider the Constitution, the podcast that cuts through the noise and provides insight into constitutional issues that directly affect every American.
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Hosted by Dr.
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Katie Crawford Lackey and featuring interviews with constitutional scholars, policy and subject matter experts, heritage professionals, and legal practitioners, we examine the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
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Consider the Constitution is brought to you by the Robert H.
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Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier.
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Hello and welcome back to Consider the Constitution.
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I'm your host, Dr.
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Katie Crawford Lackey, with James Madison's Montpelier.
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At historic sites like Montpelier, we spend a great deal of time exploring the ideas that shaped the American experiment in self-government.
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The Constitution emerged from a moment of uncertainty.
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The founders had just fought a revolution against concentrated power, yet they were also worried that a weak government could not survive.
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The result was a document that sought to balance liberty with authority, state power with federal power, and majority rule with protections for minority rights.
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But understanding those ideas isn't just about the past, as we often talk about on this podcast.
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And the Constitution remains the framework through which Americans debate everything from free speech and voting rights to limits on executive power.
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And this raises a really important question, especially in today's age.
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We should all be wondering how can citizens effectively participate in a constitutional democracy if they don't understand how it works.
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Joining us today in the studio, I'm so happy to welcome Mr.
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Ben Sheehan, who's a best-selling author and award-winning digital creator.
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His book, OMG, WTF, Does the Constitution actually say, reached number one on Amazon's bestseller chart and was praised by politicians, journalists, civics educators, and constitutional scholars.
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He is a former award-winning executive producer at Funny or Die and at HL Strategies, the creative firm he co-founded.
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As a commentator, Ben has appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, Good Morning America, CBS News, and PBS News Hour.
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And Ben, throughout your career, you've dedicated so much of your work to making constitutional education very accessible to all members of the public.
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So this is really exciting to have you here to have a conversation about how we engage broader audiences in constitutional topics.
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You also have a master's in music business from New York University.
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So you've got a really interesting mix of this focus in kind of American history and politics, but also you have a lens of media entertainment, kind of pop culture that you're bringing to this conversation.
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And I'm interested as we kind of kick off, what is it about the Constitution, you know, your own engagement with it?
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What inspired that?
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And what made you want to actually write a book translating that document for the public?
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It's funny hearing you read my bio back to me.
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It sounds very ADHD.
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And I learned recently that I that I may actually have that, so it makes sense as to why I jumped around from uh careers and focuses uh back and forth.
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But I grew up in Washington, D.C.
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And I had family parents who worked in and with the government.
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And from a really young age, I got civics lessons from my mom over the dinner table.
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My mom worked for a member of the United States Senate in the 70s and 80s.
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And she, my dad was traveling all the time for work.
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And so at night, you know, she would talk to me because it was just me and my brother and her.
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And she would talk to us about what she did that day.
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And then she would sort of give us little civics lessons and, you know, draw a house and put 100 on one side and 435 on the other and sort of do these literal back of the napkin civics lessons.
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And I grew up getting that.
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And I didn't really appreciate it at the time.
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I was honestly kind of bored by it.
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But when I got older, I realized how much I soaked in.
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And when, you know, fast forward to about 10 years ago, and I was living in Los Angeles and where I still live, and I had a lot of friends who kind of woke up after the 2016 election and wanted to get more involved, but they really didn't understand how government works.
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And they started just coming to me and asking me questions because they realized I had these answers.
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And then I thought to myself, well, why do I know all this stuff?
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Yes, I studied it in school, but that's when I had that aha moment where I realized that I'd actually been getting this sort of private education my entire life from my mom over dinner.
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And before I studied it in college, I only had half a year of government education in eighth grade.
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And I went to school a few miles from the Capitol.
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So I really didn't learn this in my K-12 education.
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It was really from my parents.
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I think we might have a new spin-off podcast, Civics at the dinner table.
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This through line of civic education happening at an early age, also outside of the classroom, because you know, civics in terms of being part of the curriculum that varies from state to state, school district to school district.
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So having that education, especially from your mom, that's really special, it sounds like.
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And um, we've had guests on the past that have talked about the importance of doing that, engaging your kids or nieces, nephews, the young people in your life in civics at an early age.
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Especially it sounds like you know, your mom and both of your parents are involved in government.
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They're seeing it.
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They're actually seeing it happening.
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And that's quite different sometimes than what we read in in in the Constitution or other legal documents.
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Aaron Powell Right.
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And I think civics is really a language.
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You know, I think the reason that I had such an acumen or interest in it is because I learned to speak it and understand it at a young age.
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And what I always respected that my parents did is that even though I was, you know, eight or ten years old, they would talk about something that happened that day in the news or at their job, and then they'd go, what do you think?
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And they sort of treated me as an equal partner, even though I wasn't and I didn't have all the information.
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But just being invited sort of on an equal playing field, on an equal plane of conversation, encouraged me to want to rise to that occasion.
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So if there are any parents listening to that, just having inviting your kid into the conversation at an age where they're able to understand a little bit of this, treat them as an equal partner, you'll be surprised how much they might be willing to engage.
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So you weren't treated as kind of a passive recipient.
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You were encouraged to engage and think for yourself about what the discussion is.
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Exactly.
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Now, as you've kind of gone on in your career, you've you know now live in the Los Angeles region, which is so kind of you to be here in the studio with us today.
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But you have this kind of coast-to-coast experience.
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You've, I'm sure, met many, many people.
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What are the misconceptions that you've encountered as you've started to get into this work of kind of civic education, especially in the media and entertainment?
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Misconceptions about civics.
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The constitution about the constitution.
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Civics or the constitution general.
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I I think people tend to think it's an antiquated document that doesn't really apply to them.
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And I think they don't realize how many things that they enjoy in their life that come from it.
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And they don't realize that the entire system of government that we have is outlined by that.
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And that's really why I wanted to write this book, because you know, like I said, I had a lot of friends who didn't understand government and also were really embarrassed that they didn't understand this stuff.
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And that I think was the biggest obstacle that I noticed to people getting involved, at least my friends and colleagues and people in my life, is that they were carrying around this unbelievable amount of shame.
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They were kicking themselves for not knowing the answers to questions.
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And then I would start to ask them, well, did you learn this in school?
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And they go, May maybe.
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And then, you know, they kind of realized, well, maybe I'm being too mean to myself over something that I didn't get.
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And, you know, they didn't have parents that worked in government that were just tutoring them at night.
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And so I think we're all walking around with this massive amount of shame about not knowing this information.
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So the thing with the book was really wanting to create an entry point for people not just to understand the Constitution, but understand all the things that it gave us that we still live with and under and enjoy today.
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I mean, all the rights in the Bill of Rights, the division of power between the states and the and the federal government, all the different roles that the branches play.
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There's so many things that people don't realize.
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It all comes from there.
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Ben, that's such a good point.
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You know, there's real um knowledge gaps that people have.
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I mean, I'll be honest.
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I am holding a copy of your book, What Does the Constitution say, which is the version for kids.
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And this is the first book I bought when I started at Montpelier because I was like, I need just a very basic, I need to know what this says, I need it to be understandable.
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And as a public historian by training, you know, we need to reach people where they're at and kind of understand that there is a knowledge gap depending on did your parents teach you like yours did in school, did you learn it?
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And so getting away from the shaming and framing it as more empowerment about what we get to learn and how that empowers us to participate.
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And I think both of your books do this.
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And while our discussion today is obviously broader than just the book, I think it's a good place to kind of ground this part of the conversation because your book walks readers through kind of step by step what the Constitution says, article by article, amendment by amendment.
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And I'm curious to hear from you.
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You know, one of the points I took away from the book is a lot of Americans have strong opinions about the Constitution, and yet many of us have not read it.
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Why do you think that is?
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I think we have strong opinions about it because we have strong opinions about everything today, because of how we get our news on social media and the fact that platforms incentivize engagement, and the easiest to get a way to get engagement is to make people mad.
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And so we're coming into political conversations already charged up and pretty, you know, kind of kind of hot-headed.
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So uh the reason I think people haven't read it is because it's you know, yes, it's in English, but it's written in English from over more than 200 years ago.
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And honestly, you know, reading it today, and this is one of the other reasons I wanted to write this book, it feels like a little bit of a different language.
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You know, words that are listed there, the way that it references even the United States in in certain capacities, just the way that it phrases certain things are kind of inaccessible.
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And you have to really go back and parse it out and go, oh, they actually meant this, or they meant this.
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Or when they were when they said state here, they were actually talking about a nation versus an actual state.
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So there's a lot of really confusing stuff in it.
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And so I think just the tone and the vernacular makes it a little bit inaccessible and people don't want to engage with it.
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But the information is so fascinating and interesting and deeply applicable to our lives.
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So that's sort of the thing that I wanted to do was annotate it, paraphrase it, do it alongside the original text, also work with constitutional scholars uh across the political spectrum to make sure that this I you know I am not I don't have a law degree.
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So I wanted to make sure that this information was buttoned up and was, you know, I wasn't leaning too hard into my bias.
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When I do share my opinion on things, I very clearly put it under an in my opinion section.
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You know, it's it is my opinion whether or not um, you know, paying to have a form of identification is an indirect poll tax.
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It's not my opinion that senators serve six-year terms.
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So it's very clearly delineated between the actual information and my opinion on things in a modern context.
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But I think just the way that the document is written, the style of language is a bit of a barrier for people.
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And how did you go about trying to make it engaging?
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Because you know, you do include, you know, graphics, humor, annotations.
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It it's fun to read and it's it's easy to understand.
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But I think some folks, especially those in academia, you know, the legal field, whatever, the humanities, don't necessarily recognize the challenge of translating something, translating I'm putting in air quotes from this heavy text.
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As you said, it was written in the 1700s.
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So English language was different then.
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How did you go about doing that?
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I took class, you know, when I my a lot of my professional experience in in Los Angeles was at a this company called Funnier Die that was founded by Will Farrell and Adam McKay.
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And it was a basically its own grad school comedy class.
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I was surrounded by people that were so funny and smart, and so much funnier and smarter than I was in many ways, and were just real comedic geniuses.
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And so I just tried to soak in as much as I could from them all the time.
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And I also was taking comedy classes in writing and performing at Upright Citizens Brigade, which is a comedy um studio theater in Los Angeles.
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It's given birth to a ton of people that went on to write and produce at places like Saturday Night Live and in a lot of the shows that people love from the last 20 years or so.
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But I, you know, really learned to spot the unusual thing.
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So to take the thing that's kind of weird and kind of extrapolate that.
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Like, for example, um, you know, in in the Bill of Rights, you have the right to sue someone for over as little as $20 in federal court.
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That today that's obviously been raised, but that's a strange thing and a small amount.
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So how can I expand that into a joke?
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Um, or sometimes the way that they talk about certain dates, like requiring Congress to meet um, you know, at least once a year and then choosing an odd way to phrase that.
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Um, you know, even just the way that we talk about the laws that around our elections, right?
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Like we vote on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in December, or uh, you know, the Electoral College meeting on the first Monday after the second, just the way they describe time is super odd.
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Like no one would I'd love to get dinner with you on the, you know, the the third Thursday after the second Wednesday.
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Like no one talks like that.
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So what's the unusual thing you can find and then kind of extrapolate that and just make it as relatable as possible?
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But that's something I learned from you know working in the comedy world.
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Aaron Powell And it shows in the book that there is a level of humor that makes it, I think, even more enjoyable to read.
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And it is a hard balance between, and and you touched on this briefly, the historical accuracy of it, but then also making it fun.
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And I think your book shows that it it can be.
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Yeah.
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I think the, you know, again, it comes back to the fact that there's such good information in here and such interesting information.
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And so it's really not, it's not about changing anything in the document, it's about just phrasing it in a different way.
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And there's so much, honestly, that I learned from writing this book that I did not learn in school.
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Like I said, I had a half a year in eighth grade and I went to school in D.C.
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And growing up in a political family in in and around D.C., the fact that I didn't have this education.
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I mean, my mom taught me a ton of stuff, but you know, she didn't sit down and go through the Constitution.
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So when I actually sat down and went through it and parsed everything out, I was absolutely stunned at how much was in there.
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Also, even just my basic understanding of government was changed.
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I may ruffle some feathers by saying this, but I learned my entire life that we have three coequal branches of government.
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After reading this document, I don't think that's true.
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I think Congress was very clearly designed.
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If if half the document is about one branch of government and outlying all the massive powers that it has the ability to do, also the fact that it has the ability to fire the president, the president can't fire Congress, it's very hard to say that these are co-equal branches of government.
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And in researching the book, originally it was supposed to be according, you know, for the delegates of the convention, the original idea was for Congress to pick the president before they decided on the Electoral College.
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So clearly they wanted to get away from a king, and they came up with this government by committee.
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And I think that we often conflate the separation of powers and checks and balances with equal power and equal balance, and that's not actually true.
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And that's such important framing to point out if that's our reference point for how the government is structured.
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Now I'm curious if there are certain um rights or protections you you referenced, you know, we benefit from the Constitution in ways we don't even know about.
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Given your like knowledge, the deep knowledge that you've gained from writing this book, what are some of the rights that are really key and important that we have, particularly those that we might not know about?
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Well, so many of the things that we have a right to in the legal process come from the Bill of Rights, you know, the right to not uh self-incriminate ourselves, the right to not be tried twice for the same uh a crime, the right to a defense lawyer, so many of the, you know, being you know tried in front of a jury of our peers, you know, neighbors and friends and people in our community.
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So many of these things come from the Bill of Rights, all written by one person who lived on this very land I'm I'm sitting on and recording on right now.
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And I think people don't realize that.
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You know, I mean, if you if you ask the average person what's the most important part of the Constitution, I guarantee you uh uh it maybe, maybe not half, maybe slightly more, slightly less, but a significant amount of people will say the Bill of Rights and the individual rights.
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And I don't know how many people realize that one person wrote all of those and you know is responsible largely for what some would say is maybe even the most important part of the Constitution.
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And a point you mentioned in your book, Ben, uh, and this is one I'm I'm particularly interested in because when you read the Constitution, its initial form is seven articles, but then there's additional amendments.
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So from kind of your project writing this book and your research, as the Constitution has changed over time with the addition of new amendments, why would you say it's important to know the history of how that document has changed in terms of how it applies to us today?
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I would say it's you know you can honestly look at American history um using the amendments as a guide.
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And you can take the amendment and you know unpack it, not just the language in it, but what was happening at the time, right?
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The reason we have the 12th amendment, because we had we almost fell apart in 1800 with uh an election that you know basically the way the electoral college was originally written, where you know the second place person got you know to be vice president and the first place got to be president, but there was an accidental tie, and then the vice president.
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I mean, this is all covered in Hamilton.
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If anyone hasn't seen that, you should check that out.
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Um, or or just read about it.
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But the thing that I think is so interesting is that you can see, okay, well, there was a huge issue, and then they needed an amendment to correct that.
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Same thing, you know, coming out of the Civil War.
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The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were trying to create more of an even playing field for Americans, African Americans, mostly male African Americans, um, at that time.
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You know, fast forward to the 16th Amendment and establishing an income tax during a time of huge wealth inequality.
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Um, you know, what we did with the 17th Amendment, now we get to elect our senators, you know, looking at prohibition and then you know repealing it with the 18th and the 21st, and then also looking at um obviously the 19th Women, but also looking at this period in the 1960s that I think often gets overlooked, where we had four constitutional amendments in a 10-year span.
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Imagine since 2015, 2016, if we'd added four amendments to the Constitution.
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You know, and I think there was a really amazing period, you know, when it comes to obviously electoral votes for for DC, banning poll taxes, fixing bugs in the Constitution with you know, presidential and vice presidential vacancies, and then also people 18 and up getting voting rights protections.
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Obviously, you also have these important amendments like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
00:20:18.720 --> 00:20:25.440
But looking in through, looking at the amendments as sort of a way to look at uh tracing American history.
00:20:25.440 --> 00:20:36.720
And I do think that one of the huge reasons those amendments passed in the 1960s, 60s and 70s is that we had a huge amount of civic education coming out of World War II.
00:20:36.720 --> 00:20:42.240
And we had classes - uh historian uh Kathleen Hall Jameson at Annenberg's UPEN talks about this.
00:20:42.240 --> 00:20:47.200
We had maybe the most robust period of civic education we've ever had in the United States.
00:20:47.200 --> 00:20:57.440
And part of it had to do with national pride after winning this gigantic war, and really establishing across the country classes like civics and foundations of democracy and U.S.
00:20:57.440 --> 00:20:58.799
history and American government.
00:20:58.799 --> 00:21:05.359
And these were really common all throughout our school system in every state, multiple years, multiple classes.
00:21:05.359 --> 00:21:15.519
And if you have that from, say, I don't know, 1946 or whatever, into the early 60s, those people are graduating and then becoming voting age.
00:21:15.519 --> 00:21:18.640
And they're really well informed and well educated.
00:21:18.640 --> 00:21:30.400
And I think it's because we had such a highly educated population in the area of government and civics that we were able to make happen massive laws like the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, these amendments.
00:21:30.400 --> 00:21:37.839
I don't think these things would have happened if we didn't have this shared, very high-level foundation of civic and government understanding.
00:21:38.480 --> 00:21:40.079
I have never thought of it like that.
00:21:40.079 --> 00:21:50.799
That's a great point about civic education post-World War II and how that affected kind of ripple effects of the education system, how people are participating in government.
00:21:50.799 --> 00:21:59.680
And it makes me think of our earlier conversation about your mom, your mom teaching you about civics and how that was important, not just in the classroom, but also.
00:21:59.680 --> 00:22:01.119
Also at home.
00:22:01.119 --> 00:22:07.359
And you know, today's landscape is very different than even 10 years ago.
00:22:07.440 --> 00:22:08.160
Aaron Powell Yeah.
00:22:08.160 --> 00:22:11.440
It's really uh disappointing what has happened with civics.
00:22:11.440 --> 00:22:19.359
And this is not to say that there aren't amazing teachers out there, educators, and states that are doing a good job because there absolutely are.
00:22:19.359 --> 00:22:40.160
But I think after the 1960s, you started to see a drop in civics classes and requirements, and then really more of an accidental shift away starting in 2002 with No Child Left Behind, where you had all these requirements for states to teach to English language arts and math and you know new standardized tests to evaluate this.
00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:45.039
And if stools consistently didn't perform well in these tests, their state could shut them down.
00:22:45.039 --> 00:22:49.599
I mean, it was a huge amount of new pressure for teachers to teach to these tests.
00:22:49.599 --> 00:23:02.240
And so subjects like civics that didn't fit those requirements kind of got crank and the classes became an afterthought, and maybe they got thrown into US history or got thrown into social studies, um, but just became deprioritized.
00:23:02.240 --> 00:23:13.599
And as a result of those classes no longer be required or just, you know, so much less than was previously required, you have people graduating who don't have the same level of foundation as previous generations.
00:23:13.599 --> 00:23:19.759
And I think it shows when you look at our larger, you know, system and environment of government.
00:23:20.559 --> 00:23:28.240
And given your experience, how can young people today use technology to better connect to this?
00:23:28.240 --> 00:23:31.680
Because I think technology can be distracting in a way.
00:23:31.680 --> 00:23:33.599
There's so much content out there.
00:23:33.599 --> 00:23:40.240
I think it makes it more challenging to distinguish between misinformation, but it can also be a powerful tool.
00:23:40.240 --> 00:23:42.799
So do you have any insight on that?
00:23:43.359 --> 00:23:48.720
Well, on a very selfish level, I host a show on PBS called Civics Made Easy.
00:23:48.720 --> 00:24:02.960
And we uh we just won a Webby for our first season, and we're in pre-production on season two, and it's 12 episodes, and every episode is 10 to 15 minutes long, and it's all about um a different part of the government and how it works from the Electoral College to understanding why we have U.S.
00:24:02.960 --> 00:24:08.880
territories to why there's you know primarily a two-party system to you know, all sorts of different things.
00:24:08.880 --> 00:24:11.759
And so, you know, these videos live on YouTube.
00:24:11.759 --> 00:24:15.839
They live on the PBS app and on the website, but primarily YouTube and social media.
00:24:15.839 --> 00:24:20.799
And you know their first season was seen by four million people.
00:24:20.799 --> 00:24:26.640
And it this the show is being taught in 40,000 classrooms across the United States.
00:24:26.640 --> 00:24:35.359
And this is an exercise, you know, we were really careful and cautious to design it in a way that, like you said, meeting people where they are.
00:24:35.359 --> 00:24:44.799
And there are increments, yes, there's a lot of noise and a lot of hyperbole and a lot of people trying to make you mad all the time, but there's also an amazing amount of resources.
00:24:44.799 --> 00:24:49.440
Uh one on PBS that I have no affiliation with that I think is really cool is called Crash Course.
00:24:49.440 --> 00:24:58.480
There's a different, you know, it's it's a mix of live action and um animated, and it, you know, a bunch of different subjects, but their civics and government course is really fantastic.
00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:00.400
And it's been seen millions and millions of times.
00:25:00.400 --> 00:25:02.480
It came out, I think, 10 or 15 years ago.
00:25:02.480 --> 00:25:06.880
So there are incredible resources out there that do meet people where they are.
00:25:06.880 --> 00:25:09.200
We have to sift through them and find them.
00:25:09.200 --> 00:25:13.599
But we're living in a time where, yes, there's more bad information or incorrect information than ever.
00:25:13.599 --> 00:25:15.680
There's also more great information.
00:25:15.680 --> 00:25:18.799
And, you know, it's really both a blessing and a curse.
00:25:18.799 --> 00:25:20.720
But I I lean on the blessing part.
00:25:21.279 --> 00:25:26.480
I have watched many crash course videos to help me prepare for teaching college courses.
00:25:26.480 --> 00:25:30.160
So yes, there are amazing resources, and it's good to know that.
00:25:30.160 --> 00:25:43.039
And I I wonder kind of to that point, for somebody that does want to become civically engaged, in addition to kind of seeking out these resources, you know, you think about PBS, it's a very reputable resource.
00:25:43.039 --> 00:25:46.640
What else can people be doing to get engaged?
00:25:47.119 --> 00:25:54.640
I would say what an important thing to keep in mind is that it doesn't take a lot of time every day to get engaged.
00:25:54.640 --> 00:25:56.480
You don't need to be on your phone 24-7.
00:25:56.480 --> 00:26:02.319
You don't need to be paying attention to the every single push-up date or notification or comment or whatever.
00:26:02.319 --> 00:26:05.680
That that's a way to spiral out of control and crash out.
00:26:05.680 --> 00:26:07.039
So don't do that.
00:26:07.039 --> 00:26:14.799
I my suggestion would be to take a few minutes either in the morning or in the evening, and that's your time to get caught up on news.
00:26:14.799 --> 00:26:18.799
And I would highly suggest people don't just look at news at the federal level.
00:26:18.799 --> 00:26:25.119
Whatever your you know preferred way to get news at the federal about you know the national government is, that's fine.
00:26:25.119 --> 00:26:29.440
But I would also look to great resources that focus on government at the state level.
00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:30.559
I live in California.
00:26:30.559 --> 00:26:37.920
CalMatters is an incredible resource, it's nonpartisan, it covers what's going on in Sacramento and the state legislature and issues throughout the state.
00:26:37.920 --> 00:26:40.480
Um, and then I also look at county information.
00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:43.519
I live in Los Angeles County, the largest county in the country.
00:26:43.519 --> 00:26:48.880
And LA Times does a great job of covering up what's in the county, and then you know, my local city paper.
00:26:48.880 --> 00:26:57.599
So when you're catching up on news, you know, it's easy to just get focus on the federal level because that's what dominates the conversation since it affects all of us.
00:26:57.599 --> 00:27:02.720
But oftentimes it's the stuff at the state and the county and the city level that actually affects your life more.
00:27:02.720 --> 00:27:07.119
And you know, the further down you go, the less partisan it becomes.
00:27:07.119 --> 00:27:19.599
You're talking about issues like parks, you know, and and trash coming on time and just sort of city management, county management, you know, homelessness, obviously, the cost of housing, a lot of things that are happening and handled at the state and local level.
00:27:19.599 --> 00:27:32.400
So I would pick one resource at each level, something at the national level, something at the state, the county, the city, and you know, spend five or ten minutes a day in the morning or at night and just you know, checking out what happened.
00:27:32.400 --> 00:27:38.880
And I guarantee you, if you do that every day, even if it's just reading headlines, you will be so much more informed about what's going on.
00:27:38.880 --> 00:27:43.119
And that will help inform how you put pressure on elected leaders and ultimately vote.
00:27:43.599 --> 00:27:49.359
And Ben, I think this is such a wonderful kind of idea to touch on.
00:27:49.359 --> 00:27:52.880
Civics doesn't just mean politics or voting.
00:27:52.880 --> 00:27:54.799
It's so much more than that.
00:27:54.799 --> 00:27:59.279
It's about, as you said, how your you know, local community is is running.
00:27:59.279 --> 00:28:04.640
It's you know, sidewalks in your community, it's a public library, it's you know, transportation, it's it's all of these different things.
00:28:04.640 --> 00:28:06.960
There's so many ways to get involved.
00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:10.000
But it's helpful to know because I'll speak for myself.
00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:21.839
It can be very daunting feeling like, okay, I need to know what's going on like everywhere all the time, like federal level, what's happening in DC, look at a couple different sources, and then I live in Virginia, so Virginia.
00:28:21.839 --> 00:28:30.960
But knowing that, okay, just you know, a little bit of time, even just looking at the headlines, it makes it feel very doable.
00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:33.519
Each of us can only do so much.
00:28:33.519 --> 00:28:38.799
None of us can, you know, w we can't individually pass laws and and ratify amendment.
00:28:38.799 --> 00:28:41.039
All of this is by committee.
00:28:41.039 --> 00:28:46.000
And I think the the way that I like to think about it is tug of war, like the game, right?
00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:50.319
If you have a few people, you know, we can only pull so much individually.
00:28:50.319 --> 00:28:54.000
But the more people you have on your side, they only have to pull a little bit.
00:28:54.000 --> 00:29:03.039
But it's truly a numbers game because a bunch of people pulling a little, that strength adds up monumentally and exponentially the more people get involved.
00:29:03.039 --> 00:29:05.039
So that's really all I do.
00:29:05.039 --> 00:29:16.000
If all of us are doing a little bit every day, it is so much more impactful than a few of us trying to do a lot and eventually crashing out and losing our minds.
00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:27.279
So it's very helpful for people to just take a little bit of time in their day, catch up, get involved, because it's just it sounds daunting, but then you realize that it's only five, 10 minutes a day.
00:29:27.279 --> 00:29:32.400
I think we can all find time to do that to exercise our duties as citizens.
00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:45.279
And again, that can be a conversation you have at the dinner table, you know, if you're a parent or a guardian or, you know, somebody's caretaker, just looking at what's happening in your city or in your state.
00:29:45.279 --> 00:29:48.640
Um, because that is probably affecting your child too.
00:29:48.640 --> 00:29:53.119
And they're not just um they're they're a a citizen in training, essentially.
00:29:53.119 --> 00:29:55.039
We're preparing them or we should be.
00:29:55.440 --> 00:29:55.599
Yeah.
00:29:55.599 --> 00:30:00.799
I mean, you know, there's still there are lots of things that people who, you know, if you're not voting age, can still do.
00:30:00.799 --> 00:30:09.680
You can still write to elected leaders, you know, put put pressure on them, go to town halls, ask questions, you know, knock on doors, you know, some of these things obviously you know do with a parent.
00:30:09.680 --> 00:30:21.839
But you know, there's a lot of ways to start getting engaged and following the news and information so that, you know, by the time you turn 18, you're ready, you know, you've got a full solid foundation of information that you can use to make a decision.
00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:37.519
And as we wrap up our conversation today, I would love to hear from you if there is one thing that every listener should walk away from this conversation, remembering either about the Constitution or civic participation.
00:30:38.640 --> 00:30:55.200
That it was designed for us to change and to act on, that laws and amendments are only as good as the people who enforce them and abide by them and live by them, because otherwise they're just suggestions on paper.
00:30:55.200 --> 00:31:08.559
And we have to be really diligent about making sure that our rights stay protected, uh, that our freedoms stay there for all of us in future generations, and that you know, this information is not out of people's grasp.
00:31:08.559 --> 00:31:16.880
Even if you have no background studying government, understanding government, I promise you there are resources out there.
00:31:16.880 --> 00:31:21.920
Some are mine, many are not, that are amazing, that can help you get caught up and involved.
00:31:21.920 --> 00:31:34.319
And I just want to make sure people realize that this is this may seem daunting, but ultimately it is not, and it doesn't require a lot of your time to be really, really helpful when it comes to strengthening and perpetuating our democracy.
00:31:34.640 --> 00:31:39.279
Well, thank you so much, Ben Chian, for being here in the studio all the way from California.
00:31:39.279 --> 00:31:56.640
This was a great conversation, and I have to say I really appreciate how you know you've really dedicated your work to bridging the gap between this seemingly academic or legal heavy text into something that's very meaningful and relatable to everybody.
00:31:56.960 --> 00:31:58.000
Well, thank you so much for having me.
00:31:58.000 --> 00:31:58.720
Happy to be here.
00:31:58.960 --> 00:32:00.480
And thank you to all of our listeners.
00:32:00.480 --> 00:32:04.079
Please subscribe and share the show with your family and friends.
00:32:04.079 --> 00:32:08.559
And join us again in two weeks as we consider the Constitution.
00:00:01.040 --> 00:00:11.439
Welcome to Consider the Constitution, the podcast that cuts through the noise and provides insight into constitutional issues that directly affect every American.
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Hosted by Dr.
00:00:12.640 --> 00:00:27.440
Katie Crawford Lackey and featuring interviews with constitutional scholars, policy and subject matter experts, heritage professionals, and legal practitioners, we examine the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
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Consider the Constitution is brought to you by the Robert H.
00:00:31.280 --> 00:00:36.159
Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier.
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Hello and welcome back to Consider the Constitution.
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I'm your host, Dr.
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Katie Crawford Lackey, with James Madison's Montpelier.
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At historic sites like Montpelier, we spend a great deal of time exploring the ideas that shaped the American experiment in self-government.
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The Constitution emerged from a moment of uncertainty.
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The founders had just fought a revolution against concentrated power, yet they were also worried that a weak government could not survive.
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The result was a document that sought to balance liberty with authority, state power with federal power, and majority rule with protections for minority rights.
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But understanding those ideas isn't just about the past, as we often talk about on this podcast.
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And the Constitution remains the framework through which Americans debate everything from free speech and voting rights to limits on executive power.
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And this raises a really important question, especially in today's age.
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We should all be wondering how can citizens effectively participate in a constitutional democracy if they don't understand how it works.
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Joining us today in the studio, I'm so happy to welcome Mr.
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Ben Sheehan, who's a best-selling author and award-winning digital creator.
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His book, OMG, WTF, Does the Constitution actually say, reached number one on Amazon's bestseller chart and was praised by politicians, journalists, civics educators, and constitutional scholars.
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He is a former award-winning executive producer at Funny or Die and at HL Strategies, the creative firm he co-founded.
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As a commentator, Ben has appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, Good Morning America, CBS News, and PBS News Hour.
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And Ben, throughout your career, you've dedicated so much of your work to making constitutional education very accessible to all members of the public.
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So this is really exciting to have you here to have a conversation about how we engage broader audiences in constitutional topics.
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You also have a master's in music business from New York University.
00:03:04.719 --> 00:03:17.599
So you've got a really interesting mix of this focus in kind of American history and politics, but also you have a lens of media entertainment, kind of pop culture that you're bringing to this conversation.
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And I'm interested as we kind of kick off, what is it about the Constitution, you know, your own engagement with it?
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What inspired that?
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And what made you want to actually write a book translating that document for the public?
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It's funny hearing you read my bio back to me.
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It sounds very ADHD.
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And I learned recently that I that I may actually have that, so it makes sense as to why I jumped around from uh careers and focuses uh back and forth.
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But I grew up in Washington, D.C.
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And I had family parents who worked in and with the government.
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And from a really young age, I got civics lessons from my mom over the dinner table.
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My mom worked for a member of the United States Senate in the 70s and 80s.
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And she, my dad was traveling all the time for work.
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And so at night, you know, she would talk to me because it was just me and my brother and her.
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And she would talk to us about what she did that day.
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And then she would sort of give us little civics lessons and, you know, draw a house and put 100 on one side and 435 on the other and sort of do these literal back of the napkin civics lessons.
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And I grew up getting that.
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And I didn't really appreciate it at the time.
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I was honestly kind of bored by it.
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But when I got older, I realized how much I soaked in.
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And when, you know, fast forward to about 10 years ago, and I was living in Los Angeles and where I still live, and I had a lot of friends who kind of woke up after the 2016 election and wanted to get more involved, but they really didn't understand how government works.
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And they started just coming to me and asking me questions because they realized I had these answers.
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And then I thought to myself, well, why do I know all this stuff?
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Yes, I studied it in school, but that's when I had that aha moment where I realized that I'd actually been getting this sort of private education my entire life from my mom over dinner.
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And before I studied it in college, I only had half a year of government education in eighth grade.
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And I went to school a few miles from the Capitol.
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So I really didn't learn this in my K-12 education.
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It was really from my parents.
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I think we might have a new spin-off podcast, Civics at the dinner table.
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This through line of civic education happening at an early age, also outside of the classroom, because you know, civics in terms of being part of the curriculum that varies from state to state, school district to school district.
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So having that education, especially from your mom, that's really special, it sounds like.
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And um, we've had guests on the past that have talked about the importance of doing that, engaging your kids or nieces, nephews, the young people in your life in civics at an early age.
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Especially it sounds like you know, your mom and both of your parents are involved in government.
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They're seeing it.
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They're actually seeing it happening.
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And that's quite different sometimes than what we read in in in the Constitution or other legal documents.
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Aaron Powell Right.
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And I think civics is really a language.
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You know, I think the reason that I had such an acumen or interest in it is because I learned to speak it and understand it at a young age.
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And what I always respected that my parents did is that even though I was, you know, eight or ten years old, they would talk about something that happened that day in the news or at their job, and then they'd go, what do you think?
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And they sort of treated me as an equal partner, even though I wasn't and I didn't have all the information.
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But just being invited sort of on an equal playing field, on an equal plane of conversation, encouraged me to want to rise to that occasion.
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So if there are any parents listening to that, just having inviting your kid into the conversation at an age where they're able to understand a little bit of this, treat them as an equal partner, you'll be surprised how much they might be willing to engage.
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So you weren't treated as kind of a passive recipient.
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You were encouraged to engage and think for yourself about what the discussion is.
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Exactly.
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Now, as you've kind of gone on in your career, you've you know now live in the Los Angeles region, which is so kind of you to be here in the studio with us today.
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But you have this kind of coast-to-coast experience.
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You've, I'm sure, met many, many people.
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What are the misconceptions that you've encountered as you've started to get into this work of kind of civic education, especially in the media and entertainment?
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Misconceptions about civics.
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The constitution about the constitution.
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Civics or the constitution general.
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I I think people tend to think it's an antiquated document that doesn't really apply to them.
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And I think they don't realize how many things that they enjoy in their life that come from it.
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And they don't realize that the entire system of government that we have is outlined by that.
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And that's really why I wanted to write this book, because you know, like I said, I had a lot of friends who didn't understand government and also were really embarrassed that they didn't understand this stuff.
00:07:52.000 --> 00:08:03.199
And that I think was the biggest obstacle that I noticed to people getting involved, at least my friends and colleagues and people in my life, is that they were carrying around this unbelievable amount of shame.
00:08:03.199 --> 00:08:05.920
They were kicking themselves for not knowing the answers to questions.
00:08:05.920 --> 00:08:08.560
And then I would start to ask them, well, did you learn this in school?
00:08:08.560 --> 00:08:09.600
And they go, May maybe.
00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:16.639
And then, you know, they kind of realized, well, maybe I'm being too mean to myself over something that I didn't get.
00:08:16.639 --> 00:08:21.680
And, you know, they didn't have parents that worked in government that were just tutoring them at night.
00:08:21.680 --> 00:08:26.160
And so I think we're all walking around with this massive amount of shame about not knowing this information.
00:08:26.160 --> 00:08:38.159
So the thing with the book was really wanting to create an entry point for people not just to understand the Constitution, but understand all the things that it gave us that we still live with and under and enjoy today.
00:08:38.159 --> 00:08:46.480
I mean, all the rights in the Bill of Rights, the division of power between the states and the and the federal government, all the different roles that the branches play.
00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:49.120
There's so many things that people don't realize.
00:08:49.120 --> 00:08:50.240
It all comes from there.
00:08:50.720 --> 00:08:51.919
Ben, that's such a good point.
00:08:51.919 --> 00:08:55.200
You know, there's real um knowledge gaps that people have.
00:08:55.200 --> 00:08:56.480
I mean, I'll be honest.
00:08:56.480 --> 00:09:03.360
I am holding a copy of your book, What Does the Constitution say, which is the version for kids.
00:09:03.360 --> 00:09:14.000
And this is the first book I bought when I started at Montpelier because I was like, I need just a very basic, I need to know what this says, I need it to be understandable.
00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:27.679
And as a public historian by training, you know, we need to reach people where they're at and kind of understand that there is a knowledge gap depending on did your parents teach you like yours did in school, did you learn it?
00:09:27.679 --> 00:09:35.840
And so getting away from the shaming and framing it as more empowerment about what we get to learn and how that empowers us to participate.
00:09:35.840 --> 00:09:39.360
And I think both of your books do this.
00:09:39.360 --> 00:09:58.000
And while our discussion today is obviously broader than just the book, I think it's a good place to kind of ground this part of the conversation because your book walks readers through kind of step by step what the Constitution says, article by article, amendment by amendment.
00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:01.679
And I'm curious to hear from you.
00:10:01.679 --> 00:10:13.759
You know, one of the points I took away from the book is a lot of Americans have strong opinions about the Constitution, and yet many of us have not read it.
00:10:13.759 --> 00:10:16.320
Why do you think that is?
00:10:17.440 --> 00:10:30.320
I think we have strong opinions about it because we have strong opinions about everything today, because of how we get our news on social media and the fact that platforms incentivize engagement, and the easiest to get a way to get engagement is to make people mad.
00:10:30.320 --> 00:10:35.519
And so we're coming into political conversations already charged up and pretty, you know, kind of kind of hot-headed.
00:10:35.519 --> 00:10:46.639
So uh the reason I think people haven't read it is because it's you know, yes, it's in English, but it's written in English from over more than 200 years ago.
00:10:46.639 --> 00:10:54.480
And honestly, you know, reading it today, and this is one of the other reasons I wanted to write this book, it feels like a little bit of a different language.
00:10:54.480 --> 00:11:05.200
You know, words that are listed there, the way that it references even the United States in in certain capacities, just the way that it phrases certain things are kind of inaccessible.
00:11:05.200 --> 00:11:08.879
And you have to really go back and parse it out and go, oh, they actually meant this, or they meant this.
00:11:08.879 --> 00:11:13.679
Or when they were when they said state here, they were actually talking about a nation versus an actual state.
00:11:13.679 --> 00:11:17.360
So there's a lot of really confusing stuff in it.
00:11:17.360 --> 00:11:24.240
And so I think just the tone and the vernacular makes it a little bit inaccessible and people don't want to engage with it.
00:11:24.240 --> 00:11:29.039
But the information is so fascinating and interesting and deeply applicable to our lives.
00:11:29.039 --> 00:11:43.600
So that's sort of the thing that I wanted to do was annotate it, paraphrase it, do it alongside the original text, also work with constitutional scholars uh across the political spectrum to make sure that this I you know I am not I don't have a law degree.
00:11:43.600 --> 00:11:49.120
So I wanted to make sure that this information was buttoned up and was, you know, I wasn't leaning too hard into my bias.
00:11:49.120 --> 00:11:53.759
When I do share my opinion on things, I very clearly put it under an in my opinion section.
00:11:53.759 --> 00:12:00.799
You know, it's it is my opinion whether or not um, you know, paying to have a form of identification is an indirect poll tax.
00:12:00.799 --> 00:12:03.120
It's not my opinion that senators serve six-year terms.
00:12:03.120 --> 00:12:09.039
So it's very clearly delineated between the actual information and my opinion on things in a modern context.
00:12:09.039 --> 00:12:14.480
But I think just the way that the document is written, the style of language is a bit of a barrier for people.
00:12:15.360 --> 00:12:19.279
And how did you go about trying to make it engaging?
00:12:19.279 --> 00:12:23.519
Because you know, you do include, you know, graphics, humor, annotations.
00:12:23.519 --> 00:12:27.519
It it's fun to read and it's it's easy to understand.
00:12:27.519 --> 00:12:43.679
But I think some folks, especially those in academia, you know, the legal field, whatever, the humanities, don't necessarily recognize the challenge of translating something, translating I'm putting in air quotes from this heavy text.
00:12:43.679 --> 00:12:46.480
As you said, it was written in the 1700s.
00:12:46.480 --> 00:12:48.639
So English language was different then.
00:12:48.639 --> 00:12:50.480
How did you go about doing that?
00:12:51.200 --> 00:13:01.759
I took class, you know, when I my a lot of my professional experience in in Los Angeles was at a this company called Funnier Die that was founded by Will Farrell and Adam McKay.
00:13:01.759 --> 00:13:06.720
And it was a basically its own grad school comedy class.
00:13:06.720 --> 00:13:17.279
I was surrounded by people that were so funny and smart, and so much funnier and smarter than I was in many ways, and were just real comedic geniuses.
00:13:17.279 --> 00:13:22.159
And so I just tried to soak in as much as I could from them all the time.
00:13:22.159 --> 00:13:31.759
And I also was taking comedy classes in writing and performing at Upright Citizens Brigade, which is a comedy um studio theater in Los Angeles.
00:13:31.759 --> 00:13:43.120
It's given birth to a ton of people that went on to write and produce at places like Saturday Night Live and in a lot of the shows that people love from the last 20 years or so.
00:13:43.120 --> 00:13:48.000
But I, you know, really learned to spot the unusual thing.
00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:51.759
So to take the thing that's kind of weird and kind of extrapolate that.
00:13:51.759 --> 00:13:58.879
Like, for example, um, you know, in in the Bill of Rights, you have the right to sue someone for over as little as $20 in federal court.
00:13:58.879 --> 00:14:03.679
That today that's obviously been raised, but that's a strange thing and a small amount.
00:14:03.679 --> 00:14:05.600
So how can I expand that into a joke?
00:14:05.600 --> 00:14:13.679
Um, or sometimes the way that they talk about certain dates, like requiring Congress to meet um, you know, at least once a year and then choosing an odd way to phrase that.
00:14:13.679 --> 00:14:19.039
Um, you know, even just the way that we talk about the laws that around our elections, right?
00:14:19.039 --> 00:14:27.840
Like we vote on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in December, or uh, you know, the Electoral College meeting on the first Monday after the second, just the way they describe time is super odd.
00:14:27.840 --> 00:14:32.960
Like no one would I'd love to get dinner with you on the, you know, the the third Thursday after the second Wednesday.
00:14:32.960 --> 00:14:34.000
Like no one talks like that.
00:14:34.000 --> 00:14:39.679
So what's the unusual thing you can find and then kind of extrapolate that and just make it as relatable as possible?
00:14:39.679 --> 00:14:42.799
But that's something I learned from you know working in the comedy world.
00:14:42.879 --> 00:14:49.600
Aaron Powell And it shows in the book that there is a level of humor that makes it, I think, even more enjoyable to read.
00:14:49.600 --> 00:14:58.879
And it is a hard balance between, and and you touched on this briefly, the historical accuracy of it, but then also making it fun.
00:14:58.879 --> 00:15:01.679
And I think your book shows that it it can be.
00:15:02.159 --> 00:15:02.320
Yeah.
00:15:02.320 --> 00:15:08.159
I think the, you know, again, it comes back to the fact that there's such good information in here and such interesting information.
00:15:08.159 --> 00:15:14.559
And so it's really not, it's not about changing anything in the document, it's about just phrasing it in a different way.
00:15:14.559 --> 00:15:20.080
And there's so much, honestly, that I learned from writing this book that I did not learn in school.
00:15:20.080 --> 00:15:24.879
Like I said, I had a half a year in eighth grade and I went to school in D.C.
00:15:24.879 --> 00:15:32.159
And growing up in a political family in in and around D.C., the fact that I didn't have this education.
00:15:32.159 --> 00:15:36.240
I mean, my mom taught me a ton of stuff, but you know, she didn't sit down and go through the Constitution.
00:15:36.240 --> 00:15:43.600
So when I actually sat down and went through it and parsed everything out, I was absolutely stunned at how much was in there.
00:15:43.600 --> 00:15:48.159
Also, even just my basic understanding of government was changed.
00:15:48.159 --> 00:15:54.720
I may ruffle some feathers by saying this, but I learned my entire life that we have three coequal branches of government.
00:15:54.720 --> 00:15:57.360
After reading this document, I don't think that's true.
00:15:57.360 --> 00:15:59.840
I think Congress was very clearly designed.
00:15:59.840 --> 00:16:13.360
If if half the document is about one branch of government and outlying all the massive powers that it has the ability to do, also the fact that it has the ability to fire the president, the president can't fire Congress, it's very hard to say that these are co-equal branches of government.
00:16:13.360 --> 00:16:23.279
And in researching the book, originally it was supposed to be according, you know, for the delegates of the convention, the original idea was for Congress to pick the president before they decided on the Electoral College.
00:16:23.279 --> 00:16:28.000
So clearly they wanted to get away from a king, and they came up with this government by committee.
00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:36.639
And I think that we often conflate the separation of powers and checks and balances with equal power and equal balance, and that's not actually true.
00:16:37.200 --> 00:16:42.799
And that's such important framing to point out if that's our reference point for how the government is structured.
00:16:42.799 --> 00:16:52.879
Now I'm curious if there are certain um rights or protections you you referenced, you know, we benefit from the Constitution in ways we don't even know about.
00:16:52.879 --> 00:17:03.039
Given your like knowledge, the deep knowledge that you've gained from writing this book, what are some of the rights that are really key and important that we have, particularly those that we might not know about?
00:17:03.600 --> 00:17:23.519
Well, so many of the things that we have a right to in the legal process come from the Bill of Rights, you know, the right to not uh self-incriminate ourselves, the right to not be tried twice for the same uh a crime, the right to a defense lawyer, so many of the, you know, being you know tried in front of a jury of our peers, you know, neighbors and friends and people in our community.
00:17:23.519 --> 00:17:33.359
So many of these things come from the Bill of Rights, all written by one person who lived on this very land I'm I'm sitting on and recording on right now.
00:17:33.359 --> 00:17:35.680
And I think people don't realize that.
00:17:35.680 --> 00:17:47.519
You know, I mean, if you if you ask the average person what's the most important part of the Constitution, I guarantee you uh uh it maybe, maybe not half, maybe slightly more, slightly less, but a significant amount of people will say the Bill of Rights and the individual rights.
00:17:47.519 --> 00:17:59.279
And I don't know how many people realize that one person wrote all of those and you know is responsible largely for what some would say is maybe even the most important part of the Constitution.
00:18:00.160 --> 00:18:12.720
And a point you mentioned in your book, Ben, uh, and this is one I'm I'm particularly interested in because when you read the Constitution, its initial form is seven articles, but then there's additional amendments.
00:18:12.720 --> 00:18:29.200
So from kind of your project writing this book and your research, as the Constitution has changed over time with the addition of new amendments, why would you say it's important to know the history of how that document has changed in terms of how it applies to us today?
00:18:30.240 --> 00:18:36.160
I would say it's you know you can honestly look at American history um using the amendments as a guide.
00:18:36.160 --> 00:18:43.279
And you can take the amendment and you know unpack it, not just the language in it, but what was happening at the time, right?
00:18:43.279 --> 00:19:00.480
The reason we have the 12th amendment, because we had we almost fell apart in 1800 with uh an election that you know basically the way the electoral college was originally written, where you know the second place person got you know to be vice president and the first place got to be president, but there was an accidental tie, and then the vice president.
00:19:00.480 --> 00:19:01.680
I mean, this is all covered in Hamilton.
00:19:01.680 --> 00:19:03.359
If anyone hasn't seen that, you should check that out.
00:19:03.359 --> 00:19:05.039
Um, or or just read about it.
00:19:05.039 --> 00:19:12.400
But the thing that I think is so interesting is that you can see, okay, well, there was a huge issue, and then they needed an amendment to correct that.
00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:14.880
Same thing, you know, coming out of the Civil War.
00:19:14.880 --> 00:19:26.000
The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were trying to create more of an even playing field for Americans, African Americans, mostly male African Americans, um, at that time.
00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:33.599
You know, fast forward to the 16th Amendment and establishing an income tax during a time of huge wealth inequality.
00:19:33.599 --> 00:19:54.000
Um, you know, what we did with the 17th Amendment, now we get to elect our senators, you know, looking at prohibition and then you know repealing it with the 18th and the 21st, and then also looking at um obviously the 19th Women, but also looking at this period in the 1960s that I think often gets overlooked, where we had four constitutional amendments in a 10-year span.
00:19:54.000 --> 00:19:59.359
Imagine since 2015, 2016, if we'd added four amendments to the Constitution.
00:19:59.359 --> 00:20:14.160
You know, and I think there was a really amazing period, you know, when it comes to obviously electoral votes for for DC, banning poll taxes, fixing bugs in the Constitution with you know, presidential and vice presidential vacancies, and then also people 18 and up getting voting rights protections.
00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:18.720
Obviously, you also have these important amendments like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
00:20:18.720 --> 00:20:25.440
But looking in through, looking at the amendments as sort of a way to look at uh tracing American history.
00:20:25.440 --> 00:20:36.720
And I do think that one of the huge reasons those amendments passed in the 1960s, 60s and 70s is that we had a huge amount of civic education coming out of World War II.
00:20:36.720 --> 00:20:42.240
And we had classes - uh historian uh Kathleen Hall Jameson at Annenberg's UPEN talks about this.
00:20:42.240 --> 00:20:47.200
We had maybe the most robust period of civic education we've ever had in the United States.
00:20:47.200 --> 00:20:57.440
And part of it had to do with national pride after winning this gigantic war, and really establishing across the country classes like civics and foundations of democracy and U.S.
00:20:57.440 --> 00:20:58.799
history and American government.
00:20:58.799 --> 00:21:05.359
And these were really common all throughout our school system in every state, multiple years, multiple classes.
00:21:05.359 --> 00:21:15.519
And if you have that from, say, I don't know, 1946 or whatever, into the early 60s, those people are graduating and then becoming voting age.
00:21:15.519 --> 00:21:18.640
And they're really well informed and well educated.
00:21:18.640 --> 00:21:30.400
And I think it's because we had such a highly educated population in the area of government and civics that we were able to make happen massive laws like the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, these amendments.
00:21:30.400 --> 00:21:37.839
I don't think these things would have happened if we didn't have this shared, very high-level foundation of civic and government understanding.
00:21:38.480 --> 00:21:40.079
I have never thought of it like that.
00:21:40.079 --> 00:21:50.799
That's a great point about civic education post-World War II and how that affected kind of ripple effects of the education system, how people are participating in government.
00:21:50.799 --> 00:21:59.680
And it makes me think of our earlier conversation about your mom, your mom teaching you about civics and how that was important, not just in the classroom, but also.
00:21:59.680 --> 00:22:01.119
Also at home.
00:22:01.119 --> 00:22:07.359
And you know, today's landscape is very different than even 10 years ago.
00:22:07.440 --> 00:22:08.160
Aaron Powell Yeah.
00:22:08.160 --> 00:22:11.440
It's really uh disappointing what has happened with civics.
00:22:11.440 --> 00:22:19.359
And this is not to say that there aren't amazing teachers out there, educators, and states that are doing a good job because there absolutely are.
00:22:19.359 --> 00:22:40.160
But I think after the 1960s, you started to see a drop in civics classes and requirements, and then really more of an accidental shift away starting in 2002 with No Child Left Behind, where you had all these requirements for states to teach to English language arts and math and you know new standardized tests to evaluate this.
00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:45.039
And if stools consistently didn't perform well in these tests, their state could shut them down.
00:22:45.039 --> 00:22:49.599
I mean, it was a huge amount of new pressure for teachers to teach to these tests.
00:22:49.599 --> 00:23:02.240
And so subjects like civics that didn't fit those requirements kind of got crank and the classes became an afterthought, and maybe they got thrown into US history or got thrown into social studies, um, but just became deprioritized.
00:23:02.240 --> 00:23:13.599
And as a result of those classes no longer be required or just, you know, so much less than was previously required, you have people graduating who don't have the same level of foundation as previous generations.
00:23:13.599 --> 00:23:19.759
And I think it shows when you look at our larger, you know, system and environment of government.
00:23:20.559 --> 00:23:28.240
And given your experience, how can young people today use technology to better connect to this?
00:23:28.240 --> 00:23:31.680
Because I think technology can be distracting in a way.
00:23:31.680 --> 00:23:33.599
There's so much content out there.
00:23:33.599 --> 00:23:40.240
I think it makes it more challenging to distinguish between misinformation, but it can also be a powerful tool.
00:23:40.240 --> 00:23:42.799
So do you have any insight on that?
00:23:43.359 --> 00:23:48.720
Well, on a very selfish level, I host a show on PBS called Civics Made Easy.
00:23:48.720 --> 00:24:02.960
And we uh we just won a Webby for our first season, and we're in pre-production on season two, and it's 12 episodes, and every episode is 10 to 15 minutes long, and it's all about um a different part of the government and how it works from the Electoral College to understanding why we have U.S.
00:24:02.960 --> 00:24:08.880
territories to why there's you know primarily a two-party system to you know, all sorts of different things.
00:24:08.880 --> 00:24:11.759
And so, you know, these videos live on YouTube.
00:24:11.759 --> 00:24:15.839
They live on the PBS app and on the website, but primarily YouTube and social media.
00:24:15.839 --> 00:24:20.799
And you know their first season was seen by four million people.
00:24:20.799 --> 00:24:26.640
And it this the show is being taught in 40,000 classrooms across the United States.
00:24:26.640 --> 00:24:35.359
And this is an exercise, you know, we were really careful and cautious to design it in a way that, like you said, meeting people where they are.
00:24:35.359 --> 00:24:44.799
And there are increments, yes, there's a lot of noise and a lot of hyperbole and a lot of people trying to make you mad all the time, but there's also an amazing amount of resources.
00:24:44.799 --> 00:24:49.440
Uh one on PBS that I have no affiliation with that I think is really cool is called Crash Course.
00:24:49.440 --> 00:24:58.480
There's a different, you know, it's it's a mix of live action and um animated, and it, you know, a bunch of different subjects, but their civics and government course is really fantastic.
00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:00.400
And it's been seen millions and millions of times.
00:25:00.400 --> 00:25:02.480
It came out, I think, 10 or 15 years ago.
00:25:02.480 --> 00:25:06.880
So there are incredible resources out there that do meet people where they are.
00:25:06.880 --> 00:25:09.200
We have to sift through them and find them.
00:25:09.200 --> 00:25:13.599
But we're living in a time where, yes, there's more bad information or incorrect information than ever.
00:25:13.599 --> 00:25:15.680
There's also more great information.
00:25:15.680 --> 00:25:18.799
And, you know, it's really both a blessing and a curse.
00:25:18.799 --> 00:25:20.720
But I I lean on the blessing part.
00:25:21.279 --> 00:25:26.480
I have watched many crash course videos to help me prepare for teaching college courses.
00:25:26.480 --> 00:25:30.160
So yes, there are amazing resources, and it's good to know that.
00:25:30.160 --> 00:25:43.039
And I I wonder kind of to that point, for somebody that does want to become civically engaged, in addition to kind of seeking out these resources, you know, you think about PBS, it's a very reputable resource.
00:25:43.039 --> 00:25:46.640
What else can people be doing to get engaged?
00:25:47.119 --> 00:25:54.640
I would say what an important thing to keep in mind is that it doesn't take a lot of time every day to get engaged.
00:25:54.640 --> 00:25:56.480
You don't need to be on your phone 24-7.
00:25:56.480 --> 00:26:02.319
You don't need to be paying attention to the every single push-up date or notification or comment or whatever.
00:26:02.319 --> 00:26:05.680
That that's a way to spiral out of control and crash out.
00:26:05.680 --> 00:26:07.039
So don't do that.
00:26:07.039 --> 00:26:14.799
I my suggestion would be to take a few minutes either in the morning or in the evening, and that's your time to get caught up on news.
00:26:14.799 --> 00:26:18.799
And I would highly suggest people don't just look at news at the federal level.
00:26:18.799 --> 00:26:25.119
Whatever your you know preferred way to get news at the federal about you know the national government is, that's fine.
00:26:25.119 --> 00:26:29.440
But I would also look to great resources that focus on government at the state level.
00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:30.559
I live in California.
00:26:30.559 --> 00:26:37.920
CalMatters is an incredible resource, it's nonpartisan, it covers what's going on in Sacramento and the state legislature and issues throughout the state.
00:26:37.920 --> 00:26:40.480
Um, and then I also look at county information.
00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:43.519
I live in Los Angeles County, the largest county in the country.
00:26:43.519 --> 00:26:48.880
And LA Times does a great job of covering up what's in the county, and then you know, my local city paper.
00:26:48.880 --> 00:26:57.599
So when you're catching up on news, you know, it's easy to just get focus on the federal level because that's what dominates the conversation since it affects all of us.
00:26:57.599 --> 00:27:02.720
But oftentimes it's the stuff at the state and the county and the city level that actually affects your life more.
00:27:02.720 --> 00:27:07.119
And you know, the further down you go, the less partisan it becomes.
00:27:07.119 --> 00:27:19.599
You're talking about issues like parks, you know, and and trash coming on time and just sort of city management, county management, you know, homelessness, obviously, the cost of housing, a lot of things that are happening and handled at the state and local level.
00:27:19.599 --> 00:27:32.400
So I would pick one resource at each level, something at the national level, something at the state, the county, the city, and you know, spend five or ten minutes a day in the morning or at night and just you know, checking out what happened.
00:27:32.400 --> 00:27:38.880
And I guarantee you, if you do that every day, even if it's just reading headlines, you will be so much more informed about what's going on.
00:27:38.880 --> 00:27:43.119
And that will help inform how you put pressure on elected leaders and ultimately vote.
00:27:43.599 --> 00:27:49.359
And Ben, I think this is such a wonderful kind of idea to touch on.
00:27:49.359 --> 00:27:52.880
Civics doesn't just mean politics or voting.
00:27:52.880 --> 00:27:54.799
It's so much more than that.
00:27:54.799 --> 00:27:59.279
It's about, as you said, how your you know, local community is is running.
00:27:59.279 --> 00:28:04.640
It's you know, sidewalks in your community, it's a public library, it's you know, transportation, it's it's all of these different things.
00:28:04.640 --> 00:28:06.960
There's so many ways to get involved.
00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:10.000
But it's helpful to know because I'll speak for myself.
00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:21.839
It can be very daunting feeling like, okay, I need to know what's going on like everywhere all the time, like federal level, what's happening in DC, look at a couple different sources, and then I live in Virginia, so Virginia.
00:28:21.839 --> 00:28:30.960
But knowing that, okay, just you know, a little bit of time, even just looking at the headlines, it makes it feel very doable.
00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:33.519
Each of us can only do so much.
00:28:33.519 --> 00:28:38.799
None of us can, you know, w we can't individually pass laws and and ratify amendment.
00:28:38.799 --> 00:28:41.039
All of this is by committee.
00:28:41.039 --> 00:28:46.000
And I think the the way that I like to think about it is tug of war, like the game, right?
00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:50.319
If you have a few people, you know, we can only pull so much individually.
00:28:50.319 --> 00:28:54.000
But the more people you have on your side, they only have to pull a little bit.
00:28:54.000 --> 00:29:03.039
But it's truly a numbers game because a bunch of people pulling a little, that strength adds up monumentally and exponentially the more people get involved.
00:29:03.039 --> 00:29:05.039
So that's really all I do.
00:29:05.039 --> 00:29:16.000
If all of us are doing a little bit every day, it is so much more impactful than a few of us trying to do a lot and eventually crashing out and losing our minds.
00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:27.279
So it's very helpful for people to just take a little bit of time in their day, catch up, get involved, because it's just it sounds daunting, but then you realize that it's only five, 10 minutes a day.
00:29:27.279 --> 00:29:32.400
I think we can all find time to do that to exercise our duties as citizens.
00:29:32.720 --> 00:29:45.279
And again, that can be a conversation you have at the dinner table, you know, if you're a parent or a guardian or, you know, somebody's caretaker, just looking at what's happening in your city or in your state.
00:29:45.279 --> 00:29:48.640
Um, because that is probably affecting your child too.
00:29:48.640 --> 00:29:53.119
And they're not just um they're they're a a citizen in training, essentially.
00:29:53.119 --> 00:29:55.039
We're preparing them or we should be.
00:29:55.440 --> 00:29:55.599
Yeah.
00:29:55.599 --> 00:30:00.799
I mean, you know, there's still there are lots of things that people who, you know, if you're not voting age, can still do.
00:30:00.799 --> 00:30:09.680
You can still write to elected leaders, you know, put put pressure on them, go to town halls, ask questions, you know, knock on doors, you know, some of these things obviously you know do with a parent.
00:30:09.680 --> 00:30:21.839
But you know, there's a lot of ways to start getting engaged and following the news and information so that, you know, by the time you turn 18, you're ready, you know, you've got a full solid foundation of information that you can use to make a decision.
00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:37.519
And as we wrap up our conversation today, I would love to hear from you if there is one thing that every listener should walk away from this conversation, remembering either about the Constitution or civic participation.
00:30:38.640 --> 00:30:55.200
That it was designed for us to change and to act on, that laws and amendments are only as good as the people who enforce them and abide by them and live by them, because otherwise they're just suggestions on paper.
00:30:55.200 --> 00:31:08.559
And we have to be really diligent about making sure that our rights stay protected, uh, that our freedoms stay there for all of us in future generations, and that you know, this information is not out of people's grasp.
00:31:08.559 --> 00:31:16.880
Even if you have no background studying government, understanding government, I promise you there are resources out there.
00:31:16.880 --> 00:31:21.920
Some are mine, many are not, that are amazing, that can help you get caught up and involved.
00:31:21.920 --> 00:31:34.319
And I just want to make sure people realize that this is this may seem daunting, but ultimately it is not, and it doesn't require a lot of your time to be really, really helpful when it comes to strengthening and perpetuating our democracy.
00:31:34.640 --> 00:31:39.279
Well, thank you so much, Ben Chian, for being here in the studio all the way from California.
00:31:39.279 --> 00:31:56.640
This was a great conversation, and I have to say I really appreciate how you know you've really dedicated your work to bridging the gap between this seemingly academic or legal heavy text into something that's very meaningful and relatable to everybody.
00:31:56.960 --> 00:31:58.000
Well, thank you so much for having me.
00:31:58.000 --> 00:31:58.720
Happy to be here.
00:31:58.960 --> 00:32:00.480
And thank you to all of our listeners.
00:32:00.480 --> 00:32:04.079
Please subscribe and share the show with your family and friends.
00:32:04.079 --> 00:32:08.559
And join us again in two weeks as we consider the Constitution.
