Making the Constitution Readable: PBS' Ben Sheehan on Civics, Comedy, and Closing the Knowledge Gap episode artwork

EPISODE · Jun 17, 2026 · 32 MIN

Making the Constitution Readable: PBS' Ben Sheehan on Civics, Comedy, and Closing the Knowledge Gap

from Consider the Constitution · host The Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution

What does the Constitution actually say — and why haven't most of us read it? Ben Sheehan, bestselling author and award-winning digital creator, joins host Dr. Katie Crawford Lackey to talk about the civic knowledge gap and how he used his background in comedy to make one of the most important documents in American history genuinely readable.Ben traces his own constitutional education — from dinner table civics lessons with his mom, a Senate staffer, to his years at Funny or Die and the Upright Citizens Brigade, to writing OMG WTF Does the Constitution Actually Say? He makes the case that Congress is more powerful than we're taught, that the Bill of Rights is the work of one person who lived on the very land where this episode was recorded, and that civic engagement doesn't have to mean doomscrolling — just ten minutes a day across the federal, state, and local level.Ben is also the host of Civics Made Easy on PBS, now being taught in 40,000 classrooms nationwide.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Jun 17, 2026

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What does the Constitution actually say — and why haven't most of us read it? Ben Sheehan, bestselling author and award-winning digital creator, joins host Dr. Katie Crawford Lackey to talk about the civic knowledge gap and how he used his background in comedy to make one of the most important documents in American history genuinely readable. Ben traces his own constitutional education — from dinner table civics lessons with his mom, a Senate staffer, to his years at Funny or Die and the Upri...

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Making the Constitution Readable: PBS' Ben Sheehan on Civics, Comedy, and Closing the Knowledge Gap

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