Inside Crash Course’s ‘Big Questions on US Government’
A conversation between USAFacts and Complexly on a civic education video series that tackles the complicated issues of the current political moment.
What happens when the basic explanations about how government works fall short of the present moment? This question led the educational YouTube channel Crash Course to partner with USAFacts to create “Big Questions on US Government,” a 15-part video series discussing the contentious topics that define American politics.
Each episode traces a current issue, such as election integrity, and explains the history, political science, and data behind it. Complexly, the company that produces Crash Course, and USAFacts, designed the series to be nonpartisan and to inform rather than to persuade.
Series host Kousha Navidar has worked as a math teacher, political speechwriter, radio host, and television producer. He sees his role as something more than a job.
“At a moment when our government feels so intractable, so messy, it is also deeply personal to 340 million people around the country,” Navidar said. Being a companion to viewers as they make sense of it, he said, is “something 16-year-old me would appreciate and be proud of.”
USAFacts spoke with Navidar; Meghan Modafferi, executive producer at Complexly; and Kari D’Elia, chief product officer at USAFacts, about how the series came together, why the team leaned into the messiness of government, and civic advice for young people.
The conversation that started the series
The idea for the series dates to a conversation USAFacts had with Hank Green, co-founder of Complexly. USAFacts sought out Green’s ideas and counsel on how to translate our mission of turning public data into public knowledge for classrooms.
“We talked about our hopes and dreams for engaging youth in a constructive way around the messiness of politics and government right now,” D’Elia said. “One that lives in the complexity of the moment but doesn’t fall victim to all of the bias framing nearly all political content right now. Then he wrote to us after and said, ‘Let’s make a series together.’ And we were like ‘Oh my gosh, yes.’”
For Crash Course, the partnership was a natural fit. The channel typically works with educational institutions, including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute on its biology series and PBS on others. Modafferi said USAFacts fits a similar space: educating the public with a focus on accessible data.
The series fits a core belief of USAFacts. “The public cannot hold their government accountable — which is the whole point of a democracy — if they do not have access to the data and information to do so,” D’Elia said.
The series, she said, aims to explain the first principles, theories, and data behind American democracy and make it “free and accessible for everyone.”
Get weekly insights
Subscribe for data-driven insights. No spin, just the facts.
Data meets storytelling
Since launching in 2012, Crash Course has grown to more than 17 million YouTube subscribers by turning educational subjects into fast-paced, visually compelling videos. Partners usually come to the channel because they don’t know how to tell a visual story themselves. This time, Modafferi said, the partner brought a visual skill of its own.
“We don’t have data journalists on staff,” she said. “Getting to partner with USAFacts on making those more complex data visualizations visually accessible was really unique and cool. And I think you’ll see it in the videos as a huge benefit.”
USAFacts does most of its explaining through charts and data. D’Elia said Crash Course added what the numbers alone couldn’t: characters, storylines, and diagrams.
“So often we talk at USAFacts about ‘how do we make this more understandable and more approachable, especially by a younger population,’” she said. “The storytelling around the data that [Crash Course] provides was really incredible.”
Navidar hosts the series as if he’s talking to a friend. That requires a delicate balance when discussing topics as divisive and charged as elections and polarization. He credits his years as a high school math teacher for his ability to break these topics down and set the tone.
“When you’re in a classroom, students respond to the vibes you’re giving off,” he said. “When you’re calm, and you’re like, ‘This is important to talk about, and you’re in a good space,’ I think that goes a lot towards it.”
His improv background also helps create that space. Navidar plays several recurring characters in the series, including Buff, a historian built like a wrestler who is also tender, sweet, shy, and awkward on camera.
“I hope these characters make the content more fun and dynamic,” Navidar said. “I also hope these characters as an ensemble showcase how diverse we the people are, both as a country, but also the richness we hold within ourselves. We are all connected by being part of this democracy, and the big democratic experiment demands everyone has a seat at the table.”
In episode four, for example, Navidar mixes political theory and Star Wars references with data visualizations on voter registration laws and turnout to explain why some states have higher voter participation than others.
And, frequently throughout the series, Navidar explains polarization by pitting the spinach party and the arugula party against each other. Spoiler alert: he has a long-running feud with arugula.
Navigating the current moment
“It’s super tricky to talk about politics and government today without being accused of having an agenda,” D’Elia said. “We can go into politically charged topics without an agenda or judgment attached to the data. And that’s important credibility for any civic literacy effort that’s meant to work everywhere, not just in places that are already inclined to agree with it.”
Discussing complicated and charged topics such as polarization can spark strong feelings and confusion. Modafferi explained that the team intentionally zoomed out from the current moment to focus on the broader historical and political trends that explain what’s going on rather than the news of the day. The polarization Americans experience today may feel unique or unprecedented, but political scientists have been tracking widening political divides for decades.
“Understanding that bigger picture sheds light on the current situation in a way that doesn’t lend itself as easily to partisan finger-pointing,” Modafferi said.
When Modafferi, Navidar, and the rest of the Complexly team develop their videos, they imagine an open-minded audience willing to learn. Instead of telling people how to think and feel, they present information, evidence, and scholarly interpretations for viewers to make up their own minds.
The process isn’t easy, but that’s because the answers are complex. The series embraced nuance as a tool for explaining a complicated world.
Inspiring democracy in young minds
Modafferi hopes educators use “Big Questions on US Government” to bridge the gap between the study of civics and the experience of living in 2026 America. The modern way people learn information about the government, through the news cycle and social media, can make current events feel like they’re happening in a completely different world than the US Government textbook was written in.
Modafferi emphasized that she wants the series to be the start of a civics learning journey, not the end. Her goal is to spark excitement about learning about politics and government and arm future voters with applicable information to create the world they want to live in.
“I hope the series can help students make some big connections, ask deep questions, and see why it matters to pay attention to and be interested in civics,” she said.
D’Elia encourages educators to explore the USAFacts companion materials for each episode, which include explainers, interactive data visualizations, and reflection questions for deeper thinking.
“While making the series, there was so much more we wished we could explore, and the companion materials gave us the space to do so,” D’Elia said.
Navidar became a US citizen at 16 and came to see government that way over time. “What I’ve had to unlearn is that what appears to be a monolith is a series of decisions over time made by real people who themselves could not foresee entirely the way the future would look,” he said. Government, he said, is “a real human endeavor” that people have built together, despite disenfranchisement, and can keep building.
Being a companion to viewers as they make sense of government is something 16-year-old me would appreciate and be proud of.
But how do young people contribute to building democracy? Navidar gave some suggestions: Vote if you can and contact your representatives whether you’re old enough to vote or not. Then, act locally and seek out in-person connections with others whose life experiences differ from yours. He also urged young people to read anything, from nonfiction to poetry. “The thing we cannot lose is our curiosity,” he said.
For first-time voters, Navidar and Modafferi stressed knowing where to find good information and how to judge whether a source is trustworthy. These skills are central to USAFacts’ work outside the series in providing information “that anyone can access, understand and use to decide if government is working in their best interest,” D’Elia said.
D’Elia is watching the next generation at home. “I am so excited to see what my own kids, who are in the second and fourth grades, do with the grand experiment we call American democracy,” she said.
It takes a village
Though Navidar is the face you see and the voice you hear in the video series, he gives most of the credit to the team.
“I can’t emphasize enough how much it is the team that made what is great about [the series] exist,” he said. “The characters that I played, the jokes that I made — nothing was in a vacuum. It just amazed me how heartfelt, intelligent, and hardworking the whole team was together.”
Watch the series and explore the data behind it at usafacts.org/crash-course.
Keep exploring
- America's public data has a trust problem. Now what? - Americans are calling for better data and better discourse. How can we answer that call?
- Why does USAFacts use US government data? - Here's why we believe it's critical to give Americans a site where the data is 100% sourced from the government itself.
- Claude Connector - USAFacts exists to make government data easier to find and understand, and that means showing up where people already are. Increasingly, that’s in a conversation with AI tools.
- How to use government data - The US government generates data on everything from unemployment rates to the status of endangered marine mammals. Here’s why that’s important.