The Brian Lehrer Show

250 Years: Ken Burns; Jon Meacham; Edward Larson; AJ Jacobs

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For the nation's 250th birthday, some 'Independence-minded' favorites:

  • Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein, co-directors (with David Schmidt) of "The American Revolution," talk about their 12-part docuseries for PBS on the nation's founding.
  • Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian and the author of American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union (Random House, 2026), puts today's political conflicts in the historical context of tensions going back to the country's founding.
  • Edward Larson, chaired professor of history and law at Pepperdine University and the author of Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters (W. W. Norton & Company, 2025), talks about the change in thinking 250 years ago in the American colonies from British subjects protesting the crown to revolution.
  • A. J. Jacobs, NPR contributor, essayist, and the author of The Year of Living Biblically, The Know-It-All, It's All Relative and The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning (Crown, 2024), offers his take on "originalism" by living like a "founding father" - tricorn hat and all.

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    These interviews were lightly edited for time and clarity; the original web versions are available here:

    Ken Burns on The American Revolution (October 31, 2025)

    American Conflicts: As It Ever Was (February 16, 2026)

    1776's No Kings (November 24, 2025)

    A.J. Jacobs Lives Originalism (May 8, 2024)

     

    image: This is a high-resolution image of the United States Declaration of Independence . This image is a version of the 1823 William Stone facsimile — Stone may well have used a wet pressing process (that removed ink from the original document onto a contact sheet for the purpose of making the engraving). (original: w:Second Continental Congress; reproduction: William Stone, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)


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