This is the first in a two-part series of conversations recorded at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello as History As It Happens goes on location, with special guests historian Alan Taylor and Brandon Dillard, Monticello's director of historic interpretation and audience engagement.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the most famous, inspiring words in all of American history. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." From the moment the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence, Americans have been in a perpetual state of argument over its meaning. Democracy for whom? Freedom and equality for whom? No founding father better articulated the ideals or personified the paradox of the American Revolution. In this episode, Alan Taylor and Brandon Dillard discuss why Jefferson still matters, from his views on the nature of democracy to whether white and Black people might one day live together as equals.