This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories all show long.

We're celebrating the 4th of July.

Up next, a story from one of our great and departed historians. We try to keep his voice alive because it was so unique. The great

David McCullough. And we want to thank the John Adams Institute in the Netherlands for providing

and sharing this audio with us.

This was his speech McCullough gave before he died in the Netherlands at the Institute

on how our founders weren't like ordinary men and why we must know our history.

They weren't just like we are.

We can never assume they were just.

They were nothing like we are in many, many ways.

And one of the ways I tried to get inside their lives was to try and read not just what they wrote, but what they read.

So I tried to read all the writers that Abigail and John read, DeFoe, Swift,

Pope, Cervantes, Shakespeare. And what's so fascinating is to see how often they are

not just picking up ideas or turns of phrases, but whole sentences, whole thoughts that come word for word out

of that English literature. I think you can't understand people unless you understand where

they came from, where they grew up. The vernacular, the language, the things that, you know,

the sort of rules to live by, taught to them by their parents.

You know the old famous line of Harry Truman, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

That's a common expression in Western Missouri. That's not Harry Truman.

And you learn so far more about life.

That's why I think it's when students are not interested in history,

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