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Hi, iHeart discover music, radio and podcast you'll love.

On this episode of Newt's World, as part of Founding Father's Week, I'm talking about the lives

and legacies of our original founders and the impact they've had in our country.

On this episode of Newt's World, we're going to deal with somebody who's truly immortal

and who has become surprisingly controversial, which tells you more about the time we live in.

In April 1962, President John F. Kennedy hosted a Nobel Prize dinner at the White House.

He said, quote, I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge,

that has ever been gathered together at the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

Now, think about that tribute. It's a little bit exaggerated. Jefferson was one of the most extraordinary

of the Founding Fathers, not only very, very smart, a great writer, but somebody who had an almost universal

interest in knowledge. In a different era, he might have been considered a Renaissance man,

but in the colonial period of America, people didn't even think like that.

So Jefferson is fascinating. He was controversial in his lifetime, and he is controversial today.

He's the founder of the Democratic Republican Party, which is today the oldest political institution in the world.

He created the first really competitive presidential race and broke with many of the norms of the British system.

He distrusted government, which is really remarkable when you look at the people who today criticize him and are opposed to it.

Jefferson somehow came to this belief that freedom was based on the individual and on the individual's relationship with God.

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