On this episode of Newtz 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 Newtz 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 died 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. And he insisted that on his

tombstone, they would only mention three things. This is a man who had spent a lifetime achieving

things. He was, quote, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statue of Virginia

for Religious Freedom and Father of the University of Virginia.

I would argue that in many ways, Jefferson personified the spirit of freedom and had developed out

something much more profound than most of his colleagues as founding fathers. He deeply distrusted

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