Hello and welcome to this special series of The Federalist History Hour. I'm Hayden Daniel,

editor at The Federalist. As always, you can email the show at Radio at Federalist.com, follow us on

Twitter at Federalist. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts and, of course,

the premium version of our website as well. I'm joined today by Brianna Lyman, correspondent at the Federalist.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

America's got a pretty big birthday coming up,

the big $250 this July 4th,

and the White House is pretty busy working on a very special little celebration.

I also understand that you are busy on this little special project

celebrating this nation's founding called Countdown to Freedom,

in which you chronicle the events of the Revolution from January the 1st, 1776

to July 4, 1776, when the founders signed the

Declaration of Independence and leapt out into the unknown and embarked America on this great

political experiment that we have been on for the last 250 years. Is that correct? Yeah, it's

just, it's been almost a month now. We're coming up on that one month mark and it's a lot of fun. If you haven't already had a chance to check it out, I encourage it. It's under two minutes because I don't want to bog people down. I know everyone has a busy life, but I think it's really important as we head to July 4th to understand just kind of reality. Not only were the founders facing, but average colonists,

right? The entire movement would have been unsuccessful and impossible if not for the average

farmers and tavern keepers and so forth and so forth who took up arms and were willing to

fight and give their lives for the cause. And in order to give their lives for the cause, they needed to be convinced.

And Hayden, I know you know this as well, but it wasn't easy to convince all the colonists to pick up arms against a country of which, you know, they had family living overseas.

Maybe they were born overseas and came here.

Maybe their parents were.

...