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Alex Zakaris is professor of political science at University of Vermont and author of

Individuality and Mass Democracy, Mill Emerson and the Burdens of Citizenship. His new book is

The Roots of American Individualism, Political Myth in the Age of Jackson, our topic today. Welcome, Professor Zakaris.

Thanks very much for having me. All right, we'll jump right in. You begin with foundational myths. How do you use the word myth here?

Yeah, so we often use the word myth here? Yeah, so we often use the myth, the term myth, right, to mean

that something is false as in like, yeah, this is an urban legend, a myth, a common misconception.

What I try to do in the book is use the term in a different sense. So, for example, when we

talk about Greek myths, we're talking about something more than just falsehoods, in this sense, a myth is a widely accepted story that helps us make sense of political events and experiences unfolding around us, and that gives us a kind of key to unlocking their meaning.

So, yeah, in the book, I focus on a certain kind of myth, which I call foundational myth.

And a foundational myth is a story that paints a kind of glorified picture of the nation and its people.

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