We Americans are gearing up for a big birthday party,

250 years since the 13 United States declared their independence from Great Britain.

There are sure to be plenty of red, white, and blue bunting, parades and picnics, and fireworks galore.

There will also be American flags, festooning homes, businesses, cars, and trucks, and fashioned into t-shirts, ties, baseball caps, and bikinis.

We will likely also see more portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Franklin than you would if you

robbed a bank. These men have been made into legends. They're on our money, in our classrooms,

and up on Broadway stages. But who were they really? Were they so extraordinary to deserve this

reverence and adulation? Or were they merely plain, honest men facing an extraordinary moment?

Another question you might ask is, are the names we recognize the only ones responsible for the birth of the world's first and currently oldest modern democracy?

On today's Saturday matinee, we're sharing the first episode of Founding Fathers an American Dream,

an epic new eight-part podcast series from Noiser that explores the riveting stories and unfamiliar figures contributing to the birth of the United States of America.

This series, of course, covers George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton.

But it also goes far beyond these figures to uncover stories from some of the millions of

people whose lives shaped the American Revolution, the women organizing resistance movements,

enslaved families, Native American communities, evangelical preachers, and teenage soldiers

thrust into the war. I hope you enjoy. While you're listening,

be sure to search for and follow Founding Fathers and American Dream. We put a link in the show

notes to make it easy for you.

It's April 26th, 1770.

We're in New York City.

On Bowling Green at the southern end of Broadway, the Great and the Good are out on show.

Pillars of the community make small talk, clergymen, politicians, entrepreneurs.

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