Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

It's 50 Weeks that shaped America, Week 1, Part 2. Let's return to 1976. America's last big birthday, the bicentennial. And last episode we talked about the gloomy state

of the country, the shambolic preparations. I would like to say that it's like a lot of birthday

parties, tough to plan and stressful, and there's going to be some people there who you're not

really excited to see. Maybe you don't actually want to go, but guess what, folks, it's coming,

like all birthdays birthdays no matter what

you do so put on your party hat this is happening whether you like it or not and america was ready

to celebrate here as always to discuss is nicole hammer vanderbilt and kelly carter jackson of

wowsley hello there jody hey there jody it sounds like you have a little bit of birthday trauma. Oh. No, I like my birthday. I was trying to, yeah, you know what? It's funny. I was going to ask you coming out of that with a, I was too harsh on birthdays and maybe not, maybe people really like birthdays, but I don't have birthday trauma. We'll see after, after we get through this year. we'll see how that. Check back in with me.

All right.

But look, I want to start this episode by looking at what went down, at least in the first few months of the year, in Philadelphia.

Because Philadelphia becomes the kind of hub in many ways of a lot of the birthday bicentennial celebrations.

But first, I'm curious for the two of you, like, was that inevitable?

I mean, I know Philadelphia played a huge role in the revolution, but, you know, there's

also Boston.

There's also New York.

There's Washington, D.C.

Like, is it inevitable that kind of things gravitated to Philly?

That's a good question.

I'm biased.

I feel like all things start in Boston.

But maybe that's because, I mean, like, especially when you live in Boston, it's so much a part of the identity of the city. The Revolution is like these big battles in the Boston Tea Party.

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