The historic sentence that still defines America

KERA's Think

KERA

Society & Culture, 071003, Kera, Think, Krysboyd

4.8 • 861 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” was a radical concept for the Founding Fathers. How did they get there? Walter Isaacson joins host Krys Boyd to discuss how one sentence in the Declaration of Independence set out a promise of America, how Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams wrestled with its crafting, and how we can still use these words as our common values in a polarized nation today. His book is “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you heard about OMG? Yes. This is a website the New York Times wirecutter featured as one of their most popular gifts. And for good reason, it presents new findings from the largest ever research study into women's pleasure and intimacy. In partnership with researchers at Yale and at Indiana University, they asked tens of thousands of women what they
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0:47.3	That's OMGS.com. With all due respect to I think therefore I am, and go ahead, make my day, and maybe even let there be light, the Declaration of Independence contains a sentence that has inspired Americans and all believers
1:12.5	in freedom and democracy for centuries.
1:15.9	From KERA in Dallas, this is Think.
1:18.4	I'm Chris Boyd.
1:19.8	It is actually the second sentence in the Declaration, the one that reads,
1:23.4	We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
1:31.9	creator with certain unalienable rights. Even if we have that elegant statement committed to memory,
1:38.6	not all of us have thought through what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues actually meant by it.
1:43.5	So my guest has written a delightful little
1:45.3	book to help us do that. Walter Isaacson is professor of history at Tulane University and was CEO of
1:50.9	the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in
1:56.9	2003, and his newest book is called The Greatest Sentence Ever Written. Walter, welcome back to think.
2:03.7	Hey, thank you. It's good to be back with you all. Taken as a whole, what is it you love about that
2:09.0	particular sentence? I think it's a mission statement, especially in these troubled times when we're
2:15.0	about to have our 250th birthday, and we've become so divided. You know, we're about to have our 250th birthday and we become so divided.
	...

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