You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

It's the most wonderful time.

Are you a smart booker or a silly booker?

Smart bookers get access to a three-erport lounge

by booking a five-star holiday with On the Beach.

Silly bookers?

Well, enjoy those cues at the bar.

Stop booking around and visit Onthebeach.com.

Conditions apply.

Seven night minimum stay, outbound only from selected airports for up to six people,

Atoll protected.

On the Beach! The United States of America has been in existence less than 250 years. That may seem like a very long time, but consider that this is only 10 generations, that we can trace back through only 10 forebears

to find an ancestor who was contemporary with the nation's founding, and it becomes clearer

how very young this country is. Think about your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents,

and you're already a third of the way to conceiving the length of ten generations. Though the U.S. is older than many

another modern nation in the Americas, in the grand scheme of history and in comparison to countries

elsewhere in the world, it's still quite young. Nevertheless, during the course of

these 250 years, we have accumulated much history and much mythology, immortalizing more than one

American leader in the public imagination. This process of eternalizing the country's most powerful and influential persons

is nowhere more clearly symbolized than in the memorial at Mount Rushmore, where the likenesses

of four perennially popular presidents have been carved into stone, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

If we can judge by the Presidential Historians' Survey, conducted by C-SPAN four times in the last 25 years,

...