Virtue and Self-Governance in America

In our new podcast, Pursuit: The Founders’ Guide to Happiness, Jeffrey Rosen explores the founders’ lives with the historians who know them best. Plus, filmmaker Ken Burns shares his daily practice of self-reflection. 

The “pursuit of happiness” is one of the most famous phrases in American history. When America’s founders wrote it in the Declaration of Independence, they intended it to mean happiness through lifelong learning and self-improvement. 

To start our series, Jeffrey Rosen and Robert P. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, trace how the meaning of the pursuit of happiness has changed over time. Then, American filmmaker Ken Burns, who has spent his “entire life trying to figure out the United States,” shares how daily self-reflection has given him new perspectives on what the founders faced 250 years ago. 

Follow Pursuit: The Founders’ Guide to Happiness on Apple Podcast and Spotify. 

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