Episode 1004: America 250 – The Greatest Sentence Ever Written with Walter Isaacson

Summary

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Newt’s World Episode 1004:

America 250 – The Greatest Sentence Ever Written with Walter Isaacson
Released July 2, 2026

Episode Overview

In celebration of America’s 250th birthday, Newt Gingrich hosts Walter Isaacson for a deep dive into Isaacson’s new book, "The Greatest Sentence Ever Written"—an exploration of the Declaration of Independence's enduring mission statement:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The episode explores the sentence’s origins, its philosophical underpinnings, its evolution in American thought, and its role as a unifying ideal, especially in polarized times.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Focus on One Sentence? The Power of a Creed

• Isaacson’s Motivation:
  • Isaacson chose to build a book around this single sentence because it encapsulates the values that can unify Americans during the 250th anniversary, in contrast to today’s divisive climate.
  • “I think it's important that we celebrate our 250th in a way that unifies us and brings us together rather than divides us, because we've had such a poisonous period in our politics...” (12:21, Isaacson)
• Historical Context:
  • The crafting and editing of the sentence by Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams represented a deliberate search for balance between rationality ("self-evident" vs. "sacred") and rights derived from both human reason and a Creator.
  • The sentence is America’s “mission statement” and a guiding star for generations (13:42, Isaacson).

2. The Art of Compromise and Creativity in the Founding

• Collaboration behind the Declaration:
  • The committee (Franklin, Adams, Jefferson) displayed intellectual rigor and compromise, balancing opposing values—a skill Isaacson says the country should recapture.
  • “It takes conversation, it takes compromise, it takes creativity... That the legislative political process inevitably has to involve people finding a common ground to do this stuff.” (16:01, Gingrich)
• Balance as a Democratic Principle:
  • The founders, influenced by science (Newton), saw society as a system of contending forces that needed equilibrium for democracy to thrive.
  • Franklin quoted as saying: “Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies.” (17:08, Isaacson)
  • The sentence is “living, breathing”—each generation must work to bring its promise closer to reality.

3. The Sentence as a Universal Statement

• Not just American, but Universal:
  • Jefferson and the others aimed to articulate rights that transcended America, appealing “to the opinions of mankind.” (23:15, Isaacson)
  • The document became a model globally for societies based on individual rights and representative democracy.
• "We": Social Contract and Collective Agency:
  • Isaacson emphasizes the significance of “We”—drawing on social contract theory (Hobbes, Locke)—as the essence of American governance by consent.
  • “No nation had been created that way… based on the consent of the governed...‘We’ doesn’t just mean 50 or 60 people hanging around in Philadelphia. It means a social contract that was the basis for a moral governing society.” (19:46, Isaacson)

4. Reconciling American Ideals with Historical Reality

• Addressing Slavery and Inclusion:
  • Both acknowledge that the ideals were not originally realized—Jefferson owned slaves, women and people of color were excluded.
  • Isaacson: “We want born perfect, but we were given an aspirational statement… The arc of history bends towards justice, but only if we bend it. And that's what this sentence helps us to do.” (28:20–29:12, Isaacson; referencing Dr. King/Thaddeus Stevens)
• Mission: Bend History Towards Justice:
  • Lincoln’s use at Gettysburg and the suffragette movement illustrate how the sentence served as a “forcing mechanism” for progress.

5. The Need for Patriotism, Civil Discourse, and Civic Celebration

• Learning from the Bicentennial:
  • Gingrich and Isaacson recall the national unity and celebration of 1976, lamenting a lack of similar plans for the 250th and calling for a renewed movement (12:21, Isaacson).
• Call for Constructive Dialogue:
  • Both advocate for discussions that transcend partisanship, urging curiosity and mutual respect:
    • “People have got to come out of their shells, and instead of just yelling things at each other, they have to have a genuine mutual curiosity.” (29:12, Gingrich)
• Community and Civic Goods:
  • Isaacson stresses the importance of agreeing on fundamental values—and of “the commons” (education, libraries, services) as areas of shared civic investment and debate (30:08, Isaacson).

6. What Makes Great Innovators? Applying Lessons from Biography

• Isaacson on Creativity:
  • Creativity, not just intelligence, defines the people he’s written about (Einstein, Musk, Jobs, Leonardo).
  • “It's not the ability to be smart... it's the ability to think out of the box, to be creative, to be imaginative, to do things that AI won't do.” (34:08, Isaacson)
• America as Invention:
  • Gingrich: “If you think of America as an invention…”
  • Isaacson: “Bingo. Exactly right.” (35:24, 35:26)
  • The greatest innovation: the democratic republic based on a social contract (“we the people”).

7. Franklin’s Legacy: Tolerance and Civic Spirit

• Franklin’s Religious Tolerance:
  • Donated to every church in Philadelphia, supported the Jewish congregation, and advocated exposure to diverse beliefs.
  • “That's the type of civil society, that's the type of respect for individual liberty they were creating back then.” (36:47–38:12, Isaacson)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Our Divisions & The Need for Unity:
  • “We need to get a movement going to say, let's do that again for the 250th.” – Walter Isaacson (12:21)
• On Compromise:
  • “Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies.” – Walter Isaacson (quoting Benjamin Franklin, 17:08)
• On the Universal Nature of the Declaration:
  • “We doesn’t just mean 50 or 60 people hanging around in Philadelphia. It means a social contract that was the basis for a moral governing society.” – Walter Isaacson (19:46)
• On the Declaration’s Imperfection and Aspiration:
  • “No, that sentence was not actually true when they wrote it, and Jefferson knew it… But the general arc of history, as Thaddeus Stevens, the abolitionist, said, and Dr. King quoted him as saying, the arc of history bends towards justice, but only if we bend it.” – Walter Isaacson (28:20–29:12)
• On the Essence of Innovation:
  • “It's not the ability to be smart... it's the ability to think out of the box, to be creative, to be imaginative, to do things that AI won't do.” – Walter Isaacson (34:08)
• Franklin’s Legacy of Tolerance:
  • “If the Mufti of Constantinople were to send somebody to teach us Islam and about the Prophet Muhammad, we should listen and we might learn.” – Walter Isaacson (recounting Franklin, 36:47–38:12)

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Key Timestamps

• [02:09] – Gingrich’s opening reflection on the transformative power of MRI (skip, not main topic)
• [10:32] – Newt Gingrich intros Walter Isaacson and sets up the discussion
• [11:48] – Isaacson on why he wrote the book and the healing mission of the 250th
• [13:42] – Editing of the Declaration; “self-evident” vs “sacred”
• [16:01] – The process of collaboration and compromise in the founding era
• [17:08] – “Balance” and Franklin’s wisdom on compromise
• [18:34] – How Lincoln resurrected the Declaration’s moral force at Gettysburg
• [19:46] – "We": Social Contract and democracy’s origins in America
• [23:15] – The universalistic intent of the Declaration
• [24:29] – On the risk that the nation might lose connection to its fundamental values
• [26:11] – Cautions about polarization and challenges of the present vs. the past
• [28:20] – The Declaration’s ideals vs. the founders’ own failings, and how the sentence drove change (slavery, suffrage)
• [30:08] – Civil conversation about shared values and the “commons”
• [34:08] – The true nature of creativity and innovation in great figures
• [35:24-36:12] – America as invention; Declaration as innovation
• [36:47-38:12] – Franklin’s interfaith civic spirit as an example for today
• [38:25] – Isaacson’s next book: Marie Curie

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Takeaway Themes

• America’s founding ideals are an ongoing challenge, not a finished project.
• The Declaration’s greatest sentence serves as an aspiration for uniting across divides, not ignoring shortcomings but learning from them.
• Dialogue, compromise, and civil discourse remain essential American virtues.
• The 250th anniversary is not just a moment to look back, but an opportunity to recommit to shared principles for the future.
• Creativity—in societies and in individuals—is the wellspring of progress.

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Final Note:
Isaacson’s “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written” is positioned as a catalyst for discussion and reflection, aiming to rekindle appreciation for the intellectual and moral ingenuity at America’s start—as well as the ongoing work required to fulfill its promise.
“We should all read the Declaration often in this coming year, and we should all read this particular sentence often and think of the profound wisdom in it.” – Walter Isaacson (36:12)

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Transcript

[America 250 Announcer]

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[Parent]

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[Newt Gingrich]

Welcome to Newts World podcast on the iHeart podcast network. The Greatest American Inventions Today, we step away from communications and computing and talk about something more personal. A machine that, if you've ever had a serious medical concern, may be the reason you're still here. The MRI scanner. For most of human history, looking inside a living body without cutting it open was impossible. X rays, discovered in 1895 were transformative. They made bones visible without surgery. But X rays pass through soft tissue with poor contrast. They can't show a brain tumor. Clearly, they can't distinguish one type of soft tissue from another. And they involve ionizing radiation, which carries its own risks. The MRI scanner changed everything. Magnetic resonance imaging produces extraordinarily detailed images of soft tissue. The brain's internal structures, the cartilage of a knee, the chambers of the heart. Without any radiation at all, it uses magnetic fields and radio waves. It is completely safe. And what it reveals still astonishes me. A living human brain cross section. Every structure visible in detail. The science underlying MRI is nuclear magnetic resonance NMR, discovered in the 1940s by Felix Bloch at Stanford and Edward Purcell at Harvard, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1952. The principle the hydrogen nuclei in our bodies behave like tiny spinning magnets in a strong external magnetic field. They align with it. Hit them with a precisely tuned radio pulse, and they flip out of alignment. When the pulse stops, they relax back, emitting a radio signal. Different tissues contain different amounts of hydrogen, and their hydrogen relaxes at different rates. By analyzing those signals, you can reconstruct detailed images of tissue. In 1971, Dr. Raymond Damadian of SUNY Downstate Medical center published a landmark paper showing that cancerous tissue had different NMR properties than healthy tissue. He proposed that NMR could be used to detect cancer in living bodies. It was a profound insight, but turning it into a usable imaging tool required years more work. Damadian built the first whole body scanner with his own team, largely by hand. They named it Indomitable. It's now in the Smithsonian. On July 3, 1977, one of his graduate students became the first human being scanned and a whole body MRI machine. The scan took 4 hours and 45 minutes. Meanwhile, Paul Lauterbur at SUNY Stony Brook and Peter Mansfield in Britain developed the mathematical techniques that made fast, clinically useful imaging possible. Lauterburg showed how magnetic field gradients could encode spatial information in the NMR signal. Mansfield developed fast imaging sequences that reduced scan times from hours to minutes. In 2003, Louderburg and Mansfield received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The exclusion of Damadian, given his foundational role, remains controversial to this day. The clinical impact has been extraordinary. Before nmri, diagnosing a brain tumor often required exploratory surgery, opening the skull to look. Now it's a 20 minute scan. Before MRI, evaluating a torn ligament required arthroscopy. Now it's a 30 minute scan. MRI guides neurosurgeons during brain operations. It detects strokes in time to treat them. It identifies spinal cord compression before permanent damage occurs. It finds early stage cancers that physical examination would miss entirely. More than 40 million MRI procedures are performed in the United States every year. And in the 1990s, functional MRI FMRI emerged capable of detecting changes in blood oxygenation that correspond to neural activities. Essentially, you can watch which parts of the brain are working as a person thinks, feels or decides. The study of consciousness, emotion, decision making, addiction and pain have all been transformed by this window into the working human brain. I want to close with this reflection. The MRI scanner emerged from basic physics research. NMR developed for chemistry applications that had no medical purpose in mind. The researchers asking what happens to atomic nuclei and magnetic fields had no idea their answer would one day let us see inside a living human brain. This is a recurring pattern in the history of medicine. X rays were discovered in a physics experiment. Penicillin was noticed in a contaminated petri dish. The insights that became FMRI came from physics and mathematics with nothing to do with medicine. It argues for investing deeply in basic science, not because we know what it will produce, but because the history of medicine tells us the things we cannot yet foresee are often the most important ones. Next time, Silicon Valley, a Stanford garage and two graduate students who decided that finding anything on the Internet should be simple, fast and free. The search engine. Coming up, Walter Isaacson joins me to discuss his new book, a New York Times bestseller, the Greatest Sentence Ever Written. That's next.

[America 250 Announcer]

This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party. Hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Experience new music, performances by major artists, patriotic tributes and the kickoff to giving 4th, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history.

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[Child]

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[Walter Isaacson]

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[Newt Gingrich]

I'm very pleased to welcome my guest, my good friend and somebody I've worked with, I think for 30 years. He is the best selling author of biographies of Elon Musk, Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein. He's a professor of history at Tulane and was the CEO of the Aspen Institute, the chair of CNN, and the editor of Time magazine. And he was awarded the national humanities medal in 2023. I'm really delighted that he's joining me today to discuss his new book, a New York Times bestseller, the Greatest Sentence Ever Written, which is so appropriate for this time. As we look at the 250th anniversary, this is a book that should be central to how we approach this. It takes readers on a fascinating, deep dive into the creation of one of history's most powerful sentences. Quote we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Walter, welcome and thank you in the middle of your busy schedule for joining me again on Newt's World.

[Walter Isaacson]

You know, it's great to be with you, Newt, and I know how much of a historian you are. Like me, you taught history at Tulane and you know the importance of a sentence like that being our mission statement as we enter our 250th year.

[Newt Gingrich]

Your timing could hardly be better. And it's such a break from the biographies that you've been doing. And yet when I read it, I was fascinated with how you took it apart. What made you decide to take this one sentence and turn it into a book?

[Walter Isaacson]

I think it's important that we celebrate our 250th in a way that unifies us and brings us together rather than divides Us because we've had such a poisonous period in our politics where we're so divided and sometimes history has been used to divide us. I picked this topic because we're going into the 250th, and I don't think we've made enough plans to say, how can we use this as a mechanism for understanding what our common values are? You and I can remember after the horrible periods of Vietnam and Watergate and the assassinations of Kennedys and kings and the riots, we came together under Gerald Ford to do the bicentennial. We need to get a movement going to say, let's do that again for the 250th.

[Newt Gingrich]

This is really the year to celebrate patriotism and to have everybody, whatever your ideology or your background, to have everybody understand that at its heart, America is a romantic idea and that patriotism is what binds us together. And I think this book is a real contribution. But it fascinates me because, you know, you can approach this from a hundred angles. You decided to dive in, go past everything else, and pick one sentence. How did that come to you?

[Walter Isaacson]

Well, when I was doing Benjamin Franklin About 20 years ago, I noticed that he had done an edit of the first draft of the Declaration of Independence that Jefferson wrote in late June of 1776. And that edit was totally fascinating, especially of what I think of as the mission statement, the aspiration statement of our country. And Jefferson had written, we hold these truths to be sacred. And there's Franklin's printer's pen crossing out sacred and putting self evident. He wanted to say, our rights come from rationality, not the dictates of religion. But the sentence goes on to talk about being endowed with rights. And John Adams writes, endowed by their creator with rights. And so I was amazed at how just in crafting this sentence that becomes our creed as a nation. They were balancing things. And Newt, you've talked about we need to all come together in times of patriotism. Especially like this is not simply about everybody being centrist. You, you have a very strong ideology, but you work in a civil way with people with different ideologies. We have to regain that ability to work across different ideologies. But saying we're one nation, that sentence and its editing stuck with me for 20 years. And I said, if we parse this sentence, what do we mean by we? What do we mean by created equal? What do we mean by the pursuit of happiness? Then the sentence wouldn't be just like something we chant along without thinking about it, like a hymn or prayer. We've said too much in church or synagogue. But we could think about the deep, profound meaning of this beautiful sentence.

[Newt Gingrich]

By the way, put in a brief plug. My daughter Jackie Cushman's chairs the commission on John Adams. She was thrilled by your book. In fact, she was waving. We did FaceTime earlier today and she was waving it at me. I said I was going to talk to you later on today.

[Walter Isaacson]

Well, you know, Congress created In June of 76 a committee to declare why we're having the revolution. With all due respect to your time as speakership, it may be the last time Congress created a really good committee. It's got John Adams, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

[Newt Gingrich]

It's pretty hard to argue that any other three people would outweigh them in terms of wisdom and knowledge. But I'm curious. You take this sentence and you get us to understand. And I think this process thing's important. This wasn't automatically coming out of a rock or lightning. These were three really smart people who had thought about this for a long time. And they're evolving. Even in writing this one sentence, they're evolving what is going to become America. And it takes conversation, it takes compromise, it takes creativity. And I think that's part of what people don't understand, that the legislative political process inevitably has to involve people finding a common ground to do this stuff. I think your experience in going through this and looking at it has to have, in a sense, stunned you with just how really wise these people were, how remarkable we were to have them.

[Walter Isaacson]

What they understood was the concept of balance, which is that they're contending forces, contending values that we have to deal with. And they were scientists. Ben Franklin was the best experimental scientist of the time. Jefferson was a great scientist. And they studied Newton and the idea that forces can be contending but you find an equilibrium. Just as I said, about them putting in truth being self evident, but putting in creator, that's creating a balance between the role of divine providence and the role of rationality. Ben Franklin said at the time of the Constitution, compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies. So we have to learn how to balance our contending values. The sentence shows us how to do it because it's a living, breathing sentence. It's something we have to aspire to each new generation to make it more true.

[Newt Gingrich]

Gary Wills, who makes the argument that what Lincoln does is resurrects the Declaration, which in many ways had been surpassed by the Constitution as the central organizing document. And Lincoln goes back and basically re educates us into the moral framework of the Founding Fathers and the degree to which this was really a call to an astonishingly different world than the world that's in.

[Walter Isaacson]

And Gary Wills does it very well. Many, many years ago, because what happens four score and seven years after they write that sentence? Lincoln invokes it at the Gettysburg Cemetery. And he said, we created a new type of nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Well, it wasn't actually true at the time of that sentence of J. Jefferson writes it, he's enslaving 400 people. But what Lincoln is doing on that battlefield cemetery is using the sentence as a forcing mechanism because he's burying more than 7,000 people who had died to make that sentence more true. And that's the arc of American history. Is each generation saying, can we get closer to that aspiration?

[Newt Gingrich]

It fits exactly the concern you're expressing about coming together as patriots again. But you point out that the Declaration's opening word, we, reappears in the Constitution as we the people. In your mind, what was the significance of this dual recognition of the word

[Walter Isaacson]

we that is so crucial? That's the most important word there. Because up until that time, nations on earth were formed by the divine right of kings, or the governance came from conquerors or swords. What they did is they pick up the notion of social contract theory, which I think you taught and you know so well. It comes from Hobbes and John Locke and others, which is a true governance of society comes from a social contract where we all agree to enter into a government, give up some of our rights in order to have a civil society. No nation had been created that way as a constitutional democratic republic that was based on the consent of the governed. So when they start we hold these truths, or eleven years later when they say we the people, we doesn't just mean 50 or 60 people hanging around in Philadelphia. It means a social contract that was the basis for a moral governing society.

[America 250 Announcer]

This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Experience music, performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to giving 4th, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history.

It's more than just fireworks.

Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party Tickets now for $17.76 at america250.org LA the best skaters, BMX

[X Games Announcer]

riders and Moto athletes in the world don't compete in leagues until now. The X Games league championship is live From New Orleans, July 24 through 26.

[Lingokids Announcer]

Three days of elite action sports, plus

[X Games Announcer]

performance performances from Metro Boomin, JID Subtronics and Bunt Watch on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 stream on the ESPN app Roku Kick, Amazon and X Games YouTube. The inaugural champion gets crowned this July.

[Child]

Mom, can I have lingo kids? Dad, Lingo kids, please.

[Parent]

When did we become the Lingokids house?

[America 250 Announcer]

No idea. Last week it was dinosaurs. This weekend.

[Parent]

Why Lingokids?

[Child]

Because it's the best thing ever. We can play games with astronauts, wild animals and superheroes.

[Lingokids Announcer]

With more than 4,000 interactive games, songs and shows, LingoKids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids.

[Child]

So no dinosaurs and dinosaurs.

[Walter Isaacson]

Lingokids.

[Parent]

Everything kids love, download it for free.

[Firestone Announcer]

Your vehicle doesn't just get you from here to there. It's a bridge to the people and places that matter most. It's how you show up for your family, your community and everyone else that depends on you. That's why for 125 years, Firestone has been building tires with one thing in to deliver products that are as reliable as you are. Firestone always dependable since 1900.

[Newt Gingrich]

Wasn't this a universalistic document? It's not actually aimed at the Americans. It is defining for the Americans a universal truth.

[Walter Isaacson]

It's defining for the world because in the previous sentence, the first sentence, it says, with a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. They're explaining how we're creating a new type of nation. And back then we were the only one that was that way. But over the course of 200 years or so, most nations on earth began to resemble this notion where we defend individual rights, the rights of liberty of each individual. And yet we come together in a civil society to govern ourselves as a representative democracy.

[Newt Gingrich]

You've covered the news, you've had remarkable exposure to most of the major media that we've used in our lifetime to communicate the news. How do we get the country back to understanding these kind of simple, basic truths? This isn't exactly TikTok. It's not even X or truth social. It's not the daily news put out in three minute bites. But yet somehow this sentence and the document that it's in is at the very core of whether or not this country will survive.

[Walter Isaacson]

Precisely. That's why I wrote it. That's why I think our 250th is a great opportunity. I worry that we're not really using It. I know back when you were in government, we probably would have had a bicentennial commission, as we did 50 years ago, that were people of all parties and community leaders. And we'd have bicentennial moments on TV and tall ships in our ports and fireworks. I think we need to quickly get moving so that we use this 250th birthday as a nation to reassert the patriotism that most of us feel, to reassert the values that underlie our nation. And those values are embodied in the sentence. But I'm hoping many people can do it. You can do it. You're doing it on this podcast. Jon Meacher, my friend, is doing it bringing out a book. Ken Burns is doing it by bringing out a documentary. I don't think Washington, the government right now is paying much attention to it. I'm trying to get the National Archives to take the first draft of the Declaration, which is at the Library of Congress, and display them together. And that can all be a way to that each of us in each community. I've gone around, I just came back from Dallas. I've been in San Antonio and Austin and then Nashville. I'm trying to encourage each community to say, how are we going to celebrate who we are as a nation for our big birthday?

[Newt Gingrich]

I felt that it almost has to be looking to the past and looking to the future. I mean, while we want to celebrate 250 years, we also want to say, and what we have learned from that gives us a chance to create an

[Walter Isaacson]

even better 250 years, especially coming out of what I think is our biggest problem today, which is the polarization that's been caused by everything from social media and talk radio to the way we do our politics. How are we going to come out of this very divisive period, which is similar to the one we went through a little bit more than 50 years ago with Vietnam, Watergate and the assassinations. And we can remember the lines when they signed that declaration, John Hancock says, as he puts his big signature on it, with all the forces contending to divide us, how do we hang together? And Franklin, who's very witty, refers to what's going to happen to them if they don't do it. He said, yes, assuredly, we must all hang together, or most assuredly, we'll all hang separately. How do we use this event to take some of the poison out of our discourse and say, get rid of that poison? That comes from social media, sometimes from the politicians, the politicians who are trying to enrage Us and play on our resentments. Let's all remember one nation with a really great mission statement, and that's the Declaration.

[Newt Gingrich]

How do you explain to people when they do raise the legitimate fact that, for example, here's Jefferson writing about freedom and about being given to us by our Creator? Well, he does own slaves.

[Parent]

Yeah.

[Walter Isaacson]

I mean, this is the thing we have to wrestle with, with American history. And we have to look at the narrative, the history, the arc of the history, because, no, that sentence was not actually true when they wrote it, and Jefferson knew it. As you know, he writes in the Declaration a lot of words decrying slavery, and they have to take it out in order to get Southern votes. And yes, people are complicated. I've written about Elon Musk, I've written about Steve Jobs. I've written about people. And Shakespeare teaches us people are complex. Even our heroes have dark strands. Henry V kills all the prisoners from France. So we have to realize that we want born perfect, but we were given an aspirational statement. And so whether it's at Gettysburg when Lincoln uses that statement to move forward so that we can end slavery, or whether it's in the 1920s when the suffragettes used that statement, this sentence, to move us forward so women get to be included in All Men are Created Equal, we have to look at the narrative of history, how in fits and starts, sometimes we go forward, sometimes we go back. But the general arc of history, as Thaddeus Stevens, the abolitionist, said, and Dr. King quoted him as saying, the arc of history bends towards justice, but only if we bend it. And that's what this sentence helps us to do.

[Newt Gingrich]

Hopefully this book will help create a dialogue. People have got to come out of their shells, and instead of just yelling things at each other, they have to have a genuine mutual curiosity. And getting them, I think, to take seriously the 250th anniversary and to ask, why has this system been so amazing? Why has it been able to absorb so many different people? Why has it been possible for people to rise in ways that would have been impossible in much of the world? I think that this kind of book, we get people to slow down and realize the folks who put this together were very wise and they had spent a long time thinking about it and they had studied a lot of history, and if we will sort of steal from their wisdom, we can have a dramatically better country.

[Walter Isaacson]

Right. We all have to dedicate ourselves to it. You've done a lot of documentaries, documentaries about what makes America work, whether it's a documentaries about immigration or about our founding and or about our history. So glad you're saying it. This is this opportunity to get everybody discussing it in a civil way, because despite all of our divides, I think most Americans, 80% of Americans, can basically agree on the fundamental values, even if they disagree on how to approach it. And they can have civil discussion about what's in commons, what do we share in commons. And I write about common ground in the book because that's what this sentence is. But common ground is also the goods and services that we keep in commons, whether it be having a good K through 12 education system or good libraries or fire or police protection. And then we have to debate on the edges how much should health care be in the commons like that. Well, those are good debates to have. But if you frame it the way the founders did, as this is a question of what we want to have in commons, then I think our debates could be more civil and we could show the balance and wisdom that they showed

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[Child]

Dad. Disney activities are on Lingokids.

[Walter Isaacson]

What?

[Child]

Moana and Elsa and Marvel's Spider Man.

[Parent]

All of them on Lingokids?

[Child]

Yes, dad, on Lingokids.

[Parent]

That's pretty cool.

[Child]

I know.

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[Parent]

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[Newt Gingrich]

So I have to ask you, you know so many different things and you have sort of had a knack of picking very interesting people to write biographies about. And given the authoritative and deep books that you write, in order to deal with these brilliant people, you've had to learn an enormous amount of. Is there any common lesson or common observation as you look back on all these personalities that you've now spent your life with?

[Walter Isaacson]

Yes. It's not the ability to be smart, because you and I know a lot of smart people. They often don't amount to much. It's the ability to think out of the box, to be creative, to be imaginative, to do things that AI won't do. And that's what Einstein does. He's sitting there and he thinks out of the box that maybe time is relative depending on your state of motion, or Elon Musk does. So I think that ability to have a reality distortion field, to think different, as Steve Jobs said, that is what humans bring to it, is this intuitive creativity that allows you to just come with an out of the box idea. Leonardo, one of my other favorite subjects, did it well. And to get back to the greatest sentence ever written, that's what Ben Franklin, when I was writing his biography, you talk about innovation. Look, rocket ships that can land on their own platform or ipods. Those are innovations. But the greatest innovation ever is to take the social contract theory and to create a democratic republic that depends on we the people. And that innovation is what we're going to be celebrating next year.

[Newt Gingrich]

Yeah, I think in that sense, if you think of America as an invention.

[Walter Isaacson]

Bingo. Exactly right.

[Newt Gingrich]

You know, you begin to realize what an astonishing gift we've been given. You know that you and I, our children, our grandchildren, our friends and neighbors, have been given this gift of self government and this gift of mutual acceptance that our rights come from a divine basis, can't be taken away by politicians, by lobbyists, by bureaucrats, by billionaires, because every single person of every background has been endowed by their creator. And of course, what you do in this book is you take us deep into this miraculous belief that these handful of extraordinary people put together in a single document that's available to anybody on the entire planet.

[Walter Isaacson]

I think we should all read the Declaration often in this coming year, and we should all read this particular sentence often and think of the profound wisdom in it. Because, as I said, they weren't necessarily just smart. They were innovative. They realized they could form a new type of government and they were wise, which is what you mentioned earlier in the show. Meaning even though they had strong beliefs, they knew how to do the balances that were necessary to keep a democratic republic alive.

[Child]

And.

[Walter Isaacson]

And I think we've lost a lot of their talent of balance, of tolerance, of respect, of civility. Your show is about that. Our country is about that. And I'll say one thing about Benjamin Franklin. Near the end, now we talk about being a nation of respect for individual rights. During his lifetime, Benjamin Franklin donated to the building fund of each and every church built in Philadelphia. And at one point, they were creating a new hall for preachers that were coming around from the first great Awakening. And he wrote the fundraising document. He said, even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send somebody to teach us Islam and about the Prophet Muhammad, we should listen and we might learn. And on his deathbed, he's the largest individual contributor to the Congregation Mikvah Israel for a synagogue in Philadelphia. So when he dies, instead of his minister accompanying his casket to the grave, all 35 ministers, preachers and priests link arms with the rabbi of the Jews and march with them to the grave. That's the type of civil society, that's the type of respect for individual liberty they were creating back then. And that's what next year and our 250th we have to remember we're still trying to hang on to today.

[Newt Gingrich]

You have done an extraordinary civic service by writing this, and I hesitate to come down from that moral high ground, but I can't resist. Do you have a new book in mind?

[Walter Isaacson]

I actually do. I love science. I love invention and how science helps humanity. And I'm doing a book now I'm totally immersed in on Marie Curie because she is the only person to win the Nobel in two different sciences, physics and chemistry. She basically shows that physics and chemistry are actually the same. And I'm going through all of her notebooks to find out exactly how did she make the leaps of the imagination and then how did she apply it? She comes up with the notion of radioactivity, and we now use it to cure cancer and, of course, for power and weapons. So that notion of moving from theory into practice, she and Einstein set the stage for the 20th century. I'm doing her next.

[Newt Gingrich]

That's amazing. I look forward and hope you'll come back and help educate us even more. But in the interim, I just want to remind everyone that the Greatest Sentence Ever Written is available now on Amazon, in bookstores everywhere. It's already in New York Times bestseller. It's a perfect set piece, I think for entering into the 250th birthday. Knowing you is a genuine honor.

[Walter Isaacson]

Hey, I feel the same back at you. Thanks for everything over so many years, Newt.

[Newt Gingrich]

I look forward to it. I appreciate very much your joining me today.

[Walter Isaacson]

Thank you and happy birthday to our country.

[Newt Gingrich]

Thank you to my guest Walter Isaacson. Newt Weld is produced by Gingrich360 and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Garnesey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. Special thanks to the team at Gingrich360. If you've been enjoying Newt's world, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Join me on [e-mail] I'm Newt Gingrich. This is neutral.

[America 250 Announcer]

This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Experience music, performances by major artists, patriotic tributes and the kickoff to giving 4th, helping to make July 4th the largest, largest day of giving in American history.

It's more than just fireworks.

Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Black Party Tickets now for 17.76 at america250.org LA the best skaters, BMX

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[Child]

Dad Disney activities are on Lingokids.

[Walter Isaacson]

What?

[Child]

Moana and Elsa and Marvel's Spider Man.

[Parent]

All of them on Lingokids.

[Child]

Yes, dad on Lingokids.

[Parent]

That's pretty cool.

[Child]

I know.

[America 250 Announcer]

You just lost them for the rest of the afternoon.

[Parent]

Worth it.

[Lingokids Announcer]

Full of fun activities inspired by Disney's Moana, Frozen, Zootopia, Marvel's Spider man and more. Lingokids is where little ones discover more about favorite characters.

[Child]

Lingokids.

[Parent]

Everything kids love, download it for free.

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