If We Can Keep It with Aaron Evans

business, history, society, culture · EN-US

In 1787, Ben Franklin walked out of the Constitutional Convention on the last day. A woman named Elizabeth Powel stopped him and asked what they'd built in there. He said, "A republic, if you can keep it." This commemorative podcast celebrates some of the most perilous steps along the 250 year journey in the creation of a new nation. I'm Aaron Evans. I run a PR firm and a strategic comms consultancy, and I've spent my career watching people try to build things that outlast them - companies, campaigns, coalitions, movements. Almost every story I care about in American history comes down to the same question Franklin was answering on the courthouse steps: is this republic worth the work it takes to hold it together, and are we the generation that's going to do the work? Each episode is one story. Short. Focused. No panel, no politics-of-the-week, no shouting. I take one moment - Valley Forge in the snow, three guys in a room writing the Federalist Pap