Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on the biggest issues impacting you. This week, here's Ryan Gorman. Thanks for joining us here on iHeartRadio Communities. I'm Ryan Gorman, and we have some important conversations lined up for you. In just a bit, we'll check in with historian and best
selling author Kenneth C. Davis to discuss the upcoming July fourth holiday. We're going to go back to our nation's founding and step through who was involved in the Declaration of Independence, how the process played out, and how that document would go on to shape the course of history. But right now, to get things started, I'm joined by Julie Garner, founder of Project yellow Light, to discuss the issue of distracted driving. You can learn more at Project
yellow light dot com. Julie, thank you so much for coming on the show, and first of all, tell us the backstory to how this initiative got started and what you aim to accomplish. Well, it's a passion project for me. Ryan, an Hunter was killed at the age of sixteen due to a car crash, and for my own survival and just to be able to live without him, we wanted to do something to protect all other young
people from meeting that same demise. I had no idea at the time, but found out that car crashes were one of the meeting causes of death of our youth and remains to this day, and we wanted to make sure that we caused a broad about awareness to that. And I think people just don't even think about it unless sadly they meet up with it personally, as we
did as a family. So we started a scholarship competition in his high school and as four years in, the AD Council reached out to us and asked us if we would like to partner with them in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and took us national. So it's a national scholarship competition where you've talked
to their peers about being careful on the road to not drive distracted. And certainly this issue has become even more prevalent across the country as more and more drivers have gotten behind the wheel and have spent time on their cell phones while driving. Distracted driving has become such a major concern all across the country. What have we seen in terms of the data undistracted driving, Well, it is at crisis mode. I mean, we just have so many fatalities in
this age group group. Our focus is the youngest drivers sixteen to twenty five, and of all the drivers, they are the ones with the largest proportion who are distracted at the time of a fatal crash. The numbers are huge.
Between two thousand and twelve and twenty one, just nine years, almost thirty three thousand people died in car crashes to distraction, just as distractions, and it's just, you know, it's a crisis, it's continuing, and sadly, it's something that we just have to focus on and that's what we do through our little project. And you know, our aim is at our youngest drivers, and we feel like there's nobody better to get that message out
there than a peer to peer type communication. And I think all of us have experienced the issue of distracted driving on the road. A lot of times when someone is swerving these days, and let's say it's in the middle of the day, it's not necessarily a drunk driver, and it could be, but a lot of times such as somebody on their phone not paying attention, or if somebody's going especially slow, a lot of times because they're scrolling the
Internet on their phone. I know, I talked to a family who really took action and push their state legislature to enact distracted driving laws because they were stuck in traffic. I mean it was a huge traffic jam and a major interstate and a driver who was older than the age group that you're focused on at Project yellow Light at this driver went right into them at full speed, never saw the traffic jam because he was on his phone, and now that
person is spending thirty years in prison because of it. So this is a really important project and again everyone can learn more Project yellow Light dot com talk about these public service announcements that have been created by teens who are warning others against driving when distracted. Yes, so our competition is national and it's open to all high school juniors and seniors and college students where they create a public
service ad that promotes this safe driving. And we have three levels, three different competitions, one for radio, thank you, iHeart, one for Billboard, and one for TV and the youth to create these ads to re their peers. And then it's just shared nationwide, which is so amazing through our credible media partners. So we have a shared national exposure with over eighteen hundred CET stations, digital outdoor displays all over the country and our amazing partner,
iHeart Media Radio stations. We're joined by Julie Garner, founder of Project yellow Light. What have you seen from the twenty twenty three winners. What's their creativity level like and their unique messages that they're trying to get across to help prevent distract the driving I think Ryan that each year they just get better and better, and I'm just so impressed with the talent of our young people and their poise quite off frankly too, and just their ability to get a message
out. One of the things we do is we say you have creative license when you apply for this. You can take this project upon however you like. And a lot of the youth humor feeling that's probably the best way to reach their peers or some sort of positive message. And so this year, without fail, we've got some amazing entries and I'm just thrilled with what they
have accomplished. When you take a look at these videos, these messages, these PSAs that teams have put together, and you've been doing this for quite a while, this is the twelfth annual Project yellow Light Scholarship Competition. What stands out to you about what you're seeing from these young people. Is there something that is pretty consistent throughout the years, or is there something that the changes that varies depending on the group of students who ends up winning that year.
I think it varies from year to year. I'm just always amazed at the talent of our young people, and I just love the work that they create. Sometimes it's animation. We have an animated video this year. Sometimes it's it's a musical type thing, which one of our radio spots is a little jingle that's just very catchy and I love it. And I'm just always impressed with the voices and the creativity that they used to reach others about this
very vile message. And I'm assuming part of the goal with this project to reach drivers between the ages of fifteen and twenty is to utilize their peers to deliver that message. And how much of an impact do you think that has on getting the message across to people that age. I think it's it's vital because when we started this, the statistics and everything that I had seen out there, all the messaging was done by adults and it just frankly wasn't hitting
the mark. And either you had somebody kind of talking down to you, or somebody in the uniform wagging a finger at you, or some show of blood, guts and gore that just turned everybody off. And that's why we felt like we needed to turn this over to the youth themselves to see what they could do to help them with this problem that they have. And you know, see if they can't find a solution better than us adults, and I think they do. They are able to resonate with each other in a
way that we cannot and they just do a fabulous job. And finally, the winners have been chosen for twenty twenty three. But you might have some students who are listening right now, maybe some parents who are thinking to themselves, this would be a great, great task to take on next year. What do you recommend for those who are more interested in the work you're doing at Project yellow Light. Go to our website Projects yellow light dot com.
You can learn everything you need to know about the project, from applying for the scholarship, to the winners announced, to seeing past winners, and it's all their self contained Project yellow Light dot Com. Not only do the winners get a scholarship prize, their work is shared nationwide. And you know, I think the biggest thing is that, as cool as it is to have your work shared that way, this is so vital. It's about doing something
for the greater good, having a voice and making a difference. And in the process you may just save a life. And it just doesn't get any bigger than that. And it's such an important issue that impacts all of us. Julie Garner the founder of Project yellow Light. You can learn more about this tremendous campaign at Project yellow light dot com. That's Project yellow Light dot com. Julie, really appreciate the time and all the work you're doing on
this issue. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Oh my goodness, Ran, thank you for helping us spread the message. I truly appreciate it. It's my pleasure. Thanks again for coming on. I'm Ryan Gorman here on iHeartRadio Communities, and now I want to bring in our next guest. We're joined by historian and best selling author Kenneth C. Davis. He's author of the Don't Know Much About book series, which you can learn more about at don't know much dot com. Kenneth, thank you so much for
coming on the show in advance of this July fourth holiday. And let's start with a very basic question, a quick refresher for everyone. How did July fourth become the day that we celebrate our country's independence. Well, John Adams, who was there back in seventeen seventy six, wrote this nice letter to his wife Abigail, and he said, this day will be the most memorable
in the history of America. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows and games and sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other. He wrote that on July third, and he was talking about July second, because that was the day
that the Continental Congress actually wrote in favor of a resolution of independence. But it was two days later, on July fourth, seventeen seventy six, that that same Continental Congress debated and then adopted Thomas Jefferson Declaration of Independence, which explained why these thirteen states had made this decision to separate from Great Britain. So it was an extraordinary day, and John Adams was right about how we would celebrate it. He was just wrong about the date. So on July
fourth, we're celebrating America's independence and those very very important ideas. All men are created equal, they are endowed with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, unalienable rights to those things. And finally, and maybe most important, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the government. And that was a radical idea in seventeen seventy six, and perhaps we take it for granted today when we looked at what led up to the declaration of Independence and the decision by those thirteen colonies two break free, knowing the battle that was to come, What were some of the major underlying reasons they felt it was necessary to proceed down that road. Well, it wasn't just taxes and tea and stamps. That's maybe you're what you remember
from eighth grade civics, if you learned civics in eighth grade. We seem to be struggling with that these days, in social studies or American history or civics. There were a lot of issues. Obviously, certainly one to a man like George Washington was the fact that they had fought a war a few years earlier in thirteen colonies. We called it the French and Indian War.
The rest of the world called it the Seven Years War. And after that Americans expected that they were going to have a piece of what the British had won, especially by defeating the French. And they learned to their chagrin that they weren't going to that The King had made a proclamation in seventeen sixty three and the fruits of that war were not going to fall to people like George Washington. So a lot of it had to do, like most wars,
with power. Who was going to have the power over this extraordinary continent that was, of course, at that time a handful of colonies stretched out along the Atlantic coast. But they knew how big and rich and what the possibilities were. But they also believed that they were Englishmen and that they had the rights of Englishmen, and they weren't being they were being denied those and perhaps most important, and especially to a man like Jefferson, they were living in
the time of what we call the Enlightenment or the age of Reason. So when Jefferson writes those words about all men being created equal that we have the right to life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness, that the governed must consent. These were radical ideas, but they were part of what was going on in the world that especially the European world at that time, when people were questioning the old order, and kings and monarchs around the world were being
challenged, and the Church was being challenged. So it was an extraordinary time of change and revolution. And certainly the ideals that these men stood up for expressed in the Declaration were very much what the revolution was about. But it almost always comes down to power. Who's going to have the power to divide up the spoils of this great continent. The men behind the creation of the Declaration of Independence and those ideals tell us a little bit about them and who
the main players were. Oh, that's a great question, And I can be more specific in point to my website Don't Know Much dot Com, where I have a series running around this time of year every year about the fifty six men who signed the declaration and what became of them. They pledged in that document, their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, And
it sounds like pretty poetry to us today. But it was very true in seventeen seventy six that they were taking their lives and certainly their wealth into their hands by challenging the man who was perhaps the most powerful man on earth at the time, the King of England. So they were a real mix of Americans, some immigrants, Irish and Scots and otherwise, and they represented a
cross section of American society in some respect. There were farmers and doctors, but a lot of lawyers, certainly men John Adams, men like Thomas Jefferson. Obviously, the five people most involved in drafting the declaration, in fact included Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, who at that time was the most famous American, not only in America but in the world. So
these were extraordinary men gathered together at this time. But I also have to say one thing, and it is very important to point out, especially in these times, that forty of those fifty six men who signed the document talking about all men are created equal were also men who enslaved other people. And this is the great contradiction in American history that a nation conceived in liberty was
also born in shackles. And we have to talk about that when we talk about American history and the Declaration of Independence, because slavery was part of the foundation of this nation, and that's a reality that some people are trying to bury right now. I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by historian and best selling author Kenneth C. Davis. He's author of the Don't Know Much About book series,
which you can find a Don't Know Much dot com. So when the creators of the Declaration of Independence were going through this process, were there disagreements about what's put in, what not to put in. How did all of that play out? That's an interesting question because of course I should back up a minute here, Ryan and say the war had already started. It didn't
start when in America declared its independence. The war had started a full year earlier, in April seventeen seventy five, with the Battles of Lexington and conquered up in Massachusetts. The Battle of Bunker Hill had already been fought. George Washington had already been sent a full year earlier up to Massachusetts to take command of this rather ragtag collection of militiamen and turned them into the Continental Army. Boston had been liberated from the British. In a sense, the British were
sailing towards New York and Washington would then move his army down there. And in fact, Washington was in New York in seventeen seventy six and had the
declaration of Independence read to the men gathered together. So the war was already underway, but there were still men in the continent of the Congress who were looking to see if there was some way we couldn't come to agreement avoid a bigger war, come to kind of agreement with the British, either about changing the status of America or granting some of the rights that they were asking for.
And it wasn't just about representing patient in Parliament. That the old line no taxation without representation is a bit of propaganda, because if they given the colonies a few seats in Congress, I don't think it in the Parliament, I should say, wouldn't have really made a difference. But the movement towards independence really gathered steam in seventeen seventy six, and by June when it was proposed that the United States should declare itself independent, it was quite a popular
idea, although not every voted for it. New York abstained, for instance, from the vote at first, later on joined to be unanimous. So there was a considerable range of opinion. But once it was announced, it was really quite accepted and celebrated in the United States, and the popular movement towards independence became quite strong. The Declaration of Independence itself we know as Thomas Jefferson as the author of that. But how much input was coming in from
other individuals, and how did that final draft come about? That's a good question too. It was actually given to Jefferson to write this document. It was a committee of five that were supposed to draft it. I mentioned Adams and Franklin. It was also Roger Sherman and lived Robert Livingston of New York. Those men really said, Jefferson, you're pretty good with words. You take care of it. Jefferson showed his draft to Franklin and Adams, and
they made a few changes. It was Franklin who, for instance, who suggested changing the phrase life, liberty and the pursuit of property, which came from a very important philosopher named John Locke. He suggested to change that to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And I think we should all be
glad that that change was made. Beyond that, the declaration as Thomas Jefferson drafted it was then turned over to Congress on June twenty eighth, and they debated it for the next few days, and Jefferson was not too happy about this. Jefferson was quite certain that what he had written was perfect. Like all writers, we don't like to be edited. But he sat and fumed
while the Congress picked over his words. A few phrases were changed. They were the insertion of more references to Providence and the Creator than Jefferson might have included. So it was the result of some you know, editing by the Congress in general, But it was essentially Jefferson's words at play. But I should again mention, and this is something I brought up earlier, that Jefferson
in his draft put in a paragraph about slavery. He said that the King of England was responsible for slavery and was keeping America from ending the slave trade. Now this was not true, but Jefferson had put it in there that was taken out. It was the only major paragraph deleted from Jefferson's draft. He later said it was done in deference to the men who owned slaves in the South, as as well as the men in the North who were making
a great deal of money from slavery. And this is again a reminder that there are very very few clean hands in Philadelphia in seventeen seventy six, when it comes to the question of enslaving people. I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by historian and bestselling author Kenneth C. Davis. So our founding fathers, they create the Declaration of Independence, But in that moment did they have a real understanding of the impact it would have, how it would go on to shape
the course of history for future generations. I think some of them did, And I think you hear that letter that John Adams writes to his wife Abigail on July third, of course missing the date by two days, but giving the sense that this was something extraordinary, This was something that had never really happened in the world before that colonies had broken free and declared their independence based
on some very very fundamental ideas. And so, you know, we can be a little bit cynical in terms of looking back and saying, oh, these guys were contradicting their little hypocritical But what they did was extraordinary, and it did change history, and I think many of them had that sense that they were in the midst of something that was changing history for all time.
Again, though they were taking their lives in their hands. When they say we pledge our lives and our sacred honor to this, that was real. It wasn't just a nice sounding piece of rhetoric. So we have to really respect and honor what they did. But again taking into accounts that there was this contradiction, as I've called it many times in writing about this in our history. But almost two hundred and fifty years later now the countries still moving
in the direction of those ideals that Jefferson talked about in the declaration. All men are created equal, we are all entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and those are really ideas that did change the world. Once they all decide to move forward with the Declaration of Independence, did they have a plan, some kind of an idea of how they wanted things to proceed from their assuming they were to defeat the British, how they would
implement these ideals that were laid out in this document. Well, that's a really good question as well, and what they had created at first was something called the Articles of confess Oration, which is a loose kind of almost a mutual defense pack as opposed to a true national government. And almost from the very beginning the question of slavery was in there. One of the delegates from South Carolina said that if you started to talk about putting attacks on slaves,
we're going to walk out, and the whole thing is over. The first threat of secession over slavery comes barely two months after the declaration is signed. They do have a Congress that organizes a war. They have George Washington, who was indispensable as the leader, not as a brilliant military tactician, but as this incredible survivor who keeps this rag tag army together long enough until the French come in and provide a significant number of arms and chips and the ammunition
and soldiers to help George Washington win this war. But it was now another eleven years from seventeen seventy six to seventeen eighty seven before we have the constitution.
Because all those years that it worked, for those eleven years getting through the war and afterwards, it was a very weak form of government and that's why in Philadelphia, in the same place that the Declaration had been adopted in seventeen seventy six, some of the same men go back to draft the United States Constitution in seventeen eighty seven to form, as we know, a more perfect union. I'm Ryan Gorman, joined by historian and bestselling author Kenneth C.
Davis. The ideals that we find in the Declaration of Independence, when did they start to spread beyond our shores and impact the rest of the world? Which almost immediate when you when you look around the world, certainly almost immediately. The French begin their own revolution, which takes a very different and very violent course. The French Revolution ultimately leads to a reign of terror, ultimately leading to a general named Napoleon taking over and wiping out the French Republic
and replacing it with a Napoleonic Empire. More importantly, perhaps or equally important, and often neglected, is the second Revolution in the Western Hemisphere is clearly inspired by Jefferson and the Declaration, and that's the revolution in Haiti, where formerly enslaved people rose up against their owners for mostly French, and created the second independent Republic in the Western Hemisphere, on Haiti, and that was clearly
a result of what had happened in the United States of America. So the impact was immediate and sent reverberations around the world that continued for two centuries. Finally, for those who maybe you want to spend part of their holiday learning more about all of this, tell us about the books that you've written on our country's history. Okay, Don't Know Much dot Com. It's my website, and right now I have this series talking about the men who signed the
declaration, what became of them. Some of them are very obscure to us, some of them are well known. You can read more about this subject in my very first book in the series, Don't Know Much About History. I also wrote about this subject more specifically in terms of enslaver in The Shadow of Liberty, which talks about five people who were enslaved by Washington, Jefferson,
Madison, and Andrew Jackson. And it shows the real human side of this story and this contradiction, as I call it, that this nation had to struggle for a long time through the clear contradiction between its founding ideals and the nation it would become as we know it today. And we're still struggling, and that's why it's so important to understand its history. Best Selling author and historian Kenneth C. Davis, author of the Don't Know Much About book
series, which again you can find at Don't Know Much dot com. Kenneth can't thank you enough for all that fantastic insight into our founding. We really appreciate the time, but thank you. Ryan. History is not boring. It's not dates and battles and speeches. It's real stories of real people, and it's fascinating and I am grateful for the chance to talk about it. So now go pursue happiness, all right, And that'll do it for this
edition of iHeartRadio Communities. I'm Ryan Gorman. Have a fantastic Fourth of July holiday, and we'll talk to you again real soon