The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Who’s Your Founding Father?: One Man’s Epic Quest to Uncover the First, True Declaration of Independence by David Fleming

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Who's Your Founding Father?: One Man’s Epic Quest to Uncover the First, True Declaration of Independence by David Fleming https://amzn.to/43Kx0k2 A centuries-old secret document might unravel the origin story of America and reveal the intellectual crime of the millennia in this epic dive into our country’s history to discover the first, true Declaration of Independence. In 1819 John Adams came across a stunning story in his hometown Essex Register that he breathlessly described to his political frenemy Thomas Jefferson as “one of the greatest curiosities and one of the deepest mysteries that ever occurred to me…entitled the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The genuine sense of America at that moment was never so well expressed before, nor since.” The story claimed that a full 14 months before Jefferson crafted his own Declaration of Independence, a misfit band of zealous Scots-Irish patriots, whiskey-loving Princeton scholars and a fanatical frontier preacher in a remote corner of North Carolina had become the first Americans to formally declare themselves “free and independent” from England. Composed during a clandestine all-night session inside the Charlotte courthouse, the Mecklenburg Declaration was signed on May 20, 1775—a date that’s still featured on the state flag of North Carolina. A year later, in 1776, Jefferson is believed to have plagiarized the MecDec while composing his own, slightly more famous Declaration and then, as he was wont to do, covered the whole thing up. Which is exactly why Adams always insisted the MecDec needed to be “thoroughly investigated” and “more universally made known to the present and future generation.” Eleven U.S. Presidents and many of today’s most respected historical scholars agree. Now, with Who’s Your Founding Father?, David Fleming picks up where Adams left off, leaving no archive, no cemetery, no bizarre clue or wild character (and definitely no Dunkin’ Donuts) unexplored while traveling the globe to bring to life one of the most fantastic, important—and controversial—stories in American history.In 1819 John Adams came across a stunning story in his hometown Essex Register. He breathlessly described it to his political frenemy Thomas Jefferson as “one of the greatest curiosities and one of the deepest mysteries that ever occurred to me…entitled the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The genuine sense of America at that moment was never so well expressed before, nor since.” The story claimed that a full 14 months before Jefferson crafted his own Declaration of Independence, a misfit band of zealous Scots-Irish patriots, whiskey-loving Princeton scholars, and a fanatical frontier preacher had joined forces in a remote corner of North Carolina to become the first Americans to formally declare themselves “free and independent” from England. Composed during a clandestine all-night session inside the Charlotte courthouse, the Mecklenburg Declaration, aka the MecDec, was signed on May 20, 1775—a date that’s still featured on the state flag of North Carolina. About a year later, in 1776, Jefferson is believed to have plagiarized the MecDec while composing his own, slightly more famous Declaration, and then, as he was wont to do, covered the whole thing up. Which is why Adams always insisted the MecDec needed to be “thoroughly investigated” and “more universally made known to the present and future generation.” Eleven U.S. Presidents and many of today’s most respected historical scholars agree. Now, with Who’s Your Founding Father?, David Fleming picks up where Adams’ investigation left off. Fleming leaves no archive, cemetery, bizarre clue, conspiracy theory, or wild character unexplored as he travels the globe and shines new light on one of the most fantastic, important—and controversial—stories in American history. About the Author David Fleming is a senior writer at ESPN. During the last three decades at Sports Illustrated,

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For 14 years and over 1,400 episodes, I don't know why that number matched up, but it just did. I don't know. We just did more production from 2000. And two to three shows a day. Billionaires, you know, the like, all those brilliant minds that are on the show. And, of course, none of them are me. After 14 years, you figured out that I'm just the host and i've got a couple jokes up my sleeve and uh but the brilliant minds we have in the show we just put them in the google machine and they just

spit out to us and we go hey we should have these brilliant minds on the show because the host is an idiot so there you go as always family friends and relatives go to goodreads.com, YouTube.com, LinkedIn.com, the big LinkedIn newsletter, the 130,000 group over there, for the podcast, and also TikTok. We're trying to put some shows up on TikTok, at least little

segments of stuff, but we might be a little too smart for TikTok. Am I being egotistical? I am. I'm a narcissist, so I'm going to run with it. Anyway, we have an amazing author on the show. He's written tons of books. He's a multi-book author, as we like to call him on the show, and he's written the newest book that just came out May 16, 2023.

Who's Your Founding Father? One man's epic quest to uncover the first true declaration of independence. He is on the show with us today. David Fleming is here, and he is a senior writer at ESPN. During the last three decades at Sports Illustrated, ESPN, the magazine, and ESPN, he has been one of the industry's most prolific, versatile, and imaginative long-form writers traveling the globe while penning more than 35 cover stories and numerous groundbreaking pieces on everything from the Super Bowl and Steph Curry to musical chairs, world championship,

wait, that's a thing? Oh my god, god wow we'll have to find out more about that uh hockey dentist wait that's another thing and the nfl's obsessions with glutes uh i mean hey don't don't don't don't keep shame uh he was he has reported in china switzerland england and mexico and has covered 25 superbowls that all wow that's a lot. How many are there? That's about half of them, I think. The Olympics and every major sporting event, including lightsaber dueling and Bigfoot calling. Wow, that's another thing. And he's done definitive profiles of Darth Vader, Bill Belichick. Wait, is he the Emperor or Darth Vader?

And Andy Reid, Michael Vick, and many others. Welcome to the show, David. How are you? I'm great, Chris. How are you? I'm great, Chris. How are you doing? That's quite the intro. I appreciate it. I was having some fun with it.

But yeah, there you go. What an amazing thing. And I like Bill Belichick, but he kind of, with that hood that he wears, he kind of has that whole emperor thing going on. I think some people called him that. So welcome to the show. Congratulations on the new book. These are always fun.

Give us a dot com for you so we can find you on those interwebages. Yeah. Just go to Linktree, phlegm ESPN. Twitter is phlegm ESPN. And Facebook is David Phlegm ESPN. Pretty easy to follow, even for lightsaber dueling experts. There you go. Lightsaber.

Stop reading that bio. I i'm like what the hell but uh it seems like there's a sport for everything and i think i've covered it yeah if there's a sport and there's a competition i've covered it i'm going to the world championship of nose picking next week so uh i'll see you there i don't know if i'll win but yeah probably espn espn channel 30 espPN 30 is covering, I think. So what motivated you want to write this latest book? Oh, it's just, I kind of live for, as you've pointed out, crazy stories, stories that you just are so jaw dropping, shocking and unheard of, you just can't, you become obsessed. You can't get them out of your head. And it just so happened that the best one I maybe have ever come across had

nothing to do with sports. It has to do with the history and the founding of our, of our country. And this is one of those things where I pulled one tiny little thread and I was down the rabbit hole for a decade oh wow and it's it is that kind of story um we call it mech deck face um which we can get into later but it's basically the face and you've made it already the face that people make when they when they realize almost everything we think we know about the founding of our country is wrong that's the way we that's why we do the podcast because you know most stuff we were taught

was wrong yeah people also make that face at the um nose picking world championships too giving that again the mech face what okay so the document that the book surrounds or that's my sort of um global gonzo quest to find mecklenburg declaration of independence oh really instead of saying that over and over again or typing it i just call it the mech deck okay mecklenburg we had a gadberg uh declaration of independence that's it yep there you go yep all right that is the thing according to the internet so there you go so um what what made you want to go on this quest i mean what was the catalyst that prompted this so we we when i worked for sports illustrated i lived in manhattan with my wife we moved to charl, North Carolina when she, her job, she got transferred and promoted

and we moved here. We moved to North Carolina, sight unseen, just sort of picked up and left and bought a house. And after a few years, when we realized, okay, we love this place, we're going to raise our kids here. This is our home now. I think the first thing people do when they, when they're, when they, you know, they've moved to a different city, one from when they grew up, there's a natural inclination that you look into like, okay, what's the city about? What's the history like? What's it famous for? What, what, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I remember specifically dropping my daughter Kate off at her Davidson Elementary School. And there was a North Carolina flag right in the lobby. So I take her in by the hand. She sees the teacher. They all go off to

class. I look at the flag and the date on the North Carolina flag is May 20th, 1775. And we talked earlier about the string, right? You pull one string. All I did was ask the question, why in the world is the date on the North Carolina flag 14 months before we even declared independence as a country? And like I said, I, that was 10 years ago and here I am. So just ask that one question. And the, when you start peeling back layers to this story, it is, it's like national treasure come to life. Um, I was going to make that joke where you're like Nick cage and national treasure. You're like hunting for the declaration of independence.

Yeah. Except I have just slightly better hair than Nick cage, but not, not by much. Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, you can act better too. Oh, I'm sorry, Nick. I'm sorry, I mean, you can act better, too. Oh! I'm sorry, Nick. I'm sorry, Nick. We love you sometimes.

It depends on the movie. Now, come on. We could both be in National. If this gets made into a National Treasure 3 or 4 or 8. Yeah. I better not offend him. We could both be in the movie. Yeah. I mean, he's a good actor in some movies.

I think when he went on that whole binge of where he's trying to pay some debts there and he got a little out of hand, but that's another story. So, so there's, so the one that's sitting, so you go through the discovery, tell us,

tell us how you research this and how you unpack this whole journey that you went on. I'll tell you what, really, when, when I knew there's that moment when, you know, you're like, okay, this could be a book. Maybe it's just a story for the Smithsonian or something like that. When I really, I went up to Quincy, Massachusetts, which is where John

Adams hits his hometown. And he's got all of his, it's where he's buried. It's where his, uh, all the, all of his documents are is it's not a presidential library, but it's essentially the same thing. And when I found out that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson wrote snarky, angry, shade-filled letters back and forth to each other about the MECDEC, that's when I was like, okay, I'm all in. This is definitely – i can't believe there haven't been 10 books written about this but when you read those letters and oh my god john adams john adams could throw shade okay john adams like he could he could do the whole snark thing and he just rips thomas jefferson a new one for basically he's accusing him of plagiarizing the Declaration of Independence in writing in these letters. And that's when it was like, oh, my God, what am I doing for the next five years?

Because I'm down this rabbit hole. Wow. And and basically, evidently, there's this. Is this is this is this Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, the one that we know? Or is this like some of the stories we've been hearing about Shakespeare lately where it was plagiarized? Well, there's a whole sort of, there's a whole multi-layer to the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence but essentially the story is that the men who founded Charlotte North Carolina Scots Irish Presbyterians people who are sort of constantly looking for a fight and for a reason to um take on any kind of tyranny whatsoever

but essentially 14 months before uh before Thomasomas jefferson ever put pen to paper the men in charlotte formally declared in writing america's independence from england so wow yeah charlotte is essentially the the true cradle of american independence this document gets written and declared from the courthouse steps in Charlotte. A guy named Captain James Jack rides it up, risking his own life up to the Continental Congress. It sits there for a year. And then there is quite a lot of proof that Thomas Jefferson plagiarized it when he wrote his own declaration. Holy crap. A moly tech mech mech deck face there you go yeah that's just that's just amazing but you know it kind of makes sense when you really think about it i mean it's a practice

run or or something you know and and you know but like you say i mean we've had so many historians on the show uh especially over the last three years and and uh it's amazing how much you know our history is either whitewashed or or you know it's not quite it you know it's packaged you know for fast food basically i think i don't know is that a good analogy that you know so our history is packaged for fast food delivery oh i mean that that's a big part of this book is why we believe what we believe why we why we sort of lock in on maybe half a dozen things around the revolution and our independence and refuse to like take in any more data. And especially the,

the, the idea that the founding fathers were some kind of like gods, right? Infallible gods. I mean, what you learn, especially in this with Thomas Jefferson, is they were anything but. But it is fascinating when you think about especially the way our brains work.

You know, we basically in middle school history, right, American history, we take in five or six pieces of data and then we basically lock in and go, okay, Boston Tea Party, Valley Forge, Yorktown. That's it. That's all I'm learning, even though there are these incredible stories that we should all actually be absorbing as well. There you go. So does he plagiarize it? Did he just spunk it up and throw some more fancy wording in it? Or is it pretty much a reprint?

I'll tell you what George Tucker, Thomas Jefferson's actual biographer, said. And what he said was, this cannot be a coincidence, right? Either Thomas Jefferson stole from the MECDEC, or somehow the MECDEC stole Either Thomas Jefferson stole from the MEC deck or somehow the MEC deck stole from Thomas Jefferson, but the two documents are so close. It can't be a coincidence. So, um, yeah, he plagiarized it. So, yeah, I mean, basically part of the journey you probably went on is to determine which was written first, right? Yeah. And it's pretty obvious. I think George Tucker, because he was a Jefferson crony, um, was trying to defend his man, right? But it's obvious that the Mech Deck that the Declaration of Independence was some kind of sacred hand to God human document. Right. That is like, OK, it was actually just late technical paperwork that we hadn't filed yet. In context, Thomas Jefferson was just charged with cutting and pasting

the different emotions and sentiments of the day and putting it in writing because, you remember, we were so late in technically declaring independence that we had almost lost the war before we had even put it in writing. Wow. So there's a lot about the declaration of independence that in context will really change people's minds about what kind of a document it is and and who the who the original writers are you know i mean oh yeah maybe they

should add some uh uh subtext to the the thing or some credit or some you know some sort of some sort of asterisk if you will the asterisk you know you cover that in espn yeah the hall of fame uh maybe baseball stars you know juiced or different things like that maybe maybe there needs to be like an asterisk written truly written by or something i don't know or some footnotes i love your idea like yeah you and i can go to the the uh library of Congress and we'll just put a little asterisk next to it. Okay, here's a great example. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, rightia's constitution and it just so happened that that was published in a philadelphia paper the same week that thomas jefferson was writing the declaration of independence oh wow yeah and so and so that got uh ripped off exactly so did did most of the uh authors of the of our you know the the thing we accept as the original Constitution, did they know this was going on?

Or was it just John Adams who was privy to it? Oh, no. I think they all remember there was a committee of five that was charged with writing or composing. One Jefferson scholar even called it a cut and paste job, the Declaration of Independence. Like, can you believe that? Wow. But there was, it was clear that it was supposed to be, that it was created by a committee. And what really makes, I mean, John Adams was neurotically jealous of the attention

that Thomas Jefferson got. And once the Declaration became famous and became this sacred document, that's when Thomas Jefferson started taking all credit for writing it. And that's what really made men like Ben Franklin, John Adams, the other members of the committee who edited and added to this thing. It was written by a group. Thomas Jefferson took full credit. And I think to his dying day, John Adams was still angry about that. Wow. With the Madison Papers that were published by James Madison, where they were trying to, I guess, sell the idea of the Constitution of Independence,

did that play into any of the story and how that worked? Or were they all just complicit and just going hey this is a somebody wrote some great stuff here let's just nationalize this yeah i mean that's that's kind of what it was and i because i think at at the time and i think here's the problem and it's always the lie right it's always the cover-up it's always the lie that gets you nixon's favorite line yeah and mean, I guess this goes all the way back to the founding of our country, right? The fact that it's the lie because Thomas Jefferson, it was that he tried to take more credit and that he wouldn't acknowledge that,

which was his job, was to borrow from all these current things that were out in the world and synthesize them into the Declaration of Independence. If he had just said, hey, I did what they asked me to do, and I did it with this group of men, and we're all responsible for it. But instead, he takes full credit, and he would never admit that he borrowed from anything else, even though the words are almost identical to several other documents so it's a lie it's the lie well this nation was kind of built on a lie i mean i think the original lie was what the shining city on the hill or that it was given to us by god or some some sort of

ordainment uh there's a there's a few different lines we've told over the years to ourselves um if i remember correctly it's been a long time and my memory's faded since uh i'm old uh but i believe north carolina joined the confederacy there was this uh was anybody pissed off about this in north carolina this may be why they were like hey you guys stole our document and uh we're gonna go our own way that's a really good point because number one that's the whole reason this thing is still alive the controversy is alive to this day because thomas jefferson in 1819 about there when the declaration of independence started becoming famous thomas jefferson and all of his cronies and especially

virginia started to take credit for everything around independence and the revolution right they started taking credit for the for thinking up the idea for declaring independence for fighting the war i mean basically they were like we did it all here and and what happened was north carolina just kind of raised their hand and was like uh hello we we were a year ahead of you guys in writing. We want some credit. And then that starts this 200-year argument between North Carolina and Virginia and the rest of the colonies about who deserves credit for declaring independence, for fighting, all that stuff.

So it's weird how that's really really what what what started it and then your point about the civil war is very very smart because um north carolina chose may 20th as the date to secede from the union uh yeah as a clear callback to their original declaration. Now, it didn't do him any favors in public opinion, but yeah, there's no coincidence that both days were on May 20th. Wow. My mind is blown. You're giving me the MechDeck face. Is that what it is?

Yes, it is. I'm stupefied. What an interesting thing that they used the same date in 1775 that they filed that. And wow. I mean, we always joke about how, it's not really a joke, but we always talk about how much foresight a lot of the creators of the Constitution that we now find out plagiarized most of it had, and how much that has impacted everything going forward. It was kind of like how they future-proofed America in understanding how imperialism worked.

But it's kind of funny. Maybe Jackson was just like, yeah, if we just bury this and mow over it, no's gonna remember this uh the deets uh 200 plus years from now so fuck it let's just roll with it oh i mean okay seriously i mean is that his attitude oh you are channeling thomas jefferson right now you are channeling thomas jefferson because it was one of those things like for the longest time are you mean, you're dead on. It must be a human nature thing, right? Because for the longest time, when people would accuse Thomas Jefferson of plagiarizing the Declaration, all he had to do, his standing was so high.

All he had to do was say or get his cronies to say, how dare you criticize or even question thomas jefferson but wow you know what's happened in the last 20 years is thomas jefferson's reputation has gone from sterling to the absolute you know the the to the uh the bottom of the port-a-john and so people have begun to instead of you can't shut the argument down anymore just based on character because that doesn't hold up this play anything into you know i mean the one thing we learned on january 6th is we we have not settled the the civil war uh to see a confederate flag in the in the uh in the congress i just was like what the fuck yeah and uh i mean has this been one of the proponents of the original civil war that that they're like you know we're really kind of our

own nation and and uh you know north carolina did this and we're just gonna we're just gonna go off and do our own thing and maybe maybe this is one of the founding problems of the whole the whole civil war thing uh i don't know yeah i there are some connections i think as far as the mech deck is concerned one of the reasons why people especially in charlotte cling to the mech deck is it's a way for us to jump right over the the civil war right and not talk about the civil war and go back to our original acts of patriotism um it's a way to go yes but like yeah we we participated in this horrific event but don't forget we were also the first patriots in america um i mean it doesn't always hold up but i think that's why people do that and then i think you'll think this is interesting one of the reasons why the mech deck was uh suppressed especially by the north is the attitude that i came across especially with uh

historians was once you guys seceded from the union right and declared war on your own country you now forfeit all rights to original patriotism and that's a lot that is why the mech deck has gone away has not been supported has been called a folks because it's punishment for look you guys you guys were part of the civil war you lose all all rights to claim original patriotism which i i understand i I understand. There you go. I mean, I'm a moderate Democrat, but I like poking at the woke. And so here's a woke joke.

Wait till the woke people find out this country is founded by the Confederacy. Oh! Well, I mean, wait till people find out what a huge role the South played in winning the Revolutionary too i mean that's that's another component of the story nobody understands that without the south um yeah we'd all have british accents right now oh wow yeah wow this is really gonna like elon musk gets a

hold of this it's gonna go full right wing uh so right we're gonna have both sides hating us it's great yeah i'm i'm on a democrat i'm used to both sides the stream side's hating us but yeah uh what are you gonna do but this is interesting man i've learned this is why we do the show man we have so many amazing historians and and stuff that comes on like yourself and we're learning so much about history and it's it's true we need to dig into this stuff and just understand our origins better and so many people especially today try to burn books and and ban books and and do history but you know the one thing it's my quote the one thing man can learn from his history is man never learns from his history and thereby we go round and round

uh and so this is important for us to learn these things it's cool i mean you've given me something where i'm just going to be like for forever now walking around going nope the original decoration is the mech deck people be like what the fuck and i'll be like read his book yes that's very good and i i agree with you and i do you get pushback in this story gets pushback from both sides. And what I always say is the most patriotic thing you can do is learn about your fricking country, right? Learn all the facts, not just your facts or somebody else's facts, learn it all and then decide for yourself.

But don't just take a narrow view, especially of history and especially of Thomas Jefferson. Trust me on that. See, now I got to go read the mech deck because I always give people shit now. Anytime somebody on social media or my face says, well, this is against the Constitution. And you're like, can you give me the quote of what, where is that in the Constitution that you just scribed?

And they're just like, I heard it on Fox News or something. And you're like, come on, man. Seriously, read the Constitution. I tell people all the time now, read the damn Constitution. Learn it all. If you really are, again, the most patriotic thing you can do is learn. Learn about your

country. Learn about... That's the other thing. There are a lot of truths going on with Thomas Jefferson that our high school and middle school teachers never taught us. You're going to be amazed. But that's okay. Just learn his whole story and then decide. But don't base it off of two or three things that, yeah, your poor eighth grade history teacher told you.

Yeah, and I think part of my audience and me are at this point where we love being we'd love being narcissists and know so much about history so we can walk around and throw in people's faces hey i know i know more about the declaration of independence man i know about the mech tech so there you go yeah exactly anything more you want to tease out on the book before we go that we may have touched on or we should have touched on or entice people with? No, I think we really hit on it. It's done. It's not a straightforward history book. I just couldn't do that. Too dry, too boring.

So it's really kind of, it's my adventure trying to discover this legend. And I go basically all over the world looking for this document and speaking to the people who are still connected to it. And the stuff that we uncover along the way is, again, will give you a mech deck face. You know, but learning stuff new is fun, man. I mean, that's the whole fun of this whole thing is learning about your country, learning about the origins. We were sold a lot of BS lies, especially by some of our crazy founders over the years. Some of it led to some ugly things that we did over the history of America. We might still be doing, actually.

Exactly. I have to tell you, there were so many times in this book, whether I was in the British National Archives or I was in Quincy, Massachusetts or in the Library of Congress, where I was like, how in the world did I not know this? Right. How did I not know this stuff, this horrible, terrible stuff about Thomas Jefferson, the man who's credited with writing all men are created equal it's like i i want to go back and i want to go track down all my history teachers and go you didn't tell me 80 of the story yeah my understanding is we had a historian on and uh i believe she claimed that uh all men are created equal is written by a black man actually in the revolutionary war or prior to it or something and that was ripped off from him i don't know if that's a fact but that's what she

claimed so well that that um that certainly fits thomas jefferson's pattern right so that could be my next book there you go and the irony was uh according to her was that you know i mean they when they wrote the constitution they didn't include black people as having rights and valued as human beings at the time. And here the line was ripped off. So, wow. I mean, we're just finding out what a scoundrel this dude is. Is there any family from the original writers of the mech deck that they're, like pissed off. Cause they're not getting royalties on this thing. I mean,

okay. Yes, there are still in, in, in Charlotte. It's like, it's like Charlotte's version of the Mayflower society. Wow.

People who can claim a direct descendant to one of the 27 signers of the mech deck. And I will tell you quickly, I was at, this is how this is how popular and sort of instilled in our culture down here that it is i was out to dinner with friends who brought along somebody else we sat down i sat down next to this guy and he introduced himself and he said his last name was alexander and alexander is a huge that that family basically founded and ran Charlotte and most of the Carolina frontier for for decades wow and I said as a joke I said oh you're probably related to one of the

mech deck signers and he said I think I am and so while we're waiting for our appetizers I pull up the Alexander family tree which is like 12 generations he leans over zooms in on my phone and goes that's my grandma wow he's like dude you might have the mech deck in your attic yeah can i come over after dinner that's crazy man so this is a this is an exciting story i love this i mean i this is why we do the show uh this we changed the format in 2023 and had a lot of more people on you know we used to just business and tech and ceos and stuff before that first 10 years but this is what i love i just i just love this so hopefully our audience does as well and i think they do so uh tease uh give us a dot coms wherever you want

people to find you on the internet yeah um it's's all phlegm.espn, right? Linktree, phlegm.espn will give you all my article archives and everywhere you can buy the book at, which is available everywhere, ebook, audiobook, all that good stuff. Phlegm.espn, Linktree, phlegm.espn, Twitter, David Phleming, ESPN on Facebook. Yeah, it's an exciting time. the response to the book has been amazing but um this is this has been one of the most fun things I've gotten to do so far oh yeah I mean I'm going to be going like side by side down the constitution and the and

the mech deck going okay let's see what the differences are and stuff and yeah I mean the more we can know about history the the more we understand our history, the more hopefully we can hope to not repeat it. But human nature is human nature as it were. So that doesn't seem to ever change. Yeah, I'm fully expecting to get texts or emails from you in the middle of the night going WTF, WTF. What a journey.

Well, I'm glad you came on and shared this with us. Everyone pick up the book. Who's your founding father? One man's epic quest to uncover the first true declaration of independence. Side note, who's your founding father is my pickup line of bars. That was my earlier joke. I don't know what that means. But thank you very much, Dave, for coming on the show.

We certainly appreciate you being here. That's my pleasure. I really appreciate it, Chris. Thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess Chris Voss. Go to youtube.com, 4Chess Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, 4Chess Chris Voss. This will be a LinkedIn newsletter.

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