If We Can Keep It with Aaron Evans
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 Papers under a pen name, a Jewish broker on Front Street bankrolling Washington's army, the first peaceful handoff of power in 1800, Lincoln in 1858, Eisenhower's farewell, the Watergate tapes, the contested elections of 2000 and 2020 - and I pull it apart. What actually happened. Who did the hard work. What it cost them. And what it means for the people who are trying to build and lead something today. This isn't a history lecture. It's a working conversation for the people I know are listening: business owners writing paychecks, executives running teams, officeholders trying to serve, and citizens who still believe the American experiment is worth defending. New episodes weekly. If it hits, share it with someone who's building something that matters. A republic. If we can keep it.
Episodes
It's Philadelphia on September 17, 1787. Four months of arguing behind closed windows in the summer heat. Franklin is 81 years old, sick, being carried in and out of the State House on a chair. On the last day, they sign. He walks out. A woman named Elizabeth Powel stops him and asks, "Well, Doctor, what have we got - a republic or a monarchy?" He says, "A republic, if you can keep it."
In this first episode of If We...
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