The Visionaries Who United the States with Simon Wincheste

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On today's episode of Timeless Wisdom.

I was just looking at the name of the country, the United States, and I thought, it is pretty remarkable, isn't it, that this country, despite, you know, the unpleasantness of the 1860s, has remained pretty steadfastly united for all of its history, and in a way that other big national entities, Canada with all the, you know, Quebec problems, and Russia and Europe where I come from, manifestly not being united. And yet this country, such a polyglot amalgam of mongrel peoples, is united. And how has this happened? And so I started drawing up a list of the people that one way or another seem to have built the physical links, the connective tissue of this country., and my wife, who is Japanese and comes from a country where, with everyone being Japanese, unity is something easy to achieve, she said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "I'm making this list." And she said, "Oh, you're making a list of the men who united the States?" And I said, "Sweetheart, you have given me the title. I bless you." And once you've got the title, and no one else had used that title remarkably, then the book sort of shaped itself around and within this title.

Oh, that's terrific.

That's coming up on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

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Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Hear thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.

Hello everybody, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show. I have a guest. These one of the best writers of nonfiction, that is especially history, living today. And I, I follow him so avidly that I'm telling you, and I have him on every book that he writes. If this man wrote Great Figures in Luxembourg History, I would have him on. In fact, Simon Winchester, New York Times bestselling author, is that your next book?

It is not, Dennis Prager. Nice to talk to you again. The next book is actually about the Pacific Ocean, so unless Luxembourg relocates rather dramatically, there will be no luck.

Well, there are those who believe the Pacific will relocate.

I think there are a lot of worried people in California. Yes, exactly.

I'm not among them, I must tell you. Simon Winchester, where am I speaking to you from? Where are you right now?

I am in Baltimore. In Maryland, and it's a crisp autumn, uh, early afternoon here. And, um, I come to San Francisco tomorrow, so I'm wandering about all over the place.

You certainly are. By the way, are you living in the UK or the US?

I live in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, and since we last spoke, I've become an American citizen, so I'm one of you, one of us.

That is just a handful of my audience cheering. I just want you to know that. By the way, has it ever been known— and it is, by the way, we're thrilled to have you, despite your accent, we are absolutely thrilled— has any Brit ever lost his accent?

I think—

I would— go on, I'm sorry.

I've sort of heard one or two people who have become And it's interesting you say this because when I go back to Britain, I was going to say when I go home, but this is home now, people say, "You do sound rather odd. You've become sort of Americanized." But I think once I get back here, I become more British than I ever was. It's peculiar and I'm not quite sure why. So I think the short answer is that no, we don't, generally speaking, lose our accent.

As we don't either. I don't believe an American I spent a year in Leeds at a very formative age, when I was 20, and I was able to mimic a Yorkshire accent.

Right.

And it was one of the— I think I may have told you this once, but I don't expect you to—

No, you haven't. I'm fascinated. Can you still do it? Will you try?

Well, all I can say—

no, I only remember "luv." "Luv," aye, "luv." Yes, everybody was "luv." Yeah, well, I lived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which is a wee bit north of you, and everyone's "pet" there, so "luv" in Yorkshire. Pet?

You're kidding me.

Pet. Hi, Pet. Yes, you go to a shop and buy a pound of flour or something and they say, there you are, Pet, that'll be, you know, threepence heptney.

By the way, oh, threepence heptney. I love that. That took me, that was my first day in Leeds. I went to a little market, I bought some stuff for my flat, and I said, how much? And he said, fahnt threepence heptney.

I had—

he said it in Bulgarian. I would have been better off because I spoke Russian.

Fa anta pentsipni. Right.

Well done. Well done. By the way, I would like to have you on if it is— if it's an interesting subject, because I don't want to take from your book time from your book. But I would be— I am very curious to know why you opted to be an American citizen. Is that a story in and of itself, or it just worked out that way?

To be perfectly honest, I first— well, it is a complicated story, but what actually happened was in 1955, when I was 11, my father, who was an engineer, was offered a job in, of all places, Oklahoma. And I was terribly excited because Britain in the 1950s was a pretty dismal country. We had rationing and so forth. And the thought of, you know, cornfields, and I think the musical had come out, and we thought everyone was, you know, apart from the ranchers and the cowboys not being friends, I think it was, we thought it was paradise. So we sold our flat, I think, or maybe we rented one, but anyway, we packed all our goods up and we arranged to go out on the Queen Mary, I think, to New York, and learned all about the railways that would go out to Tulsa. And then the day before we were due to go, my father got cold feet and cancelled the whole thing, and I was completely devastated. And so I vowed there and then that I would learn everything I possibly could about America and came over here as a hitchhiker in 1962. I took a year off between high school and university and had this— I went to every state in the Union over 6 months. Journeyed over 30,000 miles, and because Americans were so nice to me the whole trip— I entered America with $200 in my pocket, left with $182. It cost $18 for the entire 6 months because Americans were just the nicest people I'd ever met. And I thought to myself, one day I'm going to come back here and work, which I did as a correspondent in the '70s and again in the '80s. And I was completely enraptured and remain a com— I mean, I'm totally enthusiastic about this country. I think it's a wonderful, wonderful place.

Was that beautiful? I agree with every word you said. We have very parallel lives, but I— people know my life, so I'm going to continue with yours. And let's go to your book, because you've decided to write a sort of history of the United States in a terrific way. Emphasizing the great individuals, not the great political forces, but the great individuals who made this country, many of whom most of us never heard of. And the title of the book is The Men Who United the States. It's a great title. America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks and the Creation of One Nation Indivisible. This is a sort of love story about America in a certain sense, isn't it?

It is and it isn't. I mean, it's interesting that you said that, because when I decided that I wanted to try and tackle America in a book— and I mean, that's a pretty daunting task— the first thought I had was that it simply would be a love story, because of what I've just been saying, that I think this is just such a magnificent and wonderful experiment. But my editor in New York very dear friend of mine called Henry Ferris said, no, it's got to be more tightly focused than this. And so I, I then came up with the idea, because I love railway trains, of trying to cross America on what are called Class 3 railroads, those little mom-and-pop lines. You can actually go all the way from Eastport in Maine to a little station in Northern California. But he thought once again that that would be too much of a book about railroads rather than about America., and then I was just looking at the name of the country, the United States, and I thought, it is pretty remarkable, isn't it, that this country, despite, you know, the unpleasantness of the 1860s, has remained pretty steadfastly united for all of its history, and in a way that other big national entities— Canada with all the, you know, Quebec problems, and Russia, and Europe where I come from— manifestly not being united, and yet this country, such a polyglot amalgam of mongrel peoples, is united. And how has this happened? And so I started drawing up a list of the people that one way or another seem to have built the, the physical links, the connective tissue of this country. And my wife, who is Japanese and comes from a country where with everyone being Japanese Unity is something easy to achieve. She said, what are you doing? And I said, I'm making this list. And she said, oh, you're making a list of the men who united the States? And I said, sweetheart, you have given me the title, I bless you. And once I got the title, and no one else had used that title remarkably, then the book sort of shaped itself around and within this title.

Oh, that's terrific. So you call her sweetheart, not pet?

Indeed, very good. I think, yes, she'd be a bit alarmed with all these pet stores around that I've started feeding her kibble. So yes, she's sweetheart.

Yes, I saw the beautiful, uh, opening, uh, dedication to your mother-in-law in Japanese.

That is an extraordinary story. Do you want me to tell?

Of course I do.

It's very peculiar. What had happened was On the 22nd of February, 2012, our dog of many years passed away. It was terribly sad.

What was your dog's name?

Bailey. Bailey was an English Shorthaired Pointer, and she just was the most wonderful creature. And to watch her being put down in front of the fire in a chair that morning was just miserable. But my wife and I thought, well, wait a minute, tomorrow, the 23rd of February, was my wife's mother, in other words my mother-in-law's, 80th birthday. So that'll cheer us all up. So we drove down to the city, to New York, and we had arranged that we would all go to, um, to a birthday dinner in a very sort of sedate and classical Japanese restaurant called Hakubai, which is in the lower floor of a big Japanese-owned hotel on Park Avenue. And we'd taken a room upstairs stairs where people could leave their coats and we could, you know, have a birthday cake and so forth after dinner. So first of all, my wife and I went to the old couple's apartment and I told them that I was structuring this new book I was writing around— slightly eccentric idea— around the 5 classical elements, which is well known in—

All right, we're going to continue that story in a moment. We have to take a break and I need to remind everyone that this is Simon Winchester, the magnificent writer of nonfiction his new history of the men who united the states. He is as interesting in print as he is in speech.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

If you're eating less, staying disciplined, and the weight still isn't coming off, the problem may not be your effort. It may be your metabolism. After years of stress, dieting, and lack of sleep, the body adapts. It slows down and holds on to fat. That's why PhD Weight Loss focuses on your Metabolism first so your body stops working against you. Mention Prager today and receive 2 free weeks plus free food, a $1,500 value. Call 864-644-1900. That's 864-644-1900.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.

Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here. I'm speaking to the wonderful writer and raconteur Simon Winchester. And his brand new book, The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks in the Creation of One Nation Indivisible. And it's a great way to learn history. I always believe that biography is the easiest way to learn history. So this is, in a sense, many, many biographies. But you were telling me, uh, we got sidetracked, but it's too interesting to go back on track for a moment. So how it came to be that you dedicated this book to your mother-in-law, who is Japanese, on her 80th birthday?

Well, we had gone down to New York to have this big birthday party for her, and on the way we stopped off, my wife and I, at the old people's apartment and to have a cup of tea, and I mentioned that I just come up with this idea of structuring the book around this slightly eccentric idea of the 5 classical elements, which are wood, earth, water, fire, and metal. And this is very much part of the Eastern tradition, very much recognizable in China and Japan. And Mrs. Sato— that was her name— went into the bedroom briefly and came out 5 minutes later with a piece of writing paper on which she had written in beautiful script the Chinese characters for wood, earth, water, fire, and metal, together with their names in both English and Japanese. And I thought, that's so nice, this is— I'll treasure this forever. So I put it in my pocket, and we, my wife and I, then walked over to the hotel, made sure that the arrangements for dinner were fine, went up to the room, and people started arriving. There were about 14 or 16 people. They left their coats The old couple came, the dinner was a stunning success, it was wonderful, very classical, old-fashioned Japanese food, and then we afterwards went up to the room, the cake was there, the old lady blew out her 80 candles, and then we had a couple of bottles of decent Dom Pérignon champagne, which we— everyone toasted her. And then the children, there were a couple of nieces who had made a film of her life so far, sort of video clips, and images, and we watched that. And then she, Mrs. Sato, had been slightly nervous of making a speech in English because her English wasn't impeccable. So she'd been walking around Central Park that morning practicing her speech with a friend. She delivered it word-perfect. Then she went around the room and hugged everybody in the room, thanking them for coming to her birthday, sat on the sofa, and dropped dead. And it was an amazing moment. But once we'd got over the shock of everything, she'd had a massive stroke, we realized, my gosh, that is the way to go.

Oh, of course, of course. And it's like planned.

Well, almost. And the thing that I then realized with this card that I had in my pocket with the structure of my book written by her was the last thing she ever wrote in her life.

And the picture of it is in the book.

And so the publishers were kind enough to, to allow me the space, not just to dedicate it with one line, but a whole page, and I'm very grateful, and I think the family is very pleased too.

What a beautiful story, even though it's of death. Alright, so let's get started with your book here. So we have Part 1: When America's Story Was Dominated by Wood. Part 2: When America's Story Went Beneath the Earth. Part 3: When America's— when the American story traveled by water, 1803 to 1900. Part 4: When the American story was fanned by fire, 1811 to 1956. And 5, Part 5: When the American story was told through metal, 1835 until tomorrow. And so, uh, I, I will ask you, what— why don't you tell us one story from each part because of the time factor, obviously?

Yes, so one of the, the things— I mean, going back to the whole idea behind the, the, the wood chapter was this was all about the early exploration of America when the country was covered by primitive forests and people like Lewis and Clark had to passed through them, and they went in wooden canoes, and they built wooden palisades, and they warmed themselves with fires made of wood, and they were sent out by President, President Jefferson, who was obsessed by trees, loved them, regarded them as his pets, planted all manner of trees in Monticello, where the Lewis and Clark expedition was planned. But there's one thing that Jefferson did in the early peopling of America's story, which I think is— needs to be remembered by people because it's not.

It's—

and that's the importance of a town which most people know little about called East Liverpool, Ohio. And East Liverpool is a former— most of us have things made in East Liverpool because it was the, once upon a time, the crockery capital. So we have sauces and cups and teapots and things that were probably made in one of the 400 or so kilns that were there. There are now only 2 left, but the importance of East Liverpool is not so much in its history as a crockery capital, but for an obelisk that lies on the south side of, I think it's Route 39, which is on the Ohio River, just a mile or so outside the town, and that is a hugely important obelisk, and yet You'd never know it, because no one ever stops there. There's graffiti and litter, and it's just bypassed. This was the place where Jefferson railroaded through Congress in 1785 a hugely important piece of legislation called the Land Ordinance, which allowed Americans to own land for the first time. Up to that point, in Europe, it was essentially the king or the aristocracy or the church that owned the land. The ordinary people were tenants, but Jefferson said Americans ought to be able to own the land that they lived on, and they could farm it, they could build on it, they could sell it, the government could levy taxes on it. Everyone won in such a situation, but in order to sell land to the people, to the new settlers, the land had to be surveyed. And when you fly over the country today and look out of the window when you're bored and you see all those north-south lines exactly a mile apart, and east-west lines, mile apart, laying the country out into sections and townships and ranges. The point of beginning of all those lines had to be somewhere, and in 1785, a man called Thomas Hutchins, the first geographer of the United States, said the point of beginning of America should be this obelisk, which I'm going to put up outside this little village, as it was then, of East Liverpool, on the Ohio River. And so he drew a north-south line and an east-west baseline, and from that point, all Western America was measured. That, the point of beginning, is, I think, an enormously important part of the American story. And I would like to see a coach car park, I'd like to see an air-conditioned interpretive center, and every young American child taken to East Liverpool to show how the American story based on the ownership of land began.

Wow.

So you tell his story, that's one of the chapters?

Yes, indeed. Um, the second—

well, hold on, hold on with that because I want to promote your book. Is that all right? Is that all right with you?

The best news.

Okay.

The Men Who United the States: A Magnificently New Fascinating way of reading American history and learning it. Simon Winchester, who is, uh, one of the best-known writers today of nonfiction. The book is up at DennisPrager.com, and I continue with Simon Winchester momentarily.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

If you're eating less, staying disciplined, and the weight still isn't coming off, the problem may not be your effort. It may be your metabolism. After years of stress, dieting, and lack of sleep, the body adapts. It slows down and holds on to fat. That's why PhD Weight Loss focuses on your metabolism first, so your body stops working against you. Mention Prager today and receive 2 free weeks plus free food, a $1,500 value. Call 864-644-1900. That's 864-644-1900.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

Hello, my friends. Dennis Prager here speaking to Simon Winchester, the noted— properly so— author of great books of nonfiction, and the latest is The Men Who United the States. And the very fact that eccentrics is one of the groups America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks. You have no idea how it touches my soul, the eccentric and maverick, and I'd like to tell you why since you open me up as much as I open you up. You might— I'm sure you'll find this of some interest. It's not overwhelmingly— well, one of them is overwhelmingly significant. First, the maverick part. When you grew up, of course, in the UK, I grew up in the United States, the only fictional character, uh, in, uh, not including literature, but on television or in movies that impacted me was the figure of Maverick, this cowboy played by James Garner. And everything about him I emulated— his staying cool under pressure and fighting bad guys. He was my model for life. And as far as eccentric, this you will find significant. There was a book written many years ago— there are not many books on this subject— and that is Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust. And it's a subject that should interest everybody. I mean, who— how do you produce great, good people? Very— I would think it would preoccupy humanity, and it certainly has preoccupied me. And one of the few— and according to one of the books that I read on this, one of the characteristics, chief characteristics of rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust was that they had disproportionately been considered eccentrics prior to the war. So yeah, I knew you would, and, and it makes perfect sense that you would have elevated their status. Eccentrics March to the beat of their own drummer. They are the anti-herd people, and we were made by non-herd-like people, we Americans.

I think you're absolutely right. Oddly enough, I should say that my father, my late father, was the spitting image of James Garner. Ha!

Is that so?

Weird that you should bring up his name.

Yes. Oh, that's fascinating. It really is. Well, anyway, so it's another reason for people to read the book.

All right, I tell you about an eccentric.

Yes. Oh, that's a great idea.

Yeah, right. Well, talking about the chapter essentially about geology and about Earth, this remarkable man called Clarence King, who did a heroic task in a 7-year-long survey of the American West and then went on to be the first-ever director of the United States Geological Survey, which still exists. He was a— from Newport, Rhode Island. He was very much part of the WASP aristocracy. He was friends with Henry Adams, he was a friend of John Hayes. He went to Yale, got a PhD, I think, at Harvard. But he loved Native American women, and he loved black women. And he had this extraordinary event happen to him in New York fairly late in life when He was walking through Riverside Park and saw coming towards him a black woman who he said, "This is the lady of my dreams." And what he should have done, I think, in retrospect, would have gone up to her and said, "Good evening, madam. My name is Clarence King. I'm the director of the United States Geological Survey. Will you have dinner with me?" But he didn't. Thinking perhaps a little too quickly on his feet, he said, "Good evening, madam." And he didn't— where he got the name from, I don't know. My name is James Todd, and although I look white, I am in fact black, and I'm a porter on the Pullman Railways. Will you have dinner with me? They had dinner, they fell in love, they married, they had 5 children. And from that moment on, and for the next— in the last 20 years of his life, he lived 2 completely separate lives. He lived with his wife and 5 children, Mrs. Todd, Mr. and Mrs. Todd, in Queens in New York, and then every so often he would say to her, "Well, darling, I have to go off and work on the 20th Century Limited or the California Zephyr." He would walk over the newly built Brooklyn Bridge to the offices of the geologists in New York and say, "Well, that was a pretty amazing field trip. I'm here for 2 weeks to write up my notes." And as Clarence King, he would do precisely that. And then when that was done, he would go back across the Brooklyn Bridge, reassume his identity as James Todd.

That's, uh, that's eccentric on steroids.

It really is.

It gives me—

20 years.

The book is The Men Who United the States: Simon Winchester. We continue. I'm Dennis Prager.

Hi, my name is Gloria and I live in Agua Dulce, California. I was driving home one night and you came on and I was late, very late, and I literally had to pull over to listen to you because I knew I was going to drive into an area where I have no reception and that's how much I wanted to hear you. I stayed there in front of somebody's house. The whole time. And after you finished, I drove away, but I felt it looks rather criminal with me parked in front of some innocent person's home. But we miss you and we'll be happy when you come back. But I liked hearing these also. Yes, because I haven't always heard everything you've done.

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I'm thinking of doing a 3-hour special with Simon Winchester, and what I will do is I will pose a question, leave the room for breakfast or lunch, and then come back and then pose another one. That's a big compliment, incidentally. You might have been able to take it the wrong way. Oh, I talk too much. No, no, no, on the contrary.

I do talk too much.

No, no, no, you don't talk too much. The whole point was you're so interesting. Now we're talking about his book, Simon Winchester's new book, The Men Who United the States. It's about the explorers, inventors, eccentrics, and mavericks who created this nation. Now we're talking about a man who gives eccentricity new meaning. I mean, this story is— how did you How did you find out about this man who lived a life as Mr. Todd and a life as Mr. King?

Well, it's all chronicled in the official history of the U.S. Geological Survey, which was written in, I think, 5 volumes by a lady called Mary Rabbitts, which I think is a wonderful name. And, um, there's a sort of a passing reference to the fact that Clarence King Brackett, also known as James Todd, and I looked him up and it turned out that there was a book 5 or 6 years ago called Passing Strange, written not so much from the geological point of view but from the exploring the whole question of racial passing, which was more common than we thought. It tended to be black people passing as white because they were pale-skinned and figured that they got some advantages by, as it were, pretending, or at least passing white. But this was the other way around, and it drove Clarence King, which I'll have to call him because that was his real name, to terrible— I mean, awful financial problems. For a start, he had to borrow tens, I think even hundreds of thousands of dollars from his friend John Hay, who went on to be Secretary of State. And he also went rather mad. He had a big fight outside the lion cage of the Central Park Zoo and had to be taken into custody and put into an asylum for a couple of weeks. But he didn't let on to either his employers or to his wife of these two lives, um, and two races in fact. And then finally he fell ill, was taken off to Albuquerque to convalesce, but in fact died of TB. And he confessed finally to his doctor, and he said, I think you better tell a certain Mrs. Todd of Queens, New York, that her name is actually Mrs. King. And that her husband that she's been with for 20 years was not even a tiny bit black, but was in fact pure white, and, um, "I'm terribly sorry," and then with that he died, and the doctor, filling out the death certificate with the race of deceased, scored out the words "black" and "white" and simply wrote, and I think rather poetically, sentimentally, he simply wrote the word "American." Ah, if only that were done in every case. Indeed. I, I—

now, this story in Central Park of his stopping this woman of his dreams and saying, I just want you to know I'm black— well, I, I thought you'd say she ran away. I, I— it sounds a bit odd for a white person to go to a black woman and say, I'd just like you to know I'm black.

He was very charming and evidently extremely persuasive.

I'll say.

And of course they had something— it turned out that he was right. They did fall in love. I mean, it was a very good marriage.

All right, look, I'm, uh, it's a great story. Tell us about an inventor we don't know.

Well, I mean, I'm thinking of— well, gosh, there are dozens of inventors. I mean, Samuel Morse, of course, is the one that first comes to mind that we do know, but perhaps what we don't know all that much about him, that he was a painter, and a pretty good painter, but he had this sudden change of life when he was up for painting the mural inside the dome of the United States Capitol, failed to win the contract. During that time, his wife fell very ill, and by the time he had raced back to New York, she had in fact died. So there were two reasons for feeling miserable He took off to Europe to, I think, sort of to cheer himself up and to get another painting commission, but that didn't work, and then really miserable, he came back on a boat to New York, and on the ship, which had about 20 passengers, there was an electrical engineer, and the two of them— and Morse knew a little bit about electricity because he'd had a good education— they talked about how when an electric current is broken and emits a spark, then it also emits a signal which can be transmitted down a wire. And Morse thought, let me build a machine that makes little sparks and we'll send the little signals down the wire. And that was the beginning of the telegraph. And so he patented it, patent number 1647, which I think is probably one of the most important patents in world history, let alone American history. Which allowed the beginning of Morse transmi— Morse code transmission down the telegraph wire. And if anything really united the country coast to coast with information that was transmitted from New York to San Francisco in seconds, it was Morse's invention. But did we know that he was a failed painter? I think most of us probably don't.

Why, history seems to be littered with failed painters.

Yes, indeed.

That could be another book of yours.

Failed painters.

Failed painters, yes. How they've affected history. What year was the Morse code invented?

1841, I think it was, in the first, um—

So I— wait, so then I'm curious, because when I've read about the Titanic, they said that it— I thought I had heard that it was the telegraph or whatever was— had been just invented, so they they, the transmissions were not clear or were not done in time. Maybe that's wrong.

So, no, it's not wrong because what we haven't talked about is the invention of radio. I mean, the wireless transmission. The Morse code could be transmitted through wires and indeed was. I mean, that was the undoing of—

Oh, that's right. This would be, of course, wireless. That's right.

But this was wireless and that was only invented in 1902. And then in 1906, and I think this is the most lyrical and wonderful of stories, and we can squeeze it in before the break, but there was a man called Reginald Fessenden who came up with the idea of transmitting voice, and he transmitted it on Christmas Eve. Maybe I should tell what he transmitted Christmas Eve, 1906. It was the first ever voice transmission by radio.

Oh, I, I, yes, as soon as we come back. The Men Who United the States by Simon Winchester. I'm Dennis Prager. The book is up at DennisPrager.com. We continue in a moment.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

If you're eating less, staying disciplined, and the weight still isn't coming off, the problem may not be your effort. It may be your metabolism. After years of stress, dieting, and lack of sleep, the body adapts. It slows down and holds on to fat. That's why pH ADHD weight loss focuses on your metabolism first so your body stops working against you. Mention Prager today and receive 2 free weeks plus free food, a $1,500 value. Call 864-644-1900. That's 864-644-1900.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.

Hello, my friends, you are listening to The Dennis Prager Show. A truly fast hour as a credit to my guest Simon Winchester, the world-noted writer of nonfiction. His latest book, The Men Who United the States. We were talking last now about the man who first was able to transmit voice, Christmas 1906. Is that correct?

It is.

Now wait, just forgive me, but you don't mean record, you mean transmit.

I mean transmit, right? Okay. Um, he, he was called Reginald Fessenden, and he sent a message to all the ships at sea in the western Atlantic by Morse code, because that was the only thing they knew how to use in those days, saying, listen out at 1 minute to midnight on Christmas Eve, 1906, to all the ships of the United Fruit Company that were bringing bananas from the ports in Central America up to ports like Charleston and Savannah and Baltimore and Boston and New York, listen out for a different transmission. And it happened to be a dark and stormy night. There was a blizzard blowing off Cape Cod, but the radio operators went down and they clamped on their earphones and they heard the Morse code of other ships talking to each other and they heard static, and then suddenly they heard a transmitter switch on And if you'll indulge me with a brief, maybe 6-second experiment, they then heard this. And that was an Austrian singer called Emmy Leisner singing "Ombra Mai Fu" from Handel's "Octavozerkse," the first transmitted human voice ever. And then Reginald Fessenden came on and said the Lord's Prayer and then wished a happy Christmas to everyone. And then within days, a radio station opened in Pasadena above a musical instrument shop. Store. Then an aerial was put up in a cornfield in Madison, Wisconsin. WHA began transmitting, and the national conversation— what we're doing today— began. And it began at sea with that wonderful aria on Christmas Eve, 1906.

The only question is, is Xerxes an opera or an oratorio?

It's a very good question. You have stumped me, but it has nothing to do with America. It's all to do with the King of Persia.

It is too much fun, sir. I shouldn't be paid for the hours I have you on.

Well, it's lovely of you to say so. I enjoyed it, and thank you for letting me play that little piece of music.

Oh, that— the reactions of those who heard it just must be overwhelming. Thank you, Simon Winchester. Thank you for the book, The Men Who United the States.

Tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

Hello, my friends. This is Dennis Prager, and this is Independence Day, July 4th, the birthday of the United States of America. And I'm broadcasting on this day because I believe it is too significant not to broadcast on the day. It's a little— I don't know what to say— contribution that I make to my belief that holidays need to be taken seriously.

Join us tomorrow to hear more on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles. We want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the podcast. Go to lifeaudio.com to find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network, including shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.

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