Drawing on his books The Pursuit of Happiness and The Pursuit of Liberty, Jeffrey Rosen examines how the Founders understood happiness as the pursuit of virtue rather than pleasure and how the enduring debate between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson over liberty and power continues to shape American democracy. Rosen explores how Americans across generations have embraced the core principles of the American Idea liberty equality government by consent and the pursuit of happiness even as they have differed on how best to balance them.

Jeffrey Rosen is CEO Emeritus of the National Constitution Center and host of We the People, a weekly constitutional debate podcast. He is a professor of law at George Washington University Law School, a contributing editor of The Atlantic, and the author of several bestselling books, including The Pursuit of Happiness, Conversations with RBG, and Pursuit of Liberty, forthcoming in October 2025.