Join Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! host Peter Sagal and Yale Law School's Akhil Reed Amar, one of America's foremost constitutional scholars and author of the landmark new book Born Equal, for a searching conversation on the birth of the US Constitution, its life as lived in the American republic from then to now, and its uncertain future.

Did the Framers build sufficient safeguards against tyranny? Why did they compromise with slavery, and what did that cost the nation? Touching on the Anti-Federalists' warnings, John Marshall's invention of judicial review, the Electoral College's troubling origins, and the secession crisis, Amar and Sagal will probe the Constitution's deepest contradictions. Drawing on Born Equal, Amar will also trace how figures like Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought to redeem the founding promise that all are created equal — ultimately transforming the nation through four constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and extended citizenship and suffrage to all Americans. A conversation about what the Founders got wrong, what remarkable Americans fought to make right, and what it means for us today.

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