In this podcast episode accompanying Yale's DeVane course America at 250: A History, professors David Blight, Beverly Gage, and Joanne Freeman gather at the Yale Teaching Studios to discuss Freeman's first week of lectures on the pre-revolutionary period. The conversation covers John Adams' practical planning as the Revolution approached alongside the influence of Thomas Paine's Common Sense on colonial public opinion. The episode offers a more informal, discussion-based companion to the formal DeVane lectures, with the three historians reacting to and expanding on Freeman's material in conversational form rather than delivering a standalone lecture.