"The Adoption of the Constitution" by J. B. Stearns, oil., ca. 1856. (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)

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It’s Election Day, and Americans know that one way or another they are making history today with their vote.

As voters go to the polls, we are going back, to the beginning — to the American Revolution and founders, and to the real story of how they created a nation.

The country’s first turbulent decades were a time of unfolding possibilities, big triumphs, big compromises. America was still being made.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis says the founders weren’t gods, and their plans were not pure genius. They weren’t even set on making a democracy with their revolution. But they did. And today we are shaping it still.

This hour, On Point: human then and human now. Historian Joseph Ellis and the story of the American creation.

You can join the conversation. Does it all look etched in stone to you now? Can you imagine a time when it really wasn’t?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

We’re joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College. He is author of “American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic,” now available in paperback. His other books include “His Excellency: George Washington” (2004), “Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation” (2000), and “American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson” (1996).

Read an excerpt from “American Creation” at RandomHouse.com.

In storybook America, when folks sit down at the barbeque, at the bar, at the town bowling alley, at the local cafe, they come in all political and cultural stripes.

Conservatives, liberals, Republicans, Democrats, independents — all rubbing elbows, pitching in their two cents, hashing out the way of a great democracy.

In real America today, says my guest Bill Bishop, Americans have increasingly moved into lockstep, like-minded communities where everybody’s politics are the same and conversations are more echo chamber than real exchange. He calls it “the big sort.”

This hour, On Point: Bill Bishop on the dangers of a cookie-cutter America.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Bill Bishop, former reporter for the Austin American-Statesman and author of “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart”

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

Global big thinker Fareed Zakaria is out with his latest big book, and the title almost says it all: It’s “The Post-American World.”

Take a look at the world and it’s not hard to see: the world’s tallest buildings, biggest airplane, biggest investment fund, biggest movie industry, biggest refinery, biggest casino — heck, the world’s biggest ferris wheel –none of them are in the USA anymore.

So, is it all over over for Uncle Sam? Not if we play our cards right, says Zakaria.

This hour, On Point: Fareed Zakaria and the post-American world.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Fareed Zakaria, columnist and editor of Newsweek International. His new book is “The Post-American World.”

It’s not easy being Blessed Boykin, Sweet Pitts or Just Desire. But if that’s what your parents named you, that’s what you live with.

And the archives of American names recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau are full of doozeys. Good Knight. Sweet Prince. Zombie Davenport. Hysteria Johnson. Not to mention, of course, the timeless Ima Muskrat, or Mary Christmas, or Ima Nut.

Who would do that to a child? Did they really do it? And are we doing it today? A new book tells all.

This hour, On Point: Bad baby names, and the people who bear them.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Michael Sherrod and Matthew Rayback, co-authors of “Bad Baby Names: The Worst True Names Parents Saddled Their Kids With — And You Can Too!”

Laura Wattenberg, author of “The Baby Name Wizard” and creator of the online Name Voyager, a website that tracks the popularity of individual names over time.

From the misty, half-attuned, still-in-the-American-Century shores of the United States, China and India can look like peas in a pod: two rising Asian giants with screaming growth rates and lots of what used to be American jobs.

Look closer, and these are very different cats. China is the factory floor and India the back-office, software shop. China is top-down party driven. India is a messy, vibrant democracy. And the two, one-time enemies.

Look closer again, and this may be the complementary duo that changes the world. Including your world.

This hour, On Point: China, India and all that is to come.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Tarun Khanna, professor at Harvard Business School and author of “Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their Futures–and Yours.”

In the 1990s, when China’s fabled Shaolin Temple was celebrating its 1500th anniversary as a center of Zen Buddhism and kung fu, American college student Matthew Polly was on a pilgrimage of his own.

The skinny kid from Topeka, Kansas who had grown up on Star Wars and David Carradine was leaving Princeton University to look for courage and spiritual guidance. He went to Shaolin, deep in central China, to study kung fu as a martial art and spiritual practice.

What he found was a legend, decimated under Mao, reborn as tourist trap and kung fu paradise. He also found fighting monks, a rich cultural icon, and the courage he was looking for.

This hour On Point: American Shaolin.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Matthew Polly, author of “American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China.”

Eric Lee, kung fu grand master, runs martial arts tours to China.

The big GM wobble this week over workers and wages and whether its factories will be built in this country was just one more wake-up call. The old world is gone and the new one is going to require a lot more innovation if America is going to stay at the top of the economic heap.

This hour we’re checking in with three young world-beating American innovators, on the path to breakthroughs right now, about what it takes and how they do it. And we hear from a big-view innovation guru who says we’d better get cracking.

This hour, On Point: message to America — lead, follow, or get out of the way.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Dr. Anita Goel, President, Scientific Director and CEO of Nanobiosysm Labs/ Nanobiosysm Diagnostics, Inc.

David Berry, Principal in Flagship Ventures.

Garrett Camp, founder of StumbleUpon.

John Kao, leading expert on innovation, author of “Innovation Nation: How America is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters and How We Can Get it Back.”

It’s been a long time in the wilderness. But the “Made in the USA” label is packing some cachet again. After poison toys from China, job losses, and eco-disaster images of filthy smokestacks abroad, Americans are getting the itch to buy American again: toys, bikes, even t-shirts.

Some never lost the urge. But in the age of WalMart, with aisles packed from Shanghai, it’s been tough. Now some American products are looking like the sure thing — even chic.

This hour, On Point: We look again at the “Made in the USA” label, and the new American itch to bring our buying home.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jared Bernstein, director of the Living Standards program at the Economic Policy Institute.

Stephanie Sanzone, founder of the website stillmadeinusa.com.

Alex Williams, style writer for The New York Times.

John Ratzenberger, actor and host of “Made in America” on the Travel Channel.