Seventy-one years ago today, Franklin Delano Roosevelt died suddenly, and the world wondered what would happen next. FDR's death came during the crux of World War II — less than four weeks before the Germans surrendered. Without FDR's guidance, Americans had a hard time imagining how they would confront the world.

But before the war began, FDR laid out his vision for what that world should look like in his "Four Freedoms" speech, which he delivered in January 1941. 

“In the future days that we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded on four essential human freedoms," Roosevelt proclaimed. Those freedoms were: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

All this week, The Takeaway examines the state of those four freedoms in 2016.

To begin, Harvey Kaye, professor of democracy and justice at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, and author of "The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great," discusses the circumstances of FDR's Four Freedoms Speech in January 1941, and examines the lofty ideals and rhetoric of a pre-World War II America. 

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