The Thomas Jefferson Hour

Clay's conversation with writer Craig Childs of western Colorado. Childs is the author of more than a dozen books about America's backcountry. He's spent months, even years, exploring the Grand Canyon and a hundred lesser but magnificent canyons in desert country. Childs has been a river runner, a guide, and a consultant, but mostly, he is a writer of beautiful, spare, sometimes mystical prose about the Colorado Plateau. Clay and Craig talked about how he became a writer, about taking risks in the backcountry, being lost, and getting oneself lost. They also discuss the great 19th-century explorer John Wesley Powell, Henry David Thoreau, and Edward Abbey — the author of the enormously influential book Desert Solitaire. Childs is currently wandering through mountain lion country in western Colorado, trying to understand the ways of these magnificent creatures. You'll love this quiet discussion of things unrelated to America's current politics. This interview was recorded March 20, 2025.

Guest host Russ Eagle interviews Clay Jenkinson about the forthcoming eight-part History Channel series, Kevin Costner's The West. Clay was interviewed as a historical expert twice for the series produced by Doris Kearns Goodwin and featuring Kevin Costner. Clay explains his intensive preparations to participate in a documentary by Ken Burns or Doris Kearns Goodwin, the books he reads, notes he compiles, and passages he memorizes. Russ and Clay discuss several of the series' episodes: Lewis and Clark, John Colter's famous 1809 run for his life; the abduction of young Cynthia Ann Parker by the Comanche and her subsequent rescue; and John Brown's anti-slavery raids against Missouri plantations and his 1859 assault on Harpers Ferry. This podcast was recorded on May 4, 2025.

Clay Jenkinson interviews Jonathan Thompson, the author of books about the American West, including Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands. Thompson has written much about the pushback of western ranchers, irrigators, mining interests, and chambers of commerce against federal regulation (and even federal ownership) of the public lands in the West. How should we balance the varied interests in the West: agriculture, mining, motorized recreation, backpack recreation, Native American interests, and America's deep addiction to carbon extraction? Who should be at the table? Clay asked Thompson to look at the West from 38,000 feet and offer his predictions of its future in the second half of the 21st century. Will President Trump achieve his goal of privatizing whole swaths of the public domain?

Clay and frequent guest Lindsay Chervinsky discuss the American Revolution in a “live” podcast recording in Vail, Colorado. Was George Washington a great military strategist? How vital was Jefferson's Declaration of Independence when it was written? Why weren't women incorporated as full citizens — as Abigail Adams suggested — when America re-constituted itself in the 1770s and 1780s? Was what happened in those dramatic years a true revolution — or merely a separation from the mother country England? How important was Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense? This program was the first time Clay and Lindsay had met in person and one of the few live audience recordings of Listening to America. This podcast was recorded live on March 27, 2025.

Clay's conversation with Amy Irvine, the author of the 2018 book Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness. Ms. Irvine published the book on the 50th anniversary of Edward Abbey's blockbuster Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. Desert Cabal is a careful and nuanced conversation with the late Edward Abbey, who died in 1989. Wasn't his romance with the wilderness the benefit of white privilege? And wasn't he mostly pretending he was alone in that windblown trailer at Arches National Park? Amy Irvine believes that the wilderness is healing in every way and that America's National Parks, Monuments, Forests, etc., are endangered by the agenda of the Trump administration. She sees hope in finding people to trust, care for, and rebuild America by living well but also protesting in the streets when necessary.  Interview recorded March 19, 2025.

Clay talks with noted chef, author, activist, and visionary Sean Sherman, an Oglala Lakota man who is changing the world of indigenous food. Sean is the author of an award-winning book, The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen, and another book, Turtle Island, which is coming out in November. They discuss the white conquest of the North American continent, the shattering of Native American ways and traditions, the forced assimilation policies that have brought disease to Native communities, and how surplus white food — white flour, cheap cheese, sugary sodas, and noodles — have been dumped by the USDA farm program on Native communities. Sherman created an extremely popular restaurant in Minneapolis, Owamni — claiming one of the most coveted dining reservations in the Midwest. Based on the stunning success of his efforts so far, Sean Sherman is planning more restaurants in places like Bozeman, Portland, and Rapid City and freely sharing his ideas with Native communities who want to reform their diets and achieve food sovereignty. This interview was recorded on March 17, 2025  

Occasional guest host and LTA videographer Nolan Johnson joins Clay to talk about the epic Lewis and Clark Airstream journey of 2025, wherein Clay will follow the Lewis and Clark Trail from Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia to Astoria, Oregon, and back again. Historian James Ronda said the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-06 was “America's first great road story.” Clay plans to get himself on all the great rivers of the journey: Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia. Nolan will join Clay at several Lewis and Clark sites across America, with video cameras and his celebrated drone work. Nolan and Clay talk about several adventures that have already been scheduled, including an absurd pontoon float from Fort Yates, North Dakota, up to Bismarck and beyond. Clay will begin his transcontinental travels in early May in North Carolina and make stops at Monticello, Harpers Ferry, and Philadelphia before joining the Ohio River at Pittsburgh. It's a grand adventure, and we already ask, “What could go wrong?” This interview was recorded on March 22, 2025.

Clay's interview with Walt Dabney, who worked for over 30 years in the National Park System, including serving as America's Chief Ranger for five and a half years in Washington, D.C. Mr. Dabney is lecturing around the country about the threat to public lands from those who would return them to the states or privatize them altogether. Mr. Dabney refutes three myths about public lands: first, that the U.S. Government has no right to own property; second, that the U.S. Government retains public domain for nefarious reasons; and third, that individual states were promised at the time of their statehood that public land would be deeded over to them. All demonstrably untrue, says Walt Dabney. Although he's worried about current moves to reduce the size of National Monuments and allow greater resource extraction on public lands, Mr. Dabney believes the public will rally to protect and preserve one of the best things about America: our National Parks, National Monuments, game preserves, wildlife refuges, and National Forests. This interview was recorded March 19, 2025.

Clay interviews Beau L'Amour, the son of Louis L'Amour, the celebrated author of multi-million best-selling Westerns. Beau L'Amour is the manager of his father's literary estate. By his passing at 80 in 1988, Louis L'Amour wrote just under 100 novels and more than 250 short stories. All of his books are still in print. Clay and Beau talked about changing views of the frontier, white-Native relations, and the role of violence in the American West. How well does Louis L'Amour hold up in our culturally sensitive time? Beau L'Amour is currently revisiting his father's novels and providing afterwords in the books, sharing the backstory of their creation, their connection to film and television, and their place in the larger achievement of the famous author. Louis L'Amour, more than 30 years after his death, still ranks every year among the top 50 most popular writers in the world. You can read Clay's essay about his talk with Beau L'Amour here. Their conversation was recorded on March 17, 2025.

Clay is joined by one of his favorite guests and favorite people, historian Joe Ellis of Vermont. The discussion is about the Trump administration's attempt to pull the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 out of the historical dust and apply it to what it regards as undesirable foreigners in the United States. Two Alien acts, the Sedition Act, and the Naturalization Act were passed by a Federalist Congress during a war scare in 1798, the so-called Quasi War. The Alien Enemies Act permitted the president to deport any foreign person he regarded as a national security threat, without due process, without a hearing public or private, and without the benefit of counsel. In the presidential campaign of 2024 Donald Trump declared that he would be invoking the Alien Enemies Act, which is still on the books. He has begun to deport what he regards as Venezuelan gang members and other undesirables (as he sees them). The federal courts now will have to determine if the Alien Enemies Act is a legal tool in President Trump's campaign to control immigration to the United States. Joe Ellis provides vital and essential historical context for this vexed issue. This interview was recorded on 22 March 2025.

Guest host David Horton interviews Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, about his life as a diplomat. Jefferson served for five years as the American minister to the court of Louis XVI just before the French Revolution. Then, he served three years as America's first Secretary of State — trying to keep the United States from being drawn into the chaos of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. As president, Jefferson “solved” the problem of the Mississippi River by buying the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803, which doubled the size of the United States. Jefferson then sent his protégé Meriwether Lewis to inventory that vast territory. Jefferson was an admirer of Adam Smith. He believed that the less governments intruded into the free flow of goods and services in the world, the more efficient economies would be, and more prosperity would result. In the third segment of the program, Clay and David talked carefully about the trade, tariff, and foreign policy situation that has unfolded in the first months of the second Trump term. This interview was recorded on March 12, 2025.

Russ Eagle is the guest host for a discussion of Clay's recent cultural tour of Cuba. Clay, Russ, and guests spent 10 days in Cuba, traveling in a small bus across the island. They began in Santiago, where the Cuban Revolution touched off on July 26, 1953, and ended in Havana, once one of the most vibrant cities in the Caribbean. It is still full of creative people exhibiting extraordinary resourcefulness under difficult circumstances. They visited two Bay of Pigs museums, one in Little Havana in Miami (pro-insurrection) and one at the Bay of Pigs itself (pro-Castro). They spent an afternoon swimming in the Bay of Pigs! Clay performed as Theodore Roosevelt at San Juan Hill, followed by a thoughtful refutation by a Cuban professor of law. At the end of our journey, they visited Ernest Hemingway's villa outside Havana and the fishing village from which he took his boat, Pilar, out to sea in search of marlin.

Clay is joined by Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky and Dr. Casey Burgat to discuss a new book, We Hold These “Truths”: How to Spot the Myths That are Holding America Back. The book aims to tackle 13 myths at the core of political dysfunction: lobbyists are evil, Congress doesn't do anything, the Supreme Court has become too political, and there is a demand that we keep politics out of sports. Clay and his guests try to make sense of how much weight they should give to the vision of the Founding Fathers, who Lindsay notes were not saints or Platonic sages but men (and a few women) who put together what they hoped would be a self-sustaining American republic. They grieve the death of civics education in America's schools, without which we are all subject to political notions that may have no factual or historical basis. And no, says Casey Burgat, we do not want term limits for members of Congress.

Clay interviews Hampton Sides, the author of a dozen outstanding books, including studies of Kit Carson, Martin Luther King's assassin James Earl Ray, the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in Korea, and most recently, The Wide, Wide Sea, Sides' study of the third and fatal voyage of Captain James Cook. How does one write about a British explorer like James Cook in the 21st century when Cook's statues around the world are being defaced, decapitated, or torn down due to his role in disrupting the indigenous cultures he encountered in his voyages? Sides talks about his strategy of coming down somewhere in the middle on this cultural and political question. He takes comfort in that his book, The Wide, Wide Sea,has been criticized from both ends of the political spectrum. We talk, too, about his forthcoming book about the Sand Creek Massacre in eastern Colorado on November 29, 1864.

Clay sits down with Nolan Johnson, fellow North Dakotan and Listening to America's talented videographer and podcast editor. Nolan joined Clay with cameras and drone in hand at key points along Clay's 21,000-mile Travels with Charley journey in 2024. The two discuss plans for this year's Lewis and Clark trek from Monticello to Astoria, Oregon, and back again. Clay notes that following John Steinbeck's 1960 journey was relatively simple with only a dozen must-visit places on the Travels with Charley trail. With Lewis and Clark, things are much richer and more complicated. How can one pay respect to a river journey across the continent by driving along those rivers pulling an Airstream trailer? Nolan has his own history with the expedition's winter quarters at Fort Mandan in North Dakota and is excited to join Clay at Lewis and Clark sites across the country. Clay outlines his plan to get on each of the principal rivers of the 1804-1806 expedition, his goal to do a series of public events at Lewis and Clark interpretive centers, and his hope of making genuine discoveries along the way.

Guest host Russ Eagle interviews Thomas Jefferson about the American West. When he became the third president in the spring of 1801, Jefferson hired Meriwether Lewis to be his private correspondence secretary. Two years later, he selected Lewis to explore the American West by traveling up the Missouri River to its source, crossing the continental divide, and following tributaries of the Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Jefferson discusses his lifelong fascination with the West, his previous attempts to get an exploring party up the Missouri River, his secret message to Congress to get funding for the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and his famous instructions to Lewis, which embodied the principles of the Enlightenment. Lewis and Clark led the most famous exploration in American history, so why did Lewis commit suicide just three years after the successful conclusion of his travels?

Clay's discussion with Pulitzer Prize winning historian Joseph Ellis, author of over a dozen outstanding, award-winning books on the Founding Fathers and America's early national period. Joe shares his comments and insights on the 2024 election and the return of Donald Trump to the White House, only the second time this has occurred in American history. And who was Grover Cleveland anyway? Joe and Clay discuss the tenacity of racial tension in American history, the failure of Jeffersonian democracy to create conditions of harmony, compromise, and mutual respect, and the need for a new constitutional convention to address fundamental problems in American public life. Joe is, at heart, an American optimist. He believes we are going through a predictable reaction to rapid social and technological change and that we will get through this as we always have. He thinks the America, which will emerge in the next couple of decades, will come closer to the Founders' visions than might seem presently apparent. 

Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky and Clay discuss the challenge of maintaining historical integrity during political turmoil and uncertainty. How does a professional historian differentiate between her personal politics, her status as an American citizen, and her responsibilities as a professional historian? In other words, how can the public trust a historian when we venture into something as controversial as the current president, who is a self-styled disrupter of American traditions and norms? How does a historian contextualize current events in the matrix of what is known with certainty about the past? Lindsay is exemplary in her intellectual discipline, but it doesn't come easy when things we all thought were settled and taken for granted are being assailed by a populist revolutionary. In particular, we talk about Mr. Trump's first-day pardon of 1,500 individuals convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol. Can a historian provide an analysis that puts this moment into a context that helps the American people know where we are and how we got here?  

Clay and special guest Russ Eagle take up listener mail about Clay's recently completed Travels with Charley tour of America. Thousands of people followed Clay's 210-day, 21,400-mile journey across America and sent along numerous suggestions and questions; these included recommended detours, great places to camp, restaurants to visit, and great spots along the route that Steinbeck did not give himself time to visit. Russ and Clay also talk about a recent report regarding the source material Steinbeck used for his classic, Grapes of Wrath. Was Steinbeck a plagiarist? Answer: no. They also preview plans for Clay's 2025 adventure that will follow the Lewis and Clark Trail from Jefferson's Monticello to the Pacific Coast, including how Steinbeck's journey differs from the explorations of Lewis and Clark.

 Clay is joined by David Marchick, the author of the acclaimed book, The Peaceful Transfer of Power: An Oral History of America's Presidential Transitions. The transfer of power in 2021 was not peaceful and it was not efficient. The transfer of power in 2025 will certainly be peaceful, but President-elect Trump is deliberately violating norms that have been in place in U.S. politics for most of a century. David Marchick's book explores the history of transitions: Buchanan to Abraham Lincoln, arguably the worst in our history, all the way to G.W. Bush and Barack Obama in 2008, perhaps the finest and smoothest transition in our history. We spend some time talking about the transition in 2016-17 from the Obama to the first Trump administration, when Chris Christie worked for months to vet hundreds of potential appointees and provided a brilliant roadmap for Trump, only to see his dozens of binders literally tossed into the dumpster by Trump's son in law Jared Kushner.

Clay and frequent guest David Horton talk about the coming Artificial Intelligence revolution. Like it or not, we are already wading (if not rushing) into that brave new world, and we all better come to terms with what's ahead of us. Horton's portfolio at Radford University includes questions of technology, appropriate technology, and the laws of unintended consequences. Horton briefly defines AI and Quantum Computing and suggests how these things are already transforming life. Clay's concerns are primarily about the future of privacy and intellectual property. The program begins with an examination of how Thomas Jefferson aggregated information for multiple purposes and how the third president might respond to the infinite rain of information in our time. Clay and David also discuss the implications of apps like Chat GPT for the future of education.

Clay and frequent guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky discuss how an incoming president prepares to govern the United States. In what ways does the outgoing administration advise and guide the one coming in, particularly when the new president wants to make a sharp break with his predecessor's policies and style? We examine the first four presidencies: Washington, the only unanimous president, who had been preparing for this role his whole life; John Adams, who made the mistake of keeping Washington's cabinet in place, not knowing until too late that those ministers were betraying him at every turn; Jefferson, whose preparation in 1800 was hamstrung by the constitutional crisis in which the House of Representatives took 36 ballots to certify his election; and the ways in which Jefferson tried to ease the path of his handpicked successor James Madison in 1808.

Guest host David Horton and Clay discuss New Year's resolutions. Never more important than at present. People across the political spectrum are nervous about the next years of American life. But what's to be done? Clay offers several ways of coping—taking up a craft that involves one's hands and not merely one's brain, reading with discipline and purpose, learning from Aristotle's dictum that wisdom is knowing which battles to fight and which to leave alone, and much more. Clay and David wind up quoting Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity prayer in unison. Read the complete works of your favorite author. And when things really go south, watch Leslie Nielsen films: Naked Gun, Airplane, Naked Gun 2 ½.

Guest host David Horton of Radford University and Clay discuss the history of Christmas, especially its modern invention during the mid 19th century in England and the United States. Thomas Jefferson, a deist, did not celebrate Christmas, but as someone who grew up in the Anglican tradition, he did not shun it the way New England Puritans of the period did. Jefferson was likelier to observe Boxing Day than Christmas, which protestants regarded as another Saint's Day. Clay recites Waddie Mitchell's cowboy poem about Christmas. Clay and David exchange Christmas memories and their favorite recipes for Christmas cookies. At the end of the program, Clay reads his favorite Christmas story, a chapter from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie.

Clay welcomes University of North Texas historian Geoffrey Wawro for a discussion of the War in Vietnam (1961–1975), which cost more than 58,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of deaths in North and South Vietnam. Wawro, the author of seven books on the history of war, explains how a superpower got into a quagmire in a small Asian country. Why did Lyndon Johnson escalate the war between 1964 and 1968, when President John F. Kennedy made it clear that he would wind down America's involvement after he was re-elected in 1964? As the British essayist Christopher Hitchens insisted, is Henry Kissinger a war criminal? What was Richard Nixon's role in prolonging the agony? How should we assess Secretary of War Robert McNamara? Absent politics, could the war theoretically have been won by the United States and its reluctant allies?

One of Clay's favorite guests, Beau Breslin, talks about the early National Period as rife with conspiracy theories. The Declaration of Independence, for example, argued that the ministry and crown of England were engaged in a systematic conspiracy to “enslave” the colonists. Beau argues that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was a conspiracy—even a cabal—of self-selected white men aiming to tear up the legitimate Articles of Confederation without authorization and begin again. The existing Articles authorized a few amendments but not a wholesale rewriting of the nation's social contract. We also discuss the South's paranoid (but sometimes legitimate) feeling that the faraway national government, dominated by commercial and industrial interests, was destroying Southern state sovereignty and meddling with an institution they could not possibly know enough about. And, at the end, we take a quick look at one of the enduring conspiracy theories in America: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Clay's and his close friend, Russ Eagle, journey from New Orleans to Shreveport. Then, from Jackson, Mississippi, to Birmingham, Alabama to visit civil rights sites and shrines. John Steinbeck witnessed the appauling white response to the integration of the schools in New Orleans in December of 1960 and was so repulsed by what he saw that he gave up his journey. He simply bolted home to New York City. Clay ends his 2024 Travels With Charley journey by finding a better way to wrestle with the unresolved race issues in America. Russ and Clay conclude that every American should make a journey of this sort. They also learned that the country's race history is much more problematic than they previously knew. 

Clay welcomes fellow Chautauquan Steve Duchrow of Illinois for a conversation about portraying historical characters. Clay does six or seven; Steve portrays the poets Carl Sandburg and Vachel Lindsay. They discuss how to choose a character. How do you prepare for your first performance and the five hundredth? Why is it important not to work from a script? How do you take unscripted questions from the audience in character? Clay and Steve discuss Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, and John Steinbeck, among other subjects, about heroism, tragedy, and the intractable contradictions in the human character. What did Oppenheimer mean when he said, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds?”

Clay talks with guest host David Horton about America's obsession with conspiracy theories, from the notion that the moon landing in 1969 was faked on a Hollywood sound stage to the view that 9-11 was an inside job designed to secure more oil for the United States and justify a war against Islam. What is the psychology of this strange phenomenon? Do the perpetrators believe their assertions, or are they merely seeking fame and profit? What should we make of obviously false claims, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene's insistence that Jewish lasers touched off the forest fires in California or Alex Jones' appalling claim that the Sandy Hook school shooting was an inside job perpetrated to lock up America's guns? Because Clay recently spent a couple of days in Dallas, Texas, exploring the landscape of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, a considerable portion of the program explores the conspiracy theories around that horrific event. Are Americans more susceptible to conspiracy theories than other people around the world? If so, what does this signify?

In an interview recorded on October 29, 2024, Clay interviews the eminent classicist, Edward Watts of the University of California, San Diego, on the collapse of the American narrative. The old narrative that began when Columbus bumped into the New World and then moved through the colonial period, the American Revolution, the Westering movement, the Indian Wars, and America's reluctant intervention in the 20th century's two world wars has been discredited by the cultural revolution of the last 30 years. It is now possible to imagine an American narrative that would satisfy most of the constituencies of the United States. What happens when a nation loses its capacity to understand its mission, values, and history? Professor Watts is one of the world's leading experts on the collapse of the Roman Republic. How did Rome recover after its disastrous Civil Wars? Can America learn from Rome's example?

Guest host David Horton welcomes the Third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, to the program to talk about what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they designed the system of American elections. Why did the Founders give two senators to each state? How was the controversy between big and little states resolved, and how has it influenced American history? What was the original purpose of the Electoral College, and to what extent should it mirror the popular vote? How did the odious 3/5 clause impact early American elections, including Jefferson's election in 1800? Why did Jefferson argue for tearing up the Constitution once per generation, perhaps every 19 years? How important was slavery to the debates in Philadelphia in 1787? Were the Founders really opposed to democracy?

Clay interviews himself about his foray into Texas on Phase Three of the great John Steinbeck Travels with Charley tour of 2024. How is Texas different from other states? Can anyone really eat at the Big Texas Steak Ranch and survive? Is the Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo as worthy as Carhenge at Alliance, Nebraska? Why are Texans nicer IN Texas than when they drive their giant white pickups into other states? The program also includes a discussion of Clay's interlude in Birmingham, Alabama, where he had a fabulous guided tour of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, including an encounter with the actual steel bars of the jail in which Martin Luther King wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Plus, Clay's guide to the 2024 Presidential Election.

Guest host Russ Eagle interviews Clay about the third phase of his 2024 Steinbeck "Travels with Charley" tour. Russ was in North Carolina, Clay, at an RV park in eastern New Mexico on the legendary Route 66. They discussed Steinbeck's purpose for his 1960 truck camper Odyssey. Did he achieve his goal? Why wasn't Steinbeck interested in America's National Parks, many of which he could easily have visited? What was Steinbeck's state of mind as he set out to search for America? How important is his aristocratic French poodle, Charley, to the book's success? Clay also covers his recent cultural tour of Literary England and a visit to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Utah in search of the legacy of Edward Abbey, the anarchist and wilderness lover who wrote Desert Solitaire in 1968. And Clay's so-far unsuccessful search for America's best gumbo.

Clay Jenkinson is joined by sports historian Kurt Kemper of Dakota State University and sports fan David Nicandri of Washington State. Our subject: the Caitlin Clark phenomenon. Clark of the University of Iowa now holds the NCAA collegiate basketball record for most career points in either the men's or women's league. What is next for her? How does her sudden national celebrity impact the game? How many thousands of girls are out on the driveway practicing their dribble and their jump shots thanks to her example? What should we make of the game's marketing team pitting Clark, who is white, against Angel Reese, an African American? 

Clay speaks with Richard Rhodes, eminent author of numerous books, including The Making of the Atomic Bomb. The subject: industrial agriculture and the death of rural America. Other countries pass legislation protecting small family farms, but the U.S. government throws its weight behind agribusiness and industrial gigantism. Rhodes believes we need to alter our food production and consumption paradigm for the sake of our health, the planet, and our relationship with the earth and other species. Was Jefferson's utopian vision of a nation of sturdy and independent family farmers the right one? Was it ever viable? Can we regenerate rural America in the second half of the 21st century?

Clay interviews author and frequent guest Lindsay Chervinsky about her splendid new book on the John Adams administration: Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic. In the second of two conversations about the book, Clay asks Lindsay to justify some of her unscrupulous attacks on the life and character of Thomas Jefferson. More to the point, why did John Adams fail to be re-elected for a second term in the year 1800? How much effect did the Constitution's 3/5 clause have on the outcome? What were Adams' greatest contributions to American political life? Why did George Washington betray his deepest principles during the Quasi War with France in 1798? Were the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798 the reason the Jeffersonians won in 1800 or is it more complicated than that?

Clay talks with eminent historian Joseph Ellis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of over a dozen books. Today's question? Were we ever a republic, and are we now a republic? What did the Founding Fathers mean when they created the American republic? How is a republic different from a democracy? Was Jefferson's small-r republican idealism realistic? Or was he, as John Adams reckoned, a beautiful but naïve dreamer? When did we cease to be a republic, or are we, in some limited sense, still a republic in 2024? How does the election of 2024 matter from this perspective?

Guest host Russ Eagle interviews Clay about Phase II of his 2024 Travels with Charley tour. What has Clay learned from retracing Steinbeck's famous 1960 cross-country journey? This time from Bismarck to Seattle, then Monterey, Salinas, and Route 66. Clay describes a few mishaps that have occurred. Plus, a visit to the Sylvia Beach literary hotel in Oregon, the annual Lewis and Clark Cultural Tour, the magnificence of the American continent, and people's reluctance to discuss our paralytic political situation. Finally, the lingering question: uncovering the best gumbo in America? 

Clay Jenkinson's interview with adventurer Alan Mallory about his family's ascent of Mount Everest. That's 29,032 feet, a third of it in the Death Zone, where your body actually starts to die from lack of oxygen and other factors. Mallory walks us through the process—getting to Nepal, the cost, the outfitters, the journey to base camp, where you stay to adjust to the altitude, and then the slow, steady, and exhausting climb through four camps before attempting the summit. On the basis of his book, The Family that Conquered Everest, Mallory has a vibrant career as a motivational speaker. At the end he shares his adventures are ahead.

Clay interviews regular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky about her new book, Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic. It's a wonderfully readable study of the one-term presidency of John Adams. Lindsay sheds new light on some of the most interesting moments of the Adams presidency and examines the first peaceful transfer of power in American political history and the second when Thomas Jefferson displaced Adams in the election of 1800. The book provides fascinating insights into the people and events that set the future trajectory of the great American experiment.

Clay Jenkinson converses with historian Larry Skogen about his new book, To Educate American Indians. Skogen's book examines US policy of assimilating Native Americans into European-derived white America, including the nightmare of the Indian Boarding Schools, personified by Carlisle Indian School's superintendent Richard Pratt's racist mission statement: “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” One of the fascinations of this subject is that so many of the white people engaged in coercive assimilation were, at least in their own minds, “philanthropists,” who believed they were doing the right thing. Embedded in the assimilation movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was what is called “scientific racism,” the view that Anglo Saxon white people were the acme of world civilization and all others were lower on the scale of civilization, accomplishment, and even capacity. It's an important and at times chilling subject, and Larry Skogen is one of the nation's premier historians of these policies.

Clay interviews former NPR CEO Ken Stern, author of a provocative 2018 book, Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right. Weary of living in a liberal cosmos that found the other side “deplorable,” Ken traveled America to experience rituals that many associate with the political Right. He hunted a pig in Texas, visited evangelical churches, went to a NASCAR race, and spent time with the philosopher of Trumpism, Steve Bannon. Clay asks why Ken did it, what he learned, and how his views of America changed. 

Clay talks with Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky about her just-published book, Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic. Lindsay explores how, in the nation's early days, John Adams and others pioneered a framework for the American presidency that we now take for granted. One example: The U.S. Constitution was largely silent about the peaceful transfer of power. Chervinsky notes the country was filled with anxiety to see George Washington retire and observe the transfer of power, a new and revolutionary feature of political life.   

Historian Lindsay Chervinsky talks with Clay about the enemies of the second president of the United States, John Adams. Somewhat tongue in cheek, Lindsay believes that Jefferson was one of those enemies because he was a disloyal vice president to Adams. Others included Alexander Hamilton, who considered himself the shadow president. Hamilton also wrote that notorious pamphlet in 1800, asserting that he regarded Adams as unfit for re-election. Lindsay also says Abigail Adams was one of the greatest first ladies in American history and a co-president in limited respects.

Skidmore College political scientist Beau Breslin joins Clay to discuss how America might prepare for its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. Topics include the collapse of civility and mutual respect and the breakdown of respect for American institutions, from the Supreme Court and the FBI to the media and the church. They discuss the possibility of a new constitutional convention as a way of commemorating America's 250th anniversary. They also examine what Clay is discovering about the country's mood as he follows John Steinbeck's 1960 Travels with Charley journey.

Eminent historian Joseph Ellis returns to Listening to America to assess the country's current political climate. Ellis, now in retirement in the mountains of Vermont, is the author of more than a dozen books, including biographical treatments of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, and others. He believes that the election of November 2024 is the second most important election of American history and the single most important election of his lifetime. He urges all Americans to step back and think hard about where we are and where we may be heading. Ellis and Jenkinson turn to the mission statement of the Founding Fathers, Jefferson's famous 35 words beginning with We hold these truths to be self-evident, and the Constitution's preamble which commits America to the perpetual struggle to create a more perfect union. They also discuss the vision, character, and achievement of Thomas Jefferson and whether he is truly the apostle of armed resistance in American life.

Clay welcomes regular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky for a conversation about the First Amendment, ratified with nine others on December 15, 1792. The First Amendment lists four protected American rights:  1) Freedom of Religion, 2) Freedom of Speech and the Press, 3) Freedom of Assembly, 4) Freedom to Petition the government for redress of grievances. James Madison drafted the Bill of Rights to appease the demands of the American people, who wanted a charter of human rights at the center of the new Constitution. Madison's 45 words are among the most important in human history. What do we mean by the "establishment of religion"? Why did the Founding Fathers feel so strongly about First Amendment rights? Are there limits to freedom of expression, and who gets to decide? How well is the First Amendment holding up in the courts today, and what can we expect in the next few years?

Dr. Cassandra Newby-Alexander of Norfolk State University in Virginia joins Clay Jenkinson to discuss unresolved race issues in the United States. Dr. Newby-Alexander is the author of an important book, Virginia Waterways and the Underground Railroad. During the 18th and 19th centuries more than 100,000 enslaved people found their way to freedom in Canada via the Underground Railroad, many of them taking advantage of the myriad of inland waterways in the eastern half of the US. The Underground Railroad was not a single path from southern states to Canada, where slavery was illegal. It was a complex and exceedingly dangerous network of land routes, water passages, safe houses, secret insignia, always just a step or two ahead of the slave catchers and kidnappers who were complicit in the perpetuation of slavery in America.

Richard Rhodes, noted historian and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Making of the Atomic Bomb, returns to Listening to America for another discussion reflecting on America as it approaches its 250th birthday. In this poignant conversation, Mr. Rhodes and Clay discuss gun violence in America. Are humans inherently violent? What is the cause of the dramatic rise in mass shootings in the United States? Assuming that the Second Amendment is unshakable, are there things we can do to prevent or bring down the rate of gun violence in American life? Rhodes' conclusions are simple and stark. We are not different from other developed countries except in one crucial way.

Clay interviews the eminent historian Richard Slotkin about America as it approaches its 250th birthday. Richard Slotkin is an emeritus professor of history at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He is the author of many books, including two groundbreaking studies of violence on the American frontier. His latest book, A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America, attempts to place the current crisis in the basic narratives of American history: the myth of the Founders, frontier myths, the myths surrounding the Civil War and World War II; and the myth of American exceptionalism. As we approach our 250th birthday, can America find a way to craft a new consensus narrative of who we are and where we are headed? Or are we doomed to disintegrate into two or more Americas that see the other side as evil or un-American?

Clay Jenkinson's conversation with regular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky about the penman of the U.S. Constitution, Gouverneur Morris of New York. Morris and Thomas Jefferson knew each other in France but couldn't really get along. Morris was Alexander Hamilton's best friend and after the 1804 duel that ended Hamilton's life, Morris agreed to look after his widow and young children, and he gave a superb eulogy for Hamilton, whom he admitted was a monarchist. We are also joined by novelist Rebecca Flynt, who is finishing up a book about Nancy Randolph, who was involved first in the most notorious sex scandal of the era at a plantation aptly named Bizarre, but later, destitute in New York, drew Gouverneur Morris' attention first as his housekeeper and then his wife. It's all intriguing, scandalous, and well, bizarre.