The Thomas Jefferson Hour

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.

Guest host David Horton of Radford University and Clay Jenkinson discuss the origins and varieties of satire. With its roots in the ancient world and particularly Rome, satire exists in two broad categories: genial, bemused satire, identified with the Roman poet Horace; and biting, severe, take-no-prisoners satire best represented by another Roman poet Juvenal. The discussion explores satire in American history; Thomas Jefferson’s humorlessness and his immunity to satire; classical American satirists such as Mark Twain and Will Rogers; and satire of the modern age with Johnny Carson, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, and Garrison Keillor. David and Clay reflect on the silo effect and media echo chambers of our time, which have made it nearly impossible for all to meet in some form of the public square to laugh at human foibles and find ways to tolerate each other. 

Guest Host David Horton of Radford University in Virginia asks Clay for a progress report on his adventure retracing John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” journey. Clay was in Middlebury, Vermont, at the time of the interview, still aglow from his interview with Steinbeck biographer Jay Parini of Middlebury College. Topics include the clunky joys of rural AM radio; whether it matters that not everything in Travels with Charley happened precisely as Steinbeck reports; and what Clay is learning along the way. They discuss the changes in America’s highways between 1960 and today, including the Blue Highways far away from the Interstate Highway System. Clay talks about some of the other pilgrimages he has made so far in the journey: Jack Kerouac’s grave in Lowell, Massachusetts; Thoreau’s Walden Pond; and Montauk Point at the end of Long Island where Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders quarantined after their heroics in Cuba.

Guest host Russ Eagle and Clay Jenkinson talk about Listening to America’s “Travels with Charley” journey so far. At the time of this conversation, Clay was beginning his third week on the road, recording from Bar Harbor, Maine, just outside Acadia National Park. They discuss Clay’s visit to Sag Harbor, Steinbeck’s home out on the tip of Long Island; and the three-ferry journey from Long Island to New London, Connecticut. Clay recounted some of the side excursions so far, including a trip to Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, to Jack Kerouac’s grave in Lowell, Massachusetts, and a pilgrimage to Walden Pond, the home of Henry David Thoreau, Clay’s nominee for the writer of America’s most important book.

Clay Jenkinson interviews Pulitzer Prize winning historian Richard Rhodes, the author of 23 books including The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Topics include Rhodes' path to one of the most productive and acclaimed writing careers in recent American history; the strengths and weaknesses of Christopher Nolan's film Oppenheimer; the time Edward Teller abruptly stopped an interview and asked Rhodes to leave; the current status of the Doomsday Clock that tells us how close we are to nuclear war; and what's next in the illustrious career of the much awarded and universally celebrated author. 

Clay Jenkinson and special guest host Russ Eagle discuss the first days of Listening to America’s Travels with Charley Tour. Clay reports from a campground near Cedar Rapids, Iowa en route to Sag Harbor out on the end of Long Island, New York, to touch base with Steinbeck’s starting point for his 1960 journey through America. Clay recounts his wrestling match with an uncooperative bike rack, and other details of getting underway on a twenty-week odyssey around the perimeter of the United States. Russ and Clay talk about Steinbeck’s state of mind—and declining health—as he set out in late September 1960, and the ways in which Steinbeck shaped his book Travels with Charley as a literary masterpiece and not just a dry reporting of verifiable road facts. They discuss the place of Travels with Charley in the larger trajectory of Steinbeck’s amazing career, and the places Clay will visit on his way to Long Island.

 Clay Jenkinson interviews political cartoonist Phil Hands about the importance of cartoons in American history. Hands is the house cartoonist for the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, Wisconsin, syndicated for a range of newspapers around the United States. We gave much of our attention to political cartoons about Thomas Jefferson, including one that depicts him as a prairie dog vomiting money in his quest to buy the Floridas, and another that depicts Sally Hemings as Jefferson’s consort. We also talked about the most cartooned political figure in American history, Theodore Roosevelt, including Clifford Berryman’s famous Teddy Bear cartoon of TR, as well as the difficulty of being a political cartoonist today with the aggressions of cancel culture. 

Guest host David Horton of Radford University discusses America’s trees and forests with Third President Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson said, “No sprig of grass grows uninteresting to me.” He told his friend Margaret Bayard Smith that any unnecessary cutting down of a tree should be regarded as silvicide, the murder of a majestic living thing. Jefferson wanted future cities to be planned in a checkerboard pattern with every other square permanent parkland. One of his last requests, just months before his death, was that the University of Virginia plant an arboretum. Jefferson’s protégé Meriwether Lewis was so startled by the treelessness of the Great Plains that he wondered if they could ever be settled. Later in the program, Clay and David talk about the origins of the Soil Conservation Service and FDR’s idea of a single endless shelter belt down the hundredth meridian from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with regular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky about the doctrine of nullification. That’s when a state refuses to accept the legitimacy of a federal law. Nullification is nowhere enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, but through the course of American history a number of nullification crises have arisen. When the Adams administration passed the Alien and Sedition laws of 1798 Jefferson wrote a set of secret resolutions for the state of Kentucky resisting those laws, which Jefferson said were worthy of the ninth or tenth century. John C. Calhoun attempted nullification for South Carolina and other southern states in the 1830s, mostly over tariffs, and now again a number of states, led by Texas, are threatening to nullify federal laws they hate--or even to secede if necessary. Dr. Chervinsky has a hilarious response to the idea of Texas or Louisiana secessions.

Clay Jenkinson joins his friend Dennis McKenna in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico to observe the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Chaco Canyon dates to at least the ninth century CE, more than a thousand years ago, and somehow their skywatchers know how to observe equinoxes, solstices, and eclipses. What better place to see the solar eclipse of 2024? Administered by the US National Park System, but interpreted for us by a Native Navajo and Zia expert Kailo Winters, it was a magical experience in a sacred place. We came away impressed by the capacity of the European Enlightenment to figure all of this out, but far more in awe of the Puebloan scholars who figured such phenomena out centuries before European science was out of its swaddling clothes. We also check in with our favorite Enlightenment correspondent David Nicandri.

In this special edition program, Listening to America records in front of a live audience at Northwestern Oklahoma State University in Alva, Oklahoma. Clay Jenkinson and Professor of Political Science Dr. Aaron Mason focus their conversation on Thomas Jefferson and his influence on the American West. Dr. Mason is also co-executive director of the NWOSU Institute for Citizenship Studies.

Listen in on Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with media consultants Luke Peterson and Riki Conrey of Washington, DC. Luke distributed a survey based on our questions about America at 250 and 2,700 people responded. Some survey results are discussed, but also the question of how exactly does Clay or anyone else go out to listen to America? How do you check your own biases? Where do you go exactly and to whom do you talk to listen to America? How do you present what you have learned and in what larger historical context? One thing is certain: all people everywhere are storytellers. The question is how to hear those stories in a way that is useful to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Clay Jenkinson’s interview with the distinguished Dutch journalist Geert Mak, the author of In Europe, and also In America: Travels with John Steinbeck. In 2010 Geert Mak and his wife retraced the entire Steinbeck journey in a rented Jeep. After he returned to the Netherlands, Mak wrote a 550-page account of his travels. Though Steinbeck isn’t the main theme of In America, Mak fulfills the mission that Steinbeck set out to accomplish—that is, to wrestle with the character and narrative of what Steinbeck called “this monster country.” Clay and Mr. Mak discuss the sheer size of America, Steinbeck’s occasional fibs about the exact circumstances of the journey, race relations in America, violence in America, and the current state of the American Dream. It’s an amazing and quite moving interview.

Clay Jenkinson and regular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky talk about the ways in which the Constitution of the United States is impeding and even preventing good government, with a particular focus on the coming election of 2024. Topics include the need for a uniform national election procedures act; the many problems of the Electoral College; and the possibility that in the next four years we may need to invoke the 25th Amendment, which was passed in 1967 to prepare for the possibility that a President might be incapacitated before the end of his term. We also look briefly at civilian control of the military and the future of the religious freedom principles of the First Amendment. 

Clay Jenkinson is joined by regular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky to discuss the extraordinary correspondence between former Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Between 1812 and 1826, they exchanged 158 letters, thought by historians to be the finest correspondence in American history. They wrote about their political visions and disagreements, the French Revolution, the origin of Native Americans, their private and public religious views, the American West, their children and grandchildren, and so much more. Jefferson was more formal and serene, Adams more candid and at times aggressive. In his fourth or fifth letter Adams said, “we must not die until we have explained ourselves to each other.” They both worked hard at it, usually with remarkable harmony. They died on the same day, July 4, 1826, Jefferson first at Monticello and Adams five hours later in his bed in Quincy, Massachusetts.