The Thomas Jefferson Hour

Clay talks with veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones, who flew four Space Shuttle missions for a total of 53 days, 49 minutes in space. Clay outlined a list of issues related to the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-06, including propulsion, navigation, food, waste management, record-keeping, and re-entry, and explained how Lewis and Clark addressed these dynamics. Then, Tom Jones explained how these concepts are applied in space. Topics included religious activity in space, romance in space, mutiny in space, the wonder of going where no man has gone before, recruitment, training, and re-entry. Tom Jones is the author of half a dozen books, including the acclaimed Skywalking: An Astronaut's Memoir. He believes we owe it to the four remaining lunar surface astronauts that we land again on the moon before the last of them dies. This episode was recorded on September 30, 2025.

Clay and his popular guest, Lindsay Chervinsky, discuss the history of American presidents and the fourth estate. Almost all presidents are frustrated by a free press, and some have attempted to censor it. Beginning with George Washington (who was thin-skinned but did not strike out at the opposition), through Adams and Jefferson, and all the way to Richard Nixon, the First Amendment has been a casualty of real or perceived national and international crises. The Sedition Act of 1798 and the Espionage Act of 1918 have much in common. Thomas Jefferson, as usual, said all the right things about the importance of a free press, but he also encouraged the governor of Pennsylvania to undertake a few wholesome prosecutions of the most vitriolic Federalist newspapers. Generally speaking, after periods of censorship during national security crises, the pendulum swings back to the center. This program aims to provide historical context and clarity amid our own First Amendment crisis. This episode was recorded on October

Clay and historian Beau Breslin discuss the doctrine of habeas corpus and its role in the current debate about how to handle undocumented immigrants in the United States. In a nutshell, habeas corpus means "hey, produce the body." You cannot just arbitrarily snatch someone off the street and make them disappear. Habeas corpus was so important to the Founding Fathers that they embedded it in the first Article of the Constitution, right off the top, and did not postpone it to the Bill of Rights. The United States has a mixed history of its adherence to the doctrine of habeas corpus, which Beau Breslin believes is THE fundamental right in America and all over the world. And yet, Professor Breslin, who teaches at an elite college in New York state, admitted that the majority of his students, even in a class on constitutional theory, would probably be unable to define just what habeas corpus means, where it came from, and why it is critically important to a free and enlightened society. This episode was recorded o

Clay’s conversation with Nat and Mikey, schoolteachers from Britain, who are floating down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers from Three Forks, Montana, all the way to St. Louis and beyond, with hopes of ending in New Orleans around the time of Mardi Gras. They recount their adventures so far. At the time of the interview, they were just north of Pierre, South Dakota, staying for one night in a resort motel on Lake Oahe. What have they learned about America, about Lewis and Clark, about Native Americans, about their relationship, and about themselves? They capsized on day two just north of Three Forks, but have managed to stay upright ever since, and they are confident they will be able to float all the way to the mouth of the Mississippi. This episode was recorded on September 30, 2025.

Clay and his friend Russ Eagle discuss John Steinbeck’s 1960 Travels with Charley tour of America from within Steinbeck’s truck camper Rocinante. Thanks to the great generosity of the folks at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Clay and his Steinbeckian friend Russ were permitted to do the podcast at the dinette table of the pickup camper. They told the story of how Steinbeck purchased the camper—then a novelty—, how he used it as a metaphor for his travels in search of America, what happened to it after his transcontinental journey, and how it eventually found its way to the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, where John Steinbeck grew up. Clay and Russ were able to report their discovery in the Center’s archives of a document that shows just when Steinbeck returned home after his three month trek—thus solving one of the questions historians have had about the whimsical journey with his French poodle Charley. This episode was recorded live on September 27, 2025.

Guest host David Horton talks with President Thomas Jefferson about the United States as the nation approaches its 250th birthday. Horton asks Jefferson to explain his vision of America, to assess its successes and failures in his own time, and then to observe and reflect on the United States today. Aside from a ruinous and swelling national debt, Jefferson seemed most concerned by the breakdown of the “checks and balances” that are vital to the survival of a republic. Other topics included the true meaning of the phrase “pursuit of happiness,” America’s place in the world, the loss of civics and ethical training in our schools, and the death of family agriculture. Mr. Jefferson affirmed that July 4, 1776, is one of the most important dates in human history, possibly the most important date in the history of liberty. He was quick to add, however, that he did not mean to call attention to himself in invoking the Fourth of July. This episode was recorded on September 13, 2025.

Historian and author David Nicandri joins Clay in the LTA Airstream in Olympia, Washington, for a conversation about lingering mysteries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The first question was why Meriwether Lewis’ journal remained silent when he finally reached the Pacific Coast, which was the primary purpose of his transcontinental expedition. It was a dereliction of duty for the leader of the expedition to fail to write about reaching the Pacific after 18 months of gruelling travel. Clay and David attempt to make sense of Lewis’ silence. The second mystery they tackled concerns the enduring appeal of the Lewis and Clark story after 230 years. There are several dozen interpretive centers for Lewis and Clark, none for Zebulon Pike, who was exploring the Mississippi River drainage at the same time, and none for John C. Fremont, a generation later. Why? This episode was recorded September 9, 2025.

Clay interviews Montana adventurer Norm Miller, who has undertaken truly heroic canoe and kayak journeys on great rivers of the West. When he was 35, he retraced Scottish trader Alexander Mackenzie’s 1789 2,000-mile journey from Lake Athabasca to the Arctic Ocean. When he was 41, during the Bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Norm floated from St. Louis all the way to Astoria, Oregon, leaving his modified canoe only when there was no longer anything to float, and then making his way overland with a 45-pound backpack. Both stories are amazing — a lone man threading some of the most powerful rivers on the North American continent, keeping a daily journal, taking thousands of old school photographs, affirming the geographic descriptions in the journals of Lewis and Clark and Alex Mackenzie, and meeting very interesting roadside groups and individuals. This episode was recorded on September 13, 2025.

In the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah, Clay asked his good friend Beau Breslin of Skidmore College to join him in a conversation about political violence in America. Political violence is nothing new in America. We were born in an armed revolution, we’ve had waves of political violence throughout our history, and we seem as a nation to be in love with violence, at least in our popular culture, and beyond. The program includes discussion of slave revolts, violent brawls on the floor of Congress, the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and JFK, the rash of violence in the 1960s, and the growing polarization of America. Professor Breslin believes firmly that we can bring down the political temperature in the U.S. but only if we sit down together and grant each other legitimacy, even when we very seriously disagree. Prompted by popular demand, in the third segment of the program, Clay offered an op ed statement about our need to have a serious, respectful, and civil national con

Clay talks about his 2025 trek across America in his 23-foot Airstream following the Lewis and Clark trail. Clay discusses RV life and provides a sense of what a day in the life of an RV drifter is like. Clay also speaks about his intensive study of the journals of Lewis and Clark and the book he is developing, tentatively titled Getting Noticed on the Lewis and Clark Trail. And, at the end, he tells us about his future Airstream travel plans and his fall 2025 trips to England and Rome.

Clay and his friend Russ Eagle interview Robert DeMott, one of the greatest living Steinbeck scholars, at his fishing cabin on the Madison River, south of Bozeman, Montana. DeMott is the author of three important studies of Steinbeck’s novels, the editor of the journal he kept while writing his classic, The Grapes of Wrath, and also the editor of the four-volume Library of America edition of Steinbeck’s work. Russ Eagle has been enamored of Steinbeck for decades, particularly his 1945 novella Cannery Row. Dr. DeMott was incredibly generous with his time and his insights into Steinbeck. An avid fly fisherman, DeMott spends five or six weeks each summer in Montana’s Madison River valley, where we met up with him. DeMott regards the Grapes of Wrath as a top-five American novel, and Cannery Row, though underappreciated, is nearly as great. Over sodas and sandwiches, we had the honor of listening to one of America’s most significant literary critics. This episode was recorded on August 1, 2025.

Frequent guest, Lindsay Chervinsky, makes a late summer appearance to discuss Ten Books on the American Revolution. Ken Burns recently said the American Revolution was the most important event since the birth of Jesus. Our listeners have asked for advice about what to read as July 4, 2026, looms over American life. Lindsay is current with recent scholarship; Clay’s approach is more biographical. They agreed that you cannot go wrong with Rick Atkinson's trilogy on the revolution, and reading anything by Joseph Ellis is great. Clay recommended Ellis's book Passionate Sage, on John Adams, while Lindsay recommended Founding Brothers. Listen to the podcast for lots more great book recommendations and their lively discussion. This episode was recorded on August 18, 2025

Clay's conversation with historian Louis Masur about his new book A Journey North: Jefferson, Madison, & the Forging of a Friendship. In 1791, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison went on a monthlong tour of New England. They were weary from their struggles with Alexander Hamilton for the soul of America. They needed a vacation, but as exemplars of the Enlightenment, they wanted to do some "botanizing," as they put it. They were interested in studying the Hessian Fly, which was devastating New England wheat production and seemed to be heading south to Maryland and Virginia. They wanted, like most tourists, to see American Revolution battlefields. They had been friends for more than a dozen years, but this journey deepened their political partnership. The Federalists accused them of making the journey to stir up political opposition to the Hamiltonian fiscal program; however, they were mostly exploring a part of America about which they knew little.

Clay and his good friend Russ Eagle discuss the rivers Lewis and Clark traveled from Pittsburgh to the Pacific Ocean, including the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Clearwater, the Snake, and the Columbia. The paradox of Clay’s 2025 Airstream journey along the Lewis and Clark Trail is that they floated America’s rivers, and Clay has been driving along the roads closest to those rivers. To overcome this, he has contrived ways to get on the rivers of the expedition. In North Dakota, he floated for three days in a pontoon from Fort Rice to Bismarck with two young comrades. Just north of Yellowstone National Park, he and his friends, including his daughter and her fiancé, took a day-long raft trip on the Upper Yellowstone, where it remains a whitewater stream. As they recorded this podcast, Clay and Russ, plus 20 others, were about to float the famous White Cliffs section of the Missouri, east of Fort Benton, Montana. And Clay plans to get passage on an excursion boat near the mouth of the great Columbia

Clay interviews Megan Gorman, the author of the excellent new book, All the President’s Money: How the Men who Governed America Governed their Money. Gorman is a nationally respected money manager for some of the wealthiest Americans. She thought it would be interesting to explore the way American presidents have handled their finances, before, during, and after their time in office. Gerald Ford is a pivotal figure in this regard, because he left the presidency as a young man and had to find a way to make a living beyond the White House. But we spent most of our time talking about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as bookends in this history: Washington was a brilliant money manager. In fact, says Gorman, he is the richest president if you equalize currency values. Jefferson was a deplorable money manager. He died helplessly in debt. In fact, his daughter Martha had to live on public charity after his death in 1826. And yet, no president was as publicly frugal as Jefferson. In this as in all things, Jeff

Clay’s conversation with Claire Martin, who hiked the entire Pacific Crest Trail in 2020, more than 2,400 miles through some of the most rugged landscapes in America. Claire was a 2018 graduate of Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia. Without quite knowing why, she set out for the Mexican border with a 35-pound pack and began the long journey to Canada. It’s an amazing story of a young woman who doesn’t seem to be afraid of much, who undertook one of the planet’s great adventures and lived to tell the tale. In the high Sierra, just for the fun of it, she and her companions climbed to the top of Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet, the highest point in the lower 48 states. Claire spent about half of her great journey alone and half with others. She learned things about life and her own life that could only be discovered in this way. Claire now works at Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Recorded May 29, 2025.

Frequent guest Beau Breslin of Skidmore College and one of his prize students, Prairie Gunnels, talk about a capstone project for Beau’s Introduction to American Politics Course, in which students used the AI tool, ChatGPT, to write a new constitution for each of the seven generations that now share American soil. Professor Breslin is fully aware of the disruptive nature of Artificial Intelligence in the university classroom. Still, he decided to harness it for the good and encourage his students to use it responsibly to gather data essential to any possible new Constitution of the United States. Prairie Gunnels explained the methodology she used to give ChatGPT the information it needed to compose these draft constitutions. It turns out, for example, that on the whole, each generation wants to preserve the right to keep and bear arms. However, younger generations are much more comfortable with installing regulations to prevent mass shootings and mayhem. We discussed how to constitute a new generation of “fou

Clay’s conversation with popular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky on Patrick Henry. Henry began his life as a shopkeeper but rose to become the governor of Virginia and one of the handful of most essential rabble-rousers in the American Revolution. Henry and Jefferson were frenemies; at one point, Jefferson (the Deist) said to his friend Madison, “We must pray for Henry’s death.” This quip was likely a joke, but Jefferson was quite critical of Henry, and he never forgave him for initiating a legislative investigation into Jefferson’s conduct as the beleaguered wartime governor of Virginia. Henry refused to attend the Constitutional Convention in 1787 because, he said, “he smelt a rat.” He opposed ratification in Virginia, but when Jefferson and Madison were considering secession in 1798 and 1799, Henry declared to George Washington that the constitutional settlement must not be disturbed by the Jeffersonians. This episode was recorded live on May 16, 2025. *Note, we posted this description in error for the podcas

Clay’s conversation with Harvey Leake, the great-grandson of the pioneering southwestern archaeologists John and Louisa Wetherill. Harvey tells the story of former President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1913 visit to the Four Corners region. First, TR and his sons Archie, age 19, Quentin, age 15, and their cousin Nicholas Roosevelt, age 20, rode through the Grand Canyon and up to the North Rim, where they hunted mountain lions. Then, they made an arduous horseback journey to Rainbow Bridge, the sacred site in the heart of Navajo country. Finally, they visited the Hopi world, where TR and his young companions observed the sacred snake dance and got into the underground kiva, where scores of rattlesnakes slithered around. Harvey Leake has dozens of family photographs of this 1913 Roosevelt adventure. It's a strenuous life story that could not possibly be connected to any other president of the United States. Recorded May 25, 2025.

Clay’s interview with Jay Carson, the executive director of the Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS), located in remote Boulder, Utah. Jay Carson had a long and successful political career, including stints with Chuck Schumer, Howard Dean, and Bill Bradley. Jay has also had a successful career as a Hollywood screenwriter. But his life changed when he took the 14-day Boulder Outdoor Survival School course in southeastern Utah. He's not done with Hollywood yet, but his main work now is as the CEO of BOSS. Meanwhile, just a few weeks ago in January, he was in Australia when the house he shares with his wife and four children burned down north of Los Angeles. He’s an amazing man. Clay and Jay discuss whether some form of national service can help turn our republic around. Program recorded April 22, 2025.