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Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson

Listening to America aims to “light out for the territories,” traveling less visited byways and taking time to see this immense, extraordinary country with fresh eyes while listening to the many voices of America’s past, present, and future. Led by noted historian and humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson, Listening to America travels the country’s less visited byways, from national parks and forests to historic sites to countless under-recognized rural and urban places. Through this exploration, Clay and team find and tell the overlooked historical and contemporary stories that shape America’s people and places.
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Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
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Now displaying: September, 2024
Sep 30, 2024

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?

Sep 23, 2024

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?

Sep 17, 2024

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? 

Sep 9, 2024

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.

Sep 2, 2024

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.

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