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 ...
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#1620 The Hollowing Out of Rural America
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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 nee…
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#1619 A Conversation With Lindsay Chervinsky
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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…
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#1618 Are We Still a Republic?
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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…
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#1617 Clay’s Steinbeck Travels With Charley Tour: Phase Two
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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…
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#1616 The Family that Summited Everest
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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 st…
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#1615 Understanding Lindsay Chervinsky’s New Book
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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 tr…
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#1614 Native Americans and the Assimilation Movement
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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 sta…
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#1613 Republican Like Me: A Conversation with Ken Stern
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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, v…
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#1612 Lindsay Chervinsky’s New Book
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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 si…
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#1611 John Adams’ Enemies
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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 …
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#1610 America at 250 With Beau Breslin
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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…
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#1609 Joseph Ellis Returns
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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 …
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#1608 Ten Things about the First Amendment
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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…
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#1607 The Underground Railroad
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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…
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#1606 Gun Violence in America: A Conversation with Richard Rhodes
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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 …
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#1605 America at 250: A Conversation with Richard Slotkin
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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 Myt…
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#1604 Ten Things about Gouverneur Morris
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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 a…
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#1603 Satire and the American Experience
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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 …
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#1602 Highways, Byways, and Travels With Charley: A Road Report from Vermont
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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…
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#1601 John Steinbeck from Somewhere in Maine
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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 Islan…
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#1600 A Conversation with Richard Rhodes
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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 ab…
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#1599 Underway! Tracing Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” Journey
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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 wres…
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#1598 A Conversation with Political Cartoonist Phil Hands
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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 …
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#1597 Arbor Day and the Seeds of Liberty
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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. Jeffers…
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#1596 Ten Things on Nullification
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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 admin…
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