Listening to America
470 episodes - English - Latest episode: 22 days ago - ★★★★★ - 910 ratingsListening 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. Visit our website at ltamerica.org.
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Episodes
#1603 Satire and the American Experience
June 10, 2024 23:57 - 58 minutes - 80 MBGuest 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 ...
#1602 Highways, Byways, and Travels With Charley: A Road Report from Vermont
June 03, 2024 23:40 - 1 hour - 83 MBGuest 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 learn...
#1601 John Steinbeck from Somewhere in Maine
May 27, 2024 21:41 - 57 minutes - 78.4 MBGuest 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...
#1600 A Conversation with Richard Rhodes
May 20, 2024 21:48 - 55 minutes - 51.2 MBClay 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...
#1599 Underway! Tracing Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” Journey
May 13, 2024 22:33 - 50 minutes - 69.5 MBClay 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 Sta...
#1598 A Conversation with Political Cartoonist Phil Hands
May 06, 2024 22:14 - 55 minutes - 76.8 MBClay 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....
#1597 Arbor Day and the Seeds of Liberty
April 29, 2024 23:36 - 56 minutes - 77.3 MBGuest 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 ...
#1596 Ten Things on Nullification
April 22, 2024 21:26 - 54 minutes - 50.2 MBClay 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, w...
#1595 The Solar Eclipse of 2024
April 15, 2024 23:46 - 50 minutes - 69.5 MBClay 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 ex...
#1594 Live from Oklahoma
April 08, 2024 21:59 - 50 minutes - 69.5 MBIn 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.
#1593 The LTA Survey and American Reflections
April 02, 2024 00:15 - 51 minutes - 70.9 MBListen 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 ...
#1592 Geert Mak and John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley
March 25, 2024 23:33 - 58 minutes - 80.4 MBClay 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 wh...
#1591 The Election of 2024 and the Constitution
March 18, 2024 23:41 - 55 minutes - 77 MBClay 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...
#1590 Ten Things: The Jefferson-Adams Correspondence
March 11, 2024 23:14 - 59 minutes - 82.5 MBClay 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 grandch...
#1589 Loss of Respect for American Institutions
March 04, 2024 22:45 - 1 hour - 87 MBClay Jenkinson interviews Dr. Henry Brady of the University of California at Berkeley about loss of respect for sixteen American institutions, some public, and some private: the police, the church, the Supreme Court, Higher Education, the FBI, the presidency, and, of course Congress. How did we lose faith? Has there been moral and ethical slippage in the last fifty years or are we just more aware of the imperfections of these institutions thanks to 24/7 media, including social media? What ro...
#1588 Presidential Norms
February 26, 2024 23:00 - 1 hour - 92.7 MBGuest host David Horton of Virginia leads a discussion with Clay Jenkinson about the difference between Constitutional requirements and what are called presidential norms. George Washington, for example, did not shake hands with the American people. He held formal levees once a week. Jefferson regarded those as monarchical habits and he performed a series of acts of political theater to tone down the presidency during his two terms. Nothing in the Constitution requires the outgoing president...
#1587 The Sad History of Executive Orders
February 19, 2024 23:05 - 50 minutes - 69.7 MBClay Jenkinson and guest host David Horton discuss the history of executive orders. Even though they are not authorized by the U.S. Constitution, every president except William Henry Harrison has issued at least one. David and Clay review the most important executive orders in American history: the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863; the Japanese internment camps brought on by FDR in 1942. Truman integrated the U.S. military and JFK created the Peace Corps using executive orders. Clay argues ...
#1586 Ten Things on Margaret Bayard Smith
February 12, 2024 22:29 - 59 minutes - 81.7 MBClay Jenkinson is joined by regular contributor Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky for a spirited conversation about Margaret Bayard Smith, one of Thomas Jefferson’s greatest admirers. Mrs. Smith, who was 35 years younger than Jefferson, was the wife of the editor of the National Intelligencer, the first Washington, D.C. newspaper. Her letters and journals, printed as The First Forty Years of Washington Society, contain some of the most interesting details of Jefferson’s presidency, beginning with his i...
#1585 Ten Things About John Randolph of Roanoke
February 06, 2024 03:36 - 50 minutes - 69.5 MBClay Jenkinson is joined by regular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky to talk about one of the strangest and most extraordinary people of America’s Early National Period, John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia. Randolph was a brilliant and flamboyant man, hairless with the voice of a soprano and locked physically in a pre-pubescent state. Yet he was a brilliant orator, an outstanding Congressional floor manager, with a wicked tongue and a vituperative spirit. Randolph was a radical Republican who br...
#1584 The Red Barber Program
January 29, 2024 23:40 - 52 minutes - 72.5 MBClay is joined by Dr. Kurt Kemper of Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota, and our west coast Enlightenment correspondent David Nicandri. Both are deeply interested in American sports, both for the sport per se, but also for the window they provide on the larger dynamics of American life. This week’s topics: outsized college coach salaries; the madcap world of Bill Walton; the problematic temperament of Draymond Green; and the death of intercollegiality in American college sports...
#1583 College Football as Cultural Lens
January 22, 2024 23:18 - 59 minutes - 82.1 MBClay is joined by two guests, David Nicandri the West Coast Enlightenment correspondent for Listening to America and Dr. Kurt Kemper of Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota. Kemper is the author of College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era. Kemper and Nicandri believe that larger themes in American culture find expression in the world of sports. Much of the discussion surrounds the famous 1962 Rose Bowl—in which the faculty of Ohio State University voted not to se...
#1582 On the Trail of John Steinbeck
January 15, 2024 22:52 - 59 minutes - 81.3 MBThis week on Listening to America, Clay Jenkinson’s follow-up conversation with Russ Eagle of Salisbury, North Carolina, about following the trail of John Steinbeck. Russ is a former high school teacher and administrator with a vast love of the writer. After his report on the arrival of Steinbeck’s heralded boat, the Western Flyer, in Monterey, we talk about the other must-see places and objects in the Steinbeck universe: Rocinante, his truck camper at the Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Califo...
#1581 Henry Wallace and the World That Might Have Been
January 08, 2024 23:37 - 58 minutes - 80 MBClay talks with Jeremy Gill of Hays, Kansas, about former Vice President Henry Wallace. Wallace served several presidential administrations, some Republican but more Democrat. He was FDR’s New Deal Secretary of Agriculture, then FDR’s vice president in his third term, 1940-1944. The Democrats dropped Wallace as too radical in 1944, nominating Harry S. Truman in his place. So, Truman became the accidental president on April 12, 1945, not Henry Wallace. Wallace ran for the presidency against T...
#1580 Ten Things about the Hamilton-Jefferson Relationship
January 01, 2024 23:08 - 59 minutes - 81.5 MBThis week on Listening to America, Clay’s conversation with Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky about two of the greatest of the Founders, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson knew of Hamilton’s war heroics and his importance as aide-de-camp to George Washington, but he didn’t actually meet Hamilton until the spring of 1790 when they were two of the four members of George Washington’s cabinet. They were yin and yang. Jefferson was an agrarian and a strict constructionist, a man who was obse...
#1579 The Holiday Show
December 24, 2023 03:04 - 44 minutes - 60.7 MBClay checks in with a few of his favorite Listening to America guests to hear about their own holiday traditions and their New Year's resolutions. Guests include David Nicandri, Beau Wright, and Brad Crisler.
#1578 Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian
December 18, 2023 23:09 - 59 minutes - 82.4 MBThis week on Listening to America, Clay Jenkinson interviews professional photographers John and Coleen Graybill of Buena Vista, Colorado, about the life and achievement of Edward S. Curtis. Curtis took 40,000 dry glass plate photographs of Native Americans between 1900 and 1935, and published 20 volumes of his portraits, landscape photographs, musical notations, and a gigantic amount of ethnographic prose. John is the great great grandson of Edward Curtis. The Graybills are traveling the We...
#1577 The Listening to America Origin Story
December 11, 2023 23:00 - 59 minutes - 54.2 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with occasional guest host David Horton about the origins of the Thomas Jefferson Hour and the purpose of changing the name and focus of the program to Listening to America. Clay sings the praises of two hosts, Bill Crystal, now of Virginia, and David Swenson of Makoche Recording Studios in Bismarck, North Dakota. Clay recalls incidents that have occurred in his long career in tights and buckled shoes, and particularly the way in which Jefferson’s hyp...
#1576 Ten Things About the Louisiana Purchase
December 05, 2023 00:49 - 1 hour - 89 MBThis week on Listening to America, Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with regular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky: Ten Things about the Louisiana Purchase. In the spring of 1803 Napoleon sold the entire Louisiana Territory to the United States for three cents per acre. At 525 million acres, or 828,000 square miles, it was the greatest land sale in human history. What was Jefferson’s role in all of this? Why did President Jefferson believe that the purchase might be technically unconstitutional? Wha...
#1575 Mind the Gap: Between Presidential Administrations
November 27, 2023 22:53 - 57 minutes - 79.5 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with guest host David Horton about three remarkable moments in American history between administrations. First, the tragedy of Meriwether Lewis, who got caught between the outgoing administration of his mentor Thomas Jefferson and the incoming administration of President James Madison, who was no admirer of Lewis. This gap contributed to the nervous collapse of Lewis and probably his suicide in 1809. Then the burden that fell on the shoulders of Vice ...
#1574 John Steinbeck and the Western Flyer
November 21, 2023 01:15 - 56 minutes - 78.1 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with fellow Steinbeck scholar Russ Eagle of North Carolina about the relaunch of the Western Flyer, the boat that took Steinbeck, Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck’s wife Carol, and four others to the Sea of Cortez in the spring of 1940. After eighty years the Western Flyer has been completely refurbished and now takes its place as one of the principal attractions at Monterey, California. Ricketts was a marine biologist and one of Steinbeck’s best friends in lif...
#1573 Overrated and Underrated Presidents
November 14, 2023 00:18 - 58 minutes - 79.9 MBClay Jenkinson is joined by regular guests Lindsay Chervinsky and David Nicandri to discuss the most overrated and underrated Presidents in American history, present company excluded. We evaluate the 46 presidencies, not the overall character or achievement. Woodrow Wilson does not fare well, but Richard Nixon has considerable support, in spite of Watergate. Lindsay heaps high praise on her man John Adams while David believes John F. Kennedy has additional luster now that our national leader...
#1572 Ten Things: The Post-Civil War Amendments
November 06, 2023 23:00 - 58 minutes - 79.7 MBThis week, Clay’s conversation with favorite guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky about the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. All ratified between December 1865 and February 1870, these three key amendments are in some respects the second founding of the United States. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery. The 14th insisted on equal protection of all citizens of the United States, thus applying the Bill of Rights to the people of every state. And the 15th granted Black men 21...
#1571 A Conversation With David Nicandri
October 31, 2023 03:17 - 1 hour - 93.6 MBThis week, Clay’s conversation with Enlightenment correspondent David Nicandri about four subjects: Ken Burns’ documentary on the buffalo; the solar eclipse of Saturday, October 15; a new book by former Secret Service Agent Paul Landis about the Kennedy assassination — Landis actually tampered with the evidence in the presidential limo, and now, at 88, he wants to tell the people of America his story; and a preliminary conversation about the structure of road adventures, beginning with the L...
#1570 Clay’s 10 Propositions About Thomas Jefferson
October 23, 2023 23:32 - 1 hour - 86.7 MBThis week on Listening to America, after a lifetime of thinking about the third president of the United States, Clay Jenkinson has made a list of 10 insights about the great man. Clay puts these propositions to our favorite guest historian Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky.
#1569 Ten Things About the Constitutional Convention
October 16, 2023 21:44 - 1 hour - 83.5 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky about the creation of the Constitution in the summer of 1787. What did they get right, what did they get wrong, and which issues did they simply kick down the road? Was the true divide between big states and little states, or as James Madison said, between slave states and free states? Why did the Founders work behind closed doors in secrecy? Why did they throw out the Articles of Confederation when they were instructed mer...
#1568 The American Buffalo: a New Documentary by Ken Burns
October 10, 2023 11:38 - 1 hour - 93.1 MBGuest host David Horton of Radford University talks with Clay Jenkinson about Ken Burns' latest documentary, The American Buffalo, which premiers on PBS on October 16. Clay has now been in five of Ken Burns' documentaries, and has been one of the historical advisers in two of the films. Among the topics of discussion: Who was William Hornaday and what role did he play in the saving of the buffalo? What was Theodore Roosevelt's role? How do you prepare to be interviewed in a Ken Burns film? W...
#1567 Rebuilding Trust in American Institutions
October 02, 2023 23:52 - 56 minutes - 77.2 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson’s interview with Dr. Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute about how we can turn America around from this funk of profound disillusionment and cynicism. Dr. Levin is the author of many books, the most recent of which is A Time to Build: How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream. As the United States lurches towards its 250th birthday, are we still a nation with a common history, a common set of values, and a common destiny? Dr. Le...
#1566 How To Be a Chautauquan
September 25, 2023 22:08 - 1 hour - 84.5 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with actor Steven Duchrow about taking on historical characters. Steven has been performing as the poet Vachel Lindsay for many years, but now he is taking on the character of the poet Carl Sandburg. Where do you start? How do you figure out what has to be in any performance whether it is five minutes long or an hour and a half? Once you have done all the research, how do you turn that immense body of information into a solid and entertaining Chautauq...
#1565 Ten Things about Writing a Book
September 18, 2023 22:17 - 50 minutes - 69.2 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky about the agony and ecstasy of writing a book. Among the topics: Do you do all the research before you start to write or just begin and research as you go along? How do you pace yourself and not burn out? How do you know if the book is any good? What do you do to power through the gumption traps—writer’s block, the distracting dramas of real life, other professional commitments, the days or weeks when you just don’t feel li...
#1564 The New Look of the Jefferson Hour: Listening to America
September 11, 2023 22:08 - 1 hour - 83.1 MBThis week, guest host David Horton of Radford University returns to engage Clay Jenkinson about the plans and purposes of Listening to America. Why the name change on the highly successful Jefferson Hour? What will the new program title enable Clay to explore over the next decade? Did the New Enlightenment Radio Network change the name because Jefferson is now perceived as toxic because of his complicities in slavery and the dispossession of Native Americans? How exactly does Clay intend to ...
#1563 The Formation of Thomas Jefferson
September 04, 2023 22:04 - 1 hour - 87.2 MBThis week, guest host David Horton of Radford University questions Mr. Jefferson about his formation, about the path he took to national greatness. What were the particular influences of Jefferson's father Peter, a self-made man of the overseer class, and Jefferson's mother Jane Randolph, who belonged to one of the most socially and politically prominent families in Virginia? Why did Jefferson's life veer from the agrarian simplicities of western Virginia and lead him to the writing of the D...
#1562 Ten Things: Counterfactual History
August 28, 2023 22:00 - 51 minutes - 70.7 MBThis week on Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson, Clay's conversation with his regular guest Professor Lindsay Chervinsky about Ten Historical Counterfactuals. Historians are warned never to indulge in what if history, but we cannot help it, it just such fun. What if the British had won the Revolutionary War? What if Alexander Hamilton had become the President of the United States? What if Jefferson had never owned an enslaved person? What if the South had won the Civil War? What if Jo...
#1561 The Titan and the Titanic
August 22, 2023 01:40 - 53 minutes - 73.1 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson’s interview with David Nicandri in the aftermath of the disaster of the submersible Titan in the north Atlantic. Nicandi reflects on the spirit of exploration, the risks taken by those who would go where no man has gone before. Were the five men who died when the submersible imploded just billionaire tourists or adventurers in the spirit of Lewis and Clark and Captain James Cook? How can we make sense of the continuing lure of the Titanic? Where does undersea touris...
#1560 The Oppenheimer Film as Cinema
August 14, 2023 22:22 - 55 minutes - 76.9 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with his cinephile friend Niles Schwartz of Minneapolis about the summer blockbuster film Oppenheimer. People are already saying it is one of the great films in recent decades, a certain classic like The Sound of Music, Dr. Strangelove, the Deer Hunter, and Citizen Kane. Clay asked Niles to forget about history and the character of Robert Oppenheimer, but simply to respond to the film as film: cinematography, editing, direction, the acting, the score....
#1559 The Plight of a Secular Society
August 08, 2023 00:05 - 58 minutes - 80.2 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson interviews Bruce Ledewitz, the author of The Universe is On Our Side: Restoring Faith in American Public Life. Since Nietzsche's famous pronouncement that "God is dead," Euro-American culture has become profoundly secular--and it shows, according to Ledewitz. Without the great tradition of Christian culture, America has descended into radical individualism without any moral anchor for public or private behavior. Ledewitz rejects the Enlightenment's belief that secul...
#1558 How Accurate Was the Oppenheimer Movie?
July 31, 2023 22:00 - 58 minutes - 80.3 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with Listening to America’s Enlightenment correspondent David Nicandri after viewing the blockbuster film Oppenheimer. How close did the film stay to the historical record? Was the characterization of Oppenheimer both accurate and compelling? Why does Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr.) play so large a role in the film? Will the film be remembered in Hollywood history? Why is the film rated R? Is Christopher Nolan’s depiction of Edward Teller an allusi...
#1557 The Death of Great Salt Lake
July 25, 2023 00:19 - 51 minutes - 70.6 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson's interview with the Thoreau of Great Salt Lake, Scott Baxter, about the possibility that the lake will die well before it dries up entirely. Baxter has spent decades monitoring the lake as its levels diminish thanks to over-allocation and more recently the prolonged drought in the American West. With his future son-in-law, Baxter circumnavigated the lake several years ago. The toxic dust that is exposed by declining lake levels represents a respiratory problem for ...
#1556 John Quincy Adams Part II
July 18, 2023 04:58 - 51 minutes - 70.8 MBThis week, the second of a two part conversation between Clay Jenkinson and Lindsay Chervinksy on the life and achievements of John Quincy Adams. The little known sixth President is so interesting that Clay and Lindsay decided to do a second Ten Things program about him. Did he have a sense of humor? Could he relax? What kind of First Lady was Louisa Adams? Was Adams a true abolitionist or did he prefer caution to a bold assault on slavery? Why did he dislike Thomas Jefferson so much?
#1555 John Quincy Adams Deserves Better
July 10, 2023 23:58 - 56 minutes - 78 MBThis week, the first of a two part conversation between Clay Jenkinson and Lindsay Chervinsky on the life and achievement of John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States. Adams was perhaps the greatest Secretary of State in American history. He had a rough one-term presidency, but then he won a seat in the House of Representatives that he retained until his death in 1848. He was one of America's greatest opponents of slavery.
#1554 Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Civilization
July 04, 2023 19:22 - 51 minutes - 70.6 MBThis week, Clay Jenkinson talks with David Horton of Radford University in Virginia about the artificial intelligence revolution. Where are we with AI and where are we headed? What is the future of privacy? Is it possible to regulate AI? Will the machines terminate us as a slovenly, irrational, and wasteful species? Will we live forever or at least another hundred years? What will universities do now that ChatGPT is rocking education? Meanwhile, Clay asks ChatGPT to write an essay condemning...