#1657 Race in America: A Retrospective
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay’s conversation with Dr. Cassandra Newby-Alexander, professor of history at Norfolk State University in Virginia, about the status of race relations in America as we approach our 250th birthday. How should we read Thomas Jefferson's great sentence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”? Did Jefferson mean what he wrote? How accountable should we hold the Founding Fathers for making race a fundamental issue and condition of American life? Was Jefferson right or wrong when he said he was skeptical that we could ever be a biracial republic? Finally,...
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#1656 A Conversation with Novelist Anne Hillerman
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay interviews the southwestern crime novelist Anne Hillerman, now publishing her 10th novel about crime-solving in the land of the Navajo in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. Anne is the daughter of the acclaimed and bestselling Tony Hillerman, who wrote 19 novels before he died in 2008. Anne decided to carry on the tradition, and her success has been extraordinary. We talked about what it is like to be the child of a great author, how her style differs from that of her father, and why she took one of her father’s minor characters, Bernadette Manuelito, and transformed her into a...
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#1655 Clay and Lindsay Live: Religious Freedom
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay’s live conversation with Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky on Religious Freedom. Clay and Lindsay met in person at The Historic Christ Church and Museum in Weems, Virginia to discuss the history of religous freedom in the United States. They talk about how many Presidents have shared the faith, why there was an effort to separate the church and state from the beginning, and then take questions from a live audience. This episode was recorded live May 16, 2025.
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#1654 Wandering In Canyon Country — A Conversation with Craig Childs
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay’s conversation with writer Craig Childs of western Colorado. Childs is the author of more than a dozen books about America’s backcountry. He’s spent months, even years, exploring the Grand Canyon and a hundred lesser but magnificent canyons in desert country. Childs has been a river runner, a guide, and a consultant, but mostly, he is a writer of beautiful, spare, sometimes mystical prose about the Colorado Plateau. Clay and Craig talked about how he became a writer, about taking risks in the backcountry, being lost, and getting oneself lost. They also discuss the great 19th-century...
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#1653 Clay and the new History Channel Series, Kevin Costner's The West
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Guest host Russ Eagle interviews Clay Jenkinson about the forthcoming eight-part History Channel series, . Clay was interviewed as a historical expert twice for the series produced by Doris Kearns Goodwin and featuring Kevin Costner. Clay explains his intensive preparations to participate in a documentary by Ken Burns or Doris Kearns Goodwin, the books he reads, notes he compiles, and passages he memorizes. Russ and Clay discuss several of the series' episodes: Lewis and Clark, John Colter's famous 1809 run for his life; the abduction of young Cynthia Ann Parker by the Comanche and her...
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#1652 America's Public Lands: A Report Card
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay Jenkinson interviews Jonathan Thompson, the author of books about the American West, including Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands. Thompson has written much about the pushback of western ranchers, irrigators, mining interests, and chambers of commerce against federal regulation (and even federal ownership) of the public lands in the West. How should we balance the varied interests in the West: agriculture, mining, motorized recreation, backpack recreation, Native American interests, and America's deep addiction to carbon extraction?...
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#1651 Ten Things About the American Revolution
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay and frequent guest Lindsay Chervinsky discuss the American Revolution in a “live” podcast recording in Vail, Colorado. Was George Washington a great military strategist? How vital was Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence when it was written? Why weren’t women incorporated as full citizens — as Abigail Adams suggested — when America re-constituted itself in the 1770s and 1780s? Was what happened in those dramatic years a true revolution — or merely a separation from the mother country England? How important was Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense? This program was the...
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#1650 A New Look at Edward Abbey
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay's conversation with Amy Irvine, the author of the 2018 book Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness. Ms. Irvine published the book on the 50th anniversary of Edward Abbey's blockbuster Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. Desert Cabal is a careful and nuanced conversation with the late Edward Abbey, who died in 1989. Wasn't his romance with the wilderness the benefit of white privilege? And wasn't he mostly pretending he was alone in that windblown trailer at Arches National Park? Amy Irvine believes that the wilderness is healing in every way and that America's National...
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#1649 Sean Sherman and Native American Food
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay talks with noted chef, author, activist, and visionary Sean Sherman, an Oglala Lakota man who is changing the world of indigenous food. Sean is the author of an award-winning book, The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen, and another book, Turtle Island, which is coming out in November. They discuss the white conquest of the North American continent, the shattering of Native American ways and traditions, the forced assimilation policies that have brought disease to Native communities, and how surplus white food — white flour, cheap cheese, sugary sodas, and noodles — have been dumped by...
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#1648 Hitting the Road With Lewis and Clark
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Occasional guest host and LTA videographer Nolan Johnson joins Clay to talk about the epic Lewis and Clark Airstream journey of 2025, wherein Clay will follow the Lewis and Clark Trail from Jefferson’s Monticello in Virginia to Astoria, Oregon, and back again. Historian James Ronda said the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-06 was “America’s first great road story.” Clay plans to get himself on all the great rivers of the journey: Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia. Nolan will join Clay at several Lewis and Clark sites across America, with video cameras and...
info_outlineWe are joined this week by David Nicandri, one of the most respected Lewis and Clark scholars in the country. His book, "River of Promise - Lewis & Clark on the Columbia" fills a significant gap in our understanding of Lewis and Clark’s legendary expedition. Nicandri joins us not so much to speak of that journey, but one of his own. In a fascinating conversation, Nicandri tells us about the journey he and his son took on the Dempster Highway all the way to the arctic ocean.
Find this episode, along with recommended reading, on the blog. Support the show by joining the 1776 Club or by donating to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, Inc. You can learn more about Clay's cultural tours & retreats at jeffersonhour.com/tours. Check out our new merch. You can find Clay's publications on our website, along with a list of his favorite books on Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and other topics. Thomas Jefferson is interpreted by Clay S. Jenkinson.