#1702 Thomas Jefferson on British Royalty
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Release Date: 05/05/2026
#1720 The Declaration of Independence: The Days After Adoption
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Host David Horton interviews the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, about the days and weeks following the Fourth of July 1776. How quickly did the printed texts of the Declaration circulate? What was the information network of the time that enabled most Americans to read the Declaration (or hear it read in public) within a few weeks? The final copy had to go to an engraver to become the beautiful presentation document we still revere today. At the time, the Founders did not know that the Declaration would become the most important document in the history of human liberty....
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#1719 Reinventing America’s Educational System
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay interviews David Osborne, author of the 1992 bestseller Reinventing Government, about the challenges of the American public education system. How well are we preparing young people for the mid-21st century? Why is the United States slipping behind many other nations in educational metrics? David has spent the last few years focused on how we can reinvent public education. His new documentary film chronicles the astonishing success of charter schools in historically problematic school districts. How much does the survival of our republic depend on better schools for all Americans? This...
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#1718 Clay’s Summer Odyssey and Listener Mail
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
David Horton sits down with Clay Jenkinson to retrace a whirlwind summer of travel, history and adventure. Clay’s journey began in May with a trek to ancient Troy and continued across the American West, following the trail of Theodore Roosevelt. Along the way came an unusual Independence Day in Italy, stops in Las Vegas and California, and a meandering journey along the Missouri River in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark. Clay and David explore the history, surprises and memorable side trips that shaped the journey — and respond to questions and comments from listeners. This episode...
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#1717 Optimism and American Success
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay interviews Richard Battle of Texas about his series of books about the can-do spirit of America. Three of the books tell feel-good stories of character and gumption in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Mr. Battle believes that the current malaise in the American spirit is caused by a weak education system that fails to tell the story of how much America has achieved and against what odds. When we are tempted to criticize America, Mr. Battle asks, “compared to what?” What other country has as much freedom and opportunity as still exists in the United States? He regards George...
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#1716 Once More Down the River and Over the Mountains!
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Guest host Russ Eagle and Clay talk about the annual Lewis and Clark Cultural tour, just ended, after three days on the White Cliffs section of the Missouri River in Montana and then three days up in the Bitterroot Mountains on the Lolo or Nez Perce Trail. Twenty guests from around the U.S. and the world joined us for Russ’ 14th Lewis and Clark tour and Clay’s 26th. The weather was perfect. The river was cool, refreshing, and powerful. Clay and Russ discuss Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, Native American history, and the status and future of America’s public lands. Lewis and Clark...
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#1715 Can We Save Great Salt Lake?
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay interviews Dr. Ben Abbott of Brigham Young University about the crisis of Great Salt Lake. Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake, which means that water comes in but does not flow out. It’s a remnant of ancient Lake Bonneville. The volume of the lake is now down by 70% and the surface area it covers is down 60%. Abbott believes we are not more than half a dozen years from the lake’s ecological collapse, which would severely damage the brine shrimp industry, expose a large number of toxic chemicals to the Utah winds with devastating effects on human health, and severely impair Utah’s...
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#1714 Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Host David Horton interviews Clay about Christopher Nolan’s new blockbuster film on Homer’s Odyssey. How closely does it follow the Homeric original? What changes in theme and character did Nolan make to turn the ancient poem into a film for our time? What should we make of the culture war dispute over the casting of a Black woman as Helen of Troy and a transgender actor as Sinon of the Wooden Horse episode? Since Homer makes the story a triumphant homecoming of the last of the heroes of Troy, why does Nolan make Odysseus a man of regret for the role he played in ending the heroic age and...
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#1713 The Magic of Joshua Jay
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay and his travel partner, Russ Eagle, interview the world-renowned sleight of hand magician Joshua Jay in Las Vegas. In addition to wowing audiences across the United States, Joshua Jay performs in America’s prisons and encourages criminals, including hardened ones, to take up magic. He has just returned from a tour of war-torn Ukraine, where he lightened the burden of the Ukrainian people, fighting for their national survival against Russian aggression. Clay gave Joshua Jay the tuxedo of one of the 20th century’s greatest sleight of hand magicians, Channing Pollock, for Jay’s museum...
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#1712 The Changing Face of Hollywood
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay welcomes Sandra Murray to talk about her 40-year career behind the scenes of major Hollywood film productions. Sandra has worked on over 250 films, including Titanic, King Kong, Les Misérables, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, most often creating the “Making of the Movie” features that accompany distribution. She has worked with some of the major filmmakers of the last half-century, including her friend Clint Eastwood. The American film industry is undergoing a revolutionary set of changes, not all of them, in her opinion, good. Movie theaters are increasingly empty. Streaming is...
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#1711 Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian Joe Ellis on America at 250
Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson
Clay welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joe Ellis to the program to discuss America at 250. Ellis is the author of more than a dozen books about the Early National Period. He has been in several Ken Burns documentaries and a wide range of other media projects. Ellis believes the American republic is in grave danger and could still collapse. Still, he hopes that the American people are waking up to the threat to their now-fragile constitutional order. Clay and Joe examine the debate between Thomas Jefferson, who believed in the goodness of humankind and our ability to govern ourselves...
info_outlineGuest host David Horton interviews President Thomas Jefferson about his strong anti-royalist principles. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson lambasted King George III for his crimes against the American colonists. Jefferson did not go quite as far as Thomas Paine, who called George III “the royal brute of England,” but he wanted to eliminate all echoes of monarchism in American public life. Jefferson met George III once in 1786 and came away even more disillusioned than he had been previously with the ways of kings. In France, he met Louis XVI several times and generally liked him, but found him woefully out of touch with the suffering of the great mass of French people. David Horton wondered how Mr. Jefferson would react to the American fascination with British royalty in our time. This episode was recorded on April 28, 2026.