Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson

Clay talks with Professor Ellen Wohl of Colorado State University about the magical ways of rivers. Professor Wohl is the author of a new book, Following the Bend: How to Read a River and Understand Its Nature. Where does the water come from, and where does it wind up? Why do rivers meander and form S-curves? Does a river have a single source or many capillary feeder streams? As global climate change becomes a central problem of ou...

One of Clay's favorite historians, Joe Ellis, has just published his 14th book, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding. His latest volume attempts to make sense of the twin failures of the revolutionary era: the failure to end slavery in the United States and the founders' inability to respect and protect the homelands and sovereignty of Native Americans. How could the founders have been so dedicated to ...

The two intrepid British adventurers, Natalia and Mikey, who came to America to float the entire Missouri and Mississippi River corridor in a canoe, have checked in from St. Louis, where they arrived on the 108th day of their incredible journey. They are pleased to have floated 2,341 miles from Three Forks, Montana, to the mouth of the Missouri at St. Louis. The main takeaway so far, except for the fantastic adventure they have und...

Guest host Nolan Johnson and Clay talk about the history of Thanksgiving, or what John Adams might call the uses and misuses of the Thanksgiving holiday. They explore the origins of American Thanksgiving, beginning with the pilgrims of 1621, through the Civil War, and into the 20th century's additions to Thanksgiving — the parades, the NFL game, Black Friday, and its further encroachments. Clay and Nolan talk about their own Thanks...

Frequent guest host David Horton and Clay discuss America's current political paralysis and the deep frustration and cynicism of the American people in the wake of the No Kings protests of late October, which took place in 2,700 communities across the United States. If millions of people take to the streets to protest what they regard as the excesses of the current administration, are they likely to make a difference? What would it...

Clay talks with veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones, who flew four Space Shuttle missions for a total of 53 days, 49 minutes in space. Clay outlined a list of issues related to the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-06, including propulsion, navigation, food, waste management, record-keeping, and re-entry, and explained how Lewis and Clark addressed these dynamics. Then, Tom Jones explained how these concepts are applied in space. Top...

Clay and his popular guest, Lindsay Chervinsky, discuss the history of American presidents and the fourth estate. Almost all presidents are frustrated by a free press, and some have attempted to censor it. Beginning with George Washington (who was thin-skinned but did not strike out at the opposition), through Adams and Jefferson, and all the way to Richard Nixon, the First Amendment has been a casualty of real or perc...

Clay and historian Beau Breslin discuss the doctrine of habeas corpus and its role in the current debate about how to handle undocumented immigrants in the United States. In a nutshell, habeas corpus means "hey, produce the body." You cannot just arbitrarily snatch someone off the street and make them disappear. Habeas corpus was so important to the Founding Fathers that they embedded it in the first Article of the Constitution, ri...

Clay's conversation with Nat and Mikey, schoolteachers from Britain, who are floating down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers from Three Forks, Montana, all the way to St. Louis and beyond, with hopes of ending in New Orleans around the time of Mardi Gras. They recount their adventures so far. At the time of the interview, they were just north of Pierre, South Dakota, staying for one night in a resort motel on Lake Oahe. What have...

Clay and his friend Russ Eagle discuss John Steinbeck's 1960 Travels with Charley tour of America from within Steinbeck's truck camper Rocinante. Thanks to the great generosity of the folks at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Clay and his Steinbeckian friend Russ were permitted to do the podcast at the dinette table of the pickup camper. They told the story of how Steinbeck purchased the camper—then a novelty—, how he used...

Guest host David Horton talks with President Thomas Jefferson about the United States as the nation approaches its 250th birthday. Horton asks Jefferson to explain his vision of America, to assess its successes and failures in his own time, and then to observe and reflect on the United States today. Aside from a ruinous and swelling national debt, Jefferson seemed most concerned by the breakdown of the "checks and balances" that ar...

Historian and author David Nicandri joins Clay in the LTA Airstream in Olympia, Washington, for a conversation about lingering mysteries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The first question was why Meriwether Lewis' journal remained silent when he finally reached the Pacific Coast, which was the primary purpose of his transcontinental expedition. It was a dereliction of duty for the leader of the expedition to fail to write about ...

Clay interviews Montana adventurer Norm Miller, who has undertaken truly heroic canoe and kayak journeys on great rivers of the West. When he was 35, he retraced Scottish trader Alexander Mackenzie's 1789 2,000-mile journey from Lake Athabasca to the Arctic Ocean. When he was 41, during the Bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Norm floated from St. Louis all the way to Astoria, Oregon, leaving his modified canoe only whe...

In the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah, Clay asked his good friend Beau Breslin of Skidmore College to join him in a conversation about political violence in America. Political violence is nothing new in America. We were born in an armed revolution, we've had waves of political violence throughout our history, and we seem as a nation to be in love with violence, at least in our popular culture, and beyond. Th...

Clay talks about his 2025 trek across America in his 23-foot Airstream following the Lewis and Clark trail. Clay discusses RV life and provides a sense of what a day in the life of an RV drifter is like. Clay also speaks about his intensive study of the journals of Lewis and Clark and the book he is developing, tentatively titled Getting Noticed on the Lewis and Clark Trail. And, at the end, he tells us about his future Airstream t...

Clay and his friend Russ Eagle interview Robert DeMott, one of the greatest living Steinbeck scholars, at his fishing cabin on the Madison River, south of Bozeman, Montana. DeMott is the author of three important studies of Steinbeck's novels, the editor of the journal he kept while writing his classic, The Grapes of Wrath, and also the editor of the four-volume Library of America edition of Steinbeck's work. Russ Eagle has been en...

Frequent guest, Lindsay Chervinsky, makes a late summer appearance to discuss Ten Books on the American Revolution. Ken Burns recently said the American Revolution was the most important event since the birth of Jesus. Our listeners have asked for advice about what to read as July 4, 2026, looms over American life. Lindsay is current with recent scholarship; Clay's approach is more biographical. They agreed that you cannot go wrong...

Clay's conversation with historian Louis Masur about his new book A Journey North: Jefferson, Madison, & the Forging of a Friendship. In 1791, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison went on a monthlong tour of New England. They were weary from their struggles with Alexander Hamilton for the soul of America. They needed a vacation, but as exemplars of the Enlightenment, they wanted to do some "botanizing," as they put it. They were inte...

Clay and his good friend Russ Eagle discuss the rivers Lewis and Clark traveled from Pittsburgh to the Pacific Ocean, including the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Clearwater, the Snake, and the Columbia. The paradox of Clay's 2025 Airstream journey along the Lewis and Clark Trail is that they floated America's rivers, and Clay has been driving along the roads closest to those rivers. To overcome this, he has contrived way...