Listening to America

Oct 28 2024 466 ep. 54 mins 1k

Listening to America Podcast artwork

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, 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.

Society & Culture History

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#1623 Reflections on the Nation of Texas

Oct 28 2024 55 mins

Clay discusses his foray into Texas on Phase Three of the great John Steinbeck Travels with Charley 2024 tour. How is Texas different from other states? Can anyone really eat at the Big Texas Steak Ranch and survive? Is the Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo as worthy as Carhenge in Alliance, Nebraska? Why are Texans nicer IN Texas than when they drive their giant white pickups into othe

#1622 Clay's John Steinbeck America Tour Resumes

Oct 21 2024 59 mins

Guest host Russ Eagle interviews Clay about the third phase of his 2024 Steinbeck "Travels with Charley" tour. Russ was in North Carolina, Clay, at an RV park in eastern New Mexico on the legendary Route 66. They discussed Steinbeck's purpose for his 1960 truck camper Odyssey. Did he achieve his goal? Why wasn't Steinbeck interested in America's National Parks, many of which he cou

#1621 The Caitlin Clark Phenomenon

Oct 14 2024 50 mins

Clay Jenkinson is joined by sports historian Kurt Kemper of Dakota State University and sports fan David Nicandri of Washington State. Our subject: the Caitlin Clark phenomenon. Clark of the University of Iowa now holds the NCAA collegiate basketball record for most career points in either the men’s or women’s league. What is next for her? How does her sudden national celebrity

#1620 The Hollowing Out of Rural America

Oct 07 2024 59 mins

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 need to alter our food production and

#1619 A Conversation With Lindsay Chervinsky

Sep 30 2024 62 mins

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 Jefferson. More to the point, why

#1618 Are We Still a Republic?

Sep 23 2024 60 mins

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? Or was he, as John Adams rec

#1617 Clay’s Steinbeck Travels With Charley Tour: Phase Two

Sep 16 2024 59 mins

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 Oregon, the annual Lewis and Clar

#1616 The Family that Summited Everest

Sep 09 2024 57 mins

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 stay to adjust to the altitu

#1615 Understanding Lindsay Chervinsky’s New Book

Sep 02 2024 56 mins

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 transfer of power in American poli

#1614 Native Americans and the Assimilation Movement

Aug 26 2024 55 mins

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 statement: “Kill the Indian,