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.
We invite you to join us on this journey.
“Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
John Steinbeck
“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”
Jack Kerouac
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot
“Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Hope, one feels once more happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood. . . . A journey, in fact, appeals to the Imagination, to Memory, to Hope—the three sister Graces of our moral being.”
Richard Francis Burton
July 25-August 3, 2026: Cultural Tour: Lewis & Clark Trail
September 13-19, 2026: Cultural Tour: Monumental Decisions: Antiquities Act of 1906
September 20-October 2, 2026: Cultural Tour: Jefferson's France
January 3–8, 2027: Winter Retreat: The Beatles in Four Albums
January 10–15, 2027: Winter Retreat: Thoreau and the American Dream
January 17–22, 2027: Winter Retreat: The Novels of Jane Austen
April 11–May 2: The Logistics of a Constitutional Convention
May 23–June 13: Rewriting the Constitution: A More Perfect Union
Books We’re Reading
A prolific author and noted humanities scholar, Clay Jenkinson is a frequent guest on national media and is regularly featured in documentary films, including several by Ken Burns. Clay is the recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Listening to America
How would you answer the question of which U.S. president was indispensable to the Republic? ltamerica.org/who-was-the-indispensable-president/ See more
Listening to America
Is Russia really just a petrostate? In this sneak peek of our May 4th podcast, Clay and his guest, Marzio Mian, author of the Volga See more
Listening to America
On this week's podcast, frequent guest host David Horton interviews the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, about his five years in France See more
