What exactly is Listening to America?

Listening to America is a bold new initiative that will put me on the road for about six months a year. Central to the project is what formerly was called The Thomas Jefferson Hour. From now on it will be called “Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson” as we expand the lens of the program. Instead of always originating from the New Enlightenment Radio Network barn in central North Dakota, the program might now originate from the Grand Canyon or the Everglades, Wall Drug in South Dakota, or the World’s Largest Ball of Twine.

Many of the shows will be interviews with remarkable people all over the country. Some will be the kinds of shows people are most used to: conversations with Lindsay Chervinsky or Joe Ellis, or Mr. Jefferson himself being interviewed.

Our website, ltamerica.org is the show platform, but it will be much more. My “Dispatches from the Road” appear on the site, musings about the books we’re reading, interviews, travel journal entries, photo essays, video, and more.

You’ve said this has something to do with America’s 250th birthday?

Yes. The 250th birthday of the United States is July 4, 2026. When I realized this, I was filled with dread and melancholia. Think of what our unprecedented divisiveness as a nation will do with the anniversary. I see it as the Culture Wars on steroids. It will be a cage match between competing voices — the 1619 Project on the one hand and Ozzie and Harriet’s America on the other, Whole Foods v. Cracker Barrel, Red v. Blue, Coastal v. Heartland, the righteous left, and the outraged right. ...

We cannot let that happen.

At Listening to America, we believe firmly that most Americans are well within the goalposts of FOX on the one hand and MSNBC on the other.

I was trained as a classicist at the University of Minnesota and Oxford. My reading of the Roman republic has taught me that there are warning signs when a republic is beginning to collapse. I feel strongly that we are now in a slow-motion national collapse. When a nation becomes so polarized that the people can no longer agree on the national narrative — what could almost be called the national mythology — then things begin to take on a more strained and violent tenor.

My plan is to talk about this with everyone I meet — not oppressively, I hope! I want to see how my fellow Americans regard their country at 250; what they love, what they fear, what they hope and dream. I feel that the best thing I can do as we approach our 250th birthday is go out and A: cheer up (I trust), and B: listen, listen, listen.

In doing all this, I hope to help suggest a consensus narrative that is woke enough to face all the genuine inequities and problems in American history and society, and yet is proud and celebratory enough to do justice to one of the world’s most interesting experiments in the human pursuit of justice and happiness.

Will the show be different from the Thomas Jefferson Hour?

Some but not too much. Jefferson and the Jeffersonian will still be central. We’re simply putting on a wider lens with which to look at America. In some limited sense, Mr. Jefferson is too narrow a lens for the kind of exploration of America I am most interested in conducting now. Jefferson has been the center of my life, but I am nearly equally interested in Meriwether Lewis, John Wesley Powell, Theodore Roosevelt, and John Steinbeck, not to mention the Atomic West, Native American history and culture, the photography of Edward S. Curtis, the writing and vision of Henry David Thoreau, Great Plains literature and much more.

So you will hear much continuity, but also a wider set of subjects and ideas. I’m tremendously excited.

What about Lindsay Chervinsky and David Nicandri?

They will both be guests on the program as frequently as before, and maybe more. Joe Ellis will continue to appear. They are completely on board with the new approach to the show. Lindsay and I have many more “Ten Things” programs in mind, and Nicandri has agreed to make more frequent appearances on Enlightenment themes, exploration, Jeffersonian science, etc.

What happened to David Swenson?

David has decided to take a step back and start semi-retirement. He has lately been doing work of monumental importance around Native American sound, featuring the ethnomusicology of Francis Densmore (1867-1957). Despite our appeals to stay on, he said it was time to move in a new direction. We’re so appreciative of all his contributions to the program and hope to have him on as an occasional guest host.

Where did you get the new theme music?

That’s the work of one of the program’s great friends, Brad Crisler of Nashville, Tennessee. I was out driving in the badlands of western North Dakota, a little lost, and having a perfect day. On the radio I heard Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park singing “America.” Half a million people roared their love for the song and the duo. I burst into tears. And I thought, if I change the program to Listening to America, a legal riff on that song must be our theme music. I wrote to Crisler. He instantly said he knew just what to do. I could not be happier. Crisler put into my hands precisely the music I imagined.

Did you lose interest in Jefferson?

No, never. I’ve spent the last 30-some years of my life with Thomas Jefferson. I continue to find him endlessly interesting. I haven’t entirely figured him out after all this time. He’s a paradox, but a paradox that helps us make sense of America, with all its contradictions. No, Jefferson is so deeply wrapped into my life, mind, heart, and soul, that I wouldn’t be able to put him behind me if I wished to. I don’t think a day goes by in my life when I don’t think about Jefferson or quote him or measure our own times by the brighter side of his vision of America.

Jefferson’s not going anywhere. He will make appearances on Listening to America. And the Jeffersonian will be always at the center of everything I do and think. I still hope to write a big book about Mr. Jefferson. I have been putting it off for decades now. I have much more to say about this remarkable man, America’s da Vinci.

Is cancel culture driving you out?

No. But I do worry about that. There is no question in my mind that Jefferson was a racist and an apartheidist, that he wanted a separate but not equal America, and that he helped to put in place American Indian policy that led to the dispossession of Native Americans. I don’t think it’s ok to do a full Jefferson Hour now without mentioning slavery and race. At the same time, I don’t think it healthy for our civilization to fixate on race to the point that we cannot see anything else.

I don’t think Thomas Jefferson’s reputation will ever be the same as it was in 1970, for example. He has dropped permanently in the nation’s regard and memory, and I feel compelled to say I think this is only just. But that’s not why we are changing the program, including the name.

I do think, however, that stations and individuals will give Listening to America a chance, a hearing, that some might now deny to Jefferson.

Are you really going to wander the country in an Airstream?

Yes. Now that connectivity is nearly universal, I plan to originate many episodes of Listening to America from the road. We’re still trying to figure out the pace and the rhythm, but I’m guessing I will be out on the road somewhere in America about half of every year for the next decade. I’ve learned from some warmup excursions that I can read on the road (thank you eBooks); I’ve learned how to write on the road, and that is a much more demanding thing. Thanks to the digital revolution, I can stay in daily contact from the road.

I’ve been very lucky (privileged) to have visited every state, camped in a dozen of them, driven the blue highways of the country, particularly in the American West; visited historic sites, presidential libraries, the great art galleries, American Indian reservations, battlefields, sacred mountains. I’ve floated on the Little Missouri, the Salmon, the Snake, the Green, the Colorado, the Missouri, the Columbia, and the Mississippi. And yet, there is so much of America that I have never seen. And ache to see. The idea of being able to wander this great country for several years, more or less inventing the itineraries from a deep pool of curiosity and respect is almost too much to contemplate. But that is precisely what I am going to get to do.

I see myself high in the national forests of California or Oregon or Montana, at 7,000 feet, parked among beautiful pine trees, a creek or stream within hearing distance, a good book, a glass of wine, a modest meal, a shower taken on the side of the rig in the afternoon heat. Reading, musing, dreaming, writing, imagining, reflecting, rebooting.

Are you really planning to re-create Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley journey?

Yes. Beginning in the spring of 2024 I’m going to drive to the tip of Long Island (with lots of delightful stops and investigations along the way) and then do the whole 1960 journey around the perimeter of America. I won’t do it in real time. I’m planning to spread it across five three-to-four-week trips, with a few weeks in between at home. I won’t follow Steinbeck’s route literally. I’ll deviate at times but within the same travel corridor.

I’m making this immense journey because I believe Steinbeck’s work is important. A serious writer undertaking a whimsical but serious journey in search of America. Reporting accurately what he sees and learns. I want the journey to be done with the greatest possible respect for Steinbeck, not just Travels with Charley, but his lifetime of serious writing about California, America, and the human condition. But it would be a mistake, I think, to follow each road he traveled with obsessive fussiness. He went out to see America. I have to make that quest equally important with my admiration for Steinbeck.

And, no, there won’t be a dog. I cannot keep a Chia Pet alive.

What do you plan to ask the American people?

Depends on the encounter, of course, but I’m going to ask the humanities questions. What is your dream of life? What does America need? How well are we doing as a people? What would you most like to change? What books or movies or television shows help explain the America of 2024-25? What are your favorite American places? And so on. But my interview style has always been to know where it is headed but not to over-plan the interview. The art of interviewing is the art of listening carefully because people will let you know what they want to talk about, what’s on their mind. And of course, a lot of what I learn will be from informal conversation not interviews.

How do you choose your themes?

My colleague Dennis and I have been talking about Water in the West for a couple of years. Rivers are of great importance to me. Dennis lives out there in arid America. We are all bewildered and alarmed by the implications of global climate change. So that theme seemed natural. I’ve been working on the photographic genius of Edward S. Curtis for a few years with much more to do and learn, so that seems natural. I’m really fascinated and alarmed by the mega forest fires that now grow more intense every year in the West.

We are expecting that people will teach us what we want to explore. That would be spectacular. How can you go out to see America if you have a preconceived idea of what America is? And we expect, as Robert Frost put it, that “way leads on to way,” that everything exfoliates into something unexpected and intriguing. On our first journey, for example, we met a Navajo woman who was a national mixed martial arts champion — now doing important work on the reservation with Navajo youth. And I learned on the trip, from our voluble scout Frank, that the Henry Mountains, named for members of the second John Wesley Powell Expedition on the Green and Colorado Rivers, have a significant bison herd. The Henries were mostly new to me and the idea that bison can thrive so far into the desert southwest was a true surprise.

I’m guessing we won’t have any trouble generating themes and ideas.

How can people help you?

Well, this sort of intentional travel is expensive. We hope and believe people are going to want to contribute to our success. Why? Because they sense our seriousness of purpose, and they trust us. Because these are themes that the American people want to explore. Because we have a track record.

Above all we hope you will tell others about Listening to America; sign up yourself for the newsletter and urge others to do so. Write to us. Suggest people we should meet, places we should visit, experiences we should undertake, interviews we should conduct. Join me virtually on my journey. 

You could send gas cards, or pledge five or ten cents per mile. Underwrite a specific initiative like the Edward S. Curtis Elders project. Listening to America is a not-for-profit educational initiative. Your support helps immensely in making this all possible.

Can I come along?

John Steinbeck said that’s what everyone asks.