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#1714 Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey
July 27, 2026
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 bringing on the long Greek Dark Ages? Is Matt Damon an adequate Odysseus? How about Charlize Theron as the goddess Calypso? What themes was Nolan attempting to wrestle with, and how successful was he? Does it help to have a deep background in the Homeric epics, or is it best to see the film with little or no familiarity with the epic tradition? This episode was recorded on July 23, 2026.
#1713 The Magic of Joshua Jay
July 20, 2026
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 of magic in northwest Las Vegas, which also includes Houdini’s straitjacket and his famous needle swallowing apparatus. This episode was recorded on July 14, 2026.
#1712 The Changing Face of Hollywood
July 13, 2026
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 king. Artificial Intelligence and CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) are transforming special effects. Independent films are easier and less expensive to make, but much harder to distribute. So many films are produced across so many platforms that there is no longer a common body of movies most Americans have seen. Nobody is quite sure where the film industry is headed, but Sandra Murray shares her insights. This episode was recorded on April 10, 2026.
#1711 Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian Joe Ellis on America at 250
July 6, 2026
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 rationally, and John Adams’ view that human nature crossed the Atlantic Ocean with the colonists of the 17th century, and that human passions and selfishness must be factored into any political system that can survive in the long run. This episode was recorded on June 19, 2026.
#1710 President Jefferson Reads the Declaration
June 29, 2026
Host David Horton interviews the third president, Thomas Jefferson, about the circumstances surrounding the writing of the most important document in American history. Arguably the most important document in human history. Jefferson insisted that he was only trying to articulate what every American was thinking in the early summer of 1776. David Horton asks Mr. Jefferson to read the entire text of the Declaration, including the 27-point indictment of King George III and the Parliament of England. Jefferson always reminds us that if the other Founders had known how famous this document would become, Jefferson, just 33, and the youngest member of the Virginia delegation to the Continental Congress, would probably not have been chosen to write the Declaration. This episode was recorded on April 24, 2026.
#1709 America at 250: Historian Lindsay Chervinsky
June 22, 2026
Clay welcomes one of his favorite guests, Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, to talk about America at 250. Many Americans are bewildered and frightened by the current state of the Union, unsure how things got so partisan and paralyzed. Instead of offering our personal opinions on the current crisis, we, as historians, attempt to contextualize the present moment within the broad sweep of American history, beginning, of course, with the Founding Fathers. What would Adams and Jefferson say about the world of 2026? Would they be disappointed with us? And what would they urge us to reform as we move forward into the next 50, 100, and 250 years? And Clay asks Lindsay to point to the Golden Age of American life. You may be surprised by her answer. This episode was recorded on June 18, 2026.
#1708 The Amazing Explorations of Francisco Coronado
June 15, 2026
Clay interviews Peter Stark, the author of a new book on the 1540 exploration of what would eventually become the United States by Spanish Conquistador Francisco Coronado. The Lost Cities of El Norte is a remarkable examination of an expedition that took place 250 years before Lewis and Clark. The book chronicles Coronado’s search for the famed Seven Cities of Cibola, rumored to house untold wealth somewhere in the American Southwest. Coronado’s ambitious expedition, one of the largest ever of the New World, traveled as far north as present-day Kansas. Although Coronado pledged to treat indigenous people with respect, that humanitarian impulse soon broke down. But the good news is that the indigenous Puebloan people outfoxed him at every turn, representing one of the earliest successful attempts at native resistance to European imperialism. Stark’s previous book, Astoria, told the story of the American fur trade after the Lewis and Clark Expedition. This episode was recorded on May 20, 2026.
#1707 Teddy Roosevelt, National Monuments and Devils Tower, Wyoming
June 8, 2026
From Devils Tower in northwestern Wyoming, host David Horton and Clay Jenkinson discuss Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation achievements. When the National Monuments and Antiquities Act was passed in 1906, President Roosevelt lost no time in setting aside what would become 18 National Monuments, starting with Devils Tower just west of the Black Hills. Roosevelt had little to do with the creation of the Antiquities Act, but he made the most of it, culminating in his colossal designation of Grand Canyon National Monument in 1908. In the course of his two-term presidency, Roosevelt set aside a whopping 230 million acres of National Park, National Forest, National Monument, National Wildlife Refuge, and National Game Preserve. No president has done more. David asked Clay to outline his three-phase Roosevelt conservation tour for 2026. First, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado; later, Montana and Idaho; and in the fall, all of Roosevelt’s conservation designations in the Four Corners region of the Southwest. This episode was recorded on May 28, 2026.
#1706 Books About the Declaration of Independence
June 1, 2026
Clay and his frequent guest, the redoubtable Lindsay Chervinsky, discuss books written about Jefferson’s declaration, arguably the most important document in the history of liberty. Among the titles discussed are Walter Isaacson’s recent The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, which celebrates the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, to Garry Wills’ award-winning 1978 Inventing America, which locates the inspiration in the Scottish Enlightenment, and Pauline Meier’s 1997 American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, which examines local and regional declarations that contributed to Jefferson’s great national document. Could any of the other Founding Fathers have written so magnificent a declaration? What role did Jefferson’s famous “felicity for expression” play in the historical fame of America’s mission statement? This episode was recorded on May 19, 2026.
#1705 Free Expression and Political Repression: Stephen Colbert’s Exit
May 25, 2026
Host David Horton interviews Thomas Jefferson about freedom of expression in America. Did the Founding Fathers know what they were doing when they ratified the extraordinary First Amendment of the Constitution? What limits, if any, should there be in the expression of ideas in a free society? When, if ever, can government suppress press freedom? What protections do American citizens have against malicious attacks on their character? When Jefferson retires and humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson takes the microphone, Horton asks Clay about the final episode of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, which among other things, gave Paul McCartney the last word with a fabulous rendition of the Beatles song Hello-Goodbye. This episode was recorded on May 22, 2026.
#1704 A New Perspective and Book on Lewis and Clark
May 18, 2026
Clay interviews Craig Fehrman, the author of an important new book on Lewis and Clark, This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis and Clark. Fehrman approaches the great story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by viewing it through the eyes of the often-overlooked participants: Sergeant John Ordway, Clark’s enslaved valet York, and Sacagawea. Rigorously researched and grounded in actual historical discoveries, this book will be essential reading for students of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In his footnotes, Fehrman begins with a truly remarkable short essay on his methods and historiography. These essays, which amount to 40,000 words, are alone proof that his work needs to be taken seriously. And he’s great fun to interview. This episode was recorded on April 9, 2026.
#1703 Russia and America Today: A Journey Down the Volga River
May 11, 2026
Clay’s conversation with Italian journalist Marzio Mian about his new book, Volga Blues: A Journey into the Heart of Russia. Mian and his photographer spent four weeks following the Volga River from its source northwest of Moscow to its mouth on the Caspian Sea. The Volga River is considered the mother and the flowing heart of Russia. Traveling by car with two sometimes dubious Russian guides, Marzio and his partner attempted to stay below the radar of the paranoid Russian government, now grinding through its fourth year of war against its neighbor, Ukraine. In this extraordinary interview, Marzio explains that the Russian people don’t see the world as we do in the West. They believe they are fighting a defensive war in Ukraine against NATO, Europe, and the U.S., defending the sacred homeland from western aggression, territorial ambition, and cultural decadence. His goal was to encounter ordinary Russian people, to learn how they see the war in Ukraine, how they view Vladimir Putin now, in the 26th year of his dictatorship, and how they regard the Volga River, the spiritual artery of an ancient and mysterious civilization. This episode was recorded on February 14, 2026.
#1702 Thomas Jefferson on British Royalty
May 4, 2026
Guest 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.
#1701 Thomas Jefferson in France
April 27, 2026
Frequent guest host David Horton interviews the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, about his five years in France between 1784 and 1789. After the death of his wife in 1782, Jefferson permitted his closest friend, James Madison, to propose that he be sent to Europe to negotiate commercial treaties. When Jefferson assimilated his diplomatic post, Dr. Benjamin Franklin finally retired and returned to the United States. At that point, Jefferson became the American Minister to the Court of Louis XVI, which he called a school in humility after the legendary Franklin ceased to grace the French court. Jefferson worked hard to open markets to American products, especially tobacco. Before he returned to the United States in 1789 to become the first Secretary of State, Jefferson witnessed the beginnings of the French Revolution, which he defended for the rest of his life, including the excesses of what is called the Reign of Terror. This episode was recorded on February 25, 2026.
#1700 Clay’s Take on Current Events
April 20, 2026
Beau Breslin interviews Clay on current events. First, the successful launch on April 1st of Artemis II, America’s first space mission to the moon in more than 50 years. The launch’s success was not particularly unexpected, but our relief was palpable when it was nearly flawless. Second, Ken Burns’ latest documentary is a three-part study of the life and achievements of Henry David Thoreau. Clay was one of the featured historians in the film. Beau wanted to know what it was like to sit across from the great Ken Burns in an interview. And third, the future of the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing birthright citizenship to all children born in the United States. The Supreme Court recently heard arguments on the topic, though the decision is not expected until late June. This podcast was recorded on April 2, 2026.
#1699 The Iran War and the U.S. Constitution
April 13, 2026
Clay and frequent guest Beau Breslin of Skidmore College try to place Donald Trump’s war in Iran in the context of American history with a particular emphasis on the war powers language of the U.S. Constitution. The Founders considered war so grave that they did everything in their power to make sure it was not undertaken without the broad support of the American people. Wars must begin in Congress, and particularly the House of Representatives. The House enjoys the power of the purse to fund wars or refuse to fund them. In the last 60 years, presidents have gone to war with decreasing Constitutional respect, but no previous war was undertaken without some level of consultation with Congress. So far, Congress has voted against at least three war powers resolutions that might have put some controls on our incursion into the Middle East. This episode was recorded on March 5, 2026.
#1698 The Future of America’s National Monuments
April 6, 2026
Clay’s conversation with Dr. Susan Ryan of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado, about the history of the National Monuments and Antiquities Act, signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt on June 8, 1906. The Monuments and Antiquities Act gives the president of the United States virtually unlimited authority to designate national monuments on America’s public lands by executive order alone. Teddy Roosevelt named the first 18, beginning with Devils Tower in Wyoming, and, at the end of his second term, established the Grand Canyon National Monument, covering more than 800,000 acres. Most subsequent presidents have designated National Monuments, including Donald Trump in his first term. Dr. Ryan says this vast grant of presidential authority has always been controversial, particularly now, and there are stirrings of a test case that will reach the Supreme Court sometime in the next couple of years. Can a subsequent president reduce the size of a National Monument or remove it altogether? And what oversight does Congress have or should it have in these matters? This podcast was recorded on February 23, 2026.
#1697 The State of the Union as Political Theater
March 30, 2026
Frequent guest host David Horton welcomes Thomas Jefferson to the podcast to discuss political theater and State of the Union addresses. Although Jefferson was a master of political theater, he chose not to take his annual State of the Union messages in person to Congress. He sent his messages by courier and assumed Congress would study them at their convenience. After Jefferson makes his views clear, Clay Jenkinson breaks character to discuss the uses and abuses of modern State of the Union addresses. It was Ronald Reagan who began the tradition of the president pointing to extraordinary Americans in the gallery to honor their service and sacrifices, or to lament their sufferings. Donald Trump’s recent 2026 State of the Union Message was much more like a reality television show than anything in previous administrations, including a sustained celebration of the U.S. Olympic hockey program. This program was recorded on February 25, 2026.
#1696 Assessing America’s National Parks & Public Lands at 250
March 23, 2026
Clay’s conversation with Char Miller, an endowed professor of environmental history at Pomona College and author of more than a dozen highly regarded books. How did America develop its public lands? Who were the key players in the formation of National Parks, Monuments, Forests, Wildlife Refuges, and Game Preserves? How fragile is the public domain at a time when the Trump administration seeks to scale back, privatize, and permit mining and other industrial activities? The conversation includes a segment on Native American sovereignty, the Land Back Movement, and the work of David Treuer, who has suggested that the National Parks and Monuments be returned to Native ownership or, at a minimum, Native co-management. The discussion also assessed the future of the Colorado River system, including the status of Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona. This episode was recorded on January 27, 2026.
Find past episodes of Listening to America and The Thomas Jefferson Hour