#1598 A Conversation With Political Cartoonist Phil Hands
May 06, 2024
Clay interviews political cartoonist Phil Hands about the importance of cartoons in American history. Hands is the house cartoonist for the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, Wisconsin, syndicated for a range of newspapers around the United States. We gave much of our attention to political cartoons about Thomas Jefferson, including one that depicts him as a prairie dog vomiting money in his quest to buy the Floridas, and another that depicts Sally Hemings as Jefferson’s consort. We also talked about the most cartooned political figure in American history, Theodore Roosevelt, including Clifford Berryman’s famous Teddy Bear cartoon of TR, as well as the difficulty of being a political cartoonist today with the aggressions of cancel culture.
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#1597 Arbor Day and the Seeds of Liberty
April 29, 2024
Guest host David Horton of Radford University discusses America’s trees and forests with President Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson said, “no sprig of grass grows uninteresting to me.” He told his friend Margaret Bayard Smith that any unnecessary cutting down of a tree should be regarded as silvicide, the murder of a majestic living thing. Jefferson wanted future cities to be planned in a checkerboard pattern with every other square a permanent parkland. Just months before his death, one of his last requests was that the University of Virginia plant an arboretum. Jefferson’s protégé, Meriwether Lewis, was so startled by the treelessness of the Great Plains that he wondered if they could ever be settled. In the “out-of-character” segment of the program, Clay and David talk about the origins of the Soil Conservation Service and FDR’s idea of a single endless shelter belt down the hundredth meridian from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
#1596 Ten Things on Nullification
April 22, 2024
Clay’s conversation with regular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky about the doctrine of nullification. That’s when a state refuses to accept the legitimacy of a federal law. Nullification is nowhere enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, but through the course of American history a number of nullification crises have arisen. When the Adams administration passed the Alien and Sedition laws of 1798 Jefferson wrote a set of secret resolutions for the state of Kentucky resisting those laws, which Jefferson said were worthy of the ninth or 10th century. John C. Calhoun attempted nullification for South Carolina and other southern states in the 1830s, mostly over tariffs, and now again a number of states, led by Texas, are threatening to nullify federal laws they hate — or even to secede if necessary. Dr. Chervinsky has a hilarious response to the idea of Texas or Louisiana secessions.
#1595 The Solar Eclipse of 2024
April 15, 2024
Clay joins his friend Dennis McKenna in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico to observe the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Chaco Canyon dates to at least the ninth century CE, more than a thousand years ago, and somehow their skywatchers knew how to observe equinoxes, solstices, and eclipses. What better place to see the solar eclipse of 2024? Administered by the U.S. National Park System, but interpreted for us by a Native Navajo and Zia expert Kailo Winters, it was a magical experience in a sacred place. We came away impressed by the capacity of the European Enlightenment to figure all of this out, but far more in awe of the Puebloan scholars who figured out such phenomena centuries before European science was out of its swaddling clothes. We also check in with our favorite Enlightenment correspondent David Nicandri.
#1594 Live From Oklahoma
April 08, 2024
In this special edition program, Listening to America records in front of a live audience at Northwestern Oklahoma State University in Alva, Oklahoma. Clay and Professor of Political Science Dr. Aaron Mason focus their conversation on Thomas Jefferson and his influence on the American West. Dr. Mason is also co-executive director of the NWOSU Institute for Citizenship Studies.
#1593 The LTA Survey and American Reflections
April 01, 2024
Clay’s conversation with media consultants Luke Peterson and Riki Conrey of Washington, D.C. Luke distributed a survey based on our questions about America at 250 and 2,700 people responded. Some survey results are discussed, but also the question of how exactly does Clay or anyone else go out to listen to America? How do you check your own biases? Where do you go exactly and to whom do you talk to listen to America? How do you present what you have learned and in what larger historical context? One thing is certain: all people everywhere are storytellers. The question is how to hear those stories in a way that is useful to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
*Episode note: find more information on values quadrants here.
#1592 Geert Mak and John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley
March 25, 2024
Clay’s interview with the distinguished Dutch journalist Geert Mak, author of In Europe, and In America: Travels with John Steinbeck. In 2010 Geert Mak and his wife retraced the entire Steinbeck journey in a rented Jeep. After he returned to the Netherlands, Mak wrote a 550-page account of his travels. Though Steinbeck isn’t the main theme of In America, Mak fulfills the mission that Steinbeck set out to accomplish — that is, to wrestle with the character and narrative of what Steinbeck called “this monster country.” Clay and Mr. Mak discuss the sheer size of America, Steinbeck’s occasional fibs about the exact circumstances of the journey, race relations in America, violence in America, and the current state of the American Dream. It’s an amazing and quite moving interview.
#1591 The Election of 2024 and the Constitution
March 18, 2024
Clay and regular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky talk about the ways in which the Constitution of the United States is impeding and even preventing good government, with a particular focus on the coming election of 2024. Topics include the need for a uniform national election procedures act; the many problems of the Electoral College; and the possibility that in the next four years we may need to invoke the 25th Amendment, which was passed in 1967 to prepare for the possibility that a president might be incapacitated before the end of his term. We also look briefly at civilian control of the military and the future of the religious freedom principles of the First Amendment.
#1590 Ten Things: The Jefferson-Adams Correspondence
March 11, 2024
Clay is joined by regular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky to discuss the extraordinary correspondence between former presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Between 1812 and 1826, they exchanged 158 letters, thought by historians to be the finest correspondence in American history. They wrote about their political visions and disagreements, the French Revolution, the origin of Native Americans, their private and public religious views, the American West, their children and grandchildren, and so much more. Jefferson was more formal and serene, Adams more candid and at times aggressive. In his fourth or fifth letter Adams said, “We must not die until we have explained ourselves to each other.” They both worked hard at it, usually with remarkable harmony. They died on the same day, July 4, 1826, Jefferson first at Monticello and Adams five hours later in his bed in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Find past episodes of Listening to America and The Thomas Jefferson Hour