Good Day Thomas Jefferson, our podcast listeners and thank you so much for listening.

Before we start our podcast intro, I just wanted to say, we apologize, this week is pretty much all telephone connections. We had some

technical glitches and it's not the kind of thing that you can recreate when you

have conversations with Joe Ellis so our apologies for the sound qualities. We hope we have all

of that solved in weeks to come and thanks in advance for your understanding on that.

I was just speaking to Clay about this week I

really didn't say much. I just kind of sat back in awe of the the two gentlemen who had the majority of the conversation,

Professor Joseph Ellis and you, sir, the author of a new book,

which we discuss in this week's show.

Yes, it's about repairing Jefferson's America, a guide to civility and enlightened citizenship.

Book will be released on June 1st on some advanced copies have already gone out.

I'm proud of it and I hope that it gets a wide

readership and I sent a copy to my old friend Joelle's, you know, I first met him while performing

as Jefferson at the Athenaeum in Worcester, Massachusetts and he put me in his book, American Spinks, the character of Thomas Jefferson in his preface and said, I mean I don't suppose this is the most enviable position but he said I heard this guy,

Jenkinson, performing as Jefferson at the Athenaeum and I came away thinking,

Jefferson is really an inconsistent and paradoxical creature. I'm going to write a book and try to sort this out.

So I hope that was Jefferson and not me, but then we met on the set of Ken Burns documentary film on Jefferson.

We became good friends and we've known each other

now for a long time.

I've read all of his books.

I have the deepest admiration for Joe Ellis and now that he's in retirement he has time

on his hands that he didn't before and you can almost sense David I say this with

...