#1393 Memorial Day

Listening to America

Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2020

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week Joseph Ellis and Clay S. Jenkinson share thoughts on Memorial Day and also answer listener questions. Mr. Ellis says that historians must put the past in the context of its own time and not judge it by the standards of ours, and that we must also be aware of the enlightenment that has come since Jefferson's time.

Find this episode, along with recommended reading, on the blog. Support the show by joining the 1776 Club or by donating to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, Inc. You can learn more about Clay's cultural tours & retreats at jeffersonhour.com/tours. Check out our new merch. You can find Clay's publications on our website, along with a list of his favorite books on Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, and other topics. Thomas Jefferson is interpreted by Clay S. Jenkinson.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Good Day Thomas Jefferson Hour Podcast listeners and welcome to this week's episode.
0:07.0	Another conversation with our dear friend Dr Joseph Ellis who's now in a cabin in the green mountains of Vermont, sequestered through
0:16.2	the pandemic working on yet another book on the early national period of American history,
0:22.0	you know, this conversation was one that he
0:23.9	suggested. We have been calling him and now he's sort of become addicted to it and
0:28.2	our listeners love it. And here's our announcement. He has agreed to come back to the program in a week or two for the great debate.
0:35.8	You know, when I was at Vanderbilt University at the beginning of my academic life,
0:40.6	the orientation included something called the raft debate in which a literature professor and an engineer and a physicist and a philosopher each had their turn to say why if they were on a raft and only one of them could could be kept alive,
0:55.0	which one deserved to be kept alive to help them get through the ordeal.
0:59.7	And so each of them made the case. The engineer said he would be able to build a better boat or perhaps devise a motor or solar panels or distill water.
1:08.0	And the English major said, well, at least we can read, you know, Sir Vantes Donixote or or I'll teach you all about
1:14.0	Chaucer and they went down the line and the philosopher came last and at
1:18.6	Vanderbilt at least the philosopher won by public acclaim a thousand students in a lecture hall in the raft debate and
1:26.5	so we're going to have the the founding father's raft debate and that is which
1:30.2	of them was the indispensable man? There's a famous biography of Washington that said that he was the indispensable man.
1:37.0	I asked Joe Ellis at the end of today's program
1:40.0	and he agreed to come back and have a knock-down drag-out debate about who that person was.
1:45.0	We should say that it will be several weeks before that happens because we've been stockpiling a lot of shows.
1:51.0	We have some real special ones coming up, one with David
1:55.0	Nacandry, which I know listeners will enjoy about his new book, and then also one
2:00.5	with Lindsay Trevinsky about her new book the cabinet so we've been
2:05.3	busy in this pandemic. It's been great and Joe Ellis has just become such a dear
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Listening to America, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Listening to America and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.