Good day Thomas Jefferson hour podcast listeners as always and most importantly thank you very much for listening and thank you for supporting the show those of you who decided to do so go to Jefferson hour dot com you can find out details on just how you can help support the Thomas Jefferson hour we need it we so appreciate it and if you're not in a position to donate to the show right us a letter tell us what you like

what you don't like about the show and ask questions we certainly appreciate that the listener generated programs are some of my very favorites we always take that correspondence very seriously and we welcome suggestions and criticism and praise but only if it's deserved you know the program we just did David is about the presidency but we wanted to use the zoom technology that has now changed American life to bring our

listeners in so we had a meeting with them a town meeting and we had dozens of them in their postage stamp visages on a zoom platform and after a brief conversation between the two of us we turn to our listeners some of whom we're seeing for the first time we'll be doing more of that in fact quite a bit more of that and some of them will be on weekends some of them will be an evening some of them will be in the afternoon we want to make sure we move them around a little bit so that we can accommodate people who are

have to go to work or who have other reasons not to be able to meet at a certain time I really really enjoy this I like seeing the people who listen to this program and of course I'm always happiest when we're engaged in conversation with our listeners rather than just speaking here in the virtual new enlightenment radio network barn if any of you are interested in participating in one of these zoom town halls just keep listening to the show we'll try to update you on the scheduling or go to Jefferson hour dot

com and you can find out more we had a number of very interesting questions early on talked about presidents who were able to sing the song of America which I said in the show is something that it's a phrase that you used early on in my tenure as a semi permanent guest host and it struck me so much that I've always watched for that both in conversations with you Mr. Jefferson and in contemporary candidates and

it seems to me and I talked about this in the show but it seems to me that candidates who are able to utilize that sing the song of America maybe you could explain that better they seem to be the ones that are most successful we're in inherently optimistic people how could we not be coming over from the old world and finding this incredible new continent

lightly people continent whose resources have not ever been exploited there it was and when Jefferson looked to the future he saw an infinity of land to the west you know we now have a much more complicated view of that because we know that native peoples were living there and they would be displaced in order to fulfill Jefferson's idea and others of the American dream but their optimism the founding fathers and Jefferson's in particular were huge they saw

that we would have a permanent middle class because we had land in the west they understood that the continent was a resource base that would make us wealthy that we were separated by 3,000 miles from the old world etc and so Jefferson is the first of the optimists John Adams not so much George Washington was a more stately figure but he wasn't likely to gush much but Jefferson was a dreamy sort of visionary who

had this really extraordinary optimism about the future of the human project and so he brought that to the presidency and successful presidents have tended to follow in that lead think of Ronald Reagan morning in America after what was regarded as a more gloomy period following watergate and the administration of Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump whether you like him or not

and saying we're going to make America great again appeal to millions and millions of Americans who who want America to be everything that they expect it to be that they dream of and of course people get different ideas or what that dream should be but touching that note that the inherent optimism of the American people is an essential form John Kennedy had it although you know in the middle of the of the Cold War really at the darkest period of the Cold War

he nevertheless brought great idealism in a sense of a new frontier a new era he said the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans and that they were going to bring about an extraordinary progress and did and so that is a really important characteristic of some presidents others

and don't really see it that way others are more administrative some are actually even a bit pessimistic but that that rarely works that usually leads to a one term presidency

we had a number of interesting questions we talked about divisive presidents consequential presidents there was a question about presidents who grew into the office or changed well they were in office

and there was one question from a gentleman who wanted to know if we thought it would elections would ever be quote normal again so it's an interesting show but before we go to any updates you have clay about your many endeavors

it's it's a busy time for me but i'm loving it so the constitution course that i've been teaching is nearly over we'll be doing it again so stay tuned everyone

the next course is the online courses and i'm really strongly urging you to consider these the next one is about J Robert Oppenheimer you know we did the Oppenheimer retreat at Luxa Lodge and many people who wanted to come couldn't because of covid concerns so we're going to do it again between March 6th and 27th J Robert Oppenheimer the decision to drop the atomic bomb the building of the atomic bomb life at Los Alamos quantum mechanics and so on

it sounds technical and and maybe pessimistic but it's not at all Oppenheimer is an utterly fascinating man so that's March 6th through 27th then on April 10th through May 1st something of such enormous importance to me David I'm teaching a four week online course on hamlet which i regard as the greatest single piece of English literature maybe the greatest single piece of literature a book that changed my life when I first read it

as a freshman at Vanderbilt University in Nashville hamlet is for me a play a book that I returned to several times per year and I have a method to help people understand it you know that some people are intimidated by Shakespeare because it's the language is a little bit difficult and it happens so fast when you're watching it and and there are so many sort of interesting imaginative conceits and

figurative language and uses of Renaissance rhetoric when you're trying to read it but I can help people do that in fact I'm writing a line by line scene by scene commentary on hamlet in preparation for the class I'm going to publish it afterwards you know so that anyone anywhere who wants to see hamlet through my commentary will be able to do that so that's April 10th through May 1st those are the next two are coming and then next spring Cuba it's now definitely set you can find out information

on the website and John Steinbeck's California so those are both on we assume that by then the pandemic will be largely if not entirely in the rear view mirror and so I can't wait to get back to Cuba it was one of the most extraordinary moments of my life and the Steinbeck retreat which I do with my friend Russ Eagle is just pure joy.

Well great that's a lot you've got a busy 2021 coming up and with that certain shall we go to the show.

Yes and for everyone we'll do more of these as if live zoom programs they're great fun so watch for them we'll probably be doing roughly one every six weeks maybe even more often so join us on this one you get a sampling of it

...