Good day, Thomas Jefferson, our podcast listeners. And as always, thank you so very much for listening.

We so appreciate it. We also appreciate the support for the show that some of you listeners

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Perhaps you've decided to leave your ranch to Mr. Jenkinson.

Finally, somebody else who's arguing for my ranch. This week, we had a great conversation

as usual when we have conversations with Professor Joseph Ellis. And we talked about his new book,

which just came out the cause. It was interesting. One of the things that comes up in the conversation

Joe said, looking at his list of books, it's either 13 or 14, we don't know who's counting.

But he said that he probably should have written this one first, sort of as a bedrock for

the rest of his work. But then later admitted that had he not written all those other books,

he probably couldn't have written this one in the way that he did. It was a great conversation.

You had some particularly insightful questions for him, Clay.

Well, thank you. I've read most of the book. It's a really extraordinary piece. I don't think

I agree with him. I think that it's important that he wrote the books in the order that he did,

because he called them biographies of George Washington and Jefferson and Adams.

They're not really biographies. Joe is more interested in what might be called a humanities

approach to try to tease out the essence of character. And he did the same in Passionate Sage

about John Adams, which is my favorite of his books, although only by a little.

And then his excellency is, I think, one of the best things ever written about George Washington.

So his approach was to, you know, to taught for many decades. And he thought through,

what is it about John Adams? And how does he stand at this moment in American historiography?

...