PodcastJunky Show #023 – The Thomas Jefferson Hour – Call in (714) 855-2639
From Today in the Past to This Week in Google this is PodcastJunky and I listen to it all. I share the best stuff on my iPod and ask you the question…What are you listening to?
To answer that question, my call in line (714) 855-2639
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to sit down with a character from history and chat? Each week The host and producer of the show, David Swenson sits down with President Thomas Jefferson to discuss events in the news and answer listener questions. The snow is called The Thomas Jefferson Hour. This is not Sci Fi or time travel. In fact Thomas Jefferson is not even played by an actor. He is played by humanities scholar and award winning first person interpreter Clay Jenkinson. While Mr. Jenkinson does dress in costume for speaking engagements and remains “in Character” he does not consider himself an actor. He doesn’t try to speak with an accent and there is no time traveler, ghost or reincarnation back story. Mr Jenkinson has thorally studied the works of and about Thomas Jefferson so he can answer questions in the way Jefferson probably would answer them if he were here.
I’m going to play you a clip from a recent episod where Jefferson was asked about the recent Texas decision to remove him from the history text books in that state. This texas decision is more importaint that you might think because text book companies generally don’t make a seperat text book for each state. Texas has a large population and buys a lot of text books. Text book publishers have to comply with Texas standards if they want this lucrative customer. So Texas standards become the standards for the rest of the states.
Lets listen to what Mr. Swenson and President Jefferson have to say on the topic. In this clip President Jefferson gives his reaction to the Texas decision, gives us a lesson in the Constitution, and reacts to how he personally feels about being given “the boot” from the Texas text books.
Audio Clip here
Thank you for the enlightenment Mr. President.
Mr. Jefferson goes on to discuss related issues for about 35 minutes and then the show switches to the second half of the format where Clay Jenkenson comes out to play.
Mr. Jenkenson is a cultural commentator and humanities scholar. He has been honored by two presidents. He received one of the first five Charles Frankel Prizes from President George Bush. It is now called the National Humanities Medal and is the National Endowment for the Humanities highest award. President and Mrs Clinton invited him to be the first public humanities scholar to present a program at a White House-sponsored event. He presented Thomas Jefferson for a gathering hosted by President and Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Jenkenson also served as the major humanities commentator for The Ken Burns documentary on Thomas Jefferson.
In the second part of the show Mr. Jenkenson gives his own comentary on the subjects discussed by Mr. Jefferson. Here are some of Mr. Jenkenson thoughts on the topic of the first amendment and the separation of church and state.
Audio Clip here
As you can see Mr Jenkenson is a bit more animated on this topic than Mr. Jefferson was. That is not always the case. There are shows where President Jefferson is much more animated and pasionat and Mr. Jenkenson takes a more reserved view.
The Thomas Jefferson Hour is first a radio show distributed to affiliate stations by Prairy Public Radio FOR FREE! This highly polished, educational and in my opinion very entertaining and thought provoking show is offered for free. Not all public radio shows are free to affiliates.
The show is in it’s low 800’s. Only the last 200 or so are available and I couldn’t find a date for the first show but doing the math on a weekly show that would take almost 16 years. They have been podcasting the show weekly since at least March 2006. That is impressive consistency.
Link Love:
This Week in Google is part of Leo Laport’s TWiT network of mostly geek and teck podcasts. A round table style show where the hosts discuss all things google and cloud computing.
Today in the Past- The Thomas Jefferson Hour attempts to accuratly represnt the past. Today in the past makes no such attempt. The host is John Hodgman, you may not know the name but you would know the face. He is PC in the Apple adds. He accounts of what happened today in the past usually does not have even a nugget of truth to ts. But it is fun:-)
Music on this show was
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