The Future in Context

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson reminds  Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech  or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of CNN and YouTube.

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson reminds us that the fifth president is best known for the doctrine named for him that helped keep European powers from further meddling in the New World. And given the political environment today, you would be excused for being envious of his Era of Good Feeling. Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech  or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson reminds us that, in 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission revoked Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance. And thst in restoring it posthumously 68 years later, the federal government attempts to atone for its own black mark by removing the black mark on Oppenheimer's record. Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech  or subscribe to the show on the pod...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson puts the detention of an American detained in Putin's Russia in context. Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal has been incarcerated in Moscow's Lefortovo prison. He is accused of spying. It is practice that dates back to the American Civil War. Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech  or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Addi...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson reflects on the Pope's repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery and what it might mean for the Indigenous in North America. Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech  or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of the Maskwacis First Nation and YouTube.

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson puts the Florida flap over Michelangelo's David. A statue long considered a Renaissance masterpiece in Florence (and the world over) has now been deemed pornographic in the Sunshine state. Such a stark contrast in points of view — here or there — has a long history. Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech  or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of yo...

In another in an occasional series of articles Governing  is publishing about some of the less well-known presidents of the United States, o ur resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson takes a fresh look at the mixed legacy of President Benjamin Harrison - the country's 23rd - who paved the way for Teddy Roosevelt.  Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech  or subscribe to the show on the podcast app...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson laments that we thought we were immune to the human condition. We were wrong. Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech  or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of the CNN, D&D, FNC, AFP, ICC, C-SPAN, US European Command and YouTube.

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson reminds us that the idea of secession did not originate with Marjorie Taylor Greene. It has been tried before. The question we need to ask is whether we are really ready to see what a Red and Blue America would look and act like. Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech  or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson reflects on former President Jimmy Carter's Malaise speech. Seared in America's collective memory, even pilloried in popular culture, the speech was delivered 44 years ago. It was both earnest and tone deaf. The then president made the deliberate choice to tell the American people the truth, rather than the time-honored tradition of singing the Song o...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson considers the enduring legacy of Jimmy Carter's presidency following word from the Carter Center that he had decided to enter hospice care and spend his remaining days with his wife, Rosalynn. History may well be kinder to Carter than his contemporaries during his time in the White House. Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech  or subscribe to the show o...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson sees a clear connection between the recent flap over spy balloons and the cold war stunt called Sputnik. As the American people decide whether to panic, assign blame or shrug at the violation of American airspace by a handful of strange objects, one of them certainly a Chinese spy balloon, it may be useful to look back to a previous moment of national...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson says the 2023 State of the Union address was in keeping with a tradition dating back to the republic's founding, including an increasing element of 'bread and circuses,' a mix of political policies and entertainment, ceremony and spectacle, in service of endless campaigning by both parties. Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech  or subscribe to the show...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson set out to do something they used to teach in school — make sense of the American presidency. Each president campaigned and governed to suit their respective times with a mix of shared and unique traits. Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of C-SPAN, The United State...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson considers the future of second generation elites in context. He thinks Prince Harry erred in writing his autobiography Spare and would have done well to emulate American Princess Alice - that is, Alice Roosevelt. Stream the show from  www.tfic.tech or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of The Daily Mail,...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson suggests that the poem best known for its placement at the base of the Statue of Liberty may have created a case of false advertising to migrants around the world. America's incoherent immigration policy is caught between the competing instincts of "give me … your huddled masses" and "build that wall." Stream the show from www.tfic.tech or subscribe t...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson puts the chaotic events in the U.S. House of Representatives in historical context, which were a sad reminder of how fraught and flummoxed our national politics are, and almost certainly a harbinger of the reign of craziness we can expect in the Republican Party for at least the next two years.

Too Much Stuff: Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson on Americans and their storage units. The excesses of the American Dream fill 50,000 storage units across the country. This material overflow results from crisis, indecision, laziness and selective forgetfulness.

With his unprecedented call for the termination of the U.S. Constitution, former presdent Donald Trump seems to ignore the lesson of Andrew Jackson, another aggrieved presidential aspirant who lived to fight – and win – another election. It got our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson thinking.

Former presidents have managed to talk their way out of trouble, even if by the skin of their teeth. There may be a lesson in that for us today. Listen to the end of the episode for information about an important programming change.

President and first lady Biden attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. More than 500 heads of state and foreign dignitaries from all over the planet made their way to London to attend the funeral. It was part of a long tradition of world leaders paying respects at the death of a monarch. But the last one, early in the American century, was different. Yet there are con...

In 1990, a quirky campaign run by the then upstart music channel MTV encouraged its viewers to Rock the Vote. Now, three decades later, we need a similarly audacious bid to have Americans trust the validity of the vote.

The passing of the United Kingdom's longest serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, sparks reflections on English history and former British kings named Charles. By George, the House of Windsor may have missed the mark on this one.

The last half century has been a period of great disillusionment. A recent NBC News poll indicated that 74 percent of the American people believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. According to Gallup, the American people's general confidence in their national institutions is at an all-time low, averaging 27 percent, down from just under 50 percent in 1979. Our resident humanities schol...

Thomas Jefferson thought that each generation should rewrite its own founding document. A constitutional scholar talks about the changes that could have happened if Americans had taken Jefferson up on his challenge.