Clay Jenkinson is the Host of Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson, formally the host of the Thomas Jefferson Hour. His new show will continue to air at 11 a.m. on Sundays on Prairie Public. Clay also plays a role in Ken Burns' The American Buffalo which is a two-part, four-hour documentary film that tells the story of the American bison. He previews his work on the film and provides an update to his series. ~~~ News director Dave Thompson is here for our weekly news chat. ~~~ Matt Olien reviews “The Exorcist: Believer,” a sequel to th
Clay Jenkinson (transcript)
Main Street
Clay Jenkinson is the host of Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson, formerly the host of the Thomas Jefferson Hour. And his show will continue to air on Prairie Public at 11 a.m. on Sundays. Clay, welcome back to Main Street.
Clay Jenkinson
Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here, Craig.
Main Street
Clay, we're going to catch up with you and your show in just a minute. But you have also played a role in Ken Burns's The American Buffalo, which is a two part, four hour documentary film that tells the story of the American bison. And it will air on October 16th and 17th right here on Prairie Public. This wasn't your first, I guess, round working with Ken Burns.
Clay Jenkinson
No, I've been I think I've been in five, maybe six of his films now. So I've been the most fortunate person alive. He first contacted me back in 1997 for his documentary on Thomas Jefferson. And I was not only in that as one of the principal talking heads, but I was also a historical advisor to that film. And then I’ve been in the National Parks and the Roosevelts and Benjamin Franklin and now this. So it's such an honor to work with Ken Burns. You know, everyone takes his call.
Craig, there's nobody who doesn't say yes to Ken Burns. From ambassadors to Henry Kissinger, any historian that he wants to talk with, any expert and so that he is willing to make me one of his talking heads is one of the great satisfactions of my entire life. And I'll tell you a little bit why. After my first interview with him, now 25 years ago, he took me aside. We had dinner in Walpole, New Hampshire, where he lives and has his studio, and he said, I'll tell you the key to being in my films, Stick the Landing. If you stick the landing, I can edit you. But if you say. And another thing. And another thing. And another thing. And another thing, then we can't edit it. And so if you want to be in the film, say what you're going to say and then take a deep pause and then say the next thing. And so I know that's a gimmick, but it works. And so obviously you have to be well prepared and have to have to have a point of view. But if you can stick the landing, you make the work of the editors easier.
Main Street
Paint us the picture of his barn, would you?
Clay Jenkinson
So he lives in Walpole, New Hampshire, and it's right on the Vermont border. It says picturesque, a little New England town, as you could imagine, with white steeple churches and a town square and funky little shops, you know, with kind of a New England style, everything is extraordinarily well kept and tidy. He owns about half the town now, and he has a house wherein he has a studio and then this barn. And the barn, you know, he's done well, let's put it that way. So the barn is something he had done without 21st century technologies. You know, he used joiners and all the wood is beautifully chosen and fits snugly together in 18th century style. And so, you know, you think this is what used to be common, like in the world of the shakers and the pioneers and now is ruinously expensive because most of those techniques have been lost. But it's, you know, he's a historian. He's a public historian. He's our greatest documentary filmmaker. And so when you walk into his town, you feel like you're maybe retro in American history and then when you walk into the barn. You feel like you're almost in an Amish or Shaker community. It's glorious. And of course, he takes just pride in the fact that he brings a similar level of excellence to everything he does to the films that he makes to his lectures, which are first rate always. He's one of the most articulate public intellectuals in the country to his writing, which is now pretty occasional, and then to the world around him. So the first thing I saw after the Jefferson film was he built one of the pavilions. Jefferson's Monticello has these two brick pavilions that are sort of outbuildings, and he built one there. And sometimes, like Jefferson goes in and sits those beautiful lunette windows and just looks out on the countryside around Walpole.
Main Street
Is there anyone more passionate about our history and about our future?
Clay Jenkinson
I don't know the answer to that. Probably yes, but almost nobody. But here's what's so amazing about it is that he's passionate, but he's also dispassionate. In other words, there are plenty of passionate people that have very strong views and opinions and perspectives and a political agenda and so on. Ken Burns manages to cover the ground that conservatives love his films. Liberals love his films. Urban people, rural people, highly educated people, less well educated people. You know, he has a point of view. He's particularly interested in the long, agonizing history of race in America. But all of his films take on a kind of a centrist and inviting ethos, which makes it easy for anybody to love what he does. And so I think that he's the most centrist of all of the passionate people in our public world. And, you know, this is a gift. Clearly.
It's also, he would say, the result of decades of really hard work and discipline. But you know what? It's also genius. I wouldn't use that term very lightly. I think Thomas Jefferson was a genius. I think Leonardo da Vinci was a genius. But I think Ken Burns is a genius. And if you ever get a chance to see him in his editing booth, he's like a Renaissance alchemist with all those different layers. You know, the stills, the film clips, the video clips, the interviews, the signage, etc., And he's able to move in on a piece that's just about there. And then in 2 or 3 minutes, move a little statement, a little longer pause, maybe the photograph is unveiled in a slightly different way. The music picks up more slowly than it otherwise might have done, and suddenly it's fixed. And to watch him at work is just to be deeply satisfied, but also somewhat in awe.
Main Street
Clay, what role did you play in this, in his newest effort, The American Buffalo. Tell us about what it is that you wanted to articulate.
Clay Jenkinson
Well, good question, because it's been a couple of years now. So, you know, you go there, he calls you, and then, of course, you say yes and clear your schedule and then you fly to Boston or Hartford and rent a car and drive to Walpole and check into an 18th century historic inn. And then the next day you show up and they put like two dabs of makeup on you. And then suddenly he sweeps into the room, sits across from you at about three feet and says, Tell me about Buffalo. That's it. There was no memo. There was no set of suggested questions, no set of topics.
And so then you just start yammering. And so I was particularly interested in a couple of things. One is the role that was played by a man named William Hornaday of the Smithsonian in cooperation with Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt was out here, of course, in 1883 to 1887. Hornaday was sent out by the Smithsonian to Miles City to kill some buffalo for an exhibit.
They didn't have a Buffalo exhibit. So Roosevelt and Hornaday were within 150 miles of each other. They were roughly the same age. They didn't meet then. But then when Hornaday finally got his bison and took them back, he was a gifted taxidermist. He built this experimental, magnificent glass box display, a kind of panorama. It was cutting edge interpretation for his time. And he was almost like Michelangelo.
He had a big curtain around it so that nobody could see it until he was willing to unveil it. He was very much the artist. And one day in 1887, he was working and he heard some person outside the canvas, the curtains, and the person said, I wonder what sort of rifle he must have used to kill those bison. And he thought, Who is this idiot? And then the next question was, Well, I've been to Montana.
I pretty much, I think, I know where there might be some buffalo still. And so at this point, Hornaday was so annoyed that he ripped open the curtains to see who this intruder was. And it was Theodore Roosevelt. He'd never met him before. And then they became friends. And, Roosevelt helped him to become the first director of the National Zoo in Washington and then to be the director of the Bronx Zoo in New York. And the two of them set out to help save the Buffalo. And they did. And so that's the main story. I've written about that in a book called Roosevelt The Naturalist in the Arena. That was the main story that I wanted to tell.
But I'm also very much of course, I'm an Anglo, so I'm not a Native American, but I'm deeply interested in all things Native American. And I talked a little bit about the place, the sacred place of the bison in Native American cosmology, that it wasn't just their transportation and their food and their shelter and their and their clothing and their tools and so on. It was also sort of the spiritual center of their world.
And then the final thing that I said and keep in mind, who knows if I'm even in the film, I'm in the trailer. We planted the trailer. I've not seen it. I'm in the trailer. So that's a good sign. But the last thing I talked about was Lewis and Clark. When Lewis and Clark came through in 1846. In Montana particularly, they saw essentially infinite numbers of Buffalo. And at one point, Lewis said near Cut Bank, Montana, I see at least 20,000 buffalo in this little valley right in front of me.
And later on the return trip on the Yellowstone, Clark said, there are so many buffalo that I'm going to stop talking about it because no person would believe the numbers that I'm seeing here. So at the time of Lewis Clark may be 40 to 50 million. Can you imagine? Can you? Oh, you know, now we have 500,000 or so. They're out of danger. But when Roosevelt killed his in 1883, in September, September 21st, 1883, out in the Badlands, Hornaday estimated that there were fewer than a thousand left on Earth and maybe fewer than 500. So they came that close to extinction.
Main Street
I'm sure the film details that journey, of course, from start to finish and into the future. And I've read quite a bit about what this film might be about. You have not seen it yet, right? And it can be so many things about who we were, who we are and who we are going to be. It seems to me.
Clay Jenkinson
You know, I just gave a lecture about this at Stanford University two days ago for the Lane Center and because of the Burns film. And so they invited me to come talk about my own role in the film, but more about the buffalo. And I said this and I hope that some of your listeners are offended, but at one time, say at the time of Lewis and Clark, there were more than 2 million Buffalo in the state of North Dakota. It wasn't a state yet, but you take my meaning.
Jamestown put up the world's largest buffalo in the late 1950s. And we tend to do this, don't we? We nearly exterminated the buffalo and essentially exterminated them in North Dakota. And then we put up a monument of nostalgia to the very thing that we refuse to live with. And the same is true of Native Americans, that the most common icon for Native Americans is James Earl Frazier's End of the Trail with the slumping native and the spear on the ground and the horses exhausted, you know, having conquered Indian America, indigenous America, then a period of nostalgia sets in and we create monuments to the nobility of the defeated. And that's one American way. It's one way we do things. But of course, a much better way is to learn to live with significant numbers of bison. So there are a few hundred in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, there are 6,000 in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone. I have a cabin just right outside the gates there. And now the American Prairie Reserve in east central Montana is trying to create a 3.5 million acre buffalo commons in a public-private partnership. And I hope that that project succeeds.
But you take my point. The paradox of American life. We've erased so much. That was magnificent. What for a dollar general? You know, for a Senex station. And yet then once we've done it somehow, then we want to romanticize the very thing that we must crush.
Main Street
My native state's flag of course has what on it? A buffalo. WyomingPBS has on its logo. What? A buffalo, of course and we lived, I mean my wife and I just an hour from the beauty that you were describing; almost taking this for granted, certainly not understanding its history as a child, but learning more about it as we grew older.
We're visiting with Clay Jenkinson, enjoying our conversation as we always do. He's played a role in Ken Burns as the American Buffalo. It's a two part, four hour documentary film that tells the story of the American bison from its prehistoric origins to near extinction, as Clay was just talking about and now its role in the future. The film also explores the bison significance to the indigenous people of North America and its role in American culture and mythology. It will air on Prairie Public on October 16th and 17th. We'll Clay let's turn the page here.
Clay Jenkinson
Let me just say one last thing about Craig. So I don't know if I'm in it at all. I guess I am. When you leave, you don't know. I mean, you never get to see it and suddenly it broadcasts. And so I'll be watching along with everyone else on Sunday and Monday the 16th and the 17th. And I've got a little drinking game going. Every time I'm in it, I'm going to take a little sip and I won't put whiskey in it because with any luck I would be comatose by the end of it. But I'll put something like orange juice in. But I'm hoping I'll be thrilled if I'm in it ten times in four hours. And even that is asking a lot. You know, Ken Burns can ask anyone in the world to be in this film. And I get to be. Yes, let's move on.
Main Street
Wonderful. And congratulations for sure.
Clay Jenkinson
Thank you.
Main Street
I'm going to come back to Ken Burns at the very end of this conversation, Clay, but I want to move forward with you telling me how your new show, formerly the Thomas Jefferson Hour and now listening to America with Clay Jenkinson. How's that coming along?
Clay Jenkinson
It's coming along. Thanks for asking. So I did the Jefferson Hour for 20 plus years and I loved it. And I continue to keep Jefferson at the center of my thinking. I can't help it. I've been sort of married to him. But also I wanted to move a little bit more broadly. And as you know, Craig, the 250th birthday of the United States is coming July 4th, 2026. And I decided I wanted to sort of find out the mood of this country as we approach that milestone. I remember the bicentennial. Probably. You do. I do. It was very, very largely celebratory. Positive. Sure was. I'm guessing that's not quite what we're headed for here in the age of the culture war.
Main Street
Let me say this, Clay, and this is where I was going with Ken Burns and perhaps some films he may have that may highlight this a little bit later. I hope you're wrong. But I know you're not. Isn't that awful?
Clay Jenkinson
No, it's not awful because it's where we are. So if you think of the sort of I'm going to caricature here, but think of the 1619 project on the one hand saying it's all been about racial oppression from the very beginning, and then on the other end the sort of far right saying, how dare you apologize for America, where the greatest thing that ever happened and if we make mistakes, we soon correct them and everything in between. I don't want this to be Fox versus MSNBC. It will be, of course. How can it be otherwise? But my goal is to go out. I have an Airstream. In fact, it's parked right outside the Bismarck studio of Prairie Public. I just got my decal on it that says Listening to America and LTAmerica org. I'm going to wander the country for the next 4 or 5 years. About half the time I'm going to listen, listen, listen. And to try to discern the mood of the country. What I find is when I leave my television set and get out into the heartland of this country, I cheer up.
You know, I was on a month-long journey about water in the west, down in the Four Corners area with two others. And we interviewed more than 100 people in three weeks. I never heard one of them say the word Donald Trump, and I never heard one of them say the word Joe Biden. You know, the American people have more to do than to think about this paralysis that we're in and the craziness of our national discourse. And so I want to hear what the country feels that I'm going to be following the travels with Charlie, A journey of the great John Steinbeck from 1960. He traveled 10,000 miles over four months around the perimeter of the country.
And in fact, the most significant chapter in travels with Charlie occurred on the Maple River, not 25 miles from where you are sitting. He summed up the trip so far and met an extraordinary thespian, a Shakespearean actor there. And so I'm going to follow his trail, but not 100% literally. I'm going to go out and see if I can learn. I'm no Steinbeck, of course, if I can't learn something about the soul and the mood of the country as we approach the Bicentennial plus 50. And I think the only way to do this, Craig, is to listen, is to really give people the chance to say. And the question I'm asking everybody I meet is, you can't understand America unless you understand X. Fill in the X. And I'm getting some really, really remarkable answers.
Main Street
Trying to think how I would answer that question, and I would start with my parents.
Clay Jenkinson
Family. So they're your family, right? Yeah, But I'm going to go to the the birthplace of of Mormonism in Vermont, because you can't understand this country without understanding the religious imagination of the American people. LDS, Joseph Smith, all the sort of the wonderful effervescence of American religious movements from the Shakers to David Koresh. So fill in the blank. Somebody told me that agriculture, you know, you might say public radio, although I think you probably can understand the country without public radio, but I'd be sorry.
Main Street
Your last podcast kind of touches, I think, on this journey. The title of it was, "Rebuilding Trust in American Institutions." I think they're related there. Tell me if they're not. But boy, good luck with that.
Clay Jenkinson
So we're broadcasting as we now have no speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, the person third in line to the presidency. We're in paralysis in Washington. It's so dreary, it's so disheartening. But it's not just Congress and it's not just the presidency. It's the courts, the Supreme Court now. It's the press. Of course, it's even our churches and our educational system.
The American people, since I think really since November 22nd, 1963, have gone on waves of increasing disillusionment and jadedness. Watergate, the church committees, revelations about the work of our CIA, the Iran-Contra affair, Bill Clinton's problems with his own libido. etc., etc. There's just been a significant collapse, really? In 1960, most people had great respect for all of those institutions, even Congress. And now most people are cynical. And so the question I am asking all the people that I meet, especially the writers and thinkers, is what will it take to turn this around? How do you rebuild confidence in the Supreme Court? How do you rebuild confidence in the media? And by the way, we had a great one here. Eric Sevareid was from Velva, and that's back when there was enormous confidence in our media, but not so today.
Main Street
I thought about this question a lot, as you can. You can imagine.
Clay Jenkinson
I'm sure you have.
Main Street
It's the advent of media that has maybe destroyed our ability to contemplate things right. In a more holistic and more sound bite type of way. Gone are the days of newspapers, for crying out loud. Gone are the days of gathering around a radio for sure. My wife and I were having this discussion with streaming services. What streaming services do we want and why do we want them? And all of those types of things, and might we be better off without them?
Clay Jenkinson
My goodness, I'm with Charles Dickens. It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. If you have Netflix and Disney and Amazon Prime and so on, you could watch a superb Firstrillionate documentary every day for the rest of your life for free or whatever your monthly fee is. We have access to everything. Remember, if you're old enough and I think you are, when The Wizard of Oz played once a year. And if you missed it yesterday, right? Absolutely. And you waited. Oh, I did. I can't we can't miss it, witches scared me, but I watched it. Now it's you know, it's everything on demand. You can get it. Everything at any time and for pennies per show. So that's all good. And my daughter is at Oxford University finishing up a doctorate in history. I talk with her by FaceTime or by Zoom almost every day. When I was at Oxford a long time ago now in the late 70s, I called home twice a year to my parents in Dickinson, North Dakota. So on the one hand, it's the best of times. But we don't have reflection time anymore. You know, when Eric Sevareid was the principal commentator in this country for those 14 years, 1963 to 1978, when something happened, an assassination, riots, a downturn in Vietnam, some horrific thing or some great thing, almost everyone in the country would tune in to CBS that night. And for 2.5 minutes, listen to Eric Sevareid. And he was thoughtful and he was historically based. He used the humanities. He was generous, He was articulate. But now, you know, what people are looking for is clickbait. Remember when the president of CNN said Donald Trump may be a problem, but he is great for CBS or for CNN. And that tells you, I think, something about the deterioration of integrity in our media.
Main Street
Clay Jenkinson, he's the host of Listening to America with Clay Jenkinson, formerly the host of the Thomas Jefferson Hour. His new show continues to air at 11:00 on Sundays right here on Prairie Public. And Clay also plays a role. We'll see how much of a role in the upcoming Ken Burns, The American Buffalo, which is a two part, four hour documentary film that tells the story of the American bison from its prehistoric origins to its near extinction in the late 19th century to its gradual recovery today. Clay, it's always a pleasure to visit with you. By the way, that film airs on PBS on Prairie Public October 16th and 17th. Clay, thank you so much for joining us here on Main Street.
Clay Jenkinson
Craig I so appreciate. Let me say one last thing. Sure. Media is fragmented. Media has undergone a kind of a collapse, but I'm not speaking in flattery. I think the finest media in the country is public broadcasting, television and NPR on radio. And that, to me, is a sign of hope. I'll hope with you. Thank you.
Main Street
I'll hope with you.
Clay Jenkinson
Thank you.