A 14-year-old self-taught coder is doing for government what it did not do for itself. His dad helped but he learned how to hack alongside friends at a venerable but sometimes overlooked public institution – the library. Civic hacking is generational. It still carries some of the old school hackathon vibe but people coming of age today expect to be able to get data, use it for their purposes, add some value and give it back for benefit of the wider community. That generational shift offers...

Historian and humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson offers some final thoughts on putting the First Amendment, national security and America’s most (in)famous leakers -- Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning – in context. Clay's efforts to put things in a historical context resulted in 150 essays since March 27, 2021, 93 of which had companion podcast episodes. He moves on to a new adventure at Listening to America with our thanks.                                ...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson remembers Daniel Ellesberg, the war planner turned whistleblower after Vietnam. Stream the show from www.tfic.tech or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy from the CBS Archives and YouTube.

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson laments a country divided, again. Stream the show from www.tfic.tech or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy from YouTube.

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson has been a little perplexed by the growing number of people throwing their hat in the ring for the 2024 Republication nomination for president. Stripped to the underlying essential question, Clay asks, who would actually want that job? History tells us the journey is fraught, and once elected, the term in office, is ofen worse. Stream the show from www.tfic.tech or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio...

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson returns to our occasional series on some of the less well-known presidents of the United States. Perhaps best remembered for the dam and institute named for him, the 31st president was known as a great humanitarian but had a low view of the role of government in improving peoples’ lives. Stream the show from www.tfic.tech or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of PublicDomainFootage and YouTube.

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson reminds us that the hands of the Doomsday Clock now stand at 90 seconds to midnight — the closest to global nuclear catastrophe it has ever been. Against that backdrop, the United States still struggles with its own nuclear history. Stream the show from www.tfic.tech or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of Network 18, BBC and YouTube.

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson takes us back to the origins of the sixth president’s pathetic quest for greatness and his sacrifice of happiness during a lifetime of service. Stream the show from www.tfic.tech or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of Movieclips and YouTube.

Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson laments that the public expects better from the highest court in the land and has lost trust in the judicial branch as much as the others. Echoing an ancient Roman poent, Clay asks, who will save us from our guardians? Stream the show from www.tfic.tech or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of PBS Frontline, C-SPAN, CBS News, ABC Nightline, AP and YouTube.

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 choice. Additional audio courtesy of PragerU and YouTube.

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 podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of PlenilunePictures. Universal Pictures and...

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. Additional audio courtesy of NBC News, cassiopeia and YouTube.

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 your choice. Additional audio courtesy of 20th Century Fox and YouTube.

In another in an occasional series of articles Governing is publishing about some of the less well-known presidents of the United States, our 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 of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of Biographics and YouTube.

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 of the CNN, FNC and YouTube.

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 of America. Stream the show from www.tfic.tech or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of...

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 on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of the Carter Center, the Jimmy...

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 space panic. Stream the show from www.tfic.tech or subscribe to the show on the podcast app of...

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 on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of C-SPAN, Lindrebox, Neural...

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 States Army Band, Warner Bros., ABC, CBC, CBS, Smithsonian Folkway Recordings, Gerald R. Ford...

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, TLDR News, Entertainment Tonight, Harpo Productions,carlanthonyonline, Epidemic and YouTube.

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 to the show on the podcast app of your choice. Additional audio courtesy of PBS Newsletter, Vice...