Clay Jenkinson joins his friend Dennis McKenna in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico to observe the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Chaco Canyon dates to at least the ninth century CE, more than a thousand years ago, and somehow their skywatchers know how to observe equinoxes, solstices, and eclipses. What better place to see the solar eclipse of 2024? Administered by the US National Park System, but interpreted for us by a Native Navajo and Zia expert Kailo Winters, it was a magical experience in a sacred place. We came away impressed by the capacity of the European Enlightenment to figure all of this out, but far more in awe of the Puebloan scholars who figured such phenomena out centuries before European science was out of its swaddling clothes. We also check in with our favorite Enlightenment correspondent David Nicandri.
#1581 Henry Wallace and the World That Might Have Been
#1580 Ten Things about the Hamilton-Jefferson Relationship
#1579 The Holiday Show
#1578 Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian
#1577 The Listening to America Origin Story
#1576 Ten Things About the Louisiana Purchase
#1575 Mind the Gap: Between Presidential Administrations
#1574 John Steinbeck and the Western Flyer
#1573 Overrated and Underrated Presidents
#1572 Ten Things: The Post-Civil War Amendments
#1571 A Conversation With David Nicandri
#1570 Clay’s 10 Propositions About Thomas Jefferson
#1569 Ten Things About the Constitutional Convention
#1568 The American Buffalo: a New Documentary by Ken Burns
#1567 Rebuilding Trust in American Institutions
#1566 How To Be a Chautauquan
#1565 Ten Things about Writing a Book
#1564 The New Look of the Jefferson Hour: Listening to America
#1563 The Formation of Thomas Jefferson
#1562 Ten Things: Counterfactual History
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