Thomas Ricks
speaker
222 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 4 Jul
Thomas Ricks’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
John Adams is the only one of our first four presidents who never owned a slave.
He graduates from college.
His parents don't have the money to support him.
He can't sit down and read Greek and Roman history like Madison does for several years to prepare for the Constitution.
Adams has to go get a job, but he winds up a school teacher in a backwater in Massachusetts.
He doesn't even have a post office.
He hates teaching.
He totally is unprepared to be a teacher emotionally.
Eventually decides to become a lawyer.
But it's striking to me
That Adams never has a mentor.
I think he's such a prickly figure.
Interesting.
He is unable to find a mentor.
Whereas George Washington had a mentor, whereas Thomas Jefferson had a couple, and Jefferson becomes mentor to Madison.
John Adams almost has to mentor himself.
He reads diaries, and he's constantly berating himself.
Pay less attention to girls and hunting.
Pay more attention to books.
Because nobody else is guiding him, even the guy in whose law office he worked.
Showing 61–80 of 222 · page 4 of 12
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