Dispatches from the Front Range

August 16, 2025

Good morning this Saturday,

I’d hoped today to give to you the most recent podcast I had completed with Seth Cotlar, focusing in on the historic origins of Christian nationalism. Unfortunately, during yesterday‘s taping, my laptop crashed and is now in the custody of Best Buy’s geek squad. We’ll get that episode up to you as soon as we can.

Undaunted, we still have plenty of things that we can share around here, namely sky-high rodents. Yesterday I needed to travel to the top of Pikes Peak to look at some Indigenous sites on the mountain. If you haven’t been yet, Pikes Peak sits right outside of Colorado Springs and stands at an elevation of over 14,000 feet. One of the neat things about this mountain is that you can actually drive all the way to the summit, which my colleague Steve and I did yesterday morning.

I was excited because I expected the big Horn sheep would still be on the mountain and they were. It’ll start getting cold in Colorado soon and they’ll come down to lower temperatures. But for now they were readily available.

But what I really love to see are marmots. If you’re not familiar, marmots are essentially groundhogs who live where the ground is at an elevation of 12,000 feet up in the air. They are in technical terms “super cute.” You’ll find them scurrying over the rocks, usually a few will be posted out monitoring for predator which include raptors at that elevation. But you’ll often see them alongside the road and I was hoping to do so yesterday. Steve and I were rewarded multiple times over, and because there was light traffic on the mountain we were able to pull over and get some on film.

This guy was exceptionally fat meaning he and I had much in common. I think I’ll name him Larry.

And for you sheep fans, here is a small video of a family at about 13,000 feet up in the air.

Finally, if you’ve ever wondered what Colorado looks like from 14,000 feet up in the air here’s a little glimpse:

These are the places I work to protect.

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We do have some good news for you regarding the podcast. I’m thrilled to tell you that thanks to your support Reckoning with Jason Herbert crossed over 150,000 downloads this week. That’s pretty awesome.

So if you’re interested in listening to a different kind of history podcast, the episode is up this week might be right up your alley. This week we brought on historian Tyler Anbinder, who teaches at Georgetown University and focuses on the Irish diaspora in the United States. More specifically, Dr. Anbinder served as the historical consultant on the film Gangs of New York. So we couldn’t help but ask him to come on and talk about his experiences with Martin Scorsese and Daniel Day-Lewis, and Leonardo DiCaprio as well as talk about the real history behind the film. This remains one of our most popular pods and for new listeners. I often recommend it as a great introduction to what we do. Links are below.

Alright, I’ve got marathon training today. So I hope wherever you are, you’re having a great day. Talk soon.

Jason