America at 250: A View from the Streets
5/19/202618 min
The staff writer and historian Jill Lepore is an admirer of the Federal Writers’ Project, and the man-on-the-street form of documentary it helped to pioneer. This type of journalism, she thinks, is integral to the democratic project. As part of a special episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour, Lepore collaborated with the audio-storytelling group Transom to create a new documentary on how Americans perceive their country on the eve of its two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary. Producers conducted interviews in Illinois, California, Louisiana, Vermont, and Utah, in gas stations, city parks, and malls, on street corners and dairy farms, asking people how they see themselves in the American story, how they feel about America at two hundred and fifty, and what they imagine the tricentennial of independence will be like.
The New Yorker Radio Hour’s collaboration with Transom was produced by Sophie Crane. It was recorded by Eve Abrams, Scott Carrier, Erica Heilman, Yohance Lacour, and David Weinberg. Mixing and sound design by Josh Crane. Music by Jon Evans and Matthias Bossi at Stellwagen Symphonette. It was created as part of Transom’s Listeners Project, an experiment in hyperlocal documentary storytelling.
New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsJill Lepore· Host0:01
[upbeat music] The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. [gentle music] This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, and I'm Jill Lepore, sitting in today for David Remnick. This is the second part of our special episode on America at 250. In the first part, we listened to excerpts from a documentary that asked Americans in the 1970s how they felt about the bicentennial.
Speaker 20:28
We have a long way to go, baby, as Billie Jean King might have paraphrased it.
Jill Lepore· Host0:33
I love that style of documentary so much, the tradition that journalists call vox pop, that I wanted to hear what it would sound like if we made a piece like that for the Radio Hour today. So we collaborated with an organization of audio storytellers known as Transom. They sent producers to Illinois and California, Louisiana, Vermont, Utah. They went to gas stations and city parks, to malls and street corners, to dairy farms, to listen to us, to Americans, because here's what I think. You could talk to politicians, you could talk to scholars, pundits, reporters, but what this moment means, I think you'll find that right here.
Speaker 31:18
We're doing a radio program about the 250th anniversary of America. Can we ask you a couple questions?
Speaker 41:24
Oh, sure.
Speaker 31:25
Um, do you have plans to celebrate the Fourth of July this year?
Speaker 41:28
Of course. Of course.