This American Life - 890: Maximal Americanness

Episode Date: July 5, 2026

On this country's 250th birthday, we bring you stories about the most American people, places, objects, and social norms that make this country what it is. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Ira talks to Pablo Torre about Major League Baseball’s new challenge system, and how it’s been optimized for maximum drama. (10 minutes)Act One: Writer Jiayang Fan wrestles with a very common question she has never quite understood. (5 minutes)Act Two: People come from all over the country to walk down one of Michigan’s tallest sand dunes, and then promptly turn around and trudge back up. Aviva DeKornfeld talks to Americans spending their limited vacation time on this punishing activity. (8 minutes)Act Three: Emanuele Berry talks to Ira about Season 13 of the reality TV show, Survivor, known to fans as the “race war” season. (8 minutes)Act Four: Years before his famous dictionary, Noah Webster wrote a book that took on a life of its own and served an unexpected purpose. (8 minutes)Act Five: Emmanuel Dzotsi investigates a musical phenomenon very particular to the United States: singers embellishing the end of the national anthem. (9 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, This AmericanLife.org. When he's in his 20s, it was years ago, Pablo Toy started appearing on TV talking about sports. Talking about something that now is kind of embarrassed about. I was a gas bag on ESPN. Various people did not like me, I think. I just sort of represented this new young person who was vaguely, Asian but also Mexican. I'm Filipino. That answer's not mystery. But I had this take from the very

beginning of my time on TV back in 2012, which was we debate in sports all of the time. How much do the refs blow this? Which the call have been? Who's the hero? Who's the villain? What's right and what's wrong? And I had been arguing forever that robots can solve this. Like, we have the technology. If you replace the referee or referee or the empire with a robot, we don't need to waste our time arguing about this dumb shit. And so that became your stance. It became a thing I was known for, was calling for this robot referee revolution. Like, the guy won't shut up out these robots.

It wins his now when he thinks about it. Anyhow, years go on. And then finally, in 2021, I see this story break that at long last, the most traditional sport, in all of America, Major League Baseball, is experimenting with robot umpires in the minor leagues. Minor League teams installed what they called the ABS system, the automated ball strike system. These Hawkeye cameras with optical tracking,

they looked out over home plate, it saw perfectly whether every pitch was in the strike zone, and then told the human umpire who was standing there, through an earpiece, whether to call it a ball or a strike. And the way it worked in the early versions is that the robots made the call and the human empire just let the fans and players know

what the robot said. Papa got what he always dreamed of, what he always pontificated about. There's no more need to argue about the empire's calls, no more reason to boo the empire from the stance. And when Bobbo watch those games? It wasn't as good.

Really? It wasn't as good because so much of what going to a baseball game is like is you sitting in the stands and effectively using the airspace around you as this sort of pillow you can scream into, releasing whatever it is pent up over the course of your day and your week and frankly your childhood. And you're getting to unleash it on, and this is, I think, a really important part of this, on another person.

Probably says that watching the minor league games, knowing that the human empire It was just the messenger for the robot empire and its perfect calls of balls and strikes. It felt like the equivalent of talking to a customer service rep that you know isn't a person. It's like, I get that you're making human noises, but it's eerie. And then realizing, oh, no, no, I want a human.

Because when you're getting mad at an umpire in these minor league full ABS system games, you're just yelling at your computer monitor. Then, this season, I'm guessing a lot of you have heard this, the robot umpires arrived in the major leagues. The ABS system went into every major league baseball park. And every game in those parks has used that technology. And the problem that Pabble had with ABS when he first saw it in the minors,

they fixed it. They fixed it completely and fully with a competence he had never expected from major league baseball. How they do it? So explain for people who aren't watching baseball how the system works now. It's brilliant the way it works now and I didn't see it coming. The way it works is that it's not a computer telling the umpire in their ear, this is a ball and this is a strike. What's happening instead is the umpire, the human being, is going about their job as they have

for decades upon decades. So the umpire is calling the game the way they always have? Yes. except now there is a challenge system in which the batter, the pitcher, the catcher, they can basically throw a flag and say, in so many words, I think the umpire messed up.

And at that point, the robot up on the Jumbotron, they show you whether the umpire actually got it right or wrong. And what it did was in this brilliant way. once again, we are judging a human being, the umpire. So to show just how it's satisfying that can be for fans, this is a game in Cincinnati in March. It's the Reds versus the Boston Red Sox. This is only three days after they started doing these challenges.

Yann Watson is pitching for Boston, and this is actually his very first game pitching Major League baseball. And then in the sixth inning, Boston is behind five to three. Cincinnati is a bat bases are loaded they have two outs I read at every base with two down a player named

Eugenio Suarez is at bat and they're paying him to hit the ball out of the ballpark this is certainly the moment of the game to this point here comes the one two and in there struck him out

now they're going to challenge this yeah what you see is that the batter taps his helmet which is a signal for I initiate a challenge I am taking this to the Court of Appeals. And immediately, on the Jumbotron, you see the strike zone, and you see the electronic depiction of the ball.

And we see that, in fact, the batter was right. ABS powered by T-Mobile. That's out of the zone. This was not a strike. It was a ball. And the umpire, in other words, has messed up. And Bibo vado. ABS could be a lot of fun, work.

I mean, this game becomes... like this comedic chapter in the history of baseball because the very next pitch another challenge. The batter says you did it again. Jacques Hughes again. And now it's just

like, you almost begin to feel bad for C.B. Buckner the Empire. Almost. Oh my God, people are standing. They're cheering. People are so excited. So It's so great. Look, in sports, you dream. As a sports fan, you dream of stuff like this.

Johani Osweirs then hit the ball and was tagged out at first, but the Reds won, and most eye-opening, the umpire C.B. Buckner had six of his calls overturned by the robot umpire in that game that had never happened before in the major leagues. Papa points out, Major League baseball could have gotten rid of the ump at the plate entirely. the way they got rid of blind judges in tennis,

they could have chosen perfect robot umpiring, perfect calls, balls and strikes, like a gas bagged about years ago. Instead, they understood that one of the pleasures of the game is yelling. The fact is that there are few scenarios in American life or anywhere that I can imagine where you are, you're empowered, you're legally, contractually, allowed to go fucking nuts

on the authority figure. Imagine doing that to a judge. You don't get to do that. Except in sports. Yeah, there's a quote from the guy who was the chairman of the committee that decided how to roll this out, this guy named John Stanton,

and he said that the system that they chose to do retains the human side of the game, quote, adding a new fan-friendly engagement moment. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest with what that is. A fan-friendly engagement moment is booing the shit out of umpires. That's what fan-friendly engagement means.

It means let's give the Coliseum some blood. Now, you and I are talking about this right now because I reached out to you and I said, we're going to do an episode to commemorate our country's 250th anniversary, and we thought it would be nice to just celebrate and commemorate things that seem very, very American,

like especially American, how does this ABS challenge system fit the bill? Because America, if you're really cutting to the core of us, we want to be mad as much as we want justice. We want to be able to express what's inside of us that feels like it's trapped there as much as we want to see each getting their own fair due. And in this ABS system, what our pastime, our oldest, stodgiest, dustiest pastime has given us,

is somehow the ability to maybe have both. Both meaning we want justice, but we also want to scream at somebody. Hard down to think about what's going on in national politics when he puts it that way. Today on our show, for our July 4th semi-Quincennial, and yes, I had to look that word up, which means 250th. According to the internet, actually, an alternative word for this. is Sester Centennial, but that just sounds like a very old nun. For our semi-Quincentennial,

commemorating what this country has been for 250 years, we thought that it would be fun to collect a bunch of things that just seemed very particularly American, like changing the rules of our national pastime to allow for more screaming at figures of authority. Today on our show we have the most American question. We have a trip to a Michigan sand dune with our own question,

and we have so much more from WB EZ Chicago. It's This American Life. I'm our glass. Stay with us. It's This American Life. Our semi-Quincentennial episode, boy, that really does not roll off the tongue. Act 1, a most American question. So there are definitely a bunch of questions that Americans have asked over our 250 years

that seem very characteristically American. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? Do you want fries with that? Where are you from? with this class of companion. Where are you really from? One of a contributor's Jayong fan has her pick for the most American question out there.

The first time I heard someone ask the question outside of an ESL class, I was eight years old. Are you okay? I knew so few English words that part of the reason why it registered so distinctly must have been the shock of understanding. Are you okay?

A young police officer was asking my mother the question. He had been called, as the police were often called in our first days in America, to our basement apartment. My mother and I had recently reunited with my father after he'd left to study in America six years earlier, and it hadn't gone well. Doors were slammed, plates shattered,

limbs pinned to the ground, ultimatums delivered. Usually I hid in bed, under the covers, with palms pasted to my ears. But that day, the apartment was quiet. My father had already left for good. Did my mother call because she was being harassed by my father's mistress or because we were being evicted from our basement studio?

I no longer remember. I do remember that it was the first time I dared to look at an American police officer up close. Blue uniform, black boots, a belt heavy and crowded. My mother and I did not look to be in the way of bodily harm. there was nothing more for an officer of the law to do. Are you okay, ma'am? The man asked as he stood in the doorway. The question hung in the air as a procedural formality,

as a way of wrapping up the visit. I had been in the country for less than a year, but I knew what the next words should be. The standard call in response, the same way that, How are you? Had only one answer. Fine, thank you. How are you?

But that day, kneeling on the floor, face covered in her own tears and snot, my mother responded with something else. No, she said. The officer lowered himself onto the floor next to the door jam, then listened and nodded for an hour. I was astonished. My mother followed rules tirelessly and taught me to do the same, all part of adapting as seamlessly as possible. Why would she embarrass herself like that? I didn't understand enough English to follow the conversation, but as I watched my mother closely,

I was certain I would never write the script like that. I spent the next several years irritated with, Are You OK? compelled to be okay with it in public while fuming to my diary in private. Here's an entry from when I was 12. October 26, 1996. Are you okay? Things going okay, right? Is everything okay?

Those are the most common questions in America. I don't like them because they don't tell you anything about anything. Yes, of course. Great. Those are the most common answers. Isn't that so cheap? I think so. Those questions are so pointless that is even a waste of words to me. As I saw it then, the question's hollowness had a distinctly American quality. Here, pleases, thank yous, excuse me, weren't they always uttered ad nauseum from mouths of people who had already muscled past you?

Are You OK was a question, supposedly, but how often was it really a mechanical reflex, an American tick announcing itself? Someone goes down hard in lacrosse practice, and the RUOK arrives almost simultaneously with the impact. The question is a reflex, not an inquiry. In our 37 years together, my mother and I were often and unmistakably not okay. Still, it was not a question we often asked of each other.

That sort of check-in hit too close to the bone. Not Chinese, my mother would have certainly said, though I never pressed her on it. Also not Chinese. Lately, though, I've been thinking about the moment she told the police officer she wasn't okay. I thought she flubbed the obligatory call in response of the question. But now I wonder if it was something else. My mother is dead now. But the look on her face as she knelt and cried with a stranger still comes to me sometimes.

It arrives most vividly, unbidden, when I'm with friends who are mothers, watching their kids on the neighborhood playground. A scrape on the knee or the elbow, the wound still red and angry, and someone, A mother, a friend, administers the question. And there, on the child's open mouth and tears smeared face, is my mother's shocked look. The child hears the question. It doesn't make the pain go away, but the question stays in the air. It becomes a pause.

A door held open. Jaya Young fan. She's a staff writer at The New Yorker. That story was produced by Diane Wu. Act two, city on a hill of sand. We here in the land of the free do not like to be told what to do. And additionally, and maybe especially, we don't like to be told what not to do. Avivita Coinfeld has a story about that very American quality as it plays out in one of our shared public spaces.

I went to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore to see the star attraction, the tallest dune in the park. It's 450 feet high and slopes down at what looks like a 45-degree angle directly into Lake Michigan. If you can't picture 450 feet, imagine a 34-story building. The grade is so steep that from the bottom of the dune, you can't even see up to the top. It's just a wall of sand in front of you. Oh my gosh, good luck. All right, let's get over here. Let's do it.

Thank you so much. Take your time. People come from all over the Midwest to walk down this dune and then promptly turn around and trudge right back up. There's only a two foot wide strip of beach at the bottom, so turning around is about all there is to do. This climb is not for everyone. Dozens need assistance climbing out each summer. And because of that, the park service tries to discourage people from climbing the dune without prohibiting it outright. They've tried a bunch of different signs.

the current one mentions the ecological damage of walking on the dune and says down is optional, which is intentionally soft language because their previous sign said that there'd be a $3,000 rescue fee, which Americans seem to take as a kind of personal challenge, and even more people attempted the climb. Park rangers also patrol the top ridge, asking visitors about their intentions with the dune. Here's Jen, the aggressively mild-mannered ranger on the job today. talking with some prospective climbers. It's a lot harder than it looks, I will tell you that, yes.

And it's all sand, yes, so it is a very challenging climb. Usually people on the bottom half are using all fours basically to get back up. So it's very challenging, but yeah, I think the view's best at the top. Approximately eight feet away from Jen, says Jim. He's part of the team of volunteers, helping rangers deter people. My job up here is to try to save them from themselves, let them know. Jim's been volunteering for almost a decade. He sits on his chair wearing his bright orange volunteer vest,

pimped out with various pins and patches he's earned over the years, including, proudly, a junior ranger badge. This is my 86 summer up here. Oh, my gosh. Just love it, yeah. Jim's seen all kinds of ill-advised behavior, people heading down without water, without shoes, without their inhaler. And worst of all, as far as Jim is concerned, running down the dune.

We had a girl get badly hurt here. She ran down. She tripped. She bolted out. Tried to stop herself. She dislocated both shoulders, broke a collarbone, rinsed her neck, hurt her back, and cut her head on a rock. Oh, my God. Standing on the ridge, you can see the slope filled with dozens of people.

Heads down, slowly, silently trudging up the hill. Scores of people who were told not to do this and decided to try it anyway. How you feeling done here? I feel good. This is what we came for. At the very bottom of the hill, I met Michael and his daughter Kalea, who drove here from Georgia. The lady at the place that you check in at, she suggested that you not do this. She said, I advise y'all against all the park rangers say not to do it. And yet you guys thought...

Huh? We drove a thousand miles to get here, so yes, we're going to do it. Yeah. And you're not worried about going back up? No. She plays soccer and I train with her, so we're ready to go. We're going to race back up it. I think not the subject of peer pressure.

Half an hour later, I found Michael again, only about a third of the way up. How are you feeling? Lord, hopefully I make it. Slow and steady. I knew it was going to be hard, but it's harder than I thought it would be. A little further up the hill, I spot another guy named Michael. He's wearing an oversized visor and has blue braces on his teeth. He was part of a whole crew wearing matching hats, celebrating his 50th birthday.

If you could call this, celebrating. How are you feeling now? Tired. Humbling, you know. Every step you take up, you lose. at least half of it going backwards. But, yeah. One guy who had taken off his sand-filled sneakers

and slung them over his neck, kept muttering to himself like a mantra, I should have listened to my wife. I should have listened to my wife. The reason why you're not hearing that on tape is because it was so hard to move around the dune, zigzagging from person to person. Oh, my God.

I don't think it's a stretch to say we are a country of people who have been told over and over that we are the exception. So many of our movies, so many of the stories we tell ourselves are about how the rules, the warnings, the statistics,

those are for other people. When we hear that most people can't do something, we are trained to think, well, I'm not most people. But really, when we try to live out this pint-sized American exceptionalism, we are just as likely to find ourselves

face down in the sand, panting, and humbled. Less city on a hill, and more bear crawling up it. How are you feeling? I like death. I noticed that you are on your hands and knees. Yep. We really rethink a life choices right now. I'm just tired.

Are we halfway there yet? I don't think we're halfway there yet. That's a bitch. Are you on vacation? Why would you spend your vacation doing something so punishing? Is your life not hard enough? I work my ass off all the time, so yeah. It's just another day in the life.

Yep. Kids seem to have a much easier time than adults. The top of the hill was full of children who, because of their tiny body weight, scampered like water beetles on top of the sand up to the ridge, and then had the pleasure of watching the adults who usually bossed them around, huff and puff, 300 feet below them. I met an 11-year-old and his little brother waiting for their parents.

He's five. You're five, and you went all the way to the bottom? Yeah, we went to the water. And then we got all the way to the top. Faster than our whole family. Wow. He doesn't even have cappinesia, so. What? Is that true? I thought you got knees when you were like, could walk.

Um, no. You know your kneecaps? Yeah. You get them when you're 10. It makes it harder to climb. What? Like this? Your kneecap. You get them when you're 10? Yeah. Can I see your knees? They look the same. It's the inside kneecap. Huh. I walk over to gym with my fully formed kneecaps and pick up our conversation. He started expounding on how. he counsels people. Well, if I start to tell people about what it's like and...

Eagle! A bald eagle flew overhead. We all turned and looked. And there we stood, a bunch of Americans on a perfect summer day, on a dune in a park being destroyed by our actions and maintained by our tax dollars, watching our mascots soar through the sky, indifferent to our plate below. David of Cornfield is one of the producers of our program. That story was co-produced by Molling Marcello.

Coming up, Americans, thousands of miles away on tiny islands, recreating some very American things about home, whether they intend to or not. That's in a minute. I'm Chicago Bubba Radio, when our program continues. It's This American Life, Myro Glass. Today's program, maximal Americanness. For our nation's 250th birthday, we have stories about things that seem very especially and particularly American.

We arrived at Act 3 of our program. Act 3, Cooked Island. For this next act, I'm joined in the studio by our executive editor, Emmanuel Berry. Hello. Hey there. And you are here because one, a very American invention, was television,

and then we as a nation topped that by creating an even more American thing, which is reality TV. And you are here to tell us about the kind of cherry on top of all of that? Yes. I'm going to present the most American season. of reality TV. And I should say you watch a lot of reality TV. So what season is it?

All right. We are talking about season 13 of Survivor. And Survivor is the old school reality show where they stick a bunch of people on an island and divide them into teams and they compete in challenges and then people get voted off. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's Survivor. Classic show. We all know it. And so the season of Survivor I want to talk about is what me, other Survivor fans, the race war season. And we call it that because in this season, they divided the tribes up by race. So there's like an African-American tribe, there's a white tribe, there's an Asian-American tribe, there's a Latino tribe. I know that's not a race, but that's like how they divided the tribes. Okay. So that seems like an incredibly loaded and crazy thing to do. Why did they do

this? So basically, Survivor had gotten a lot of criticism because the casting just wasn't very diverse. And on top of that, a lot of times they would get to the end of the season, and it would only be the white players left. Oh, the non-white players could we get voted off early? Yes. So this was their response to that. They were like, okay, you guys want more diversity?

Here is more diversity, which is a choice. Do you have to respect them for kind of doubling down? How did the contestants on the show feel about it? So the contestants seemed kind of confused by it. They're like, why did we make this? about race. Different ethnic groups. Who is that?

Cosher? I honestly was stunned. I mean, this was crazy. I mean, on one hand, I think it's a great opportunity because I think it's wonderful that there's more minorities. At the same time, I'm a little bit worried that it might pay out to caricatures and stereotypes. I remember watching the show

and being really shocked when I first started the season because I was like, I can't believe that they did this. But honestly, got over it really quick. because basically something happened in the first scene that switched the way I was seeing it. And from there on, it just kept happening. So what happened? So they start the season in this really dramatic way. They're on a boat in the middle of the South Pacific.

And the host, Jeff Probst, is telling all the contestants to gather supplies, get on a raft, and go to shore with your team. They've been giving two minutes to salvage whatever they can off this boat. And Jeff's like you have two minutes, grab as much as you can. So they grab as much as they can, get to the island. And then this thing happens that really it could happen on any season of Survivor, which is someone from one of the tribe steals chickens from the other tribe. But because this season is, you know, everyone's divided by race,

it's like I kind of can't help but notice that it was the white tribe that stole the chicken from the Asian tribe. So I'm watching this and I'm thinking, That is so white. I see that. But then I'm like, oh, why did I even think that? You know, like looking at my own biases and thinking about how I'm thinking about race, right? Oh, so you're having this thing where you're finding yourself asking over and over, is that race or is that me?

Yeah. So all that is happening in the first few episodes. And then the producers decide, you know what? Let's end the segregation thing. They're like, mix up the teams. Like, they completely abandoned this initial premise of the season. And everybody is now on integrated teams, basically. But the thing is, because they started out segregated,

the race thing is sort of still hanging over the whole thing. And then there's this twist that happens. It's right before a challenge. And the two tribes have gathered. And Jeff says, we're going to try something different here. I'm offering each of you the opportunity to mute me. Which essentially means you can abandon your tribe and go and join the other tribe. And does this play out in a racially charged way?

Well, the only people who switch are two white players. So they go and join the other white players on the other tribe. And just to say, like, they could have done it because they had close relationships with those people or, like, lots of reasons that they could have done this. But it's hard not to think. watching them like walk across to the other side, hmm, white flight. Because what it does is it totally creates these two lopsided tribes.

So there's one tribe of four left, the tribe they abandoned, which has four POC. And then the other tribe has now eight people, four white people, two Asian people, one black person, and one Hispanic person. And wait, and so one tribe is twice as big as the other. So that must give them an advantage, right? It does in a lot of ways. I think they think, like, oh, we're about to, like, sweep this other tribe.

There's no way they're going to, like, win any challenges. And what happens actually is kind of the exact opposite. So the little tribe of four, which is the, they call them the I-24, the little P-O-C coalition, they basically go on, I would say, one of the greatest runs in Survivor history. So they win every single challenge from then on out, even though they're outnumbered, you know, two to one. And again, as I'm watching this, it's kind of hard not to think, huh, got to be twice as good, right? It's all these people of color who are having to be smarter and work harder and do all of these things just to like stay on the even playing field to win essentially.

Yeah. And, you know, each time they win, the other team has to go to tribal council. They kick off a person of color. Until finally, it kind of becomes this very stark thing where, it's down to four white people versus four people of color. Oh, my God. The producers got what they wanted. Kind of, yeah, right? And then that tribe, that is the POC tribe, they keep winning. And then they vote all the white contestants off one by one.

And so when you see how all of this played up by the end of the season, why do you think of this as the most American season of reality TV? I mean, because in general in this country, we don't want to talk. about race. We don't want to have to think about race. No, we do not. And then we are forced into these situations where we have no choice. We have to talk about it. It's come up again. You guys, surprised. Yeah, things happen.

And then in this season, we have that experience over and over and over again. And to me, it is like such a quintessential part of the American experience. And it's all playing out in this game on a freaking island in the middle of the South Pacific.

Manuel Berry is executive editor of our program. Act 4, the Most American School Book. So Roman Mars hosts the podcast 99% Invisible, and he recently started a new series with the BBC. It's called A History of the United States in 100 Objects. And one of the stories on his new show seemed very much in line with what we're talking about here today on our show.

It is about a book that shaped education in this country for years. Here's Roman. The book I'm going to tell you about was written by one very frustrated school teacher. This guy is teaching in 1783. The Revolutionary War is ending. The fighting on American soil finally tapering off. And in every part of regular life, people are trying to figure out, okay, now that we're not British anymore,

what does it actually mean to be an American? This teacher, he's educating anywhere from 50 to 70 students in a one-room schoolhouse. And these students range from 6 to 16 years old. It's the same in a lot of places around the country. A very small percentage of kids are getting an education. And even if they do get into a classroom, there's no standard curriculum. No shared set of books or processes. The books these students are using are British, teaching British geography,

British history, British ways of thinking. People are largely still spelling the word color with a you. And the school teacher, he looks around at all of this and decides, this has to change. His name is Noah Webster. He's this person who takes on, as an educator, the problem of literacy. That's Amani Perry, author and professor of African American Studies at Harvard University. And he complains about the classrooms being crowded and noisy and chaotic, and he is also sort of interested in trying to find a way to standardize American learning.

So long before his dictionary made him a household name, Webster spends his own money to print a little blue book with an unwieldy title. It's called The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language, a title so bad that nobody ever used it. They just started calling it, the blue backspeller. So he really creates this book that is built for an autodidact. It's a way to self-teach. It's not a dictionary. it really is like a guide to learning to read. If it sounds kind of counterintuitive

that you'd learn to read from a book that requires you to read, here's how that worked. The book contains a bunch of exercises that kind of look like multiplication tables, but with words and letters that you'd memorize. First, you'd start by learning the alphabet, A, B, C, D, and then you'd move to syllables

like A, B, K, and Da, until you finally learn simple words like bag, big, bog, bug. Eventually, you'd form sentences, read paragraphs, and then you'd read these short stories, a collection of fables and moral parables. Webster uses the book to introduce simpler, more distinctly American spellings. He drops the U from humor and labor. He once suggested that we start spelling the word daughter as D-A-W-T-E-R,

which would have been nice, though that one didn't stick. But his larger idea does succeed. This book, the blue backspeller, becomes one of the most important books in early America. Entire generations grow up with it. At one point, the blue backspeller was second only to the Bible and copies sold. And it also, it's kind of like a Bible.

Like, could you describe its size and the relevance of its size? Yeah, I mean, it's wonderful to hold one because, you realize it's pocket size. I mean, it was small enough to fit into a jacket pocket or pants pocket. It was mobile. Yeah, and it could be hidden. It could easily be hidden, which was really important. Important because it means the book could be used secretly by people who weren't supposed to have it.

Inslave people who were legally prohibited from learning to read. Webster probably never intended this book for black people at all. Well, he was against slavery. Webster's books were meant for Americans, who were defined by Webster in his dictionary as descendants of Europeans, white people. And despite that fact, his blueback speller becomes something that is fundamental to African-American struggles for literacy. The blueback speller was everywhere, so common that some enslaved people managed to get their hands on it anyway. Even though teaching an enslaved person to read was actually, against the law in much of the South.

Having one of these spellers for someone who's enslaved could put you at enormous risk of maiming, of death, of being sold. Black literacy was seen as a threat. One of the enslaved people who learned to read this way was Frederick Douglass. He go on to become one of the most influential writers and thinkers in American history,

an advisor to Abraham Lincoln. He and countless other black people take on that blue-back speller and insist upon becoming part of the literate American public. And one of the early ways we see this is, you know, black soldiers in the Civil War who become literate and immediately begin writing letters to Lincoln saying not only are they hopeful for land with their freedom, but there have to be schools. The blue-back speller found its way from shipyard to town square, from the schoolhouses of New England to the plantations of the South.

And when I actually got my hands on it, if I'm being honest, the content of the book itself is kind of a joyless slog. If you ask me to teach someone to read using the blue-black speller, it would be hard. And I can't imagine starting from a place of not being able to read at all and using it to navigate my way to literacy. It just throws you right into the deep end of the pool, swimming in pages of hard-to-navigate tables.

And then there are the moral parables. They're not exactly compelling and more than a little condescending. If you were someone who didn't get a primary school education, this seems like exactly the kind of book that might put you off of reading forever. It takes real conviction to use the book. It goes from basically, you know, pre-kindergarten to college inside of a few hundred, like maybe a hundred pages, you know, 250 pages. It is not something that you do. just pick up and all of a sudden you have mastery? No, it requires work.

And despite that fact, his blueback speller becomes something that is important. The same object, it's Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois for whom the blueback speller matters. There's something quintessentially American about the blueback speller. It becomes not only a way to learn to read, but actually a tool for entry into all kinds of arenas where they had not been contemplated. The Blueback Speller wasn't what it was because of the genius of Noah Webster.

It became what it became because of the people who read it. Who made something of it? A version of the story originally aired on his new show, a history of the United States and 100 objects. It was originally produced by Priscilla Alibi and aired courtesy of BBC Studios Productions Limited, 99% Evisible and Serious XM.

You can find the series in the 99% Invisible Feed wherever you get your podcast. Imani Perry tells the story of the Blueback Speller in a new book, Black and Blues. Which brings us to Act 5. Act 5, Jose Can You See? So one of the areas where this country can really claim to have invented a lot of things is music.

There's jazz, there's R&B, there's rock, there's country, there's hip-hop. All created here, and then export it around the world. But we do have some musical traditions that are very specific to this country and pretty much have stayed in this country. One of our producers, Emmanuel Jochi, has a story about one like that. So when I first moved to the U.S. as a kid, years before I became a citizen, I remember noticing this one very distinct thing, which is that every time I saw someone sing the national anthem,

they put their own little twist on it. And they always seem to do it in this one spot. It doesn't matter the genre of the singer is from And it doesn't matter if they sing the rest of the song fairly straight Like people will get to that last part of the song And do something completely different Sometimes they scat or add their own words They put them Mariah Carey because

Well, they are Mariah Carey. This happens so often I think most Americans have sort of accepted it as a fact But this sort of thing just doesn't go down like that in other countries. Like, if you take the UK where I was born, like that national anthem, I have no earthly idea why I would even begin to put my own spin on it. The ad-lipping thing is not really something British do to God save the king, right? Like, you just kind of wish King Charles a happy Victoria's life and you keep it pushing. But when I told some of my co-workers

that this American life about this, they were incredulous. Like, surely other countries play around with the end of their national lamphams. It's the end of a song, dude. Like, what else are you going to do? I heard all that, and I took it personally. So I set out to prove them wrong. I spoke to five musicologists about this at places like Stanford, Berkeley, U and Z.

And they all agreed with me. What American singers do at the end of a national anthem is something you really don't see much in other countries. And there are a bunch of reasons for that. Like, for one, Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to the Star-Spangled Banner, specifically chose a melody that's designed for showing off. This is very different from other national anthems, which are often marches or hymns.

The tune Scott Key picked came from a musicians club in England and was basically the equivalent of one of those songs you use at a talent show to show your incredible range and voice. In fact, that's why the song is so hard for most of us to sing. The original tune has this kind of, you can't sing with us energy. The other reason other countries don't improvise the way we do on their anthem is they don't have our tradition of improvised music. Like, we have jazz, blues, gospel, black music where it's built in that you don't always do

what's on the page. There's, you know, freedom or whatever. Individuality. Drew Gellington did his own version in the 1940s. A newly moved to the US, Igor Stravinsky, did one too. And yet, the first major recorded instance of vocalists got up at a sporting event and decided they were going to customize the Star-Spangled Banner and sing it their own way is relatively recent.

The consensus all points to one particular performance of the anthem in 1968. Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. Please rise and join in the singing of our national anthem. It was Game 5 of the World Series, and the guy who song, Jose Feliciano, was a big star. His cover of Light My Fire came. out that year. And Jose was chosen to do the national anthem that night, specifically because of who he was, a young Puerto Rican folk singer who could offer something different.

Feliciaana doesn't just alter that one line of the song. His version is a whole rethinking of it. It's almost like he's trying to do away with the grandeur of the song and do the opposite. Make it intimate. A recording Feliciano did of this version was super successful. He opened his concerts with it. And then, a year later, Jimmy Hendrix goes even further at Woodstock. Then a whole raft of people take these big swings. There's Marvin Gaye's 1983 version at the NBA All-Star game,

which sounds like it should come with a free waterbed. The inspiration for how everybody sings it now, that arrives in 1991. Whitney Houston at the Super Bowl. She slows the song down, changes it from three-four-time to four-four-time, which gives her more space. And she sings it mostly straight, until the end. And that last line, but I miss Whitney Houston. But yeah, that's how we get to today.

a ritual where you as a vocalist, no matter what your race, what your genre of music, you clock in, do the job you were hired for, sing the song through like they wrote it, and you get, you know, two phrases at the end

for some real personality. Now, I just want to play you one last version because this weekend, the 250th anniversary of this country, is probably one of the only appropriate sayings for it. This one is the most on-the-nose, general pattern in front of the American flag, these colours don't run. If you ain't first, you'll last, you can take this anthem from me out of my cold, dead fingers rendition of the

Star-Spangled banner I have yet heard. Because the occasion, I guess, called for it. It was the 100th birthday of the Statue of Liberty, 1986. And the singer was Sandy Patty. The National Anthem normally runs about two minutes. But Sandy, she makes it last for almost six. She adds all these extra verses that were written for the occasion and every time you think the song is about to end, there is more. I learned about this version in high school, in a music theory class because our teacher used it as the greatest example of key changes. We were still six months away from Beyonce's love on top.

But anyways, Sandy Paddy, she takes it higher and higher again and again and again It is totally ridiculous and yet kind of incredible Emmanuel Jochi Well, our program was produced today by Emmanuel Jochi Molly Marcello and me The people who put together today's show

include Fia Bennon, Damon Chivis, Cassie Halle, Adrian Lily, Sathlin, Miki Meeks, Don Nelson, Robin Reed Marissa Robertson Texter, Ryan Rumory, Alyssa Schip Christopher Sertala Our managing editor Sarah Abduraman Our senior editors David Kestimbao Special thanks today to Sean Collins Anna Gret Fouster Stephen Hinton

Nate Sloan, Nicholas Matthew, Mark Clegg, Jay Allison, Neil Drumming, Sage Miller, Angelica Bastion, Sierra Crayne Murdoch, Ashley C. Ford, Annie Brown, Charlie Lannon, Bonnie Bastion, Laura Ann Johnson, Scott Tucker, Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan Public, Sal Lacerro, and Kotild Johnson Beal. Thanks also today to this American life partners, Jonathan Teller, and Becky Weidman. Who are these life partners I speak of? They are people who have signed up to pay a little bit of money to help us do something very basic, which is to continue making our show. If that is a goal you support, I hope you'll consider joining them. Join us.

You get all kinds of perks. That's a thanks. Most notably, I think just the show continuing to exist. But also, we've been experimenting with all sorts of stuff. I've been writing a weekly newsletter for two weeks now. We'll see how long it goes. Go to this Americanlife.org slash life partners. That link is also in the show notes.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Tori Malatia. You know, recently he has learned what being ashy is. And I don't know, it's embarrassing. He keeps going up to strangers and asking.

Can I see your niece? I'm Arrow Glass. Back next week, with more stories of this American life.