890: Maximal Americanness

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, thisamericanlife.org. When he's done his 20s and his years ago, the public toy started appearing on TV talking about sports. Talking about something that now is kind of embarrassed about. I was a gas bag on USPN, 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, 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 to the refs below this, what's 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. We have the technology, if you replace the referee or the umpire with a robot, we don't need a way star time arguing about this dumb shit. And so that became your stance, became a thing I was known for was calling for this robot referee revolution, like, the guy won't shut about these robots, it wins his now when he thinks about it, anyhow, years go on and then finally, in 2021, I see, this storybreak 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 hulk eye cameras with optical tracking, they looked out of a 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 umpire, just what the fans and players know, with the robot said, "Papa got what he always dreamed of, what he always pontificated about, there's no more need to argue about the umpire's calls, no more reason to boo the umpire from the stance." And, Papa, watch those games? It wasn't, it wasn't as good, 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. Papa says that watching the minor league games, knowing that the human umpire was just the messenger for the robot umpire, and it's perfect calls of balls and strikes. It felt like the equivalent of talking to a customer service wrap that you know isn't a person. It's like I get that you're making human noises, but it's, it's eerie. And then realizing, oh no, no, I want, 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 umpire has arrived in the major leagues. The ABS system, I'm going to do every major league baseball park, and every game in those parks has used that technology. And the problem, the probable head 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. Now 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. Because except now there's 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 jumbo tron, 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 satisfying that can be for fans, this is a game in Cincinnati and March. It's the Reds versus the Boston Red Sox. This is only three days after they started doing these challenges. Ryan Watson is pitching for Boston and this is actually his very first game pitching major week baseball. And then in the sixth inning, Boston is behind five to three. Cincinnati is a bat. Bases are loaded. They have two outs. A red at every base with two down. A player named Eugenio Suarez is a bat and 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. And what you see is that the batter taps his helmet, which is the signal for I initiate a challenge. I'm taking this to the court of appeals. And immediately on the jump out from 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 team mobile. This was not a strike. It was a ball. And the umpire in other words, has messed up the people. 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 CV Buckner, the umpire. Look, it sports you dream. As a sports fan, you dream of stuff like this. You any of you as far as then hit the ball, most tagged out of first, but the red's one. And most eye-opening, the umpire CB Buckner had six of his calls overturned by the robot umpire of that game that had never happened before in the major leagues. Papa points out, major league baseball could have gotten rid of the umpire plate entirely, the way the government of line judges in tennis. They could have chosen perfect robot umpiring, perfect calls, balls and strikes, like a gas bag about the years ago. And 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 your 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. Right 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 Colosseum 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 do. 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. We also want to scream at somebody Hard time to think about what's going on in national politics. Let me put it that way Today on our show for our July 4th semi-Quincentennial, and yes, I had to look that word up, which means 250th According to the internet actually an alternative word for this is cester centennial But that just sounds like a very old none 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 seem 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 the WB easy Chicago. It's this American life. I'm our boss Stay with us It's his American life our semi-Quincentennial episode where that really does not roll off the tongue Act one a most American question So there definitely are 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? What if I can tribute his giant 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 ultimatum 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 a 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 This 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 since not 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 washed my mother closely, I was certain I would never rate the script like that I Spat the next several years irritated with are you okay 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 it is even a waste of words to me As I saw it then The questions hollowness had a distinctly American quality Here, pleases, thank you, excuse me Wasn't they always uttered at nauseam from mouths of people who had already muscled past you? Are you okay 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 are you okay 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 an 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 and 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 the stranger still comes to me sometimes It arrives most vividly Unbidden when I'm with friends or mothers Watching their kids on the neighborhood playground A scrape on the knee with the elbow The wound still read an angry And someone a mother a friend administers the question And there on the child's open mouth and tears smear 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 Adore held open Jiong fan she's deffreader at the New Yorker that story was produced by Diane will Actu 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 If you've to coincide has a story about that very American quality as it plays out And one of our shared public spaces I went to sleep beanbare dunes national lake shore 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 try to write 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 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 Um, so it's very challenging But yeah, I think the views best at the top Approximately eight feet away from Jen since 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 God. Just love it. Yeah. Wow. 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. So, 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 part-rangers, say not to do it." And yet you guys thought, "We drove a thousand miles to get here, so yes, we're gonna do it." Yeah. And you're not worried about going back up. No. She placed on her and I trained with her, so we're ready to go. We're supposed to race back up it. Half an hour later, I found Michael again. Only about a third of the way up. How are you feeling? Oh, hopefully I'll 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? Tire, humbling. 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. 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. 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 bare crawling up it. How are you feeling? I'm like death. I noticed that you are on your hands and knees. Yeah. We're really rethinking life choices right now. I'm just tired. We're halfway there yet. I don't think we're halfway there yet. That's a bitch. Are you in vacation? Why would you spend your vacation doing something so punishing? Is your life not hard enough? It hurts. I hurt my ass off all the time. It's just another day in the life. Good bye. 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, scampored like water beetles on top of the sand up to the ridge, and then had the pleasure of watching the adults who usually boss them around. Huff and Puff, 300 feet below them. I met an 11-year-old and his little brother waiting for their parents. You're five and you went all the way to the bottom? Yeah, to the water. And then we go to all the way to the top. I mean, he's faster than our whole family. Wow. He doesn't even have cap needs yet, so I. What is that true? I thought you got knees when you were like, good walk. Um, no, you know your kneecaps? Yeah, you get them when you're 10. Makes it harder to climb. What? Like this? Your kneecap. You get them when you're 10? Yeah, actually. Yeah. Can I see your knees? They look the same. It's the inside kneecap. Huh. I walk over to Jim 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 uh, 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. In different to our plate below. I gave it a cornfield. It's one of the producers of our program. The story was co-produced by Mowing Marcelo. 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 just going to go up a radio when our program continues. It's this American life from our 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've 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 of 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. That's Survivor. Classic show. We all know it. And so the season of Survivor I wanted to talk about is what me other Survivor fans call 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. Oh, then not my place 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 seem kind of confused by it. They're like, why did we make this about race? Different ethnic groups. I mean, is that kosher? I honestly was stunned. I think this is crazy. 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 play out to characters 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, I 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, you know, get on a raft and go to shore with you to do it. They've been giving two minutes to salvage whatever they can off this boat. And just 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 can't help but notice that it was the white tribe that stole the chicken from the Asian tribe. And 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 buy. 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? What's on 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-saggregated, the race thing is sort of still hanging over the whole thing. And then there's this twist that happens. It's right before challenge. And the two tribes have gathered. And Jeff says, we're gonna 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. (laughing) Because what it does is it totally creates these two lopsided tribes. So there's one tribe before 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 gonna like win any challenges. And what happens actually is kind of the exact opposite. So the little tribe before, which is the, they call them the I-24, the little POC 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, oh, gotta be twice as good, right? It's all of 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. 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 out 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, surprise. - Yeah, thanks a lot. - And then, 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 fricking island in the middle of the South Pacific. (upbeat music) Manuel Barry, this is a good idea of our program. (upbeat music) At four, the most American schoolbook. 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 gonna 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 tape rain 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 six 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 spoon the word color with a U. 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 a money pairing, author and professor of African American studies at Harvard University. And he complains about the classroom to 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 Blueback Speller. So he really creates this book that is built for an auto-diad act. 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 works. 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, C, and D. 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've been nice, though that one didn't stick. But his larger idea does succeed. This book, The Blueback Speller, becomes one of the most important books in early America. Entire generations grow up with it. At one point, The Blueback Speller was second only to the Bible and copy-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 its pocket size. I mean, it was small enough to fit into a jacket pocket or a pants pocket. It was mobile. Yeah, and it could be hidden. It could easily be hidden, which is really important. Important because it means the book could be used secretly by people who weren't supposed to have it. enslaved 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 was enslaved could put you at enormous risk of naming a 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 Blueback Speller. It insists upon becoming part of the literate American public. And one of the early ways we see this is black soldiers in the Civil War who become literate and immediately begin writing letters to Lincoln saying not only they hope for land with their freedom, but there have to be schools. The Blueback Speller found its way from shipyard to town square, from the school houses of New England to the plantations of the south, and when I actually got my hands on it, but 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 Blueback Speller, it would be hard, and it can't imagine starting from a place of not being able to read it 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 pre-kindergarten to college inside of a few, like maybe a hundred pages, I'll see. It is not something that you just pick up, and all of a sudden you have mastery. No, it's quite 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 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, an aired courtesy of BBC Studios Productions limited, 99% of visible and serious XM. You can find the series in the 99% of visible feed, wherever you get your podcasts. Manny 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 exported 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 US 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 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. And sometimes they scare or add their own words. People are Mariah Carey because, well, they are Mariah Carey. What's happened 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 libbing thing is not really something British do to go save the king, right? You just gotta wish King Charles a happy victorious 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 life films. It's the end of a song dude, like what else are you gonna do? I heard all that, and I took it personally. So I set out to prove and roll. I spoke to five musicologists about this, at places like Stanford, Berkeley, UNC. 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 Gorky 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 musician's 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 built in that you don't always do what's on the page. There's, you know, freedom or whatever. Individuality. Duke Ellington 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 vocalist 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 a World Series and the guy who sung, Jose Feliciano, was a big star. His cover of "Like 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. Feliciano 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. And a whole raft of people take these big swings. There's Marvin Gaye's 1983 version at the NBA All-Star Game. Sounds like it should come with a free water bed. 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 times to four, four times, which gives her more space. And she thinks it, mostly straight, until the end, in that last line. But yeah, that's how we get to today. A ritual where you use 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, it's probably one of the only appropriate things for it. This one is the most on the nose, general pattern in front of the American flag. These colors don't run, you ain't first your last, you can take this and 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 Pattie. But National Anthem normally runs about two minutes. But Sandy, she makes it last for almost 6. She adds all these extroverses that were written for the occasion, and every time you think the song is about to end, there is more. I don't know about this version in high school, in a music theory class, because our teacher used it as the greatest example of key changes. She was still 6 months away from Beyonce's love on top. But anyways, Sandy Paddy, she takes it higher and higher, again, and again, and again, and again, it is totally ridiculous, and yet kind of incredible. Man, you're just a man. You've got to make the world go round, you've got to make the world go round, you've got to make the world go round, you've got to make the world go round. Well, a program was produced today by Emmanuel Jochi, Maui Marcelo, and me. The people who put together today's show include Fia Venand in Achivas, Cassie Halley, Adrian Willie Sathlin, Miki Meeks, Don Nelson, Robin Reed, Marissa Robertson, Texter, Ryan Rummery, Alyssa Ship, Christopher Sartalla, our Managing Editor, Sara Abduraman, our Senior Editor, David Kestinbaum. Special thanks today to Sean Collins, and a great fowlster, Stephen Hinton, Nate Sloan, Nicholas Matthew, Mark McCleig, Jay Allison, Neil Drumming, Sage Miller, Angelica Bastien, Sierra Crane Murdock, Ashley C Ford, Annie Brown, Charlie Lannon, Bonnie Bastien, Laura, Ann Johnson, Scott Tucker, Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan Public, Sal Wasero, and Clotild Johnson Beale. Thanks also today to this American Life Partners, Jonathan Teller, Becky Leibman, 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, as a thanks. Most notably, I think just the show continuing to exist. And 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 thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners. 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, doorbell comes co-founder, Mr. Toy Manitia, you know, recently his learned what being Ash he is. And I don't know, it's embarrassing. He keeps going up to strangers and asking. Nice to see your niece. I'm Eric Glass. Back next week was more stories with Theamerican Life.