The Stuff of America

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC. So did you see the piece in New York Times Opinion by photographer and creative director Emily Keegan? She assembled a collection of 25 everyday objects that add up to an answer to the question, who are we? Meaning, what would you put in your Museum of America? Her piece was called Welcome to My Museum of America.
Emily, welcome to WNYC. Oh, I think, did I misidentify you as a photographer? You're photo editor, right? And creative director at the time. So just to give you an exact right title and, well, you want to start with Crest Whitestrips?

**Emily Keegin** (1:03)
Sure. Yeah.
This project was fantastic to think about, how can we define ourselves and looking at the things that we hold close and looking at them deeply and to see if we can uncover within those objects pieces of the American spirit. And Crest Whitestrips, do you use them, Brian? Are you a fan?

**Brian Lehrer** (1:29)
No, I've never actually used one of those strips, but I'm not a critic. I just haven't run into them.

**Emily Keegin** (1:38)
Well, I felt like this was a part of the American spirit that I, myself, use, but Americans are very smiley.
We smile big. We care a lot about our teeth. And actually, if you just take a look at photographs of our leaders around the world, they often pose with other leaders from other countries. And you'll notice that our presidents have a tendency to smile big. It's a part of our personality is kind of warm and inviting. And so for me, Crest Whitestrips said something about not just who we are as individuals, but might be who we are as a country as a whole.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:29)
And you have the red Solo Cup, Bottomless Baskets of Chips and Salsa.
You have a $4.99 Costco Rotisserie Chicken. I'm going to read a few that are coming in from listeners. A cardboard box from Amazon, Twinkies, ice cubes, shackles, AR-15 assault rifles, Indian arrowheads, The Constitution, The Banjo, a film of the musical Hamilton, an Oscar statuette, a gun. That's another one with a gun. Model T card changed everything. A Big Mac. What else? I'd include a velvet Elvis, writes one listener, the perfect encapsulation of the beauty of American tackiness.
Consistent with where you were going, some of those things?

**Emily Keegin** (3:24)
I think so. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that thinking about who we are as a country is really thinking about a country that's a big contradiction. We place a lot of value and moral virtue in nature and also plastic and technology. Anytime we plant a flag as to who we are and try to divine ourselves, you can very easily pick up a history book and find the exact opposite to be true and also valid. Sometimes in some of these objects, if we really scratch the surface, we find that contradiction of things exists within them. Like, for example, the Tiffany lamps that we have in our pizza parlors.
They are fancy and they are meant to indicate something regal or something high art. And they are also low. They are for every man. They are for pizza. And so we always are kind of in this high and low space as a nation.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:48)
More from our text messages. The original COVID vaccine card. It assumed we would only need two doses. Hellman's mayonnaise, Union and Confederate Civil War caps, gigantic double roll of paper towels, 7-Eleven Big Gulp.
Yeah. So those are those that just came in. Let's take a caller with one. Pierre and Hawthorne, you're on WNYC. Hi, Pierre.
Hey, Brian. How are you? Good. What you got? I've got a crockpot.

**SPEAKER_3** (5:22)
I think crockpot is very, very, it opens the gateway of Americana. You've got casseroles that you've got things that just sit there for hours.
I don't think that's very akin to people in other countries.

**Brian Lehrer** (5:36)
Crockpots and you could add crackpots. But thank you for that. Josh in Greenpoint, you're on WNYC. Hi, Josh.

**SPEAKER_3** (5:46)
The number two pencil.
Think about it. Every student is given a number two pencil. They go in, they take a standardized test. There's the promise that you can go to any college you want, become anything you want, and the number two pencil makes that all happen.

**Brian Lehrer** (6:01)
Thank you very much. Stephanie in Atlanta, you're on WNYC. Did I say your name right? Hi there.

**SPEAKER_3** (6:09)
Kind of, Stata Mealy with an H sound. But very close, Brian, very good.
My artifact would be an artifact of lynching, either lynching tree or one of the other artifacts we have, the remaining photographs, et cetera, because to me, it really represents the violence that is at the fabric of this nation and the violence and the fear that is tried to instill in the African-American black experience in America.