What Was America? Katy Siegel and Elise Armani on the Bicentennial We Lost

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. We're already three months, after the two hundred and fiftieth celebrations of, the American Republic back in July. Seems a long time ago now. For some people, they're probably rather pleased it's gone. Others might miss it. Of course, these celebrations, whether it's the two hundred and fiftieth or the two hundredth, they're always, in their own way, nostalgic. We're always looking backwards, for better or worse. And today, we're talking with a couple of authors of an interesting new book that does indeed look backwards doubly in a sense. It's nostalgia about nostalgia. It's a book, cowritten by my two guests, Elise Armani and Katy Siegel, entitled What Was America? Art, Culture, and Politics in the Bicentennial Era, which many people, I think, in America, especially progressives, are rather nostalgic for. 1976, more than fifty years ago. And I'm joined by the two authors, Elise Armani and Katy Siegel. Elise, let me start with you. Why do this book? Were you yourself nostalgic for 1976?

00:01:50 Elise Armani: Nostalgic is perhaps not, the best way to put it, as I myself was not around in 1976. But, the book came out of, actually a sort of coincidental observation that Katy and I made in our individual research projects, which cross the, seventies in the US and, sort of starting to notice this odd reference to the bicentennial, not necessarily as a subject matter for artists, but, for some, a subject matter and for many in occasion for participating in exhibitions or receiving cultural funding. And so we became interested in the sort of structure of the bicentennial event as something that seemed to touch many, many artists in a way that we had never sort of read about or came across. And, investigating that realized, that it was quite an influential event in terms of touching the arts and cultural world and prompting a lot of artistic production. And so that was sort of the genesis as an investigation. And as we started looking, we just found more and more examples, which informed what's in the book.

00:03:04 Andrew Keen: Elise, I know you're a student of Katy. She's a distinguished professor at Stony Brook. So without wishing to sound too ageist, Katy, what do you remember about 1976?

00:03:17 Katy Siegel: Well, I was in fourth grade in 1976 and, dressed up with my brother as the Statue of Liberty, and he was in a tricorner hat. That was a Revere or some other colonial hero. The thing I remember most, was making a time capsule, which was a class project in fourth grade made out of a shoebox with 1976 written in glitter on the top of it. And I think the thing that— you know, while it was fun to write a project, and I think you're right, Andrew, in catching the tone of how much fun it was to do this book and how many people we got to speak to who had so many memories of the bicentennial. It was also incredibly serious. And I think, like Elise is saying, it's the scale was maybe— is maybe the most singular thing about the book. Art and the moment. Art people are nostalgic for the 1930s and the WPA, but it's really the bicentennial we discovered over the last five years that has the largest scale of artistic and cultural participation. 12,566 official bicentennial communities that the organizers estimate reached 85% of the American population. And there's nothing else in the United States that reaches that level of participation and engagement, especially around arts and culture today. So that was the headline for us.

00:04:43 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And, of course, the book is called, the subtitle of the book is Art, Culture, and Politics in the Bicentennial Era. Elise, I know you are a curator, actually, in— where do you— what's your museum that you curate?

00:05:06 Elise Armani: The Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska.

00:05:08 Andrew Keen: So you're in Omaha, Nebraska, and I am— Katy, I know you're a professor. You've written extensively on art and culture in this period. Are we particularly nostalgic, do you think, given the nature of America? There's so much pessimism, particularly amongst progressives. Is there a— in terms of picking this book up, I've been leafing through it just before this conversation. It strikes me on the one hand that fifty years is a long time ago in terms of art and representation and imagery. And on the other hand, what I'm struck with, at least with this book, is how much more positive America was in 1976, at least about itself in its inclusivity than it is today in 2026. Who wants to take those questions on?

00:06:03 Elise Armani: Well, I might just interject to say that, Katy is also a curator and has, curated many, many more things than I have. So, certainly also has a lot of work with, objects. But I think, yeah, I don't know if I guess this feels like a moment to remark on, something that we reflected on in finishing the book, in terms of considering this moment of 1976 in relation to the present is that, initially, when we started this book about five or six years ago, we thought that there were far more sort of parallels in terms of some of the energy of social unrest and, the contentious discourse over defining American history, that was playing out around 2020 and seemed to be quite similar to a lot of what was feeding into the bicentennial. And just for context, the planning of the bicentennial was something that, you know, really played out over a full decade in advance. But, of course, as we approach 2026, that sort of sense of parallels, really was, sort of fell apart, and we realized it was really far more of a sort of study in contrast, between '76 and the present. I don't know if, people were necessarily positive, but I think that there was more of a, belief in the sort of core ideals of— the core democratic ideals of the United States and more of a sense of agency in pushing the country to live up to those ideals. And I think that, the sort of general, that sense of agency that was sort of in part fostered by the mass participation feels like perhaps the biggest difference for me in terms of, what we've saw in terms— in '20— in relation to the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary being more of a sort of general withdrawal. And—

00:08:00 Andrew Keen: Katy, the subtitle of the book is, as I said, Art, Culture, and Politics in the Bicentennial Era. Of course, Gerald Ford was president, and we were only, what, three years out from Watergate and Nixon's humiliation, the fact that he almost got impeached, the first president to resign, very different from today, of course, in terms of that particular history, but it's not particularly glowing. So you might remind us about '76 in terms of how people thought about politics, particularly artists.

00:08:33 Katy Siegel: So I'd say we have to remember that, like Elise said, it's a decade in the works, and we could have called the book, you know, the Art, Culture, and Politics of the US Bicentennial, and we wanted to tack "era" onto the title to make it clear it's ten years. So the Bicentennial and the NEA start in the same year, and a lot of the policy making, as well as the institutional work done in the nineteen sixties that we think of as foundational to the arts and culture today was begun in parallel, but also intertwined with the bicentennial as the impetus for, emphasis on, American culture. So it's not just Ford. It's not just Nixon. So it's LBJ, then Nixon, and then, Ford. And so it encompasses three periods of political zeitgeist, if you wanna call it that, in the US. The first one is LBJ and the Great Society and the feeling that there's finally enough affluence in the United States to provide the Jeffersonian pursuit of happiness, the good life, for working and middle-class people, and that's quite explicit. And it's, you know, public parks, public education, art and cultural programs for everyone. And then comes Nixon, another imperial president parallel to, you know, King Donald, and, he doesn't care about art and culture, and he is someone who wants to run everything and have the bicentennial be centralized. But almost immediately, he realizes that there's too much distrust of the federal government for a centralized bicentennial. But he has a— there's a real difference between him and Trump even though there are so many parallels. He wants to outdo Kennedy in making America the beacon of art and culture around the world, not only for our quality of life domestically, but for international reputation, Trump wants to undo Obama, his own better looking, more popular nemesis. So, yeah. That's a really strong difference. And Ford comes along, and he just sees things through in a way. He does oversee the peak between Ford and Carter, the peak of the NEA, you know, together with the celebration of the bicentennial. And so in that sense, it's really great for artists. Artists are protesting. They are challenging American, narratives about history, about who is American, what is America, when does the history start for native, artists and activists. But it's an— it's a moment of incredible growth for the arts and culture and not just visual arts, but symphonies, theaters, opera, folk art, all of it.

00:11:18 Andrew Keen: Right. It was a great period, of course, for the Kennedy Center, which the current administration has either— it depends when you look at the news. Either they're trying to close it—

00:11:30 Katy Siegel: Yes.

00:11:31 Andrew Keen: Or undermine it. Given, Katy, as you said, you weren't around or as you certainly don't remember 1976. What's your take on the difference in the politics between then and now, particularly within the artistic community? Sorry, Elise. I was—

00:11:53 Elise Armani: Oh, oh, sure. You know, I think, one of the striking differences is the degree to which, many of the artists were engaging, with politics, not just in terms of representation, but also, you know, playing, active roles in terms of, advocating for policy, whether as activists, but also, in governmental roles. This is more, this was a focus of one of Katy's chapters. So I imagine maybe you'll wanna add to this, but Benny Andrews, who we begin with, in our first chapter, was an artist who, both created a incredibly prolific suite of, paintings that were focused on the bicentennial, but also later went on to serve in a leadership role in the NEA. And so, there is, a bit more of this back and forth between engaging with representing politics and considering, you know, the role of the artist in sort of world making in a— in art making sense, but also world making in a way of, engaging with, sort of truly on the ground, policy making and activism both inside and outside of liberal institutions. So—

00:13:03 Andrew Keen: Katy, Elise has mentioned Benny Andrews. As she notes, he's front and center of the book. You begin with him. I was browsing through it. I have to admit I'm not particularly familiar with his work. Is there a danger of him or some of the other artists in your book in '7— in 1976 sort of falling into kind of agitprop where they're ideological artists promoting a certain vision of America, certainly focusing on much of the political debates of the period, the culture wars on race, on identity, on sexuality?

00:13:41 Katy Siegel: So I would say, first of all, those are real problems, and there are—

00:13:41 Andrew Keen: No. I'm not suggesting they're not. That— I certainly didn't say that.

00:13:50 Katy Siegel: But there's— but there, you know, there are no bigger problems, no bigger subjects than Benny Andrews realizes in 1969. He's following along with the planning for the bicentennial in New York Times, on the news, and he realizes it's gonna be the biggest event of the period nationally. And he thinks there's not gonna be a role for black Americans, that it's going to be, you know, all different flavors of what white America has been up to for two hundred years, but just a little slice of a sort of stereotyped black America. So rather than far from narrowing down on a single one-note kind of message, he's trying to broaden and make a panorama. And some of these paintings are [unclear: up] to 40 feet wide, which is just an incredible artistic accomplishment. I think it's important to remember he's a political person, but he is also at the same time an incredible artist.

00:14:43 Andrew Keen: Mhmm.

00:14:43 Katy Siegel: And so there are not only large works, but many works. 250 works in total in a six-part cycle, including the work on the cover of the book. And he sees this critique. And there are other artists in the book who are much more directly making art, poster art, graphic art that is directly message-focused. Benny Andrews is a man with a giant imagination, a giant vision, and to him, the critique of America is the most patriotic thing you can do. He sees himself as a patriot because he is incredibly engaged with the question of what does it mean to be an American and what is America today?

00:15:24 Andrew Keen: What's, I'm curious. It's probably my own ignorance of contemporary American art. But what's Andrews's reputation now? Has it changed in the last fifty years?

00:15:36 Katy Siegel: Yes. I think, you know, art— and I'm not sure how much, you know, your viewers and listeners are engaged in the inside of baseball of the art world, but fashions come and go, and there have been, you know, abstraction has dominated, you know, much of the last, however many, decades after World War II. And Benny Andrews, you know, faded from fashion. He also wasn't someone who was obsessed with his career, but he has had a very, very much a revival in— of interest in the last decade. And I would also say, other artists never stopped admiring him and knowing about him. So sometimes, curators, critics, collectors are the last to know in the— out of the loop. So I think he is, at this moment, seen as a very important figure in, like, twentieth-century art.

00:16:29 Andrew Keen: Elise, my wife is a big quilter, both in terms of doing the quilting and collecting quilts. There's a lot in the book on quilting. You talk about the people's bicentennial quilt. I know that there were some quilts featuring Harriet Powers and other more contemporary quilters, painters like Faith Ringgold. Is— or was quilting perhaps symbolic of '7— of 1976, perhaps in contrast to 2026? Where do you see the role of quilting in the bicentennial?

00:17:09 Elise Armani: Yeah. Yes. I think to answer your question directly, yes, certainly, it was symbolic. The quilts, sort of became the center— the central chapter of the book because of its metaphor, sort of significance within the bicentennial. In this period, of the seventies, you know, the planning of the bicentennial, maybe coincidentally, but also coming from a lot of the same sort of ethos of looking towards, history. It coincided with, resurgence of interest in quilting, both among artists who, you know, artists and, who were engaged with sort of seeking out feminist and matrilineal, traditions of making, looked to quilts for inspiration. And so we see, artists sort of moving through the contemporary art world at that moment who are engaging with motifs from quilting, but also there was mass interest in reviving quilting practices as a hobby and also collecting quilting, and understanding quilts, from a scholarly perspective as a historical document that, primarily, came from working-class and women, creators. But within bicentennial planning, the quilt also became a metaphor for the nation and this notion that, the sort of, collective tapestry was strengthened by the diversity of its pieces with their individual histories. And so, this both was, metaphorically, representative of the diffuse structure of the bicentennial, that it was not a centralized, you know, DC-based event, but rather many thousands of events all over the country, but also a shift in how national history was being, narrated on a national level around the bicentennial to really, engage with, immigrant history and to understand that there's not sort of one central linear narrative of what it is to be American or have an American history, but rather, again, a sort of collective presence of many different threads that come together to sort of weave this, plural history. So, the quilt becomes, an object that is referenced a lot in how the bicentennial is being conceptualized.

00:19:20 Andrew Keen: Elise, I'm not convinced that the culture wars in America have changed that dramatically over the last fifty years. There's still half of America who seem to think one thing and the other half that think something quite different. Back in 1976, it seems as if it was the progressives who perhaps had more power than the conservatives when it comes to when it came to these celebrations. Today in 2026, it seems to be the reverse. Were there people— was there a significant community back in 1976 who would be arguing that quilting and inclusivity and all this identity politics has nothing to do with America? In other words, were there a lot of Americans who switched off, or did they all embrace it?

00:20:09 Elise Armani: I think it's, I guess, you know, it feels much less binary than right now in the sense that I think there were people that were quilting in an incredibly— you know, the quilt that's in the book is— was made by a group of women in Northern California who were engaged with, everything from the sort of basic environmental movement to, improving carceral conditions. And, certainly, I think it would be fair to characterize them as largely leftist, but, also, I think people like, you know, Daughters of the American Revolution were also into quilting. Like, I think quilts, for example, were something that really ran the gamut, and it was more, if anything, of perhaps as an anti-technological backlash and a sort of, uncertainty about the future and the massification of culture and mass production that turns people towards craft than any kind of specific political inclination. And I think in that way, a lot of the aspects of the bicentennial and also the sort of founding tenets of the US took on different political tenors depending on how they were being— who they were being engaged by and how, but it wasn't a sort of switching off of participation or on. I don't know. Katy, do you feel that—

00:21:16 Andrew Keen: Okay. Katy, let me move on. There's so much to discuss. It's such an interesting conversation, such an interesting subject, such a wonderful book, by the way. You've both done a great job with it. Artists, of course, are supposed to look into the future. They're not supposed to be nostalgic. I mean, good artists, I'm guessing, and you I'm assuming you would agree with that. In 1976, America was on the brink of dramatic change and even invented the Internet yet. That was the Reagan revolution, if that's the right word— way of putting it. I know one of the photographs you feature in the book is Richard Avedon's, photo of Ronald Reagan. To what extent, Katy, were a lot of the artists and cultural figures in your book in 1976 a little fearful, nervous of the future? Did some of them understand what was about to happen, the destruction of, old— the old New Deal America, the replacement of the market, greed is good, Reaganomics, neoliberalism, and all the rest of it?

00:22:27 Katy Siegel: Well, none of them were psychic. But first, I have to make a small, correction, which is that the bicentennial is the first— actually, the first time the Internet is really used—

00:22:38 Andrew Keen: Mhmm.

00:22:38 Katy Siegel: To centralize a widespread grassroots regional American project, and BINET was the name for the bicentennial Internet, and it allowed the 12,566 communities to, go to any regional office and look up and see what was happening all over the country. So there's a lot of technology and a lot of data that pops up.

00:23:03 Andrew Keen: That's an important correction, although— and I take your point. On the other hand, in 1976, of course, there was no World Wide Web.

00:23:10 Katy Siegel: Sure.

00:23:11 Andrew Keen: There was barely a personal computer. So ordinary people didn't have access to the Internet. So it would have been something that maybe people in universities or large institutions might have had access to. But for the rest of us, it didn't exist.

00:23:24 Katy Siegel: It's really the beginning of home computing for hackers and DIY people doing it themselves. [unclear: Mike Magazine has Tom Kane], you know, on the cover for 1976. And ordinary people could go and touch a computer and access, the connective web of, if not officially, www, the web of information, for the bicentennial. But that's one point. I think in terms of looking to the future, it is a moment when the future was really cloudy in the crystal ball. No one could have predicted Reagan, although Reagan almost won in 1976, and we could have had him four years earlier, if Ford hadn't squeaked out a victory. And he gives a speech, actually, at the Republican convention that really, is prescient in a lot of ways of what would come in the nineteen eighties. But I don't think anyone would have predicted it because the bicen— the NEA was still rising its budget, which Nixon increased by eightfold, and it didn't really peak, until the late seventies. And Reagan wanted to cut it his first year in office, but couldn't manage to. It was too popular, in Congress. And so that stuff, happened a little bit later. But that narrative, which is, again, a little bit binary of, you know, malaise to morning in America, you know, Carter to Reagan, I think, no one could have seen it, but people did feel the beginning of it, and the future became hard to see. And, like, that's the reason we end, with the final chapter on time capsules, you know, and people trying to imagine, especially artists, Ant Farm Collective and others, trying to imagine of what the future would look like and really struggling with it.

00:25:12 Andrew Keen: Elise, the future, though, is always hard to see. It doesn't matter when you're living, 1776, 1876, 1976, 2076. Do you think, though, with all this new technology, with the birth of the Internet in seventeen— in 1976, now with AI, that technology has made it even harder for the creative community, for artists to figure out the future and think about America?

00:25:40 Elise Armani: I think that, certainly, you're correct that it's always hard to think about the— to see and envision the future or think about the future with any degree of certainty, but I do think that the, things like the trend of creating time capsules, for example, which, you know, there were, conservatively estimated, like, nearly 3,000 that were created for the bicentennial, probably many more. But it does underline the way in which, in relation to the very concrete, detailed material ways people were engaging with all kinds of history in the bicentennial, the sort of, strangeness of trying to contend with the future. I think there is a sense that came through in researching for that final chapter in writing it, that there was perhaps a heightened sense of fear around the uncertainty of the future in the seventies that does feel very, familiar right now and, you know, that led to things like Alvin Toffler writing Future Shock, which is something that we touch on briefly, and the very fantastical ways in which people imagined, extreme possibilities for what could happen within just the next twenty-five years. And, of course, the vast majority of those things were, very far off. But, it feels a bit similar to right now and the ways in which people are, hypothesizing the consequences of AI, in vastly different ways and ways that are sort of hard to wrap your head around. And I don't know.

00:27:02 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And I know one of the interesting sections of the book was on the environment, photography of the environment. Obviously, that was something that was about to become a huge issue or was probably already one. Katy, in terms of the time capsules, what did we— or what did Americans get wrong? What are the most absurd, misunderstandings or mispredictions of the future that you discovered?

00:27:32 Katy Siegel: I think— and I— this is Elise's chapter, so I kind of wanna—

00:27:36 Andrew Keen: Okay. Well, maybe go back to Elise if you want.

00:27:41 Elise Armani: Wow. What were— what— some of the more absurd. You know, honestly, some of the things that seemed perhaps far-fetched at the time, for example, one of the— there was a classroom of students whose [unclear] time capsules that we quote, and they were talking about, the idea that there would be no pens and pencils and students would be taught by computers. Of course, it's actually fairly accurate, of a prediction. Others like, this sort of, quiet fear articulated by one person that perhaps by 2000, there wouldn't have been a woman president, are, you know, of course, they were accurate in that way too. But there's also things about, you know, colonizing space, about waking up and being dressed by a robot.

00:28:27 Andrew Keen: Guess the space stuff given the moon landing and—

00:28:30 Elise Armani: Sure. The Golden Record is something that, you know, is part of this sort of, message to the future, time capsule ethos of this moment as well. A lot about space. That was certainly, one sort of technological area of consequence on people's minds.

00:28:46 Katy Siegel: And also because of, like, today, because of the oil shortage of 1973–74, the crisis, people— even then where NASA turned towards geological, spelunking and looking to the moon and Mars for natural resources, much like today.

00:29:03 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Maybe Elon Musk read your book or he put a time capsule together.

00:29:09 Katy Siegel: He's a lot. Yeah.

00:29:09 Andrew Keen: One of— the photograph, I think, there are lots of great photos in the book too. One— the photograph that really caught, my eye in the book is, Stanley Forman's the so— The Soiling of Old Glory, which was a photograph in 1976 of a white man with an American flag in Boston, attacking a black activist. It, of course, brings to mind the demonstrators, if that's the right word, the ins— the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021 bringing their Confederate flags into the White House [ed.: the Capitol]. How do those more overt political photos like The Soiling of Old Glory, Katy now look to us? Do they seem in an odd way even more familiar?

00:30:04 Katy Siegel: I think that— and there's recently a fantastic book that really focused on this photograph. And again, I think some people feel— may feel nostalgia for this period, and we got a lot of the warm, fuzzy interactions with the hundreds of people we talked to about the book. But there is also that issue of photographs like this one that say, how far have we come? You know, there hasn't been a woman president. We're still— this is very much a January 6 photo. Are we still, you know, in the same place in any— in some ways? Even though, as you say, fifty years seems like a long time ago. And from a bird's-eye view of history, it's the blink of an eye, and how much progress have we made. And I think one of the questions that historians like Heather Richardson, Jill Lepore, and others are asking is, you know, how much of America is gen— genetic and foundational and recurs over and over again, not just from fifty years ago, but from two hundred years ago, longer if you ask a native or indigenous historian. And, sort of does— do things change or don't—

00:31:14 Andrew Keen: What do you think? I mean, you're the ones who put the book together.

00:31:18 Katy Siegel: I think that we are wrestling with many of the same questions, that we were in 1976. So we've named them social unrest in— imperial president. The question of what is history, who is American, I think there are a lot of lessons in the book about how we might deal with those questions more freely. The only reason to write history is because it helps us in the present. It's not a vegetable. It's not good for you. It's supposed to be a tool, and I think, this demonstrates that there's a different way to do things, open forums, town halls for Americans, not just left and right, but of all kinds coming together to debate the central issue— issues of the day, immigration, race, school busing, the environment. This is something that ordinary people felt engaged in, felt agency around, and that is something that has really disappeared along with a living wage over the last fifty years.

00:32:21 Andrew Keen: Elise, do you wanna add something there? You're of a slightly younger generation. Do you feel almost envious of the generation of 1976 that they had all this, at least in Katy's view, good stuff, that America hasn't progressed over the last fifty years? If anything, it's taken a step backwards. Although, of course, that does depend on a particular kind of historiographical narrative that thinks of America as a model of progress, maybe borrowing from Martin Luther King's vision of history.

00:32:56 Elise Armani: Yeah. You know, I think, one of the things that I feel some sense of envy or perhaps nostalgia for is, the way in which I think that agency that Katy was mentioning and that we've touched on was enabled by, you know, structural differences and how people live their lives in terms of making a living wage and having time and capacity to sort of engage— both work a full-time job, be able to perhaps buy a house, and also engage civically. And part of that is maybe the absence of some things that are, that suck up a lot of time now, like social media. But also, I think, you know, artists being able to engage politically, in part stemmed from artists being able to make enough money to live working, perhaps part time in some kind of, you know, whether, I mean, artists did all kinds of things. But even if not making enough money from their art, that there were jobs available that enabled a person to have time left over to engage with these questions and engage with this— with their communities. And I think that sense of, having an inroad to participate in shaping things is something that feels foreign to my, experience. And, hopefully, this inspires people to seek out or create those inroads, but I also think much of that is structural conditions that are beyond one person's sort of, ambitions to change things and are more about, being able to both do what you need to do to survive and also have capacity to participate in these conversations.

00:34:28 Andrew Keen: Yeah. The perennial issue in America of agency, it's a country that prides itself on enabling individual agency, but it seems to be what you guys are seeing is that what was America was a place of more agency. Finally, for the two of you as, I'm gonna say we look forward to 2076, but as we begin to think of the next anniversary, the three hundredth year anniversary, we can't, of course, predict what America will be like in 2076. But what is your book? What has your book taught you about making sense of the future? Katy, let me begin with you very briefly and then end with Elise.

00:35:08 Katy Siegel: So the— I mean, that we make the future, that history is never written. It's like a baseball game. You've actually don't know the outcome, and so much is rigged in the United States as elsewhere. Under global capitalism, the house always wins. And there's a sense with history, we really don't know the outcome. And studying this period made us realize it's not just individuals. The book is— certainly has that, but it's really communities organizing together, both to demand things from the government and to make things for themselves. And I think that's the big lesson for the future that it remains to be seen.

00:35:44 Andrew Keen: It remains to be seen. Elise, [unclear] to end. What else would you add?

00:35:50 Elise Armani: Oh, what to add to that? I mean, I think, you know, on a less, optimistic note, we noodled about the title for perhaps the whole process of writing this—

00:36:01 Andrew Keen: I love the title, though. What Was America? I think it's excellent.

00:36:05 Elise Armani: Well, we feared initially that perhaps it was a bit too cynical or negative for what— for a book that, you know, as Katy mentioned, it was— a lot of it was quite fun to research and write, and it's, you know— as I was reading it in a coffee shop yesterday, and someone asked me if it was depressing based on the title. So, hopefully, it's not all depressing. But I will say that the, retrospective frame of What Was America, felt increasingly accurate as we wrote it. And I think that the question of what will America be in 2076 is, contingent on the continued existence of America as we know it, and that feels, very at stake at the moment. So it's hard.

00:36:46 Andrew Keen: We know that one thing we've learned on this show is historians always make the best futurists, and, Elise Armani and Katy Siegel are both cultural historians, curators, thinkers about both the past, the present, and the future. Their new book, it's a Yale University book. It's beautifully put together. What Was America? Art, Culture, and Politics in the Bicentennial Era. It's out this week. So, Elise and Katy, thank you so much. That was really good, and congratulations on the book.

00:37:13 Katy Siegel: Thank you so much, Andrew.