The Daily - The Most American Episode of The Daily_ Ever

0:05From the New York Times, I'm Michael Balbaro. This is The Daily on Sunday. Today, in celebration of America's 250th birthday, we posed a simple question to some of our favorite colleagues from across the newsroom. People who write about books, movies, TV shows, science, sports, wellness, food. We asked them all, what is the most American thing?

0:37on your beat. Some of their answers will surprise you. I would say that the TV show that most encapsulates America for me is CBS's survivor. Some might make you angry. There's no better choice than Grand Theft Auto. Some might make you think a little bit differently. All of these urgent issues are tied to the American fixation on parking our cars. But they're all in their own way. Extremely.

1:06American. There will be blood. August Wilson's century cycle. Demolition derby. How do you capture America? How do you determine the most American book? It's a trap. It's a trap. The M&M. Get out. Bama Rush. Randy Newman's political science. Beloved by Toni Morrison or Huck Finn or Tekela Mockingbird or Invisible Man or other. So here we go. The most American episode of the daily ever. It's Sunday, July 5th. Happy birthday America.

1:43There's a lot of classical music that is quintessentially American, but if I had to pick one, I think the most American of them would be Aaron Copeland's Rodeo. I'm Joshua Brone. I write about classical music and opera at the times. So Aaron Copeland was writing in the 1940s at a time when American sound really came into its own. He really crack the code of what it means to be American in music. He was writing about specifically American themes, he was writing about the American landscape. With Rodeo, he's writing a score for a ballet by Agnes DeMille that's about as American as it gets because it's about a tomboy cowgirl in the West being courted by two men. In Rodeo...

2:46Aaron Copeland kind of creates the vibe of Americana as we know it, but at the same time, he's creating that by drawing on American folk music. So the first movement alone incorporates the tune, if he'd be a buckaroo by his trade. And later, there's this really, really lovely late night waltz that's based on the tune called, I Ride an Old Paint. I mean, this is a song that Woody Guthrie recorded as well.

3:40Like this is what American music is made of. It's about a school of composing that was really trying to distinguish the United States from the rest of the world and specifically from the European tradition. Okay, here we go. If anyone, even if they don't think they know Rodeo, they know Hoedown, which is the finale. It is just, I mean, it's as finale as a finale gets. It's also ultimately as American it gets. I mean, Anyone who was around in the 90s might remember Beef It's What's for Dinner, which was what this was used for. I mean, it was a barbecue in the backyard. I mean, it's just like it's pure Americana. This isn't anything that's particularly high-brow. I mean, it appeals to the masses. It comes from the masses, and that is so quintessentially American in classical music. I am Vanessa Friedman, and I am the Chief Fashion Critic for The Times.

5:16If you stop anyone on the street and ask them what they think the most American piece of apparel is, they will probably come up with something like a t-shirt and jeans. However, if you ask anyone outside of this country how they can identify an American through what they are wearing, the answer they always come up with is leggings, sports bra, work at wear. I'm Eric Piepenberg and I write about horror movies for the New York Times. Only in America could you get a horror film like Jordan Peele's Get Out. Get Out holds up a mirror to the so-called post-racial America, liberal America, and says that monster that you thought wasn't there anymore? It's still there, man. It's not going anywhere. I'm Kevin Russe, and I'm a tech columnist at The Times. The most American piece of technology is Amazon Prime. It is based on a fundamentally American premise that people want things fast, cheap, and all the time.

6:14I'm Mikado Murphy. I am the assistant film editor and also resident roller coaster lover here at The Times. The most American roller coaster is The Beast at Kings Island. It's this giant wooden coaster. It feels like it's both too much, but also something that you just can't get enough of and that feels genuinely American.

6:48I'm James Panawazik and I'm the chief TV critic for the New York Times. Survivor is one of my favorite shows. Survivor is in my family what sports is in other families. Welcome to Survivor 50! What's the idea? What is the setup of Survivor? A bunch of people come from somewhere else and they are stuck with each other.

7:22and they have to set up a society and figure out how to get along or not get along. Survivor is always evolving. And it's not because of the twists or advantages. Survivor evolves because of you, the player. It is not necessarily an idealistic or optimistic picture of America. Survivor is a zero-sum game. It is a competition. Only one of you will win. Often a cutthroat competition.

7:51You must and will rely on each other in order to survive in a real jungle. And you must and will vote each other out in order to win. With people falling apart into tribes and factions. And sometimes treating each other unpleasantly. You are unemployed, uneducated, leech on society. And the only thing... It is very competitive.

8:18Much as America is. But it's also often very uplifting. People are competing with each other, but they also have to form alliances. They have to cooperate. And within this bigger game of trying to win a million dollars, there are all sorts of opportunities for what can often be really kind of touching stories of personal triumph.

8:53Somebody doing a hard thing that they didn't think that they were capable of. People coming together to support teammates who are having a hard time. It shows the challenges and sometimes the potential for triumph that you get when you throw together a bunch of people who came from somewhere else and try to get them to create a world from scratch. That's not always pretty. Our history certainly hasn't always been pretty, you know, but it's exciting and vital and I think filled with a kind of energy that to me is distinctly American, if not sort of stereotypically, you know, red, white, and blue, propagandistically American. Travis Spoken. I'm Jancy Dunn. I write the well newsletter. And honestly, the most American thing on my beat is that I'm constantly writing about two things. How to be as productive as possible and how to get some rest.

10:29I'm Elena Bergeron. I'm an assistant editor for pop culture at the times. When I think about America in sports, I think about the women's and men's Olympic hockey teams wrecking shop at the Winter Olympics. Taking home gold, making us proud. My name is Jennifer Salai and I'm the non-fiction book critic for the New York Times.

10:53The most American non-fiction book is Paved Paradise, How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grubar. Grubar makes the argument that a lot of questions about how to allocate resources and cities, questions of building affordable housing, all of these really Urgent issues are actually tied to the American fixation, not just on cars, but on parking those cars. It really made me understand the country in a new way. I'm Bill Wasik and I'm the science editor at The New York Times. When my colleagues and I in the science desk were thinking about what the most American scientific discovery would be, we settled on Robert Goddard's discovery of liquid rocket fuel.

11:46I think we were working backwards from the fact that when it was combined with television, from then on the televised rocket launch became this extremely American phenomenon. It's something that brought the whole country together. Big explosions and flames and smoke. What could be more American than those things? I'm Madison Malone Kircher and I am the Internet Culture Reporter on the Stiles desk here at The Times.

12:26The most American thing online that I've reported on is Bama Rush. Bama Rush is the week before school starts where women flock to the University of Alabama and Tuscaloosa and Vi for spots in sororities.

12:45This shows up in the form of many, many videos. Young women showing what they're buying. What they're prepping, what they're gonna wear. Sorority rush is sort of this perfect encapsulation of the promise of the American meritocracy. Anybody should be able to get into a sorority, but...

13:11You have sort of this hidden power structure around social capital, who you know what you're wearing. And so it's this, to go macro, this friction between the promise of democracy and like the exclusivity of reality. And my necklace is David Ehrman. My earrings are Van Cleef. They're like little chandeliers. I mean, it's a thing that might be easy to dunk on and make fun of, right? Because it's 18 year old girls, young women sort of competing for a social club.

13:41Modern-day sorority culture is born out of a historical lineage of women who are looking for access into spaces that they didn't have, whether that be social clubs or academia. So there is sort of something positive underneath all of this, once you strip away the jewelry and the weird ruffle scorts. This was, at one point, quite revolutionary. Also an American concept, really, if you think about it. We'll be right back. I'm Kim Severson. I'm a national food correspondent for The New York Times.

14:28I am going to try to convince you that you can tell the story of 20th century America through one food item, and that is the Eminem. The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand. Begins with Forest Mars, who is the charismatic heir to the Mars Empire. His dad, Frank, created the Milky Way bar in the 1920s. And as often happens, Forrest Mars became estranged from his father. He goes to Europe. He discovers that some of the British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War are eating these little chocolate balls covered in hard candy so they wouldn't melt in the heat.

15:21At this point, selling chocolate in the summer in America was a challenge. So here we have Forrest Mars going, aha. He brings this idea back to the US, but he didn't have a lot of chocolate. He didn't really have the raw material. So he partners with Bruce Murray, who's the son of a Hershey executive. So you have the first two Nepo babies really in candy in America coming together, creating the M&M 1941.

15:49When a soldier is out in the field and away from catcooks, he must carry his own ration. The first contract he had was with the US government in World War II. So all the soldiers are getting these little carton tubes of M&M's in their rations. They all come back. They're like, hey, love the M&M's. And so, boom, the M&M becomes very popular national candy. Because M&M's milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand. Very, almost crucially M&M is a great example of American marketing too, right? So we all will remember if you're over 40, melt in your mouth, not in your hand. Melt in your mouth, not in your hand. Melt in your mouth, not in your hand, sir. Melt in your mouth. They were the first candy on the space shuttle.

16:49They opened that big Eminem store in 2006. And I think you'll remember crucially the Eminem spokes candies. Just your friendly neighborhood Eminem. Sit down. Of course, the red Eminem and the yellow Eminem were sort of the glitzy stars. And then we had Mrs. Brown, who had some heels on. She was kind of a corporate boss lady Eminem. My shell is brown.

17:14It just looks like my milk chocolate is showing. Only a fool would they got actually. So at some point, Mrs. Brown got a makeover and the stiletto heels were replaced by a more sensible shoe, thus thrusting the Eminem into the heart of America's culture wars. Which is that the brown Eminem has, quote, transitioned from high stilettos to lower block heels. Also less sexy. That's progress. And then there was the purple Eminem, which was kind of the...

17:43inclusive Eminem, if you will. This, of course, thrust the Eminem even deeper into the culture wars. The company added obese and distinctly frumpy lesbian Eminems to promote, quote, feminism and body positivity. And that was that. Something I think is really interesting that a lot of people don't know is that the Eminem has had an outsized influence on American agriculture. 1954.

18:15They decided to add the peanut M&M. The tricky thing about peanuts is they go rancid very quickly. The last thing you want to do is eat a rancid peanut M&M that will put you off M&Ms for a long time, which the company realized. And so they've developed various kinds of peanuts to grow for their peanut M&M over the years. Georgia is the country's leading producer of peanuts.

18:43according to UGA Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development. In the 2000s, the company worked with agriculture specialists at the University of Georgia to create the perfect peanut for the peanut M&M. Georgia-09B. The Georgia-09B. It's a high-yielding, high-lake, TSWV resistant runner type car. So you have this great ag story. M&M's again is a little bit in the news with With our current MAHA health movement, one of the big make America healthy again, tenants is to get rid of artificial dyes and food and M&Ms has been trying desperately to do that. They can reliably recreate the red and yellow with natural ingredients like tumerics and beets. Really difficult with the blue and the brown. So you may be seeing weird

19:34slightly less vibrant colored M&Ms in your packs as they're trying to figure it out. But again, M&Ms, the great American food story. Really, the story of American food is really the story of innovation and of money and of our incredible need to eat sweet things. When I heard the challenge, what is the most American book? When I was asked about the most American play. First, I panicked. I actually came up with ten plays. That would be August Wilson's Century Cycle. But then I chose the book, The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honoré Fanon Jeffers. My name is Helen Shaw. I'm the chief theater critic at The Times. I am MJ Franklin. I'm an editor at the New York Times Book Review. In the America Cycle, Wilson sets each of the ten plays in each of the ten decades of the 20th century.

20:44among a group of very loosely related families in the Hill District in Pittsburgh. The book weaves together two separate storylines. The first is about this girl growing up in the late 20th century. The second storyline is the story of her ancestors as they're living on the land that later becomes Georgia, that later becomes the America that we know and love today. Those two storylines converge and as they converge you really see how History, American history, is alive and present with us today. It still shapes how we live, it shapes our experiences. The past is not just the past, but it's something that's still present with us. And that's why I love it. All 10 plays together make a really beautiful kind of statement about what August Wilson thought was happening with the African American experience, what he thought Black culture was.

21:43Facing in the 20th century and what sort of reparations it was capable of making in the spirit. There are all of these big lofty important ideas in it, but it is carried in this just delightful, compelling vehicle. That's the love songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoré Fanon Jeffers. That is August Wilson's century cycle. I'm Alyssa Wilkinson, and I am a movie critic here at The New York Times.

22:27To me, the most American movie is Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 epic, There Will Be Blood. I drink your milkshake. I drink it up. Don't bully me, Daniel. There Will Be Blood is about an oil man named Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day Lewis, who is pushing out across really the West in order to seek his fortune.

22:58I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed." And often in American westerns, we see that as kind of a positive thing, and it is inverting that trope. This man, he does pull it off. He becomes fabulously wealthy when we finally see him near the end of the film. He has built an incredible mansion. It has kind of famously a bowling alley in it. But he is absolutely miserable at the end of the film.

23:31And we see that all of his wealth did not insulate him from what actually happens often to people when they do become fabulously wealthy. So we see this kind of taking of this trope that persists throughout, you know, the American imagination and flipping it on its head. It's a movie about capitalism, but in a kind of cynical way. It's a movie about the dangers of unfettered liberty. It's a movie about the pursuit of power, even above wealth. You know, when you watch this movie, you can see parallels to questions about entrepreneurialism in the 21st century. You have a great chance here. But bear in mind, you can lose it all if you're not careful, out of all men that beg for a chance to be lost.

24:35All of everything about America is bad, but it is about when the ideals that sometimes are associated with the American project are taken to their final kind of end, the kind of idea of unfettered liberty, the unfettered pursuit of power. Those things are ultimately destructive, not just to a person's life, but really to their soul.

25:06I'm finished. Hey, I'm Zachary Small and I'm a culture reporter at The New York Times writing about everything from video games to fossils and art. My name is Elizabeth Finchantelli and I write about culture for The New York Times. When you think of a video game that is trying to take in all of the weird complexities of American culture, there's no better choice than Grand Theft Auto. I think that the most American thing I've ever witnessed is a demolition derby.

25:46Grand Theft Auto is a series of games. The new one is coming out at the end of this year and you're essentially plopped into some crime-ridden city in America and you are a criminal and you can do whatever you want. A demolition derby is when people get into an arena and they run into each other until there's one car left standing as a matter of speaking.

26:13It says American as South Park, as burlesque theater. It's shock and awe. It's PT Barnum. It's about mayhem, violence, chaos. I do find it incredibly thrilling, though. I have to say, my first one, I was screaming. I lost, I really lost my mind. There's some impulse to just really push the limits.

26:40Test the boundaries of what you can get away with, the mayhem. I do feel like that's very American. I'm Jason Zimmerman. I'm a critic at large and I write a lot about comedy. I think you can make the argument that there's no work of comedy that sums up a particular part of the American character better than Randy Newman's political science.

27:21The song is a jingoistic American advocating for bombing the world into smithereens. He's not saying we're gonna bomb the world because of some grand plan or because of some ideology or because of some thought out geopolitical reason. He's saying bomb the world because he's annoyed and mopey. And let's just see what happens. This is not the, you know, the anger of the underdog. This is the resentment of a powerful who feels like the underdog. And that really feels like it captures where we are. We've been as a country for quite a long time.

28:29It's kind of a downer of an answer, I realize. What's more American than that? We'll do it back. My name's Jason Ferrago and I'm one of the critics at large of the New York Times where I write principally about art, architecture, monuments, and the way it all fits into the wider world. When I'm thinking about whether one work of art could be called the most American, there's really one that immediately comes to mind, and it's the Statue of Liberty. Really, even before she was fully erected, she was turned into, and I don't use the word lightly, an icon, an actual sort of visual representation.

29:40of the United States as such. This French work of art that is, in my view, the most American work of art. You know, I went in for the first time, I think, certainly the first time I can remember in my life, just a couple of weeks ago. And the fitness of the copper, it's less than an eighth of an inch thick. And the armature, designed by Gustave Eiffel, of a tower you might know in Paris, holding it all up. And that malleability of the copper and the idea that there's this sort of extraordinary symbol that's also an empty shell. It's something that's very very strong but it's also vacant. You know, you could spend a lot of time with your therapist talking about how these contradictions might embody a certain American ideal and a certain ideal of liberty that I think goes wholly underestimated.

30:51I'm A.O. Scott. I'm a critic at large at the New York Times Book Review. To me, if I had to pick one poem as the most American poem, I think it would be Crossing Brooklyn Ferry by Walt Whitman. This is the actor Jeffrey Wright reading Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.

31:20Crowds of men and women are tired in the usual costumes how curious you are to me on the ferry boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross returning home are more curious to me than you suppose and You that show cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me and more in my meditations than you might suppose crossing Brooklyn ferry he originally called it sundown poem and it's kind of a description of crossing over from Brooklyn to Manhattan, crossing the East River at sunset. But what makes it so vivid and interesting and so American in a way is that he uses this experience of basically a daily commute to meditate on a whole state of connection between the past, the present, and the future.

32:19What is it then between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is it avails not Distance avails not and place avails not I too lived Brooklyn of ample Hills was my I too walked the streets of Manhattan Island and bathed in the waters around it But it's not all like sweetness and light we're not necessarily all like Great, wonderful people. I mean, we're talking about New York City, you know? It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall. The dark threw its patches down upon me also. The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious. The great thoughts, as I suppose them, were they not in reality meager. Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil. I am he who knew what it was to be evil.

33:25So I love that passage because it's saying like it's not that we're all great people. One thing that we have in common is that we can be terrible. We're sort of, we're low and mean and jealous and lazy and all of these things, but that is also what makes us this great community, this great democracy. And I think in a way what he's saying is that if you have an idea that there's going to be democracy, that you're going to have a democratic way of living, it has to include that. It has to acknowledge that.

33:54that we're not angels, we're not perfect. And we have to, in some way, embrace our low as well as our high aspects. Gorgeous clouds of the sunset drenched with your splendor, me or the men and women generations after me. Cross from shore to shore countless crowds of passengers. Stand up tall masts of Manhattan. Stand up beautiful hills of Brooklyn.

34:26It distills for me in a way that not many other literary works do an idea of America as extending into the future. So there's this idea that America is a space and a community and an experience that's defined not by a shared past but by a shared future. And that to me makes it Kind of wonderfully and in a sort of utopian democratic way quintessentially America Thrive cities Bring your freight bring your shows ample and sufficient rivers expand Being then which none else is perhaps more spiritual keep your places Objects then which none else is more lasting you have waited you always wait you dumb

35:30beautiful ministers. We receive you with free sense at last and are in satiate hence forward. Not you anymore shall be able to foil us or withhold yourselves from us. We use you and do not cast you aside. We plant you permanently within us. We fathom you not. We love you. There is perfection in you also.

36:03You furnish your parts toward eternity, great or small. You furnish your parts toward the soul. My name is Gea Corliss and I'm the dance critic at The New York Times. I think dance has more pieces about America than I even realized. Two of the most American dance pieces are Stars and Stripes by George Balanchine, 1958 and Appalachian Spring by Martha Graham, 1944.

36:45The Appalachian Spring, it's set to music by Aaron Copeland, which is, I know that there's another Aaron Copeland score in this presentation, but Aaron Copeland is worth mentioning twice and many more times. And it's about a frontier couple and they're starting their, their life together. Stars and Stripes is set to SUSA music as arranged by Hershey Kay. Stars and Stripes, you know, they're baton twirling majorettes and there's a huge flag of that.

37:27rises from the floor at the end of the ballet. It's kind of crazy. The dancing is technical. It's classical ballet. It's like putting this serious art form on top of this subject. I don't know that he was making fun of America, but while also loving it. And Graham was like, she was showing what America is and showing what an American artist makes and why they make it and why that is important. I think, you know, They're they're both dances about optimism and hope and keeping the faith with your eyes wide open They see things for what they are and I think that um, you know being funny and serious at the same time is really healthy Very American I'm John Caramanica. I'm a pop music critic at the New York Times and the co-host of popcast our pop culture talk show um

38:40When presented with the absurdist project to identify the most American pop song Immediately, I thought of all the easy outs there could be it could be a Jay-Z song a Paul Simon song Hell a very man with a song and I realized pretty quickly that none of those were correct because Those reflect ideas about America that I think we often wish about ourselves, but it may not reflect the actual mess of the country that we live in. So I picked a song called Trump Trump Baby by a Florida rapper named Forgeado Blow. Forgeado Blow refers to himself as the mayor of Magaville.

39:39He's a white rapper. He is an avowed make America great again cheerleader. This song came out in July of 2024, a few months before Donald Trump was reelected to the White House. Look, I don't know if this song is good.

40:12I probably not. But this is something that could only exist in the current version of America that we have. This is an, I believe, accurate reflection of a certain segment of how this country views culture and politics. That's the version of America that I felt needed to be talked about.

40:39I often find that of all the cultural forms, all the medium, film, television, things happen the fastest in music. You see little tweaks and changes in the culture first in a pop song. There are things happening in these spaces that are Discomfiting and maybe radical. They may be hard to listen to, but we can't afford to ignore them. In summation, I want to say, yes, I understand the spiritual gap between listening to Aaron Copeland and listening to Fortunata Blow. But I also think that it's incumbent upon us to listen to what pop music tells us in real time. America isn't only what you look at and what you listen to. It's also what you avert your eyes from. It's also what you avert your ears from. Not today, though. This episode was produced by Alex Barron with help from Tina Antolini. It was edited by Wendy Dorre. It contains music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker and Chris Wood.

42:33and was engineered by Sophia Landman. And somehow, shocker makes no mention of Billy Joel. That's it for the Sunday Daily. I'm Michael Balbarro. See you tomorrow.