America at 250: A View from the Streets
Key takeaways
- The staff writer and historian Jill Lepore is an admirer of the Federal Writers’ Project, and the man-on-the-street form of documentary it helped to pioneer.
- The New Yorker Radio Hour’s collaboration with Transom was produced by Sophie Crane.
- New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday.
With David Remnick May 15, 2026Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Google | Wherever You Listen
Sign up for our daily newsletter to get the best of The New Yorker in your inbox.
The staff writer and historian Jill Lepore is an admirer of the Federal Writers’ Project, and the man-on-the-street form of documentary it helped to pioneer. This type of journalism, she thinks, is integral to the democratic project. As part of a special episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour, Lepore collaborated with the audio-storytelling group Transom to create a new documentary on how Americans perceive their country on the eve of its two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary. Producers conducted interviews in Illinois, California, Louisiana, Vermont, and Utah, in gas stations, city parks, and malls, on street corners and dairy farms, asking people how they see themselves in the American story, how they feel about America at two hundred and fifty, and what they imagine the tricentennial of independence will be like.