Visualizing The Past: In Pursuit with Nathaniel Popkin and Andrew Ferrett

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Civics and Coffee, a History Podcast. The show all about United States history, delivered to you in the time it takes to enjoy your morning cup of coffee. I'm your host, Alicia, a historian trained in United States history with a passion for telling both the known and unknown parts of America's past. So grab your coffee and get ready for some bite-sized history. Hey peeps, welcome back. I am excited to share this week's conversation with you, which is a first for the show. One of the things I love about public history is its many forms it can take, from books and public historic sites to podcasts and documentaries. I recently had the great fortune of sitting down with two gentlemen behind In Pursuit, Philadelphia and the Making of America, a multi-volume documentary covering the story of America in a compelling visual format. I hope you all enjoy the conversation. Hello, everyone. Joining me today are two public history makers, Andrew Ferrett and Nathaniel Popkin. Andrew is a director and producer of several award-winning history documentaries, whose credits include For the Common Good and Before Hollywood. And Nathaniel is a producer, an author of four books, and is a co-founder of the public history website Hidden City. They recently joined forces to produce a new documentary series in pursuit that seeks to answer some big questions. How do we experience the meaning of America and what do Americans want from their democracy? Welcome, Andrew and Nathaniel.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Hi, good to be with you. Great to be here, Alicia.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

So I'm so excited to chat with you about this series. So let's start with how did this project come together and what prompted you to develop a series focused on telling the national story through the lens of Philadelphia?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Well, the lens of Philadelphia was really the uh first draw that attracted us to this series. It's almost like a version of Write What You Know, the old adage that you should you can find something rich and fascinating uh in the material that you have been maybe familiarizing yourself with for some time. And in in our case, uh we had collaborated before on a series uh for local television in Philadelphia on the history of the city that broke uh the city's history up into 14 different 25-minute episodes. And uh, as probably a lot of us, your listeners are familiar, uh Philadelphia is this key city in the founding of the United States. Uh many of the, you know, one very core important tenet of American uh history that shaped the Constitution uh and American society, uh, freedom of religion, was uh really practiced in a governmental way in Pennsylvania by William Penn, even before the um, you know, well before the founding of the United States. So Philadelphia had this interesting kind of central role, but in the founding. But as we were exploring the city's history, we found that actually throughout four centuries from the 17th century through the 20th century and even into the 21st century, Philadelphia can be used as a lens to study American history. It's so hard to write a history of America because it's so big and so multifaceted. And, you know, you can try, but you have to stay at a certain, at a certain level or explore different places. But by focusing on one place that has been there through all of those currents of history and has shaped uh in a major way all of those currents of history, you can actually begin to understand the pursuits of uh American history. And that's what we that's what we sort of landed on uh as the best expression of what we were observing, which was that there are so many overlapping, sometimes contradictory pursuits uh in the uh history of the United States that all come together in Philadelphia.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Well, and the documentary is broken up into several episodes, right? You're you're doing quite an expansive history, as you mentioned. So, how did you approach periodization in framing your story?

SPEAKER_03 4:36

You know, that's a great question. And there's what we always try to do, first of all, we tell the story in the present tense. So when we're talking about periodization, this is a 10-episode series. It's just about it's probably a little bit more than 11 hours long. And we're telling it in 2026, right? So this is a story, uh, this is our story of our United States that we're telling right now, and we're using history to try to understand ourselves better. And through that, we can look at the periods of history a little bit differently. And we ended up, so we have 10 episodes, and they do break up periods as we kind of understand them a little bit differently. For example, last night we premiered episode five, which takes place from 1838 to 1876. So, what's in the middle of that is the Civil War. But we approach the Civil War by looking at um another other factors of division within American society. And we start out by looking at the divisions that were created by mass immigration, particularly among Irish Catholics, and the response to that by Protestant nativists. And what you have was such a what you ended up with is a violent conflict around immigration and religion that helps us to understand how we get to the Civil War a little bit better. In the case of Philadelphia, what all of that conflict led to actually, and maybe ironically, was an act of unification where the city consolidates and becomes the largest city in the country by area at that time. And it's the first act of consolidation. Many, many other cities follow it over the years. And so you have, as Andrew said, you have these contradictory pursuits built into the story. And I will add one more thing about how we periodized this. Uh, two things. First of all, we spend a lot of time talking about indigenous history, and we continue telling the story of the Lenape, who are the people who lived in this part of the world until the many waves of European immigration came. And so, how do you treat that? You start at year zero, whatever year zero is, in that context. And and you most people choose to start telling this history of the United States, you know, through the European lens, and we don't. So that automatically changes the way we periodize this. And we continue to tell the story of Lenape all the way into well into the 19th century and their final um displacement to Oklahoma, because this is, after all, the story of this country. And I will say one other thing. We have periods of tragedy in this film, multiple, that are very, I mean, there's serious tragedy here, right? And so, from a dramatic standpoint, we have to be mindful of that. And often it's it's tra it's it's something very powerful, whether it's uplift or or something terribly sad and horrible. That's often where an episode will will land. Because you can't talk past that. So that that's another reason from a filmmaking perspective that it's um it's carved up in the way it is.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah. They were the episodes that I've seen, they're they were done very tastefully, very powerfully. And I think what I liked about how you framed these stories is that you you have obviously your experts and and the creative reenactments. And so I'm curious as to how do you see this series kind of fitting into the other commemorations of the of the country's 250th anniversary?

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Well, it's the this this can inform uh Americans about the history of their country in a way that is because it's focused on one place, but we found things about Philadelphia that should be relatable to people who live everywhere. And this was always on my mind when we were constructing the episodes was not to create a parochial local history. So this isn't that. If you live around Philadelphia, you're already interested in Philadelphia, you'll you'll naturally be interested in this. But if you live in Arizona or Chicago or California, like you, there still is something about the history of the United States, because westward expansion, uh, which was driven in large part the 19th century by the railroads, is is key to our story. Um, and also just we find we tried to find elements of the pursuits in Philadelphia that were universal, you know, American qualities. So there were first episode, uh, Nathaniel mentioned our fifth episode, uh, which is entitled America, because that Civil War era really was about the pursuit of America after the Civil War, rewriting the Constitution, adding to the Constitution uh new amendments that were actually changing and kind of enshrining into law certain qualities that had never been enshrined before. It was about unifying, creating a unified country in so many ways. Um and then if you go back to the beginning of our series, we opened with freedom, the pursuit of freedom, which was, as historians of uh Lenape Indigenous history have observed, was among the various different indigenous groups that were in the woodlands of the eastern coastal plain. Um, the Lenape as a group valued uh individual freedom and personal liberty in a particular way, which is an interesting highlight on the fact that there comes this group from Europe, the Quakers, who desperately craved religious freedom and liberty, not to be persecuted as they were uh really violently persecuted by the king and uh by the crown in England. And so you have these two groups both seeking freedom to be who they are, you know, the group that's been here for thousands of years, and this other group that is coming and sees this land as a space for freedom. So freedom is that pursuit, and that's what what is a more American pursuit than freedom, right? So that's one, uh, land is another one, uh, the second one, um, as the land is acquired. Of course, independence is our third episode, which covers the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, of course, written in Philadelphia. So you see the um, as far as how it can be a sort of a um a useful entertainment or guide or tool to people in celebrating the 250th, I think it's a great opportunity for reflection. People probably want uh to reflect on history and put themselves in the presence of history at a time like this. And we feel that Philadelphia's story offers something uh really valuable and uh and really interesting um to uh anyone who's interested in American history.

unknown 12:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:02

I I would add something to that if if that's okay. Um and that is in this moment where there is a kind of ferocious, determined effort to tell a certain story about the country, the series stands as something apart from that. It stands as an attempt to say this is our story, our story of our nation, and our nation is big, diverse, multicultural, that includes all kinds of people that have had very different experiences and come together under e pluribus unum out of many one. And I would say the series in pursuit, our attempt here is to tell the truest, most honest, most authentic history that we can from the most viable, multiple, multitudinous perspectives, so that Americans have the full story.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

But and and I and I also would add on top of that that um the story, the full story is not doctrinaire. I mean, we're not corresponding to a political point of view, we're not corresponding to an a particular academic school of thought. Um, we're really trying to give a full account in such a way that would be engaging and interesting, and that doesn't, you know, giving weight and pace are just uppermost in my mind as a filmmaker, especially of this type of material where it can be contentious, right? History, you know, you name the topic, we're covering a lot of them in this film, can have uh a lot of discourse around them. And we give space to that discourse, I think, uh, in the telling. We try to reflect it, as Nathaniel said, in a in a very um broad and inclusive way, um, but not in a way that overly uh is is the intention is not to lead you into a particular way of thinking. The intention is to present uh the history of Philadelphia in as full and you know vivid and dramatic a way as possible that will hopefully you know be a great tool for you know reflecting and thinking about uh you know where we are today and how we got there.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Yeah, I found it to be uh highly accessible and sparked a lot of questions and made me want to look into a lot of things. And so I think that is the all you can ask for when you're doing public history, right? If you spark conversation, if you spark engagement, if you spark curiosity, I think you've done a good job. And so I thought, oh, this would be perfect in like a classroom, you know, showing clips to talk about certain aspects of the American story. That's immediately where I went. Um, and and people who, you know, maybe don't want to sit through a lovely Ken Burns 12-hour epic about the American Revolution, even though that is totally my jam, but you know, maybe want to see something about, you know, uh just a tidbit. Um and so I thought this was very well done in that context.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

So that's good to hear.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Um, and so, you know, Philadelphia, like we mentioned, is very much at the heart of the story. So, what does Philadelphia mean to you as storytellers and working in the public history space?

SPEAKER_00 15:40

I think I I want to let Nathaniel start with that because he's um been really writing about and thinking about Philadelphia for decades. Um, I've been uh doing it for fewer decades, but uh, you know, I his perspective as a writer and as an observer of Philadelphia is really uh unique and uh something that I found very valuable.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

I think when we look at this city, we see all of the contradictions and complications from poverty and to wealth, race. We see a city that actually developed in a way that physically mirrors the way we the way our democracy functions. Okay, so it's we're the city is form is the row house, and it's an accumulative physical form rather than giant impositions, it's the intimate generation by generation change, and that's how we perceive that's how we amend our constitution, for example, by amending it, by building on top of it and incorporating what was there before. And that is when we look around the city what what we see. So there's something really special about that, I think. Uh, Philadelphia contains all of the confusion, all of the hope and aspiration, all of the wonder of a democracy. And uh Andrew is right. I've been writing about it in nonfiction and fiction film for quite a long time. And the thing about it is it's a big enough, complex enough and dynamic enough place that change is always the constant. And that change conflict is what makes for story. So it's easy to find the story here and it's easy to find meaning here. And it there's an intimacy that allows us to do what we've done with this film, which is tell whatever you want to say, 500 years of history through people, uh, through their intimate hopes and dreams. And then when you build out from that, you see very distinctly very clear waves of change in American life, where you get big ideas that dissolve and um break up and and and result in in conflict and difference and difficulty at the street level, and then you get reform to try to build it back up and new bigger ideas, and it just it goes like this for it it goes in that give and take big ideas, dissolution, big ideas, dissolution for 500 years. We all know where we are right now with this as a nation, and so we're just seeing it play out.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Uh there's something really interesting, too. Um, I think about the the physical form of Philadelphia that Nathaniel was just uh describing, and it's true of I think a lot of cities, but of old, dense eastern cities, which is that this grid, this very intricately wrought, densely plotted grid of streets and houses, is laid across this large sort of you know plane of land. And in the case of Philadelphia, it doesn't have as it's sort of bounded by two rivers, but doesn't have but sort of spreads uninterrupted south to north and doesn't have the kind of you know physical limitations uh that you might find in like New York City, where there's a lot of waterways that carve up the city and make natural distinctions between places. Philadelphia, the distinctions are very human. They're made by the people in the neighborhoods. This neighborhood is very different from that neighborhood that's two or three blocks away. And it's something that people have sort of always observed about Philadelphia, that they still observe, that when you walk through the city, you can pass through, you know, different epochs of history. You could, you could, in a way, because cities and neighborhoods were built at different times, and you can all, or they're you know, settled by groups of people at different times that have remained in those neighborhoods. And that is this extremely human characteristic of the city and why it is, again, a great place for exploring the history of the United States and the history of you know, kind of the social history of the country, because it's such a deeply social place. People are always in contact with each other and communication with each other.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Well, and so this documentary series is beautifully done. There's, you know, you have the the landscape shots, you have the talking heads, you have the the dramatic reenactments, you have beautiful pros. And so I imagine there were quite a lot of moving parts. So, what were some of the challenges in putting this project together?

SPEAKER_03 20:53

Well, I can give the big picture and then Andrew, you can talk about how it was really done because you're the one who's doing it. Um, but we started with you know, this this project over the course of uh well more than a decade and a half has accumulated well over a thousand hours of in-studio interviews with all kinds of people, an extraordinary range, both of you know nationally um prominent scholars to people who simply uh live through certain moments of history to journalists and artists and all of that. And we had this large accumulation of interviews, we had a large accumulation of recreations that Andrew directed, we had an expansive amount of journalistic and cinematic b role, and we have access to all of the archives of the world. So, how you make all of that come together as a cogent, coherent story that's engaging, I will say. And our process starts with a script, of course. And this and and the script is where we identify you know what is the story arc? Because this is narrative. This is history is a story. History is a million stories all at once. And our job here is to filter through those million stories into one coherent one. So it starts with a script. But at that point, after we've um done all these interviews and shot the recreations to match the story, Andrew's beautiful gift is turning all of that into what you've watched, you know. So I should let him talk about that.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Well, it we have faced it's really not not easy, and it's iterative. The whole process is like one iteration after another of refining and honing. It's it's not what's the word? It proceeds not so much from the spark as from the iteration of just finding the finding what's best by whittling through, gradually culling through all of those interviews, all the possibilities of how we could tell a story, and we ultimately think that we're going to say a lot more than we end up saying because you can say so much with an image or with a scene. So it always changes uh between the paper and the sc and the screen. And so I mean, there were so many different challenges. One of them is just trying to be as factually accurate as possible and relying on our historians as consultants and advisors, but also um, you know, rigorously checking what we actually do uh right to make sure that it's that it's accurate and correct, uh, which is hard to do when you're you're doing it across such a span of history. You can't be an expert in everything, but you have to uh get it all right that you're presenting. So that's that's a challenge. But really, um I think uh you both uh observed the mixture of the scenic cinematography, the recreations, uh, the faces of all the different people telling the story. We wanted to let all of it speak to that idea of um sort of e pluribus unum that Nathaniel referenced. Out of all of these expert voices, all of these witnesses to history, in the later episodes, we interview a lot of people who participated in different social movements uh or were elected officials in one way or another in the 20th century, some of whom have now passed away, but we interviewed them in some cases 15 years ago uh because of the ongoing nature of this project. They the challenge was how to create a composition that felt unified, even though it's episodic, and how to make each episode feel unified around a theme that would be interesting to people beyond Philadelphia. You know, one of the great things about local TV when you were working in local when we were working in local television is you don't have to justify the relevance of something that happened in Philadelphia to a local audience or anywhere. If you are you know presenting to that city's local audience, there's a certain assumption that you know people who are interested in history will be interested in it. But we had to satisfy a higher bar here, which was how to engage people without being boastful or without trying to be, you know, to to trumpet what is you know what what someone would say is so exceptional about Philadelphia, because every city can can have those things, you know, like uh the things that make make it exceptional. And we we want to focus on what makes it very interesting and and fascinating, hopefully.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

Well, and obviously there's so much to cover the the series spans, right? Four centuries. So how did you decide what to include? And and were there any moments or or people that you wanted to include, but at the end of the day, you you just you had to let go of?

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Well, it's it's difficult because we expanded on material that we had already used, but so we we wanted to, we we actually got a lot of stories into this episode that we had never told before, uh that we that we very much wanted to. But the uh I mean honestly, as I as I look at it now, I I go I want to hear what Nathaniel thinks about this because um, you know, just from the uh at the story level, um it's it's really a question that goes right back to the concept. But I feel like as we're presenting it, we're we're kind of letting all of it build the city. Like the city builds organically through the series itself. Like you see it start to grow and um you know different voices uh come into it. But I don't know, Nathaniel. Um, what do you how how are you how do you feel about what we uh anything we couldn't include?

SPEAKER_03 27:19

So we were very honed in by the format of the previous series that we worked on, which was called Philadelphia the Great Experiment, because it was a particular format, very fast-paced, and we crammed a lot in. This 10-episode format allows us to be very expansive while at the same time focusing more mostly on the pursuit of rights and uh and big ideas and big ideals that we can label and think of as American. And so that was freedom right there. We create when we set out to make in pursuit, we gave ourselves to tell the story in as wide and as intimate way as we could, both at the same time, so that the audience could really attach to it and see themselves in it, see their own lives playing out, as it were, in all of this history. It absolutely has meant certain things getting left on the floor. We've cut out, we sometimes we cut out a story and then it's brought back in because it serves such an important purpose. The story of uh women medical students that uh was in episode five. Andrew and I had taken it out of the script. And when he's doing that iterative process of figuring out how to make it all work in the editing room with our editor, that scene, which is beautiful and lush and real, and one of the most extraordinary, I think, in the history of women who wanted to go to medical school who could but weren't allowed to practice surgery, who sort of demanded that right in post-Civil War period. Um wow, it tells us so much. And so putting it back in opens up the space. So there's a million stories we've left out, and there are a million people we've left out, and there's really not much we can do about that, right? But in this series, there are stories about American life that have never been told before in any form, particularly as we get into the 20th century, and uh that that really I think are going to expand the way all Americans think about their nation. And I'm not and there's no value on that, just the way they think, what they know, what they can refer to.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Yeah. Uh I I would also just add about uh I I thought of one actually while you were while you were giving your answer. Um we you won't see this in In Pursuit, but um one of the chat one of the challenges we had was how to present period spanning the 1920s uh through World War II. Because you have these overlapping sort of like epochs of American history that kind of all happen at the same time in Philadelphia. You have prohibition, you know, they all have different beginning and end points, but they sort of overlap. So you have prohibition, and then you have um just culturally like the roaring twenties, and you have the great migration of African Americans to the North, then there's the Great Depression. Like, and so you and if you really wanted to tell it in a linear way, all of these different um things they all start at different times and they all kind of coincide at the same time. Um, and then of course it ends in the war, which so which kind of cuts everything off, and then everything after 1945 really starts to change. So we had the story of a gentleman named Smedley Butler, who was the chief of Philadelphia police, uh, who was brought in to clean up the uh in the 1920s, he was brought in, he was a Marine general uh and was brought in to uh kind of clean up the town with prohibition and to really, because Philadelphia completely flouted prohibition, and it was, you know, the political machine of the city was totally involved with the bootleggers and the you know, the opening of saloons and speakeasies at every level, like from the highest levels of society down to the neighborhoods. Like ever there were tap rooms and bar rooms everywhere. And, you know, the mayor of the city seeking reform brought this Marine general in to like to root out the bootleggers and make the city conform to prohibition, uh, which it which he did. He did it very zealously and very effectively, and so effectively that he was totally run out of town by the political machine and was you know dismissed within a couple of years of being hired uh because he was uh you know, he he he was too uh zealous in uh in uh you know ousting uh all of the speakeasies, which of course, you know, they the a lot of the people in the city wanted anyway. But the we it's a great story, but the episode was already one of our longest episodes, and uh we we it was sort of of local relevance, even though it's cool. And it we sort of told it in a previous in a previous uh episode. So we didn't feel like we could really add anything to it.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Well, and this is a very well done series, and so I think you are two experts that can answer this question with experience. What makes for powerful historical storytelling?

SPEAKER_03 33:00

The first thing, of course, is honesty and authenticity at every level, visual, sound, words, and I think also the ability to contextualize history, so to see the way things connect and to account for differences and contradictions in a story in an honest way rather than papering things over. That's when you start to get into things that are inauthentic and distancing. Andrew alluded to something else earlier, like the use of superlatives or the you or the the claiming, the overclaiming is distancing when what you want to be doing with any media form or a novel, a film, whatever, is to be seducing the person you're trying to draw into the story. And you do that by being real and by being uh there's an emotional and intellectual honesty that is necessary, and it goes, I think, to the way you and what you choose to put on the screen, you know, those recreations have to be as authentic as possible. This is why we're struggling so much with seeing what AI produces a slop, because it there's an a desperate inauthenticity to it, and that's all to push you away from engaging in a real way. And that's that's what we're looking for. We're looking to engage you so that you take the story, you think about it as you want to think about it, and let it play out in your own life.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

And what do you hope viewers take away from the series?

SPEAKER_00 34:48

I hope that people can uh kind of understand a reflection or that people can have the opportunity to reflect on you know what it means to be an American, you know, what where where our history has led us, you know, through through good and through bad. We have a a historian, a sort of an artist historian who lives in Philly, who speaks at near the end of the film, who says kind of our thesis in a different way. Uh she says that um Philadelphia is a great place for understanding America because she's holding the good, the bad, and the ugly. Philadelphia is the she in this. It said she's holding the good, the bad, and the ugly. And it's all there. Uh and and I I think that a lot of people in in America, I mean, you know, Philly has these certain reputations that um get assigned to it uh fairly or not, or partially fairly, like, you know, being this kind of very passionate sports city that might be a little too passionate at times, or you know, certain other stereotypes that, and it has this kind of I think reputation as being an authentic place, a place that is very much of itself. But what we want to do is is kind of show it as a mirror of of what America is, has been, could be. So that's what I would I would hope people would uh take away a deeper understanding of you know American history and their relationship to it.

SPEAKER_03 36:18

There's nothing determined about the story, you know? It's it's all ongoing, there's no answer, there's no final ending, at least not yet. And um, it's not determined, the outcomes.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

One thing I I did want to check with you both about is you know, in in the era of like ultra binging and releasing everything all at once, you both took a different path. And you are releasing the episodes, uh, you know, to to date myself, I guess. Uh, back in my day, you would you would wait for episodes to to be released on a cycle. So can you talk a little bit about the decision behind that? Um, I was curious as to to what what went into that that decision uh what went into that decision was by and large necessity.

SPEAKER_03 37:16

So uh the the we're talking about 11 hours of film here, and um it couldn't be finished all at once in time to be presented in this year that carries so much meaning. And so by necessity, it's coming out one episode a month, and in 2027 it will exist as one series uh that can be entirely binge watched, and I and I'm not sure that either of us are sure whether we're happy or or not happy about that. It has it is allowing us to use each episode to engage with audiences on its own and to build slowly so that the conversation perhaps lasts a little bit longer and and sort of um naturally evolves and naturally expands. I know in my role, which is mostly done at this point as the writer, I can't wait to see all of it together. I'm dying here in my office, you know. And uh so it can't go fast, you know. In my view, it can't go faster. But you know, one other reason is because Andrew cares so passionately about this product, and and so everything has to be perfect. Period. Period, period. And you can talk to that.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

Yeah, it's each episode. Um in one way it's actually very helpful to complete each episode at a time. Obviously, you know, they're all in in some stage of completion already, even before they're released. Um, so it's not like we're we're not conceptualizing them one at a time. Um, that was done uh, you know, some years ago with with Nathaniel and and I sort of having a lot of conversations, but each one can communicate to the last one. So as I go into that last stage of reviewing an episode and kind of finding it's helping it reach its final form, having the other previous episode already released and sort of having attended screenings and talking to audiences and you know, getting their reactions and seeing what they connect with all helps the episodes uh take their shape that are are yet to come. Um so that's that's something that's cool about it. The as a filmmaker, and and when I was growing up, I'm you know in my 40s now, but uh, you know, in the 90s, I loved those wonderful sort of magisterial PBS series like The West, and of course all the other Ken Burns series, or you know, the great history of New York that came out in 1999 on PBS. These really long-form, pensive, thoughtful uh documentaries that would get enormous audiences on public television. They would get, you know, something like 20 or 30 million people watching them, uh, just because of the way mass media was back then. But, you know, it certainly was encouraging enough that uh public television kept producing these series and kept finding corporate sponsorships and you know, funders for them. And that is something that I wish would would could have as big a platform today as it had back then. I mean, we are releasing these onto YouTube and we're promoting the heck out of them as they come out, and we're going to continue to promote them more as the series is is finally finished. But I mean, I don't know, Alicia, like as someone who also works in the history content space, I mean I don't I don't think that our episodes would get 20 million views on YouTube. That's like an almost impossible thing to imagine. Um uh, you know, to as big and as great and wide a reach as YouTube can have, there seems to be some somewhat of a ceiling uh to what someone can expect for you know history-based content that is smaller than you know the gigantic audiences you used to see on TV back in the day.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

Well, hopefully, we can hope. We can hope. Because I I've seen some other questionable content reach much larger numbers. So here's the hoping that in pursuit can get to uh much larger numbers.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

So here's hoping.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

So as folks and and viewers are engaging with the series, where should they go if they want to know more about you and the work that you do?

SPEAKER_00 41:57

Well, our website uh is inpursuit.tv. Um and you can go to inpursuit.tv and you can click on a page that says watch the episodes. And that page just shows each of our episodes together with the links to the YouTube page where they live. Um, you can also engage with us on YouTube itself, just search in pursuit on YouTube, it's all there, or uh on different social media channels. Uh different social media platforms, I should say. We're on Instagram, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Daniel, did you want to say anything else about how we can how people can find us? Well, you've said it.

SPEAKER_03 42:36

Inpursuit.tv, uh, and then tell your friends. That's the key, right? Word of mouth is how this um project is spreading most effectively right now.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 42:48

I have already shared it with a couple of teacher friends of mine, so you brought up teachers and you had asked uh earlier about you know how you imagined the series could be used in the classroom. In four months, all 10 episodes will be up on YouTube for everyone to use as they wish. And they are dynamite for the classroom. If you want to teach the founding of this nation, or you want to teach the civil rights era, which is episode eight, uh, or you want to teach the fact that this that's the third civil rights era in American history, and teach the earlier ones from the 18th and 19th centuries, um, it's all there. And uh as each, as the as American ideals find their way to have meaning for everyone throughout through the progression of the country, it's all there.

SPEAKER_01 43:47

And now is there anything that we haven't touched on before I let you go that you want to make sure viewers know?

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Well, viewer uh we we just want viewers to connect with um to be able to sort of observe what we observed, which was that the the the the history of this place is fascinating and uh and and really does stand on its own. Um because Philadelphia was such an old city, and it was a big city relative to other cities in the US hundreds of years ago. So that's important. That it's a place that's been asking and answering those questions for as long as long or longer than any other place in the country. It's worth seeing uh how those questions of rights and prosperity and wealth and you know, land have all been kind of worked out in this place because there are, of course, important issues everywhere. I mean, certainly it's so fascinating when you study like Los Angeles and the history of the land and the water rights and how the city was sort of constructed and obtained, you can see the origins of those land acquisitions, you know, way back in, you know, not in California, but you see the the origins of that idea of how you know America was going to organize itself based on land uh way back in Philadelphia in the 1700s.

SPEAKER_03 45:14

I would add one thing, and that is I'm not aware of another project of this nature that engages with as many voices as we do. Um, there are well over a hundred different um on-screen experts of various kinds who speak to the history, the story, and the meaning of America throughout ten episodes. And when you see that on screen, it's your your brain is becoming aware of something that's a truth all by itself, no matter what is being said.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Yeah, well said. So, to the listeners out there, make sure to check out InPursuit. You can follow their channel on YouTube quite simply, or you can check out their website at www.inpursuit.tv. Thank you, Andrew and Nathaniel.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Thank you, Alicia. Great to talk with you.

SPEAKER_01 46:21

My thanks again to Nathaniel and Andrew for spending their time with me. Be sure to stream the available episodes of In Pursuit Now and follow their channel so you don't miss the latest episodes when they become available. I have provided a link to it in the show notes for the episode. Thanks, peeps. I'll see you next time. Thanks for sitting down with me as I explored this chapter of American history. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe and share with your friends. I look forward to our next cup of coffee together.