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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we welcome back The Washington Post humor columnist, Alexandra Petri, who is reputed to have said, "I put the pun in punditry." Listeners, Alexandra is here today to give you an AP US History quiz. If you think you can tell real historical documents from fake ones, call up and get in line 212-433-WNYC. Get one right and you win a copy of the book. Let me bring Alexandra right in here and we'll explain further. Hi, Alexandra. Welcome back to WNYC.

Alexandra Petri: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Now, to be completely transparent with the listeners, you do have a new book called Alexandra Petri's US History: Important Documents (I Made Up) . When you refer to AP US History, do you mean Advanced Placement US history?

Alexandra Petri: I do or maybe I mean my own personal US history. That ambiguity I hope to exploit and possibly confuse somebody who's trying to, at the last minute, buy good useful documents.

Brian Lehrer: AP for Alexandra Petri. I see you have a Washington Post column with excerpts from the book presented in quiz form. That's what we're going to replicate on the radio now. Thank you for agreeing to do this. The column, folks, is called Alexandra Petri Presents Real or Fake, A History Quiz. Listeners, that's the drill. Whether you had AP US History in high school or not, we invite you to call in and try your hand at identifying whether US history document that Alexandra and I will read from is real or if it's fake. There are a number of them. There is a prize. It is a copy of the book, Alexandra Petri's US History: Important Documents (I Made Up).

We will tell you there are some real documents cited in the quiz, if not in the book, 212-433-WNYC. 212-43396 if you want to play. What gave you the idea to put some of the documents into the form of a quiz. Don't you think we already have too much testing in the schools these days?

Alexandra Petri: I feel like this is the kind of test that I wish I'd gotten to take because my favorite part of history is all the wild primary source documents that are out there, the things that are not even in the book like Nikola Tesla, the time turned out he was in love with a pigeon and he wanted his friends to know that. Genuinely, there's a real thing where he's like, "I met this one bird and she was unlike any other bird and I loved her as a man loves a woman." It's like, "Where is this in my history textbook?" That was the inspiration for the book.

Brian Lehrer: You write that everyone these days seems to want to rewrite history. Did something inspire you to be part of that trend?

Alexandra Petri: I thought why should rewriting history be left raged state legislatures when I too know very little about the past, and would like to make some stuff up. I wanted to do so from a place of joy. Hopefully, this will be a book of made-up history that will make you laugh instead of one that enrages you and confuses you.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, because often, as you point out, people rewrite history to make it more accurate. Did you want to go another way?

Alexandra Petri: I feel like people who are rewriting it to make it more accurate they have to go and spend a lot of time in archives wearing gloves and trying very hard not to breathe on all the materials. I respect their labor so much that I'm so excited that they're working on the history, but I wanted to go back to the roots of history like Herodotus and Thucydides, the fathers of history who said things like, "There was a guy and he had a ring that made him invisible." That's in an actual book of history, or Thucydides who said, "Whenever there was a speech and I wasn't there for it, I just came up with some remarks that seemed to be like what you would say at a time like that."

I'm like, "Where's that energy in our current history books?" I know Rush Limbaugh used to write a whole series of self insert historical fiction books where he and his talking horse, Liberty, would go to places in the past and tell John Bradford what to do- William Bradford, sorry. Not sure who this John Bradford character is. I'm like, "I want to get in on that." That's a motivation.

Brian Lehrer: That you can put that in your next book, William Bradford's fake brother John.

Alexandra Petri: [chuckles] Exactly. Speak for yourself, John.

Brian Lehrer: What he did to sabotage America. Maybe you were just so inspired by Donald Trump's reliance on fake news to run the country that you decided to research fake history.

Alexandra Petri: Exactly. I've been mistaken for real news once before while writing satire so I thought, "Clearly, if I'm able to fool the Donald Trump presidential official website, newsletter thing, maybe I'm official enough to write a whole book of history that does the same thing."

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I will say The Washington Post seems always very careful to label your column "humor" right up at the top. Jack in North Brunswick, you're ready to take a little real or fake history quiz?

Jack: I'm growing more and more nervous as we speak.

Brian Lehrer: All right. It's a one-question quiz, you can relax, Jack, because nerves work against your judgment and your ability to sniff out fakes. We're just going to go down some of the ones in the column here. Alexandra, you'll read from the first one. Some of these are long. You made up some very intricate documents here. This book is amazing, folks, by the way. Let me just say this book is absolutely brilliant. You're going to laugh and you're going to cry. Just give us 30 seconds or something like that, okay?

Alexandra Petri: Perfect. This is maybe correspondence from President Warren G. Harding to his mistress Carrie Fulton Phillips, written perhaps on September 15th, 1913. "Honestly, I hurt with the insatiate longing, until I feel that there will never be any relief until I take a long, deep, wild draft on your lips and then bury my face on your pillowing breasts. Oh, Carrie. I want the solace you only can give. It is awful to hunger so and be so wholly denied. Wouldn't you like to hear me ask if we only dared and answer, "We dare," while souls rejoicing sang the sweetest of choruses in the music room?

Wouldn't you like to get sopping wet out on Superior, not the lake, for the joy of fevered fondling and melting kisses? Wouldn't you like to make the suspected occupant of the next room jealous of the joys he could not know, as we did in morning communion at Richmond?"

Brian Lehrer: All right, that's all I can hear. This is a family show. Whether it's you or President Harding, who's responsible for that, I don't want to get canceled by the FCC on your behalf. Okay, Jack, is that a real letter from Warren G. Harding to his mistress or is that fake?

Jack: It sounds so delicious, it has to be real.

Alexandra Petri: Ding ding, yes, it is. [background noise] Oh, an actual sound. That's even better than me saying, "Ding ding."

Brian Lehrer: Jack, hang on. Congratulations. Nerves aside, you discovered within yourself the ability to identify a real document. Let's just go on to the next one with the next contestant as we get ready to take Jack's address off the air so we can send him a copy of the book. Sherry in Brooklyn, you're ready to play?

Sherry: Hi. Yes, I am. Hi, Alexandra also fellow Jeopardy alum here. It's great to hear you on the radio.

Alexandra Petri: Oh, congrats. Were you a Jeopardy loser as I was or a Jeopardy [crosstalk]

Sherry: Yes.

Alexandra Petri: Oh, good. High five to you.

Sherry: One and done. Yes. High five.

Brian Lehrer: You're going to do this much better than I do so why don't we just continue with you reading from your own stuff here and you can go on to the next one?

Alexandra Petri: All right. This may be correspondence from Sun-Maid, a raisin company, to the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, perhaps on March 20th, 1959. "Dear Ms. Hansberry, we here at Sun-Maid, a raisin company, wish to congratulate you upon the success of A Raisin in the Sun. As a gesture of our appreciation, we here enclose a large basket of complimentary raisins from California's number-one raisin-producing farmer association.

We are so thrilled that the highest form of grape has served to inspire one as gifted as yourself. We have long felt that the raisin deserved a moment in, as you so aptly put it, the sun (our raisins are all sun-ripened, so we know the process well), and we could not be more delighted by your choice of subject and its Broadway success.

Speaking of which: As we like to say, raisins are not just for the kitchen anymore. You know the sensation you have upon biting into a cookie and discovering that there are raisins in it? Now multiply that feeling across all forms of expression. Imagine America's delight at finding unexpected raisins not only in their cookies or breakfast cereals but also in their novels, their plays, their musicals, their short films, you name it, the raisin will elevate it.

To this end, we would love to partner with you and your producers to offer an intermission refreshment to your Broadway guests. Do let us know to whom we can address that request? Anything that puts raisins in front of the American public is bound to meet with success."

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Okay, Sherry, so you and Alexandra belong to the Jeopardy losers club. Let's see if you can be a winner in Alexandra's real or fake history quiz. Real or fake?

Sherry: This is fantastic, and I can't believe that it's real, so I'm going to say fake.

Alexandra Petri: Ding ding. [background noise] I forgot the original sound.

Brian Lehrer: Yay. Sherry, thank you very much. Congratulations. Hang on, we're going to take your address off the air and send you a copy of Alexandra's book. That was too crazy, so creative, the raisin company sending a promotional letter to Lorraine Hansberry for writing A Raisin in the Sun. I do see, by the way, that you were an English major at Harvard.

I should say that I'm not surprised you were an English major because I expected your made-up American history documents since I read your column sometimes to be mostly about things like war and white supremacy and political corruption. So much of it is literary, like, what if Ernest Hemingway, not F. Scott Fitzgerald, wrote The Great Gatsby, and you give us a little Gatsby in the style of Hemingway? Or what if Emily Dickinson was a contestant on Family Feud? Or Herman Melville pitches his editor on his book idea about a whale?

First, you have to know all these works well enough to satirize them, and they're brilliant one after another. Did you read Moby-Dick thinking, "Gee, I wonder how Melville pitched this book to a publisher"?

Alexandra Petri: I love it. I do wonder how he pitched it because I would say 50% of it is plot and 90% of it is just thoughts that he had about whales, and I love that ratio. I love any book where they try to have a little plot, but mostly the author just wants to grab you by the shoulders and yell fun facts, but people don't do that as much since Victor Hugo really went hog wild with like, "You want to know anything about the sewers, I can tell you," in that energy in Les Mis.

I'm sad that the musical honestly does not involve-- You'll sing, you'll sing, you'll stop, and then you'll just hear a lecture about the sewers. To me, that would be the ideal format of that, but this is a digression. I feel like I can't do any Les Mis content because it's not American, so I had to whittle it down.

Brian Lehrer: Well, maybe you'll do a musical version of some of these documents that you're making up in the book, some of these exchanges such as, "What if Emily Dickinson, the poet, was a contestant on Family Feud?" What do you give us there?

Alexandra Petri: I do feel like, as with many people I know, she would not have been very good at being a contestant on the Family Feud because she has such a specific mind, and all of her answers would be things like, "A wind-bellied gust," and the question would be like, "What's the reason that your honeymoon's not going well?" I don't actually have it in front of me, so I'm like, "I know that it was funnier on the page, please buy the book."

I also watch a lot of Family Feud. Every so often, someone will have a really amazing witty, brilliant answer, and it will turn out to not be up there. There's a guy that they were like, "Things that follow pork," and he goes, "-cupine." I was like, "This man is a genius," but it wasn't up there. I feel like Emily Dickinson would have the same problem as the porcupine guy.

Brian Lehrer: All right, let's take another quiz contestant. Marissa, in Queens, you're on WNYC. Listeners, if you're just joining us and wondering, "What the heck are they doing on the Brian Lehrer Show right now?" We are with Washington Post humor columnist Alexandra Petri, who has a new book called Alexandra Petri's US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up).

Yes, the documents are fake, but she has a Washington Post column that's related, that includes some of those documents and some real ones, and it's a quiz. Is this document real, or is this document fake? We're going through some of those, and if you get it right, we will send you a copy of the book. Really, the publisher will because it's coming out of their pocket, so we thank your publisher, which is who? I guess you could say the--

Alexandra Petri: Norton. W. W. Norton. Happy [unintelligible 00:14:13] birthday.

Brian Lehrer: Marissa in Queens, ready to play?

Marissa: I think so.

Brian Lehrer: All right, Alexandra, keep going.

Alexandra Petri: This may be correspondence between Abigail Adams and her husband, John, the future second president of the United States. It's dated April 1, 1778, from Peace field, Old House, Quincy, Massachusetts. "My dear is John, I trust you have arrived safely in Paris. Do tell me the long journey was not unduly arduous. How do you find it there, my love? In particular, as I try to imagine you alone, in your quarters across the vast ocean, I find myself curious to hear all manner of detail regarding your arrangements, regarding the people, and, selfishly, regarding the latest fashions. Dare I ask: What are you wearing?"

Hotel de Valois, Paris, France, May 21st, 1778: "My Dearest Friend, I am wearing a good thick woolen coat of sound construction as well as my customary stockings, long linen shirt, and knee breeches. It is a brisk, chill day here in Paris, yet as I stamp and rub my hands in the cold, or shove them more deeply into my stout brown coat's pockets, I am passed by many a man clad gaily like a field in riot with sunflowers. Such are the exigencies of fashion here, I feel a very wren amidst so many peacocks."

Peace field, June 8th, 1778: "Dear John, I delighted very much in your description of the fashions. However, I must be candid: I inquired as to what you were wearing in the hopes that we might engage in simulated coitus via letter. I apologize if that was unclear, in case you should wish to alter your description of what attire you are wearing."

Hotel de Valois, June 23rd, 1778: "My dearest friend, ah, what would be the benefit of such an exchange? It seems to me that sheets of cotton and sheets of parchment offer very different possibilities for marital disportment.

Peace field, July 7th, 1778: "Dear John, here, John, I have drawn a map. You are indicated with an X, and I am indicated with another X, and we may see by examining this map closely that you are on one continent whereas I am on another continent, so any pursuit involving cotton sheets, however desirable, is, alas, impossible."

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Well, that is quite an exchange between John and Abigail Adams. Marissa in Queens, is it real or is it fake?

Marissa: Oh, boy, this is tough. I'm going to say fake.

Alexandra Petri: Ding ding ding.

[background noise]

Brian Lehrer: Everybody's getting these right.

Alexandra Petri: I like that you thought it was tough.

Marissa: That was fabulous.

Alexandra Petri: My mom was like, "Your grandmother will not like it because it has 'coitus' in it," so sorry, grandma.

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Marissa, thank you--

Marissa: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Hang on, we'll take your address and send you a copy of the book. The moral of the story here is that Warren Harding's salty correspondence with his mistress was real, but John and Abigail Adams' salty correspondence with each other was fake?

Alexandra Petri: Yes, that is the moral. I feel like you always get the documents you don't want to get and you never get the documents you do want to get, although I guess I've just now outed myself as wanting John and Abigail Adams' salacious correspondence, which I guess I will own too. I feel like they had a good relationship.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I think if I remember correctly, the title of that chapter in the book is John and Abigail Adams sexting with each other?

Alexandra Petri: They attempt sexting. Yes. The spoiler alert, it doesn't go very well. Also, side note, I did get a fact-checker for this book, and this was one of the sections where they were like, "That is not how fast a letter would travel." I learned a lot about how long it takes a letter to get across the Atlantic.

Brian Lehrer: That is really the spirit of a journalist because even when you're writing a fake letter for a book of fake documents, you wanted to know how long it would really take to travel across the Atlantic?

Alexandra Petri: I did. Although, then once I learned that information like, "It doesn't make it work, I need it to be shorter," so I then, having learned that fact, discarded it.

Brian Lehrer: Let's see if we can do at least one more. Maybe we'll have time for a couple more. Joe on Staten Island, ready to play?

Joe: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hello.

Joe: Yes, why not?

Brian Lehrer: Alexandra, what you got for Joe?

Alexandra Petri: Okay, Joe, I'm hopping forward a little bit to give you, potentially, an excerpt from Ayn Rand's unpublished children's book, The Little Engine Stops, from 1958.

The little train went along the track. It is good for a train to be about its business. Men and trains ought always to be about their business, pursuing their own particular excellence. The track was in disrepair, a consequence of the railroad management's passivity.

The train carried toys to redistribute to children. A disgraceful errand. The train was chugging up a hill when it came suddenly to a halt. Something was not right with the train. In addition to the self-inflicted spiritual rot caused by the train's altruism, something was mechanically wrong with it. The toys aboard the train were, of course, parasites. They could offer it no useful assistance. The train was forced to wait passively on its stretch of track for an engine to come along. It is always thus with those who have nothing of value to offer and throw themselves upon the mercy of others.

Brian Lehrer: Real or fake, Joe?

Joe: Wow, well, I think if it were real, Paul Ryan would have it in his children's bookshelf. I'm going to maybe, potentially, be the first person to get something wrong, but I'm going to say fake.

Alexandra Petri: Fake. It is fake.

[background noise]

Brian Lehrer: Way to go, Joe. Joe knows his Ayn Rand, knows that Paul Ryan used to give out copies of these free-market-to-your-novelist books when he was a young member of Congress. Joe, paying attention, earns his copy of Alexandra's book. Joe, thank you very much. I love that one. That was so delicious.

To me, obviously, satire, the little engine stops instead of the little engine that could because the little engine was going to rely on government benefits, the little engine decided to be passive and just wait for other people to bail it out. That's the satirical point you're making, right?

Alexandra Petri: This altruism is sapping our vital forces, and it must be curtailed at any cost, I think, is what you would say to the actual little engine. Also, she was really into trains, so I feel like if she had written a children's book, it would have been slightly weird about trains as much of her writing is.

Brian Lehrer: In our last few minutes, there's so much delicious stuff in this book that are fake documents. Richard Nixon tapes, but just the parts where he's yelling at Checkers, his dog, can you do any of that for us off the top of your head?

Alexandra Petri: Sure. I've got it right here, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Lucky guess.

Alexandra Petri: "Damn it, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and Checkers. Checkers. No. Now, the way I want that handled is just to-- No, what the hell is this, Checkers? What's that he's got in his mouth? Ah, hell. Break in. Break in and take it out. Stop. Not you, Checkers. Give me that. Here, Checkers. Fetch. I want to make sure he is a ruthless son of a-- does what he's told.

No. Checkers. Checkers. [muffled thumping] Give me that. Give it to me. Drop it. I'm not for women in any job. Checkers, you were just out. You can't go out again. The Italians, of course, those people don't have their heads screwed on right. Hey, now, Buster. Pat. Pat. Checkers is in here. Get him out of here. I'm on the phone."

Brian Lehrer: Well, he was good at arranging obstruction of justice cover-ups but apparently not so good at dog training.

Alexandra Petri: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Going much earlier in US history, you have top toys for Puritan parents. Really?

Alexandra Petri: Oh, yes. I don't have them in front of you, but I know that they included such things as a difficult bake oven because nothing good should be easy, and Elmo who delights in nothing, other such stayed and undelightful treats.

Brian Lehrer: Let's see, I know I'm throwing a few things at you here without advance warning. Do you happen to have the 1950s recipe book in front of you? I'm going to use it in my kitchen when I think of the era of our parent's/grandparent's heyday, 1950s recipes.

Alexandra Petri: Oh, yes, I've got those. For instance, ham salad, weird egg, gelatinous mass circular, which is one of my favorite treats to have at grandma's. Noun you wouldn't expect to be followed by salad, followed by salad, wiener porcupine [unintelligible 00:23:35]

Brian Lehrer: Do you have the weird egg recipe in front of you?

Alexandra Petri: Oh yes. Weird egg, served 16, prep time, the best years of your life. Ingredients; one dozen eggs, some celery, and mayonnaise. All you have to do is do something to the egg so that it comes back wrong, and then you're set for life.

Brian Lehrer: 1950s recipes. Absolutely, all you need to devote is the best years of your life and an egg. Before you go, the book, again, is called Alexandra Petri's US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up). If you look at the front cover, it looks like AP US History, it's her initials, Alexandra Petri, AP US History. I was just wondering if your book is going to be banned in Florida because Governor DeSantis's relationship with certain AP History courses these days is not very friendly.

Alexandra Petri: That's true. We'll have to wait and see. I think unlike the actual college board, I will not be changing any of the book. If he wants to, let him come at it. That's what I'd say.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Listeners, because this was probably more fun than you've had listening to the radio in about a dozen years, you may be interested to know that Alexandra has a book-related event tonight in the city. It's at Symphony Space, that theater on the Upper West Side, 95th and Broadway. What do you have planned for Symphony Space tonight?

Alexandra Petri: Oh, we're going to have some hilarious guests, and we're going to be studying for the fake exam that this would be the textbook for as a group. We're going to have PowerPoints. We're going to have laughter. We're going to have audience quizzes and you can maybe win very [unintelligible 00:25:30] looking pillow with Richard Nixon on it. People should come out, they'll have exactly the time I just described, which I hope will be a good time.

Brian Lehrer: I hope Checkers hasn't soiled that pillow.

Alexandra Petri: Me too.

Brian Lehrer: All right. The book is Alexandra Petri's US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up). The event is tonight at Symphony Space. Thank you, Alexandra.

Alexandra Petri: Thank you. This was a treat.

 

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