Hey, podcast listeners, do you ever think about the future?

Not next month or next year, but like 100, 200 years in the future.

We'll be dead.

But what will be remembered?

Will Justin Bieber's music stand the test of time?

Or what about the theory of relativity or even gravity?

So this is the kind of thing that keeps the cultural critic Chuck Closterman up at night.

I'm Anne Strange Champs.

This is it to the best of our knowledge, extra, an extended conversation with Closterman.

He's got a new book out called But What If We're Wrong?

Thinking about the present as if it were the past.

So in this book, Closterman looks at popular culture as if it were the past. So in this book, Closterman looks at

popular culture as if it were history. For example, take Herman Melville's 1851 novel,

Moby Dick. Melville thought it was his masterwork, but the critics gave it mixed reviews,

and it didn't sell. Now it's considered the Great American Novel.

So here's Doug Gordon's conversation with Chuck Closterman.

How and when did Moby Dick become the Great American Novel?

When did it get its recognition?

Okay, it's sort of a mystery, right?

Like there is an answer that you can give,

which is kind of the conventional wisdom,

which is that soldiers coming back from World War I had had this experience

...