Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to Econ Talk. in to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done

going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econ talk.org we'd love to hear from you. Today is July 15,

2024, and my guest is Sculptor Saban Howard. He is the sculptor Saben Howard.

He is the sculptor of the soon to be unveiled

World War One Memorial in Washington, D.C.

on the evening of September the 13th.

This is a 58 foot wide 10 foot high bronze wall with 38

figures. It's an incredible project. We're going to discuss the memorial and

then I hope we get to discuss art more generally.

Say I've been welcome to you, Kontok.

Thank you for having me on this morning.

The memorial that you're building, you give it the name a soldier's journey.

What's the idea behind it?

It's a story that would be understandable universally of a father, a dad, and an allegory for the United States.

And it follows under the idea of the hero's journey with Joseph Campbell's

wrote about.

It's this soldier, his dad, leaves home and enters into the Brotherhood of Arms,

and from that point enters into the battle he leads the battle charge and then from this

horrific experience is shell-shocked which is the focus of the full 60 foot long freeze.

And at that moment, that is an allegory for the change in our world

for how we were seen as humans, how we saw ourselves no longer

...