Hello, welcome to the editor's desk.

This is the podcast where we take a closer look at the essays and articles in the latest print

issue of First Things magazine.

I'm Rusty Reno on the editor of First Things magazine, and I'm here with you today at

the editor's desk.

Today we have Justin Shubo, president of the National Civic Arts Society, and he is going to

talk to us. We're casting our gaze back on an article from the March 2016

issue monument to failure, which is an account of these architectural misdeeds of the past.

And I asked Justin to come with me today because with this new incoming administration, there's

an opportunity to get things going in a much better direction. So welcome to the podcast,

Justin. Thanks for having me. And let me just say that the National Civic Arts Society is a very

important and effective organization in Washington to lobby for beauty

in the federal patronage of the arts and especially architecture.

So thanks for all the work you've done at the National Civic Arts Society, Justin.

Well, thanks for all the support you've given us over the years, and we're glad to now have you as a member of our Board of Advisors.

Yeah, it's a pleasure.

And as I said, we were casting our gaze back.

And this 2016 article, you talked about the LBJ building, which houses the Department of Education, which was up for, it was a candidate for designation as a site of historic preservation or preserved for posterity.

But you point out that it's part of a larger phenomenon in federal architecture of a kind of turn towards kind of a banal modernism.

And it's certainly not the worst example, is it?

Well, I mean, it's just a utterly forgettable mid-century building, a big

giant box with a grid of windows on it. When it was constructed, it was compared to looking like

...