Getting Better with Jonathan Van Ness

In 1903, a Frenchman and an American granted the United States ninety nine years of control over the Isthmus of Panama. No Panamanians signed that treaty. This week, Professor Kaysha Corinealdi and Jonathan explore the political history and legacy of what came next: the Panama Canal.

Kaysha Corinealdi is an interdisciplinary historian of modern empires, migration, gender, and activism in the Americas. Her forthcoming book Panama in Black centers the activism of Afro-Caribbean migrants and their descendants as they navigated practices and policies of anti-Blackness, xenophobia, denationalization, and white supremacy in Panama and the United States. Her research can also be found in Black Perspectives (September 14, 2021), Caribbean Review of Gender Studies (Issue 12, 2018), the International Journal of Africana Studies (18:2, Fall-Winter 2017), and the Global South (6:2, Fall 2013).

You can follow her on Twitter @KCorinealdi, and read more of her work here. 

Find out what today’s guest and former guests are up to by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN. 

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

Check out Getting Curious merch at PodSwag.com.

Listen to more music from Quiñ by heading over to TheQuinCat.com.

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook.

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This week’s episode is a cut above the rest, as we explore the history and cultural significance of scissors. Join Jonathan and design historian Teresa Collenette as they talk ancient spring scissors, Victorian-era chatelaines, Jonathan’s go-to hair shears, and Teresa’s incredible collection of more than 100 pairs of scissors. 

Teresa Collenette is a design historian, curator and collector. Teresa has curated several exhibitions with the Fashion and Textile Museum, including The Secret Life of Scissors in 2018 and Beautiful People: The Boutique in 1960s Counterculture, which is up now!

You can follow her on Instagram @thehouseofscissors.

Want to learn more about scissors? Check out these resources:

Handmade scissors in Sheffield at Ernest Wright

Scissors being made at Ernest Wright

Scissors maker William Whiteley & Sons, Sheffield

Scissor Collecting Magazine

Dial M For Murder

The Secret Life of Scissors exhibition in The New York Times

Find out what today’s guest and former guests are up to by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN. 

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

Check out Getting Curious merch at PodSwag.com.

Listen to more music from Quiñ by heading over to TheQuinCat.com.

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook.

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Can you map out the Oregon Trail? If you just flashed back to playing The Oregon Trail video game in your sixth grade computer lab, get ready for a journey. Jonathan and Professor Margaret Huettl explore how Native knowledge systems established the Oregon Trail; how Native peoples experienced non-Native settlers moving West; and how Indigenous communities today are reckoning with this past to build a better future.

Margaret Huettl, a descendant of Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibweg, Assyrian refugees, and European settlers, is Assistant Professor in History and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is a scholar of Native American history and North American Wests, and her research examines the continuities of Ojibwe sovereignty in the context of settler colonialism in both the United States and Canada, centering Ojibwe ways of knowing. 

You can follow her on Twitter @historianhuettl.

Want to learn more about the Oregon Trail? 

See whose land you’re living on, or learn more about the Native nations whose land was crossed by the Oregon Trail: Native-Land.ca

Visit the only Oregon Trail museum run by Indigenous people: TAMÁSTSLIKT CULTURAL INSTITUTE

Explore the Fort Laramie Treaty through an interactive case study: Fort Laramie Treaty Case Study

Read Margaret’s work: “Treaty Stories: Reclaiming the Unbroken History of Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Sovereignty”

Learn more about Indigenous representations: IllumiNative. 

Check out some Indigenous-centered games:

When Rivers Were Trails

Invaders

Growing Up Ojibwe

Never Alone

Find out what today’s guest and former guests are up to by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN. 

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

Check out Getting Curious merch at PodSwag.com.

Listen to more music from Quiñ by heading over to TheQuinCat.com.

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook.

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You may have seen tear gas marketed as a “non-lethal” or “less lethal” weapon. The truth is more dangerous. This week, Professor Anna Feigenbaum breaks down what’s in tear gas, who manufactures it, and what its poisonous history reveals about profit motivation and modern policing.

Professor Anna Feigenbaum works at Bournemouth University in the South of England. She is the author of Tear Gas (Verso 2017). Her recent project The Data Storytelling Workbook (Routledge 2020) provides a guide to telling more effective, empathetic and evidence-based data stories.

You can follow Professor Feigenbaum on Twitter @drfigtree.

Want to learn more about tear gas? Here are some recommended resources:

Tear Gas: An Investigation — Amnesty International

RiotID (@RiotID on Twitter)

Welcome to Omega Research Foundation | Omega Research Foundation

Chemical Weapons Research Consortium

DTP

Physicians for Human Rights: Through evidence, change is possible.

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

Check out Getting Curious merch at PodSwag.com.

Listen to more music from Quiñ by heading over to TheQuinCat.com.

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook.

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Have you ever met a redhead? Someone with green eyes? Someone with intersex traits? 

If you answered yes to the first two questions, you can likely answer yes to the third: being intersex is as common as having red hair or green eyes. And that’s almost definitely an undercount. 

This week, Alicia Roth Weigel lays out what it means to have intersex traits, why so many intersex children face medical abuse, and what justice looks like for intersex people.

Alicia Roth Weigel is a Forbes and New York Times published change agent, working to improve the political and social landscape for marginalized populations in the South through her consulting firm Intrepida Strategy. As a Human Rights Commissioner for the City of Austin, she has contributed to legislation to reduce sexual assault and human trafficking, mandate paid sick leave and abortion funding, decriminalize and alleviate homelessness, and target other social determinants of health. 

Most notably, Alicia continually advocates for the rights of intersex people like her, for which she was awarded the Ceci Gratias Guardian Award by the Austin LGBT Chamber of Commerce in 2019. Alicia is committed to fostering body autonomy and culturally competent healthcare for all.

Make sure to follow Alicia on Instagram and Twitter @xoxy_alicia.

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

Check out Getting Curious merch at PodSwag.com.

Listen to more music from Quiñ by heading over to TheQuinCat.com.

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook.

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Chances are, you’ve been exposed to vaccine misinformation. And you could be at risk of believing it. This week, Dr. Kolina Koltai joins Jonathan to explore how vaccine misinformation travels online, why it’s so dangerous, and how you can stop it from spreading.

Dr. Kolina Koltai is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on the anti-vaccine community’s use of sociotechnical systems to find, share, and assess vaccine misinformation. She received her PhD in 2020 in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

You can follow her on Twitter @kolinakoltai.

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

Check out Getting Curious merch at PodSwag.com.

Listen to more music from Quiñ by heading over to TheQuinCat.com.

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook.

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Dams, what’s their story? Are they scenic sites? Harmful structures? This week, Professor Heather Randell and Jonathan go on a journey through dam history, ecology, and sociology. Listen in to learn about why dams are built; who they serve; and how they can cause displacement, change river ecology, and contribute to climate change.

Heather Randell is an Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology and Demography at Penn State. She studies how dam construction affects local communities as well as the health and social impacts of climate change.

You can follow her on Twitter @HeatherFRandell, and at www.heatherrandell.com

Want to learn more about dams? Here are three short films worth checking out:

Guardians of the River

Belo Monte: After the Flood (2016)

A River Runs Through Us

And here’s a recent article from the New Yorker on the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell.

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

Check out Getting Curious merch at PodSwag.com.

Listen to more music from Quiñ by heading over to TheQuinCat.com.

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook.

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You know those hangout episodes of your favorite TV shows? This episode’s like that, but in podcast form. Grab a seat and spend an hour with Jonathan and comedian, producer, writer, actor (and more!) Amanda Seales. The two explore their shared passion for gymnastics, how Amanda crafts her Instagram-famous comedy songs, and why it can be a compliment to be called “difficult.” 

Want another round with Amanda and Jonathan? Head over to Amanda’s podcast Small Doses for the second half of their conversation!

For more on Amanda and her work, including upcoming performance dates, make sure to follow her on Instagram and Twitter @amandaseales, and head to smartfunnyandblack.com.

Find out what today’s guest and former guests are up to by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN. 

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

Check out Getting Curious merch at PodSwag.com.

Listen to more music from Quiñ by heading over to TheQuinCat.com.

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Even the best earthquake early warning systems will give you only five to eight seconds of notice before you experience ground shaking. This week, Jonathan and geotechnical engineer Ashly Cabas take more than an hour exploring seismic waves, soils, risk assessment, and other earthquake fundamentals so that you can be prepared in the event of a natural hazard.

Ashly Cabas, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU), where she investigates seismic hazards and earthquake effects on civil infrastructure. 

Her team at NCSU collaborates with seismologists, geologists, and structural engineers to understand how the response of soils and rocks to earthquake loading can influence the damaging potential of earthquakes. 

Her research group’s work has also been recognized with EERI best paper awards in 2014 and 2018, and she has served in reconnaissance missions after the 2018 M7.1 Anchorage, Alaska earthquake, and more recently the 2021 M7.2 Nippes, Haiti earthquake.

You can follow Professor Cabas on Twitter @amcabas, and keep up with her work at NCSU on Twitter @NCStateCCEE and on the Cabas Research Group site.

Want to learn more about earthquakes? Here are some recommended resources:

Seismological Society of America (SSA)

Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI)

American Society of Civil Engineers - GeoInstitute

US Geological Survey (USGS), Earthquake Hazards

Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure Cyberinfrastructure component, DesignSafe-CI

Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure Natural Hazards Reconnaissance component, RAPID

Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS)

GeoHazards International (GHI)

ShakeAlert, Early Warning System

RaspberryShake Personal seismograph

NCSU Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering Department

Find out what today’s guest and former guests are up to by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN. 

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

Check out Getting Curious merch at PodSwag.com.

Listen to more music from Quiñ by heading over to TheQuinCat.com.

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook.

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Actress, executive producer, activist, and best-selling author Gabrielle Union joins Jonathan to discuss radical transparency, allyship, and her new book You Got Anything Stronger?

You can follow Gabrielle on Twitter @itsgabrielleu and Instagram @gabunion. 

Find out what today’s guest and former guests are up to by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN.

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

Check out Getting Curious merch at PodSwag.com.

Listen to more music from Quiñ by heading over to TheQuinCat.com.

Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook.

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