Knox Pods

For three days in October of 1890, Knoxville hosted an enormous reunion of Confederate and Union soldiers near the site of Fort Sanders. The visitors nearly doubled the city's population, and they all needed places to sleep, and food. How did Knoxville step up to the challenge? What did the veterans do at the reunion?

Elizabeth Rowland, Executive Director of TN-China Network, discusses Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos in this Books Sandwiched In podcast.

Modern day China is experiencing a great collision: the clash between the elevation of the individual and the Communist Party's struggle to retain control. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos has seen the clash first hand during his decades on the ground covering this rising global power. In Age of Ambition, Osnos asks probing questions: Why does a government with more success lifting people from poverty than any civilization in history choose to put strict restraints on freedom of expression? Why do millions of young Chinese professionals—fluent in English and devoted to Western pop culture—consider themselves "angry youth" dedicated to resisting the West's influence? How are Chinese from all strata finding meaning after two decades of the relentless pursuit of wealth?

In 1922, Knoxville Aero Corporation was the proud owner of the first privately-owned aeroplane in the city, christened Airship Knoxville. We read an article about one of the corporation's efforts to find a commercial application for their cutting-edge investment—that of running charter flights into the Smokies.

We read news of a Wild West-style shootout in Knoxville with an actual Wild West bandit. Kid Curry was one of the most wanted criminals, a cohort of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. After participating in the Great Northern Train Robbery, he hid out in Knoxville until one evening he got into fisticuffs in a Bowery pool hall. Police arrived on the scene, and in the exchange of gunfire the bandit—whose real name was Harvey Logan—escaped from the police he wounded. Logan’s wounds led to his identification and capture two days later.

This podcast episode tells the strange and sad story of how an elephant came to be executed in Erwin, TN in 1916 for killing her handler. The reading is an abridgment of an article entitled “The hanging of Mary, a circus elephant,” by Thomas Burton published in Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin, volume 37, number 1, March 1971 (used by permission; all rights reserved). The full article is available at the Calvin M. McClung Collection.

In A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power, President Carter addresses the world’s most serious, pervasive, and ignored violation of basic human rights: the ongoing discrimination and violence against women and girls. Wanda Sobieski responds to his book in this recording.

“Carter makes a well-documented argument that the worst of prejudice, discrimination, wars, violence, distorted interpretations of religious texts, physical and mental abuse, poverty and disease fall disproportionately on women and girls,” Sobieski says. “He concludes with a Call to Action list of 23 very specific steps we can take individually and/or collectively to address this worldwide challenge.”

Wanda Sobieski joined Baker, Worthington, Crossley, Stansberry & Woolf law firm in 1982, becoming the first woman partner in the hundred-year history of the firm. She established her own law firm in 1993.

Where is the intersection between happiness and urban design? Knoxville Area Transit director Dawn Distler reviews Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery and answers several questions about her plans to improve Knoxville's mass transit system for a happier rider. (Recorded March 18, 2015)

Dr. McIntyre, Superintendent of Knox County Schools, discusses Last child in the woods: saving our children from nature-deficit disorder by Richard Louv. He is joined by Knox County School’s Aneisa McDonald, Supervisor of Coordinated School Health, and Lisa Wagoner, Supervisor of Health Services.

Louv emphasizes the important role interaction with nature plays in our personal emotional, physical and intellectual health. He contends that connecting education and play to environment raises standardized test scores and grade point averages, improving many skills such as critical thinking and even creativity. Yet sending kids outside to play is increasingly difficult. Homework and electronic entertainments compete for their time, of course, but it's also our fear of traffic, strangers, and even virus-carrying mosquitoes that keep children indoors. (Recorded November 18, 2009)

Dawn Coppock and Pat Hudson of Lindquist Environmental Appalachian Fellowship (LEAF) discuss the issue of mountaintop removal coal mining and the book Something's rising: Appalachians fighting mountaintop removal. View their presentation slides as you listen to the recording below. The people who live, work, and raise families in central Appalachia face not only the physical destruction of their land but also the loss of their culture and health in communities dominated by the consequences of mountaintop removal. Included here are oral histories from both well-known activists and people rarely in the media. (Recorded October 28, 2009)

Dr. William D. Shiell, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church, discusses Cheap: the high cost of discount culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell. "Cheap addresses our need for more stuff by challenging our assumptions about discounts," Dr Shiell said. "The book says that just because something is on sale does not make it a good value. During the shopping season, this book asks us to look beyond the sale price and examine how our purchases reflect our values." (Recorded December 2, 2009)