Welcome to the season finale of Public Work! This week's episode begins with a conversation between Amelia and Jim on the secret origins of Public Work, the ubiquity of podcasts, and what they've learned from working on this project. Then Jim talks to Liza Yeager, an audio producer and storyteller (and a Brown University alum!) who has worked on a range of podcasts, radio programs, and other projects. Liza talks about what led her to co-found Now Here This, a student-led audio storytelling project, at Brown, what she's learned about radio and podcasts from her work with NPR's Story Lab, Jacobin's The Dig podcast, and other projects, and what she cares about when telling and hearing audio-centric forms of storytelling.

Public Work is produced and hosted by Amelia Golcheski and Jim McGrath This is the last episode of Public Work with this team, as Amelia has recently graduated. Congrats Amelia! Stay tuned to @PublicWorkPod and @publichumans on Twitter to learn what podcast projects are on the horizon at Brown's Center for Public Humanities!

Questions? Comments? Email us: publicworkpodcast[at]gmail.

The music at the beginning of this episode is excerpted from the song “New Day” by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International). All other music is performed by No-No Boy.

How can music call attention to America's traumatic past and reveal what we can learn from these histories in the present? This week we talk to Julian Saporiti and Erin Aoyama, the musicians and scholars behind No-No Boy. The No-No Boy project tells stories about the Asian American experience through folk music, highlighting histories of Japanese Incarceration camp survivors, what life was like during the Vietnam War, and many other experiences. Juilan and Erin talk about where the idea for this project came from, discuss the research and traveling they've done to learn more about these histories, and play some of their amazing songs. We hope you enjoy this special musical episode of Public Work!

Public Work is produced and hosted by Amelia Golcheski and Jim McGrath. Questions? Comments? Find us on Twitter (PublicWorkPod) or email us: publicworkpodcast[at]gmail.

The music at the beginning of this episode is excerpted from the song “New Day” by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International). All other music is performed by No-No Boy.

What happened to Providence's Chinatown? In this week's episode we talk to Angela Yuanyuan Feng and Julieanne Fontana, two Master's Students in Public Humanities at Brown University who have created an exhibit and walking tour in downtown Providence to consider this question. Angela and Julieanne discuss their work with community partners, scholars, and archivists to recover this history, and they talk about the various circumstances that led to the creation of Providence's Chinatown and its decline. Then we're joined by Diane O'Donoghue, Director of the Program for Public Humanities at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University, to learn more about how Diane's work on Boston's Chinatown and its public library influenced the project on Providence's Chinatown.

Public Work is produced and hosted by Amelia Golcheski and Jim McGrath. Questions? Comments? Find us on Twitter (PublicWorkPod) or email us: publicworkpodcast[at]gmail.

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song “New Day” by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International).

Every museum has its own unique soundtrack. This week on Public Work, Ruby Thiagarajan, a first-year Master's Student in Public Humanities at Brown University, talks to John Kannenberg, a multimedia artist and the Director and Chief Curator of The Museum of Portable Sound. Ruby and John discuss why John decide to create a museum that's the size of a cell phone, what it's like to curate sound, and what we might learn from the sounds of museums.

Public Work is produced and hosted by Amelia Golcheski and Jim McGrath. Questions? Comments? Find us on Twitter (PublicWorkPod) or email us: publicworkpodcast[at]gmail.

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song "New Day" by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International).

What is moonhaus? Find out in our conversation with Rica Maestas and Julia Renaud, the hosts behind a recent installation and event series that invited attendees to explore ideas of astrology and witch culture. Rica and Julia talk about what moonhaus borrows from theater and installation art, what kind of work goes into creating meaningful interactions and adopting feminist methodologies when designing events, and what astrology might teach us in the twenty-first century.

This episode is part of our series on Gallery Lab, an exciting collection of pop-up exhibitions, performances, and other programming hosted by the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage (Brown University).

Public Work is produced and hosted by Amelia Golcheski and Jim McGrath. Questions? Comments? Find us on Twitter (PublicWorkPod) or email us: publicworkpodcast[at]gmail.

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song "New Day" by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International).

What is Bad Art? Where do our ideas about aesthetics come from and how do those ideas change over time? Have you ever taken a still life class where the model was a dog? What does Enya have to do with all of this? Find out in our conversation with Maggie Unverzagt Goddard and Mika Matsuno, the Brown University students behind a crowdsourced exhibition on Bad Art.

This episode is part of our series on Gallery Lab, an exciting collection of pop-up exhibitions, performances, and other programming hosted by the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage (Brown University).

Public Work is produced and hosted by Amelia Golcheski and Jim McGrath. Questions? Comments? Find us on Twitter (PublicWorkPod) or email us: publicworkpodcast[at]gmail.

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song "New Day" by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International).

What role does folklore play in modern life? What is folklore, anyway? In this episode, Amelia Golcheski interviews West Virginia state folklorist Emily Hilliard to learn why folklore is more than just myths and legends. It can also be about labor movements, local histories, and even the "right" way to eat a hot dog. Amelia and Emily also discuss the recent teachers' strike in West Virginia, misconceptions about life in so-called "Trump Country," and approaches to public humanities that are invested in showing the importance of regional history.

Public Work is produced and hosted by Amelia Golcheski and Jim McGrath. Questions? Comments? Find us on Twitter (PublicWorkPod) or email us: publicworkpodcast[at]gmail.

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song "New Day" by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International).

How are artists and performers finding creative uses for archival materials? On our latest episode we're joined by Kate Duffy, a doctoral candidate in American Studies at Brown who is also one of the creators of The Phantom Archive. Kate describes her interest in creating dreamlike spaces around archival materials, explains what she's learned from nineteenth-century forms of entertainment like panoramas and magic shows, and introduces us to Mr. Crowley and Nancy Luce.

This episode is part of our series on Gallery Lab, an exciting collection of pop-up exhibitions, performances, and other programming hosted by the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage (Brown University).

Public Work is produced and hosted by Amelia Golcheski and Jim McGrath. Questions? Comments? Find us on Twitter (PublicWorkPod) or email us: publicworkpodcast[at]gmail.

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song "New Day" by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International).

Learn about museums in Shanghai from our latest episode, which features a conversation between Public Humanities graduate student Zhuohan Jiang and Susan Smulyan, Director of Brown University's John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage. Zhuohan and Susan discuss why they think museums are particularly popular destinations for the city's younger populations, how the cultural and economic factors of Shanghai and China are shaping the kinds of museums opening there, and what the uses of WeChat might tell us about visitor engagement here and in other global contexts.

Public Work is produced and hosted by Amelia Golcheski and Jim McGrath. Questions? Comments? Find us on Twitter (PublicWorkPod) or email us: publicworkpodcast[at]gmail.

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song "New Day" by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International).

Hannah Mooney and Molly Pailet stopped by Public Work to talk about "Monument Worthy," an exhibition they curated on the topic of "personal memory markers." Hear Hannah and Molly talk with Jim and Amelia about the monuments and debates informing their work, the forms of monuments to personal memory that were revealed in their exhibition, and the ways we remember, erase, and interrogate history through our relationships to material objects large and small. This episode is the first of several to focus on Gallery Lab, an exciting series of pop-up exhibitions, performances, and other programming at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage (Brown University).

Public Work is produced and hosted by Amelia Golcheski and Jim McGrath. Questions? Comments? Find us on Twitter (PublicWorkPod) or email us: publicworkpodcast[at]gmail.

The music on this episode is excerpted from the song "New Day" by Lee Rosevere (licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)