Reckoning with Jason Herbert

The gang is back together as we return to Indiana Jones franchise to talk about archaeology, British imperialism, representation of India on film, and why Harrison Ford never looked cooler than he did on the bridge. 

Physicist Matt Strassler drops in to talk about the origins of the universe and how we how what we know.

About  our guest:

Dr. Matt Strassler is a  theoretical physicist and writer. His research over the past thirty years has mainly been related mainly to the Large Hadron Collider, though he has written many papers on a wide variety of topics in string theory, quantum field theory and particle physics. He has recently completed a new book, called “Waves in an Impossible Sea“, in which, without assuming readers know any science or math, he explains modern physics and its centrality in human experience.

This week Kevin Smokler drops in to talk about The Breakfast Club, the Brat Pack, John Hughes, and the legacy of 80s teen movies. 

About our guest:

Kevin Smokler is a writer, documentary filmmaker and event host focused on our relationship as human beings with pop culture. His most recent book BREAK THE FRAME: CONVERSATIONS WITH WOMEN FILMMAKERS  contains 24 career-retrospective conversations with directors behind box office phenomenon like Captain Marvel, Oscar winners like Free Solo and the filmmakers who launched actors such as America Ferrera, Paul Rudd, Ryan Gosling and Jennifer Lawrence. His previous books, BRAT PACK AMERICA is a love letter to teen movies of the 1980s. His 2013 essay collection PRACTICAL CLASSICS is a 50 book attempt to reread one’s high school reading list as an adult.

April 1 marks the beginning of Autism Awareness Month in the U.S. and the U.K. so I invited neuroscientist Dr. Gina Rippon on the pod to talk about what autism is, the history of its diagnosis, and how women and girls have been overlooked in autism research.

About our guest: 

Professor Gina Rippon is Professor Emeritus of Cognitive NeuroImaging at Aston University in the UK. Her research involves the use of state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques to investigate developmental disorders such as autism, profiling different patterns of brain activity in autistic children and adults.

 Her current research explores the under-recognition of autism in women and girls, especially in neuroscience research. Her new book on this topic: The Lost Girls of Autism (UK)/Off the Spectrum (US) is released in April 2025.

Talking today about why we have to keep fighting and why we must move forward. Because it's not about us.

This week Dr. Kit Heyem visits from across the Pond to talk about their new book, Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender. This was an awesome conversation to talk nonbinary histories through time and why that is relevant today.

About our guest:
Dr Kit Heyam (they/them or he/him) is a Leeds-based freelance writer, heritage practitioner, trans awareness trainer and academic. 

You can find them on Blue Sky at: https://bsky.app/profile/krheyam.bsky.social

In 1992 Bill Duke teamed up with Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum to create one of the best film noirs ever made and a masterpiece of Black cinema. Walter Greason and Tim Fielder join in to talk about it, the rise of hip hop, and the early 90s. 

About our guests:

A native of Mississippi, Tim Fielder is an illustrator, cartoonist, animator and OG Afrofuturist. He is the founder of Dieselfunk Studios, an intermedia storytelling company, and is an educator for institutions such as the New York Film Academy and Howard University. Tim has served clients such as Marvel, Tri-Star Pictures, Ubisoft Entertainment, and the Village Voice, and is known for his TEDx Talk on Afrofuturism. He won the prestigious 2018 Glyph Award, and his work has been showcased in the Hammonds House Museum, Exit Art and NYU Gallatin Gallery. He attended Jackson State University, School of Visual Arts, and New York University. He lives in New York City.

Walter Greason teaches American and world history, using media ecology, economics, and African diaspora studies. His areas of research include urban planning, Afrofuturism, and multimedia user experience design. He is an author, editor, and contributor to more than twenty books, mostly notably the award-winning books Suburban Erasure and The Black Reparations Project.  His work on the Timothy Thomas Fortune Cultural Center has garnered international acclaim for the innovative use of digital technology, leading to multiple urban revitalization projects in Minnesota, Florida, New Jersey, and Louisiana. He has written for or appeared as the feature guest on media outlets ranging from the Washington Post, USA Today, the Canadian Broadcast Channel, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Huffington Post, National Public Radio, Historians at the Movies, the New York Times Read Along, WURD Philadelphia, and Today with Dr. Kaye (WEEA, Baltimore). He was a Future Faculty Fellow at Temple University where he completed his Ph.D. in History and a Presidential Scholar at Villanova University where he studied History, English, Philosophy, Peace and Justice Studies, and Africana Studies. His most recent project, The Graphic History of Hip Hop, with Afrofuturist illustrator Tim Fielder, has been featured at the United Nations, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum for African American History and Culture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Schomburg Center in the New York Public Library system, and San Diego Comic-Con in 2024.

In the early 20th century, the New York Times dubbed French philosopher Henri Bergson as "the most dangerous man in the world." Bergson scared a lot of people in how he brought philosophy to the masses but he also won critical acclaim, receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature and France's highest honor, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur. Surprisingly, no English language biography exists of him. Until now. This week, Dr. Emily Herring joins in to talk about Bergson's rise to fame, his influence on 20th century thought, and the mysteries behind why he died in relative obscurity. 

About our guest:

Dr. Emily Herring received her PhD from the University of Leeds and is now working as a freelance writer and editor. She is the author of the first biography of Henri Bergson in English, Herald of a Restless World. How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People (2024 Basic Books). 

Imagine John Wick. Only instead of losing his puppy, he's lost his entire family because the British let them freeze to death. And imagine now that they're all in Ireland and it's the middle of the Famine. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Black '47. Joining us to talk about this film and the misconceptions around the Irish Potato Famine is Padraic Scanlan, author of the new book Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine. This movie is bonkers and actually has a lot to say on Irish history. And this conversation won't leave you hungry. 

About our guest:

Padraic Scanlan is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, cross-appointed to the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies. He is also a Research Associate at the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St. Michael's College.

His research focuses on the history of labour, enslaved and free, in Britain and the British empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He is currently in the early stages of research on a new project, on the transformation of the line between ‘home’ and ‘work’ in the industrial era. 

His most recent book, Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine, out now from Robinson Books and Basic Books, reinterprets the history of the Irish Great Famine (1845-1851). In the first half of the nineteenth century, nowhere in Europe – or the world – did the working poor depend as completely on potatoes as in Ireland. To many British observers, potatoes were evidence of a lack of modernity and ‘civilization’ among the Irish. Ireland before the Famine, however, more closely resembled capitalism’s future than its past. Irish labourers were paid some of the lowest wages in the British empire, and relied on the abundance of the potato to survive. He shows how the staggering inequality, pervasive debt, outrageous rent-gouging, precarious employment, and vulnerability to changes in commodity prices that torment so many in the twenty-first century were rehearsed in the Irish countryside before the potatoes failed.

Let’s talk about sex, baby. And food too. And while we’re at it, let’s talk with Dr. Rachel Hope Cleves about how conceptions of food and sex informed one another in the minds of Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries. Plus, we get into the ideas of food tourism, appropriation vs. appreciation, and our favorite food scenes in movies. 

About our guest:

Hungry historian and novelist. Professor at the University of Victoria. 

Rachel Hope Cleves is the author of four award-winning works of history: Lustful Appetites: An Intimate History of Good Food and Wicked Sex (2024), Unspeakable: A Life Beyond Sexual Morality (2020), Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America (2014), and The Reign of Terror in America: Visions of Violence from Anti-Jacobinism to Antislavery (2009).

In 2023, Cleves published her first novel, A Second Chance for Yesterday (2023), co-authored with her brother, the futurist Aram Sinnreich.

Her research has been featured in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, salon.com and brainpickings.org. She writes in a treehouse in Victoria, British Columbia.