When disaffected teens in East Berlin first heard the Sex Pistols on British military radio in 1977, they couldn’t have known that those radio waves would spark a revolution. In the DDR, or East Germany, everyday life was obsessively planned and oppressively boring. To be punk was to be an individual, someone who wasn’t having any of the state’s rules. That didn’t exactly endear punks to the Stasi, the DDR’s dreaded secret police. Punks lost their jobs and families, were spied on for years by their own friends, had their homes searched and trashed by the police, and were even thrown in prison for dissidence. But every time the state cracked down, the punks only fanned the flames of resistance, ultimately firing up a nationwide, mainstream protest movement. American writer, translator, and former Berlin DJ Tim Mohr joins us on the podcast to tell the story of how punk rock brought down the Wall. This episode originally aired 29 years to the day after it came tumbling down, November 9, 2018.

Go beyond the episode:

• Tim Mohr’s Burning Down the Haus
• For photographs of East German punks, peruse the online gallery for the exhibition Ostpunk! Too Much Future
• We’ve compiled a playlist of DDR punk songs—many of them demos or live recordings from the ’80s—which include hits from Namenlos, Schleim Keim, Planlos, and Müllstation, of varying sound quality
• For something a little less scratchy, check out this 2007 remaster and rerelease of Feeling B’s songs from the Ostpunk era, Grün und Blau
• If you understand German, check out the documentary Too Much Future: Punk in der DDR. Another good one, sadly only available on DVD from Germany, is Flüstern und Schreien, which was released in 1989.

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

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Music featured from Namenlos (“Alptraum”) and Schleim Keim (“Kriege machen menschen”). Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman.

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About 50 books are known to exist in the world that are allegedly bound in human skin—and it’s possible that there are many more. Believe it or not, these dark books were not made by Nazis, serial killers, or occultists, nor were they churned out in a nightmare factory during the French Revolution. No, they were made mostly by doctors in the 19th century. How and why such books came to be is the subject of Dark Archives, by rare-books specialist and UCLA medical librarian Megan Rosenbloom. She’s one of the founders of the Anthropodermic Book Project, whose team has used a simple protein test called peptide mass fingerprinting to confirm that, as of October 2020, 18 books were bound in human skin. What sort of person would do this? How did they get away with it, and what does this ghoulish practice tell us about the clinical gaze? Megan Rosenbloom joins us on the podcast this week to discuss the history of anthropodermic bibliopegy, the evolution of medical ethics and consent, and the controversial question of what we do now with the very human remains of this grim legacy.

Go beyond the episode:

• Megan Rosenbloom’s Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin
• Currently, the Anthropodermic Book Project has tested 31 books,
• The first anthropodermic book to be confirmed using peptide mass fingerprinting was at Harvard’s Houghton Library; the same year, 2014, its other book suspected of having human skin binding turned out to be made of sheep leather
• Explore the anthropodermic book collection at the Mütter Museum, which has the largest known collection (of five books)
• Follow librarian Beth Lander’s quest to learn more about Mary Lynch, the woman whose skin binds three of those books
• Si vous pouvez lire le français ... here is the story of a French edition of The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe, the 18th book confirmed by the Anthropodermic Book Project

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

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Have suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Music featured from Master Toad (“Dreadful Mansion”) and Dead End Canada (“Witch Hunt”), courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman.

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Caitlin Doughty is the death professional behind the Internet’s favorite show about death, Ask a Mortician, and founder of the Order of the Good Death, which works to overcome our culture’s anxiety about dying, grief, and the afterlife. She runs her own funeral home, Undertaking LA, which offers alternatives to traditional, formaldehyde-soaked approaches to burial. In her book From Here to Eternity, she travels the world in search of the good death, from Mexico and North Carolina to Japan and Bolivia, learning about the ways in which other cultures have approached the end of life. We originally spoke to her in 2017, digging in to the subjects of corpse interaction, alternatives to the casket, and what death means to her.

Go beyond the episode on our website: https://theamericanscholar.org/in-search-of-the-good-death/

• Caitlin Doughty’s From Here to Eternity
• Check out Landis Blair’s illustrations for the book on our episode page
• Ask a Mortician all about coffin birth, ghost marriage, and the iconic corpses of the world on Caitlin’s YouTube channel
• Read more about the Order of the Good Death, an organization of funeral professionals working to change attitudes about death
• Virtually visit the high-tech Ruriden Columbarium in Tokyo, Japan with head monk Yajima Taijun

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

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Have suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

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Magic has gotten a bad rap for the past few hundred years: in our haste to become rational, logical creatures of the Enlightenment, we’ve disavowed magic of all kinds (and burned a few hundred thousand women as witches along the way). Oxford professor of archaeology Chris Gosden wants to change the way we think about magic, starting with its definition: a connection with the universe that allows us to directly influence its workings. Gosden considers it the oldest and most neglected form of human engagement with the world, wrongly condemned by adherents of science and religion. His new book, Magic: A History, runs from the stones of prehistory to the apps on our smartphones to explore practices on every inhabited continent. What might we learn by considering the sentience of trees, or the connections between the living and the dead? Who is excluded from the hierarchies of religion or science? And might a 21st-century magic lead us to a better response to climate catastrophe?

Go beyond the episode:

• Chris Gosden’s Magic: A History
• We covered the darker side of the practice in a previous interview with Ronald Hutton about witchcraft
• Our host’s guilty pleasure is reading astrologist Chani Nicholas’s sometimes eery horoscopes
• One of the most profound forms of magic still practiced today is found in the Aboriginal cultures of Australia, especially the concept of the Dreaming (much confused by Bruce Chatwin and valued today by art collectors)
• Or consider herbalism, which has been put to use in kitchens from prehistory to today, and has already led to significant pharmaceutical developments

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

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Have suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

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What’s spookier than the Tower of London, home to the ghosts of queens and the rest of Henry the VIII’s enemies? How about the half-dozen black ravens that inhabit it—without which, as legend has it, the Tower will crumble and the kingdom will fall? Since there haven’t been dead bodies littering the Tower Green for centuries, someone has to keep the ravens alive—and that person is the Ravenmaster, Christopher Skaife. As a Yeoman Warder, Skaife is one of the custodians of the Tower’s rich history and traditions, and he joins us to offer a bird’s-eye view of his life among the ravens. This episode originally aired in 2018.

Go beyond the episode:

• Christopher Skaife’s The Ravenmaster
• Read an excerpt about the birds’ daily routine
• Follow Merlina the raven (with help from the Ravenmaster) on Twitter
• For more scary tales, read ex-Yeoman Warder Geoffrey Abott’s book, Ghosts of the Tower of London
• For photographs that Skaife says “come very close to capturing the true majesty and mystery of the birds,” see Masahisa Fukase’s Ravens series
• Behold, the funerals of crows
• For one of the “best books in the world on bird behavior,” according to Skaife, see Nathan Emery’s Bird Brain, and for dozens more recommended books on the Tower and its inhabitants, see the “Suggested Reading” section at the back of The Ravenmaster

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

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Have suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

Music featured from Master Toad (“Dreadful Mansion”) courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman.

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If you’ve ever made a salad from tender greens picked up from the farmers’ market, slurped an oyster cultivated at a regenerative farm, or sliced into a hearty loaf of rye bread—then raise a glass of California wine to James Beard, the dean of American cooking. For more than 35 years and in nearly two dozen cookbooks, Beard swept aside stuffy imported notions of epicurean haute cuisine on the one hand and processed and freezer food on the other to reveal the real flavors that were available to American cooks: ham from Kentucky hogs, old-world loaves from immigrant bakeries, obscure Washington apples. As John Birdsall writes in the first biography of the chef in more than 25 years, Beard “remembered what food tasted like before supermarkets killed off local butchers and produce stands”—and he spent his whole life trying to share that memory with the public. But while he gave home cooks permission to put pleasure and flavor at the center of the American table, Beard kept his own struggles with self-doubt and his sexual identity in the closet (while winking at his own persona as a “gastronomic gigolo” in his books). Birdsall’s biography, The Man Who Ate Too Much, explores the paradox of Beard’s life as a beloved national figure who kept so much of himself hidden, “a man on a lonely coast who told us we could find meaning and comfort by embracing pleasure.”

Go beyond the episode:

• John Birdsall’s The Man Who Ate Too Much
• Read his first essay on James Beard in Lucky Peach (RIP), “America, Your Food Is So Gay”
• Watch the PBS American Masters documentary of Beard’s life, America’s First Foodie
• Chefs like Alice Waters took Beard’s lessons for the home cook to the restaurant kitchen, as she recalls in this clip
• Watch some moments from his short-lived show, I Love to Eat
• Check out one of our favorite James Beard cookbooks, Beard on Bread, which still holds up.

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

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Have suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman.

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Were you a geek? A nerd? Did you play Magic: The Gathering, paint Warhammer miniatures, learn to speak Klingon or Elvish, or memorize whole scenes from Star Trek? If so, then good news: it might have taken a few broken eyeglasses and shoves in high school, but geek culture has finally triumphed. Dragons are cool, Star Wars has never had more fans, and everyone is geeking out over the latest sci-fi release on Netflix. How did this happen? And how have the changing demographics of geekdom affected it, for better or worse? Lifelong nerd and critic A. D. Jameson, whose geek cred is stronger than the Force itself, joins us to figure it out. This episode originally aired in 2018.

Go beyond the episode:

• A. D. Jameson’s I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing: Star Wars and the Triumph of Geek Culture
• Read A. D. Jameson and Justin Roman’s article on sexism in gaming, “If Magic: The Gathering Cares About Women, Why Can’t They Hire Any?”
• For more on how franchises have changed Hollywood’s structure, check out Stephen Metcalf’s article, “How Superheroes Made Movies Expendable”
• If you’re looking for an escape this holiday weekend, please binge watch Marvel’s Jessica Jones  (reading a book would be fine, too)
• Listen to the queer history of comics in our second podcast episode, “Superheroes Are So Gay!”

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

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Have suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman.

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For decades, we’ve been filling our plates with fruit and vegetables from California’s Central Valley and with meat fattened by the golden fields of the Corn Belt. But the future of almonds and soybeans looks grim. Industrial agriculture yields massive crops, but in the process destroys its own foundations: groundwater and topsoil. In his new book, Perilous Bounty, journalist and former farmer Tom Philpott explores the contradictions in our food supply by narrowing his focus to these agricultural essentials—water and earth. He reveals a “quiet emergency” happening on our fruited plains, profiles the farmers adapting old ways to a new era, and suggests ways we might reimagine not only the future of food, but that of the people who grow, pick, and package it.

Go beyond the episode:

• Tom Philpott’s Perilous Bounty
• Read his Guardian essay, “Unless we change course, the US agricultural system could collapse”
• Philpott’s recent reporting has focused on the meatpacking industry, especially poultry production
• And his recent article for Mother Jones features none other than Rob Wallace, the epidemiologist we interviewed back in March on “How Global Agriculture Grew a Pandemic”
• If you’re missing dinner parties (we are!) listen to this immersive episode with Alexandra Kleeman and Jen Monroe, who served a futuristic menu set 30 years into our climate crisis

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

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Have suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

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Everywhere but where we live—and maybe where you live?—it seems like things are slowly creeping back toward how they were before the pandemic, or at least slowly getting less awful. In New York City, the High Line is reopening a little bit more of its 1.5 mile length to a socially distanced public, bringing a few more blocks of that beloved, reclaimed railroad to visitors. So this week, we’re looking back to an interview from the spring of 2017, when we walked along the High Line with architecture critic Sarah Williams Goldhagen. Her book, Welcome to Your World, is about how people experience the built environment, not just as individuals but as groups of people living together in cities or towns. She weaves together research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience to explain how the buildings we encounter every day shape our feelings, our memories, and our well-being.

Go beyond the episode:

• Sarah Williams Goldhagen’s Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives
• If you’re a New Yorker, plan your own (socially distanced) visit to New York’s High Line park

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

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Have suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

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Some of our best poets have the greatest range: think of Shakespeare, in all his wild permutations, or Edna St. Vincent Millay boomeranging from heartbreak to revelry. Or T. S. Eliot, who captured our bruised souls in “The Waste Land,” itemized the neuroses of unrequited love in “Prufrock,” and then turned around and set to verse the antics of cats like Growltiger and Rumpleteazer. You could say that the same range exists in the best of actors—like Jeremy Irons, who’s played everyone from starry-eyed Charles Ryder to Humbert Humbert himself. Irons’s iconic voice has lent itself to animated lions and audiobooks before, but now, he joins us to talk about perhaps his most ambitious project yet: narrating the poems of T. S. Eliot. This episode originally aired in 2018.

Go beyond the episode:

• Jeremy Irons reads The Poems of T. S. Eliot from Faber & Faber and BBC Radio 4
• Read more about T. S. Eliot’s life at the Poetry Foundation
• May we suggest Juliet Stevenson’s portfolio of Jane Austen’s novels for your next road trip?
• Listen for yourself: T. S. Eliot reads “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”and “The Waste Land”
• On the other hand, we love W. H. Auden’s reading of “As I Walked Out One Evening” (and his collaboration on the Night Mail documentary)

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

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Have suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Excerpt of “The Rum Tum Tugger” used courtesy the BBC, which owns the production copyright.

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