Smarty Pants

As we in the United States approach a full year of spending even more time than usual at home, and away from friends and family, we’re all a little bit lonely. But even though it might feel as if your immediate family and your pets are the only signs of life in your house—you're not as alone as you might think. The modern American house is a wilderness: thousands of species of insects, bacteria, fungi, and plants lurk in our floorboards, on our counters, and inside our kitchen cabinets—not to mention the microbes that flavor our food itself. The trouble with wilderness, however, is that we always want to tame it. Cleaning, bleaching, sterilizing, and killing the organisms in our houses has had unintended—and dangerous—consequences for our health and the environment. Biologist Rob Dunn, a professor in the department of applied ecology at North Carolina State University, joins us to impart some advice about how to graciously welcome these unbidden guests into our homes. This episode originally aired in 2018.

Go beyond the episode:

• Rob Dunn’s Never Home Alone
• Dig deeper into the experiments mentioned in the show, like the sourdough project or the world’s largest survey of showerheads
• Cat people: track your cat to reveal its secret life—and what it brings into your home—in this citizen science project
• More opportunities to participate in scientific research about everything from belly button ecology to counting the crickets in your basement through Your Wild Life

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every family has things they don’t talk about: those regrettable beliefs espoused by your great-grandmother, or why your uncles don’t speak to each other anymore. Sometimes these are remnants of the old social order, things that were considered shameful 50 years ago that are perfectly normal today (or the opposite). And sometimes, members of your family just happened to be small-time mobsters. The acclaimed writer Russell Shorto, author of such histories as Amsterdam and The Island at the Center of the World, always knew his grandfather and namesake was involved with the Italian mafia, but Shorto never quite got around to digging up the whole tale until now. He joins us on the podcast to discuss his new memoir, Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob. 

Go beyond the episode:

• Russell Shorto’s Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob
• Inspired to dig up your own family dirt? Shorto developed an online course called Tell Your Family Story
• Itching for a history of the big-time mafia? Check out Thomas Reppetto’s American Mafia, John Dickie’s Cosa Nostra, or Salvatore Lupo’s History of the Mafia
• And you can’t forget the movies: the British Film Institute ranks the 10 best mafia movies

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.

Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • Acast

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The tiny village of Gapun in Papua New Guinea is home to an equally tiny language called Tayap. No more than a few hundred people have lived in Gapun, so no more than a few hundred people have ever spoken this isolate language, unrelated to any other on the planet. Our guest this episode, the anthropologist Don Kulick, has been visiting the village since 1985, at one point living there for 15 months to document the Gapun way of life, eat a lot of sago palm pudding, and study Tayap—which, even when he arrived more than 30 years ago, was dying. Today, only about 40 people speak it, and Kulick predicts that the language will be “stone cold dead” in less than 50 years. How did that happen? Perhaps more importantly, what cultural and economic losses paved the way? The answer might lie in the backward way we’ve been framing language death. This episode originally aired in 2019.

Go beyond the episode:

• Don Kulick’s A Death in the Rainforest
• Kulick returned to Gapun one year—proudly bearing a copy of his new dictionary—only to learn that all of the village’s young men had possibly rendered themselves impotent
• Explore these dazzling maps of the 851 individual languages of Papua New Guinea (including Tayap, listed as number 187)
• Watch the arduous process of harvesting sago palm, a staple food in the country
• National Geographic reports on various initiatives to save the world’s disappearing languages, including the Rosetta Project and Wikitongues

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. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.

Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • Acast

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As an artist and activist, Betty Yu has spent her career focusing on the community around her: Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where she was born and raised. Whether, as a member of the Chinatown Arts Brigade, engaging art galleries on their role in gentrification, or projecting tenants’ life stories on the sides of buildings slated for redevelopment, Yu’s work has stressed the connection between art and social change. But what happens when Covid-19 makes interacting with your neighbors life-threatening? Yu, who first began turning the camera on her parents’ family life in 2019, joins us on the podcast to talk about getting even more personal in the pandemic.

Go beyond the episode

• Betty Yu’s website features a selection of film and videos exploring her family history
• In our Winter 2021 issue, we ran a photograph from (Dis)Placed in Sunset Park, an ongoing multimedia installation about urban gentrification, which includes this short video about Yu's own story
• Intimate / Distant, an interactive project documenting several generations of Yu's family
• Videos from Resistance in Progress, a group show that opened during the pandemic

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.

Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • Acast

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Giorgio Vasari has been variously called the father of art history, the inventor of artistic biography, and the author of “the Bible of the Italian Renaissance”—a little book called The Lives of the Artists. It’s a touchstone for scholars looking to get a peek at life in Michelangelo’s day, and quite fun, too, depending on whose wildly embellished life you’re reading. Ingrid Rowland joins us on the podcast to tell the story of the man behind the men of the Renaissance that we know so well—and, of course, to gossip a bit about Florentine egos, and even a few naughty monkeys. Visit the episode page for a slideshow of Vasari’s work.

Go beyond the episode:

• Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney’s The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art
• Page through a scanned 1568 copy of The Lives of the Artists on Archive.org (beautiful even if you don’t read Italian)
• Explore the Palazzo Vecchio, which includes dozens of Vasari’s works, on the Google Art Project
• Or take a hilarious video tour of the Palazzo Vecchio—which Vasari renovated and lined with his own paintings—with “Giorgio Vasari” (played by an actor far more attractive than Vasari was in real life)
• Can’t book a ticket to Florence? The Uffizi offers a virtual tour of its halls, also designed by Vasari

Tune in every two weeks 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.

Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • Acast

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Snow Maiden—not to be confused with the Snow Queen, Snow White, or Frosty the Snow Man—is a popular Slavic folktale about an elderly couple and a miraculous child born from snow. In addition to being a charming story about the passing of seasons, it references a number of folk rituals, from jumping over fires on the summer solstice to mock funerals marking the Yuletide. Philippa Rappoport, a lecturer in Russian culture at George Washington University, explains how folktales and rituals overlap, and reads aloud her own version of this wintry tale. This episode originally aired in 2018.

This is our last episode of the year, and we want to hear from you about what you’d like to hear in 2021! If there are any subjects or guests you would especially like to have on the show, send us an email at [email protected]. And, of course, help us find more listeners by rating us on iTunes and telling all your friends.

Go beyond the episode:

• Read six versions of “The Snow Maiden,” classified by folklorist D. L. Ashliman as tales of “type 703,” or, relatedly, nine different spins from across Europe on “The Snow Child” (“type 1362 and related stories about questionable paternity”)
• Watch the 1952 animated film The Snow Maiden, based on the Rimsky-Korsakov opera of the same name
• Listen to Kristjan Järvi conduct an excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s Snow Maiden with the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir

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.

Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • Acast

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The phrase “Russian spies” conjures up all sorts of Cold War thrills: hidden cameras, dastardly poisons, The Americans, John le Carré. But from the 17th to the 19th century, the best Russian spies were pencil-pushing bureaucrats along the long border with China, as Georgetown historian Gregory Afinogenov argues in his new book, Spies and Scholars. These career apparatchiks succeeded at gathering intelligence on the Qing dynasty from their quotidian positions at diplomatic offices, religious missions, and frontier outposts, though they never seemed to get much credit for their work. The irony is that while the intelligence they shared bought Russia greater prestige among European powers, these encounters with European ideals of intellectualism also radically changed what kind of “intelligence” was considered worthwhile.

Go beyond the episode:

• Gregory Afinogenov’s Spies and Scholars: Chinese Secrets and Imperial Russia’s Quest for World Power
• Itching to learn Manchu? Check out the Manchu Studies Group, which includes examples of Manchu script
• For 20th-century Russian spying, no one beats John le Carré, in life or fiction

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.

Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • Acast

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The most unusual brains are not the largest, nor the ones that can remember the most digits of the number pi. What fascinates Helen Thomson—a neuroscientist by training, a journalist by trade—are the brains that see auras, feel another’s pain, or play music around the clock. In her new book, Unthinkable, she travels the globe to find out what life is like for these people who perceive a completely different world than she does. How does a man who believes he’s a tiger live in a human community? How can a father who believes that he’s dead go to dinner with his kids? What’s it like to be lost in your own living room? Thomson joins us on the podcast with answers that might teach you something about your own noggin. This episode originally aired in 2018.

Go beyond the episode:

• Helen Thomson’s Unthinkable
• Read her interview with a dead man—or at least, a man who thinks he’s dead
• Scientific American lists 10 of the biggest ideas in neuroscience of the 21st century
• Meet the scientists who discovered the brain’s internal GPS
• Think you might be a synesthete? Take neuroscientist David Eagleman’s “Synesthesia Battery” questionnaire to measure your perception

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.

Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • Acast

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Baldessari is one of America's best-known conceptual artists, noted for pieces that pushed the boundaries of art, language, and the idea of the image. His 1971 work, I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, commissioned by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada, is perhaps his most famous; it was executed long-distance, for the cost of a postage stamp. Sierra Bellows, who wrote about the artist for our Winter 2021 issue, joins us on the podcast to discuss this seminal work as “an emblem of the Covid era”—particularly poignant given that Baldessari died in January 2020, just before the pandemic began.

Go beyond the episode:

• Read Sierra Bellow’s essay, “Long-Distance Punishment,” from our Winter 2021 issue
• Watch John Baldessari’s 1971 video edition of the piece and the 2012 short film A Brief Introduction to John Baldessari
• View more of Baldessari’s works on his website, or at MOMA
• Read Calvin Tomkins’s 2010 New Yorker profile of the artist

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.

Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • Acast

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A few years ago, Witold Rybczynski, one of The American Scholar's frequent contributors, happened to be coming to town for—of all things—a chair symposium. Not really having considered the chair as more than a functional object, we arranged to meet up at the Smithsonian American Art Museum to track down some classics of global chairmaking. And, of course, to sit in them.

Go beyond the episode:

• Witold Rybczynski’s Now I Sit Me Down
• On his blog, Rybczynski reviews quite a lot of chairs
• Watch a video on the making of Arne Jacobsen’s Series 7 chair from 1955
• Scope out Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair from 1929 at MOMA, or buy your own for the low, low price of $5507!

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.

Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • Acast

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.