The Audio Browser

“"When I was in the third grade my teacher announced to our class that Ronald Reagan had been shot. When she asked if we had questions, I raised my hand and asked her if the Indiana - North Carolina basketball game was still going to happen that night.” – Chuck Klosterman

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf, Chuck, and Michael hypothesize about where in Texas the town of "Dillon" is in the TV show Friday Night Lights (2:30); the role of sports and sports movies in how people perceive Indiana, and which sports fandoms are independent of geography (17:00); sports movies (and hypothetical sports movies) set in Michael's hometown of State College, PA, or Chuck's home-state of North Dakota, or Rolf's hometown of Wichita (27:00); working-class sports cities with bad reputations, and how geography determines the sports stories that are told there (40:00); the inherent placelessness of the NFL Scouting Combine and the Super Bowl, how sports are the last media events where the outcome is truly unknown, and what the best hypothetical scenario is for diehard fans watching a big game (50:00).

Chuck Klosterman is a cultural critic known for analyzing pop culture, sports, and philosophy. He is the author of 13 books, including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, The Nineties, and, most recently, Football.

Michael Weinreb (@MichaelWeinreb) is the author of three sports books, including Bigger Than the Game and  Season of Saturdays. His Substack newsletter is called Throwbacks: A Newsletter About Sports History and Culture.

Notable Links:

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at [email protected].

The English country house has been on the brink of ruination since at least the start of World War I—or perhaps the first chug of the Industrial Revolution—or was it the end of serfdom …? Propping up this dying, decadent institution has been a favored pastime of preservationists, architecture buffs, and earls for about as long as the institution has been around. In his new book, Noble Ambitions, historian Adrian Tinniswood peels back the wallpaper to show how these ancestral piles survived both World War II and the sunset of the British Empire—and in some ways, are more relevant than they ever were. This episode originally aired in 2021.

Go beyond the episode:

• Adrian Tinniswood’s Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the English Country House After World War II
• For the completionist, his previous book: The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House, 1918-1939
• Revisit the famed 1974 Victoria & Albert exhibition “The Destruction of the Country House,” or go visit Agecroft Hall and Gardens in Richmond, Virginia, one of several country homes dismantled and reassembled on this side of the Atlantic. In England? Check out Sudbury Hall, which gets a shout out in the episode
• The first bestselling nonfiction book about the country house? Mark Girouard’s Life in the English Country House
• Read Sam Knight’s essay about the National Trust’s recent report on colonialism and slavery: “Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History”
• If you haven’t yet, you simply must watch Downtown Abbey

Tune in every other 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/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora

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.

Clarke Peters explores the life and legacy of a visionary artist whose relentless pursuit of the "new" often scorched his own life and the lives of those around him.

In September 1944, an 18-year-old Miles Davis arrives in New York with a trumpet in his hand and a secret mission. He may have first arrived in New York to take up a place at the prestigious Juilliard School, but in reality Miles was actually patrolling the smoke-filled jazz clubs of 52nd Street, chasing the high-speed sounds of his bebop heroes, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

Across the series, Clarke charts Miles’s ever-evolving artform, starting with this first great transformation of a legend - when the young Miles chose to step into the unknown, seize control of his own creative destiny, and begin his journey as a leader.

Narrator, acclaimed actor and longtime fan, Clarke Peters (The Wire, Treme, Da 5 Bloods) reveals the restless genius and radical evolution of Miles Davis. Growing up in a New York household where his father’s jazz records were the permanent soundtrack, Clarke was captivated by Miles long before he fully appreciated the man behind the music. Across five episodes, Clarke traces a 50 year odyssey of constant reinvention - from a teenage outsider chasing the bebop revolution in 1944 to a global icon who redefined what it meant to be Black, to be cool, and to be an artist.

Blending archival recordings and legendary tracks with fresh perspectives from a range of creators, the series reveals how Miles’ influence ripples far beyond the world of jazz. We discover how his "take no shit" attitude and aesthetic fearlessness impacted on the likes of Oscar-winning filmmakers, celebrated designers and music icons like Prince, Joni Mitchell, Sting and even bands like Radiohead, as well as generations of now also legendary jazz musicians that he championed early in their careers - John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Keith Jarrett and Marcus Miller, to name a few.

The series also grapples with the darker side of Miles’ legacy, including the domestic abuse that left a trail of pain for those closest to him and the substance issues that took a deep toll on his health. It asks difficult questions about how to regard an artist capable of creating the most sublime aesthetic statements while engaging in brutal behaviour.

Clarke Peters, whose own creative journey as an actor was sparked by Miles’s music, leads a searching investigation into a man who refused to be palatable, refused to be a "legend", and simply refused to stop moving forward.

Miles Davis Interview: From Jazz Talking by Ben Sidran, 1986.

Featured tracks (in order of appearance)

Presenter: Clarke Peters

We’ve all been told the American Revolution was fought over taxation and representation. But that's not what the Declaration of Independence says. According to our founders, in their own words, what they were most upset about was Native Americans. How did we all miss that? Rebecca sits down with historian Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) to talk about how hunger for Indigenous land drove the Revolution. Welcome to First America, the true story of how the United States came to be, and how our current political moment was 250 years in the making.

Resources:
- Dig into more of Ned Blackhawk's scholarship here

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Where the modern game was invented and professionalised.

Our first visit to London focuses on the origins of the British intelligence agencies - MI5, MI6 and GCHQ - in the early 20th century. Mansfield Cumming - the original 'C' - and Vernon Kell take the helm at the Secret Service Bureau as spy mania mounts in the United Kingdom. We'll be back in London before too long!

For further background on this and all episodes of Spy Cities please check out https://www.spycities.com/Episodes

We’d love to hear your feedback. Please drop us a message - coded or not - to [email protected]’

This has been a Chatterbox Audio Production https://chatterboxaudio.com/

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

What is your Roman Empire? It’s about to be this episode. What causes the big dogs to stumble and fall? Do societies collapse suddenly, or would one notice as it happens? What *is* a complex society – and is it better than a simple one? Depends on who you ask, and we went straight to the source: the legendary anthropologist, scholar, historian and author of “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” Dr. Joseph Tainter. New obsession awaits you in the fall of the Roman Empire, cities lost to the desert dust, diminishing returns, fiddling amid the flames, the worst beard in history, fossil fuels, fertilizer, bread, circus, hanging chads, and if you should go live on a small goat farm. Happy 250th birthday to the currently United States of America!

Follow Dr. Tainter on Google Scholar

Buy his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies

A donation went to Utah State University's Ecology Center

More episode sources and links

Other episodes you may enjoy: Classical Archeology (ANCIENT ROME), Revolutionology (REBELLIONS & SOCIAL CHANGE), Futurology (THE FUTURE), Nomology (THE CONSTITUTION), Genealogy (FAMILY TREES), Agnotology (IGNORANCE), Genocidology (CRIMES OF ATROCITY), Syndesiology (CONNECTIONS), Space Archaeology (SPACE JUNK), Astrobromatology (SPACE FOOD), Paternology (FATHERHOOD)

400+ Ologies episodes sorted by topic

Smologies (short, classroom-safe) episodes

Sponsors of Ologies

Transcripts and bleeped episodes

Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month

OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes!

Follow Ologies on Instagram and Bluesky

Follow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTok

Editing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake Chaffee

Managing Director: Susan Hale

Scheduling Producer: Noel Dilworth

Transcripts by Aveline Malek 

Website by Kelly R. Dwyer

Theme song by Nick Thorburn

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It seems like the only time you hear about new statues these days is when something goes horribly wrong. Unfortunate bronze renditions of Lucille Ball, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dwayne Wade, and many others are always going viral, becoming a fixture of late-night shows and mocking comment sections. Is the internet too harsh a critic? Or is American statuary a total bust?

In this episode of Decoder Ring, host Willa Paskin talks to artist Atalanta Arden-Miller about what’s happened to one of the oldest artistic traditions in the world—why so many contemporary statues turn out off-center, off-kilter, and off-putting. The answer takes us from ancient Greece to Nazi Germany to North Korea.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was produced by Max Freedman. It was edited by Josh Levin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Our intern is Phoebe Mulder.

Special thanks to the Works in Progress Podcast, where we first heard Atalanta talk about the dismal state of statuary today.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

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

Mary Keen has worked in, documented and designed gardens all over the world for decades. But it’s the garden she’s made at home, during her ninth decade, that she writes most affectionately about. 

In her seventh book, Diary of a Keen Gardener, she reflects on both a life shaped by plants and her more recent years, when she has weathered grief, illness and aging. It’s an honest love letter to what makes a garden. And it’s here that we meet Mary, on a breezy spring day, to take a studied tour around her Gloucestershire garden.

Diary of a Keen Gardener is available in hardback now, and you can follow Mary’s exploits on instagram: @keenkeengardener.

This podcast is inspired by my book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, which is available in all good bookshops. We’ve also been photographing our guests and their gardens and you can see the beautiful images captured by India Hobson on my website and instagram account @⁠⁠alicevincentwrites⁠⁠. Thank you to our friends at ⁠⁠⁠Niwaki⁠⁠⁠. You can get 10% off your order with the code WHYWOMENGROW.

If you’re new to the Why Women Grow podcast, do check out our previous episodes, including guests such as Sarah Raven and Ula Maria. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, it would mean so much if you could rate and review the podcast on whichever platform you’re listening in on, or share it with someone you think may enjoy it.

This episode was produced by Holly Fisher. The theme music is by Maria Chiara Argiro. 

After reading something that said her menstrual cycle changes her brain each month, Senior Correspondent Molly Webster goes on a reporting mission to see if that’s true, and, if so, how.

This journey into sex hormones and the brain involves females and males, and exacting self-experimentation. It gets into PTSD, and ends with a new twist on self-care (hint: it’s biological). And, it starts to reveal a sneaky truth: that each one of us is at the mercy of a crashing sea of chemicals inside of us – those things we call hormones.

Special thanks to Emily Jacobs, Laura Pritschet, Pavel Shapturenka, and Dr. Catherine Woolley.

EPISODE CREDITS:

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Articles - 

For more on how much variability there is between female and male animals, check out this “groundbreaking” study, referenced by Emily Jacobs in our episode

Dr. Catherine Woolley has revolutionized the field of neuroscience and sex hormones, here’s more about her work …

Data sets -

Audio - 

Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected].

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We convene three guests to discuss 25 years of the iPod, the consumer hardware End of History, and the possibility of a new consumer hardware Cambrian Explosion.

Hosts Francis Zierer and Daisy Alioto are joined by:

Molly Mary O'Brien is a freelance video editor and writer living in Los Angeles, California. She is the writer behind the blog “I enjoy Music,” and the host of a podcast about words about music called “And Introducing.”

Liz Dorman is a technologist, design engineer, and world wanderer. She is a co-founder of Era, a company working to usher in a new era of computing with an intelligence layer for physical devices.

Joy Howard is the Chief Marketing Officer at Back Market, a global marketplace for refurbished electronics. Previously, she’s held similar roles at Lyft, Sonos, Patagonia, Nike, and Coca Cola. Before she got he business degree, she was the vocalist in a shoegaze band, playing with acts like Cat Power and Modest Mouse in the 90s.

Find a full, linked syllabus of all articles mentioned in this episode here.

00:00 The iPod's Legacy and Impact

03:04 Personal Experiences with the iPod

06:00 Nostalgia and Cultural Shifts

08:54 The Evolution of Music Consumption

12:05 The Aesthetics of the iPod

14:55 The Right to Repair Movement

17:57 The Future of Consumer Electronics

21:07 The Afterlife of the iPod

24:07 Generational Perspectives on Music Devices

26:55 The Role of Music in Youth Culture

30:06 The Future of Technology and Human Interaction