Podcast appearances and mentions of mickey capper

Over the course of our miniseries Exploding the Canon, Smarty Pants host Stephanie Bastek has examined Reed College students' efforts in 2016–2017 to fundamentally transform a mandatory freshman humanities course. Now, in the final episode, Bastek looks at how much has really changed since that time. The protestors were ostensibly successful—the Humanities 110 syllabus underwent significant revision. But though the college has bolstered several support programs for students of color, in the last decade Black, Latino, and Indigenous student enrollment at Reed has not increased. Some professors are satisfied with the current humanities program; others would like to see more change. Perhaps the fundamental lesson to be gained from Reed's upheaval is that the work is hardly finished—and a way forward might be found in how classicists have radically reimagined their discipline in recent years. Please visit our episode page for a full list of linksReed College Office of Institutional Research data on historical enrollment by ethnicity (2002–2024)The 2023–24 Hum 110 syllabus, with timelines and mapsFeatured voices in this episode: Salim Moore, Brittany Wideman, Paul Marthers, Mary James, Nigel Nicholson, Kritish Rajbhandari, Pancho Savery, Milyon Trulove, alea adigweme, Mary Frankie McFarland Forte, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, T. H. M. Gellar-Goad, Sasha-Mae Eccleston, Jan Mieszkowski, Colin Drumm, Albert Kerelis, Peter Steinberger, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, and Addison Bates. Thanks to the Reed staff, faculty, and students—past and present—who made this series possible.Produced and hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Original music by Rhae Royal. Audio storytelling consulting by Mickey Capper.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS Feed Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Reedies Against Racism's protest of the Humanities 110 curriculum at Reed College reached a turning point in the 2017–2018 school year. After a year and a half of debate, dozens of faculty members voted on a revised syllabus, the second semester of which introduced brand new material from Mexico City and the Harlem Renaissance. But in September 2018, an entire department voted not to teach the spring syllabus—and as the years passed, discontent with the syllabus grew, among both faculty and students.Visit our website for a transcript and links to documents and articles mentioned in the episode.Featured voices in this episode: Addison Bates, Eden Daniel, Mary James, Libby Drumm, Roger Porter, Jan Mieszkowski, Pancho Savery, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Peter Steinberger, Nathalia King, Kritish Rajbhandari, Nigel Nicholson, and Albert Kerelis.Produced and hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Original music by Rhae Royal. Audio storytelling consulting by Mickey Capper.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS Feed Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Smarty Pants host and Scholar senior editor Stephanie Bastek delves into the history of Black Studies at her alma mater, Reed College, drawing connections between the fight for a Black Studies program in 1968 and the efforts of Reedies Against Racism to diversify the college's mandatory freshman humanities course 48 years later. Speaking with former students and members of Reed's Black Student Union, Bastek recounts the 1968 BSU occupation of Eliot Hall, one of the largest buildings on campus, as part of the campaign for a Black Studies program. The program was established, but not without backlash—and rifts among faculty members would threaten Reed's foundation for decades to come.Read Martin White's essay, “The Black Studies Controversy at Reed College, 1968–1970” in the Oregon Historical QuarterlyIn Memoriam: Linda Gordon Howard, Calvin FreemanVisit our episode page to see more of Stephen Robinson's photographs from 1968Transcript available on our websiteFeatured voices in this episode: Andre Wooten, Mary Frankie McFarlane Forte, Martin White, Stephen Robinson, Roger Porter, George Brandon, Steve Engel, and Suzanne Snively. Ron Herndon oral history audio courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society. Archival recording of the October 28, 1968 BSU town hall featuring Cathy Allen and Ron Herndon courtesy of the Reed College Library.Produced and hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Original music by Rhae Royal. Audio storytelling consulting by Mickey Capper.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS Feed Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The autumn of 2016 at Reed College was tumultuous. On September 26, students organized a boycott of classes in response to recent police killings of Black people, both to allow time to mourn and to highlight the ways in which they felt Reed was failing people of color. They also put forward a list of demands—including an overhaul of the mandatory freshman humanities course, Humanities 110, which, they alleged, focused too narrowly on European history and ideas, wrongly discounting the contributions of other cultures. That same week, they would begin a year-long occupation of Vollum Hall, where lectures were held, thereby creating fissures among the faculty and kickstarting the process of changing the course.RAR's 25 demandsReed's November and December 2016 Progress Reports in response Featured voices in this episode: Addison Bates, Eden Daniel, alea adigweme, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Peter Steinberger, Jan Mieskowski, Pancho Savery, Mary James, Nathalia King, and Mary Frankie McFarlane Forte. Newsreel: KOIN News.Produced and hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Original music by Rhae Royal. Audio storytelling consulting by Mickey Capper.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedTranscript available on our episode page. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At Reed College in 2016, a student group named Reedies Against Racism began protesting the syllabus of the mandatory freshman humanities course and the college's perceived failure to support Black students. After a year of sustained action, the students won the largest-ever revision of Humanities 110—but half a decade on, emotions are still raw. Smarty Pants host Stephanie Bastek graduated from Reed in 2013, and she returned last year to find out how much the culture had really changed. Humanities 110 Syllabi: 2009-10, 2016-17, 2023-24Visit our episode page for a visual representation of the regions of study in Hum 110, 1944–2015 (graph by Michael Song)Featured voices in this episode: Nigel Nicholson, Jan Mieszkowski, Peter Steinberger, Nathalia King, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Pancho Savery, Libby Drumm, and Eden Daniel. Reed College documentary audio from Give Up Steam (1991) by Daniel Levin. Newsreel commentators: Michael Jones and Jennifer Kabbany. Transcript available on our episode page.Produced and hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Original music by Rhae Royal. Audio storytelling consulting by Mickey Capper.Follow The American Scholar on Twitter and Instagram. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Midterm Election Debrief: The midterm elections were held just last week. KUNC's Statehouse Reporter Lucas Brady Woods talks about the results and how things shook out post-election.Pobre Pancho's: One of Fort Collins' oldest Mexican restaurants — Pobre Pancho's — closed last spring. The owner wants to sell the property to a fast food change planning to knock the building down.But reporter Mickey Capper says the family who ran the restaurant for decades is now fighting to preserve the building and its history.CreditsColorado Edition is hosted by Yoselin Meza Miranda and produced by the KUNC newsroom, led by news director Sean Corcoran. Web was edited by digital editor Megan Manata.The mission of Colorado Edition is to deepen understanding of life in Northern Colorado through authentic conversation and storytelling. It's available as a podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.Colorado Edition is made possible with support from our KUNC members. Thank you!Our theme music was composed by Colorado musicians Briana Harris and Johnny Burroughs. Other music in the show by Blue Dot Sessions.

Midterm Election Debrief: The midterm elections were held just last week. KUNC's Statehouse Reporter Lucas Brady Woods talks about the results and how things shook out post-election.Pobre Pancho's: One of Fort Collins' oldest Mexican restaurants — Pobre Pancho's — closed last spring. The owner wants to sell the property to a fast food change planning to knock the building down.But reporter Mickey Capper says the family who ran the restaurant for decades is now fighting to preserve the building and its history.CreditsColorado Edition is hosted by Yoselin Meza Miranda and produced by the KUNC newsroom, led by news director Sean Corcoran. Web was edited by digital editor Megan Manata. The mission of Colorado Edition is to deepen understanding of life in Northern Colorado through authentic conversation and storytelling. It's available as a podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.Colorado Edition is made possible with support from our KUNC members. Thank you!Our theme music was composed by Colorado musicians Briana Harris and Johnny Burroughs. Other music in the show by Blue Dot Sessions.

Everything's on a spectrum! In the latest episode of "Tales of Two Cities," we'll hear from people finding their own place on spectrums of language, hookup culture, neurodiversity, and politics. Hosted by Luis Hernandez and Ashvini Malshe. Reported by Maria Sestito, Edward Booth, Brian Perlman, Carla Williams, and Annie Berman. Produced by Mickey Capper. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

Caveh Zahedi conflates reality TV, experimental documentary, and discomfort comedy in unsettling high-stakes films about his own life. In each episode of his TV project The Show about the Show, the actors and crew recreate the conflicts, interpersonal dramas, and unwittingly shared secrets that occurred during the filming of the previous episode. Each level takes us further behind the performance, landing the viewer deep inside the eccentric mind of Caveh himself. With an oddly life-affirming honesty, his work violates ethical boundaries and triggers the unraveling of his marriage. Is it worth losing someone you love to make the art you believe in? When the Organist sends producer Rachel James to document the production of his TV show, she too becomes drawn into Caveh’s inescapable vortex of metanarrative. Produced by Rachel James and Mickey Capper

On this season of Working, we left the East Coast behind and flew to Detroit. We spoke with eight people who are drawing on the city’s complex history as they work to create its future. For this final episode, we visited the Mosaic Youth Theater of Detroit where DeLashea Strawder leads arts and music programs that inspire the city's young students to pursue their dreams. Strawder tells us about teaching multiplication tables with song, creating new music for original theater productions, and encouraging her students to apply performing arts skills to whatever career path they might pursue. We also listened in on her rehearsal with the Mosaic Singers, which you'll hear throughout the episode. (Stay tuned for a special recording after the credits.) Then in a Slate Plus Extra, Strawder shares a little about her role as a fundraiser with the organization. If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus. Email: working@slate.com Twitter: @Jacob_Brogan Production: Mickey Capper, @FMcapper All recordings feature the Mosaic Singings performing and Mickey Capper recording except for "The Pitts" written by Edmund Alyn Jones, arranged by DeLashea Strawder, and recorded & mixed by Studio Lumumba. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this season of Working, we left the East Coast behind and flew to Detroit. We spoke with eight people who are drawing on the city’s complex history as they work to create its future. For this final episode, we visited the Mosaic Youth Theater of Detroit where DeLashea Strawder leads arts and music programs that inspire the city's young students to pursue their dreams. Strawder tells us about teaching multiplication tables with song, creating new music for original theater productions, and encouraging her students to apply performing arts skills to whatever career path they might pursue. We also listened in on her rehearsal with the Mosaic Singers, which you'll hear throughout the episode. (Stay tuned for a special recording after the credits.) Then in a Slate Plus Extra, Strawder shares a little about her role as a fundraiser with the organization. If you’re a member, enjoy bonus segments and interview transcripts from Working, plus other great podcast exclusives. Start your two-week free trial at slate.com/workingplus. Email: working@slate.com Twitter: @Jacob_Brogan Production: Mickey Capper, @FMcapper All recordings feature the Mosaic Singings performing and Mickey Capper recording except for "The Pitts" written by Edmund Alyn Jones, arranged by DeLashea Strawder, and recorded & mixed by Studio Lumumba. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Will Marlon Brando's anguished shout from A Streetcar Named Desire survive as a cultural meme long after Brando himself is forgotten? Will the Stella scream become an enduring cultural reference in the vein of Shakespeare's quotations? In 2011, essayist Elena Passarello won New Orleans' annual Stella scream competition by channelling Brando's abject bawling. This week we speak with her about screams, cries, and the full range of the human voice. How does the body play into the sound of our voice? Is it possible to hear a broken foot bone when a performer speaks or sings? As interviewer Niela Orr puts it, “Passarello's essays are what would happen if Joan Didion wrote captions for VH1's Pop-Up Video.” Passarello's work explores the physical and cultural aspects of the human voice and how they might be connected. Our discussion encompasses vocality from opera, Flavor Flav, and James Brown, as well as automated voices, such as the classic Bell telephone operator, the voice of the Moviefone hotline, and contemporary AI, including Alexa and Siri—and how these automated voices mimic accents and human confusion. You'll also hear Passarello's rendition of how Koko, the gorilla with a lexicon of 1000 signs, tells the legendarily dirty vaudeville joke “The Aristocrats.” You'll also hear fiction from Chelsea Martin on attempts to woo an estranged ex—written in the form of a review of The Organist podcast itself. Special thanks to Mickey Capper and Sidewalks podcast for the use of “Someone like Baby.” Produced by Jenny Ament and Niela Orr.

On this episode of Slate Money, hosts Felix Salmon of Fusion, Cathy O’Neil, author of the upcoming, Weapons of Math Destruction, and Ryan Avent, author of The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-first Century discuss how jobs are changing in the robot economy, Wells Fargo’s unnecessary banking products, and shifty Amazon pricing algorithms. Topics discussed on today’s show include: -Ryan Avent discusses his take on how work might change in the future, a topic explored in his book The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-first Century -The pressure Wells Fargo put on bank tellers to sign customers up for products they weren’t interested in -Bias in Amazon’s pricing algorithm Check out other Panoply podcasts at itunes.com/panoply. Email: slatemoney@slate.com Twitter: @felixsalmon, @mathbabedotorg, @JHWeissmann Production by Mickey Capper. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A man screams “why are you closed? Tell us the reason!†over and over as he rattles a pair of locked doors outside a Toronto shopping mall. Klaus Kinski berates the officiant at his own wedding while he lavishes a disturbing amount of affection on his bride. A clean-cut guy in glasses beatboxes the entire drum part of Rush’s “YYZ.†The Tumblr Weird Dude Energy is singularly devoted to collecting the most inexplicable male behavior on the internet. It’s funny, and it’s weird, but if you study it carefully, it also raises some troubling and complicated questions: questions about contemporary masculinity and community. It even raises questions about violence, misogyny, and Donald Trump. For the Organist, the writer Mark Sussman stared into the testosterone abyss of Weird Dude Energy and sent us back this report. Written by Mark Sussman. Produced by Mickey Capper.  

Louis Chude-Sokei is a Nigerian-Jamaican- American writer and scholar at the University of Seattle, Washington. In this episode, he discusses the music culture surrounding Nigeria's internet scammers (known as “Yahoozees”), his own experience as a black immigrant in Los Angeles' Inglewood neighborhood during the era of NWA, and the way blackface performance is perceived outside the U.S. He's the author of The Last Darky: Bert Williams, Black-on- Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (Duke University, 2006), which examines the life of Bert Williams, a top vaudeville performer-- a black blackface performer-- and one of the most famous entertainers of his era. His new book, The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics (Wesleyan, 2015), tackles the complex relationships between blackness, robotics, and technology. In this way, the book is in conversation with Afrofuturism. First coined by the cultural critic Mark Dery, Afrofuturism is a growing field of art, music, and academic scholarship which finds its roots in sci-fi imagery in black culture: Sun Ra, George Clinton, Octavia Butler, and Samuel R. Delaney. Afrofuturism seeks to find alternates to the current sometimes harrowing circumstances of contemporary black life through imagined futures and emergent possibilities. Its expression is visible in the work of Janelle Monae, producer Flying Lotus, and rap duo Shabazz Palaces. In his conversation with Ben Bush for the Organist, Chude-Sokei emphasizes the emerging field's pre-20th century roots as well as non-US aspects that have until now fallen outside the critical paradigm related to Afrofuturism—from PT Barnum's black cyborg to the metaphysical echo of instrumental dub reggae.   Links: A playlist based on songs discussed in this episode (and in The Sound of Culture)  Louis Chude-Sokei on Joice Heth, PT Barnum's black cyborg Bina48 on the Organist  Video trailer Credits: Interview by Ben Bush. Produced by Mickey Capper.

It was a group of businessmen in the late 19th century who originally invented the Ouija Board. They sold them in toy shops and promising questions answered “about the past, present and future with marvelous accuracy.” Spiritualism was all the rage in the United States, and, while hiring a professional medium could be costly, the Ouija Board allowed ordinary people to communicate with the dead.In this episode of Here Be Monsters, freelance producer Mickey Capper attends a modern seance, conducted by 20-somethings under an udder-like canopy in a living room in Chicago. They gather around a homemade Ouija Board to summon up spirits from the past. And they're visited by the ghost of the seance host's long-dead ancestors. The ghost has a striking message for her about a secret she didn't want to share with the group.Mickey said the following about the experience:Even though I've always like the idea of trying to contact the dead through a community of friends, I hadn't been to a seance before. The darkness and the candles and the makeshift Ouija Board did work... at least as an icebreaker. I felt closer to everyone than I would have expected. I also learned that whether or not you believe you're contacting the spirit, there's nothing protecting you from finding things you'd rather not hear.Of course, Ouija Boards don't run on a dark energy, the planchette isn't moved by the delicate hands of wispy ghosts. Instead, its movement is achieved through a well understood phenomenon called the Idiomotor Effect. Ideomotor movements are subconscious muscle movements that occur when people think they are holding entirely still. They're heavily influence by perception and bias. And in Ouija, it can be responsible for creating stunning messages that seem to be otherworldly.So, who was this ghost who revealed the host's secret? It's hard to know. But even for someone who would deny outright the existence of spirits and ghosts, it's impossible to deny the power that belief in the paranormal holds.Mickey Capper is a freelance radio reporter and the co-host of Tape, which is a new podcast that interviews people who make radio. It's good, it's people you've heard of...listen to it. taperadio.orgMusic: The Black Spot, Serocell, Lucky Dragons

It was a group of businessmen in the late 19th century who originally invented the Ouija Board. They sold them in toy shops and promising questions answered “about the past, present and future with marvelous accuracy.” Spiritualism was all the rage in the United States, and, while hiring a professional medium could be costly, the Ouija Board allowed ordinary people to communicate with the dead.In this episode of Here Be Monsters, freelance producer Mickey Capper attends a modern seance, conducted by 20-somethings under an udder-like canopy in a living room in Chicago. They gather around a homemade Ouija Board to summon up spirits from the past. And they’re visited by the ghost of the seance host’s long-dead ancestors. The ghost has a striking message for her about a secret she didn’t want to share with the group.Mickey said the following about the experience:Even though I've always like the idea of trying to contact the dead through a community of friends, I hadn't been to a seance before. The darkness and the candles and the makeshift Ouija Board did work... at least as an icebreaker. I felt closer to everyone than I would have expected. I also learned that whether or not you believe you're contacting the spirit, there's nothing protecting you from finding things you'd rather not hear.Of course, Ouija Boards don’t run on a dark energy, the planchette isn’t moved by the delicate hands of wispy ghosts. Instead, its movement is achieved through a well understood phenomenon called the Idiomotor Effect. Ideomotor movements are subconscious muscle movements that occur when people think they are holding entirely still. They’re heavily influence by perception and bias. And in Ouija, it can be responsible for creating stunning messages that seem to be otherworldly.So, who was this ghost who revealed the host’s secret? It’s hard to know. But even for someone who would deny outright the existence of spirits and ghosts, it’s impossible to deny the power that belief in the paranormal holds.Mickey Capper is a freelance radio reporter and the co-host of Tape, which is a new podcast that interviews people who make radio. It's good, it's people you've heard of...listen to it. taperadio.orgMusic: The Black Spot, Serocell, Lucky Dragons

In this episode of Here Be Monsters, freelance producer Mickey Capper attends a modern seance, conducted by 20-somethings under an udder-like canopy in a living room in Chicago.