Podcast appearances and mentions of Rebecca Mead

Hi friends, We're taking care of some spring cleaning this week. We'll be back in two weeks with a new episode. In the meantime, enjoy this favorite from our archives! - The Many Minds team ––––––––– [originally aired February 22, 2024] Brains are not cheap. It takes a lot of calories to run a brain, and the bigger your brain, the more calories it takes. So how is it that, over the last couple million years, the human brain tripled in size. How could we possibly have afforded that? Where did the extra calories come from? There's no shortage of suggestions out there. Some say it was meat; others say it was tubers; many say it was by mastering fire and learning to cook. But now there's a newer proposal on the table and—spoiler—it's a bit funky. My guests today are Katherine Bryant, Postdoctoral Fellow at Aix-Marseille University, and Erin Hecht, Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. Katherine, Erin, and another colleague are the authors of a new paper titled 'Fermentation technology as a driver of human brain expansion.' In it, they argue that fermented foods could have provided the caloric boost that allowed our brains to expand. Here, we talk about how the human body differs from the bodies of other great apes, not just in terms of our brains but also in terms of our bowels. We discuss the different mechanisms by which fermented foods provide nutritional benefits over unfermented foods. We consider how fermentation—which basically happens whether you want it to or not—would have been cognitively easier to harness than fire. Along the way, we touch on kiviaq, chicha, makgeolli, hákarl, natto, Limburger cheese, salt-rising bread, and other arguably delectable products of fermentation.  This is a fun one friends. But before we get to it: a friendly reminder about this summer's Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute. This a yearly event in St Andrews, Scotland; it features a rich program of lectures and events devoted to the study of cognition, mind, and intelligence in all its forms. If you have a taste for cross-disciplinary ferment and bubbly conversation, DISI may be for you. The application window is now open but is closing soon. You can find more info at DISI.org. That's D-I-S-I.org. Alright, friends, on to my conversation with Erin Hecht and Katherine Bryant. Enjoy!     A transcript of this episode is available here.   Notes and links 3:00 – A popular science article about the “infectiously delicious confection” that is salt-rising bread. A recipe for the bread.  6:00 – An article about makgeolli, a Korean rice wine. An article about chicha, the traditional corn-based fermented beverage that has been banned in some places. 11:30 – An article about the role of the arcuate fasciculus in language processing. A recent paper by Dr. Bryant and colleagues comparing the arcuate in humans and chimpanzees. 12:30 – A recent article by Dr. Hecht and colleagues on the evolutionary neuroscience of domestication.   13:00 – For discussions of the encephalization quotient (aka EQ) and of human brain evolution, see our previous episodes here and here. 15:00 – The classic paper on the “expensive tissue hypothesis.” 22:00 – An article about the role of meat in human evolution; an article about the role of tubers. The cooking hypothesis is most strongly associated with Richard Wrangham and his book, Catching Fire.  26:00 – A recent article on evidence for the widespread control of fire in human groups by around 400,000 years ago. 31:30 – A paper on how fermenting cassava reduces its toxicity. 38:30 – There have been various claims in the ethnographic literature that the control of fire has been lost among small groups, such as in Tasmania. See footnote 2 in this article. 44:30 – A popular article about kiviaq.  45:00 – The article from the New Yorker, by Rebecca Mead, about the foodways of the Faroe Islands.  53:00 – For more discussion of the so-called drunken monkey hypothesis, see our previous episode about intoxication.   1:00:30 – A popular article about hákarl, which is fermented Greenland shark.   Recommendations The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan The Art of Fermentation, by Sandor Katz Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Katz “How humans evolved large brains,” by Karin Isler & Carel van Schaik   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.  For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead is a captivating blend of memoir and biography that invites readers to explore the enduring impact of George Eliot's Middlemarch. Mead offers insights into the relevance of Middlemarch in contemporary life, illustrating how Eliot's exploration of human relationships and personal growth resonates today. We are joined by former British Novel professor, and published author, John Bennion as we discuss the merits of Rebecca Mead's book. Join us for a thought-provoking journey through both Mead's reflections and Eliot's timeless narrative!  

Earlier this year, New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead reported on the scandals taking place within the British Museum—and its own history of cultural theft that continues to define how we approach it as a museum today. Lale joins Rebecca on the ground in London to learn more about the institution she grew up visiting—and more broadly, how to tackle some of the world's biggest museums in a way that's both fulfilling and, well, fun. Share your thoughts on Women Who Travel. As a token of our appreciation, you will be eligible to enter a prize drawing up to $1,000 after you complete the survey.https://selfserve.decipherinc.com/survey/selfserve/222b/76152?pin=1&uBRANDLINK=2&uCHANNELLINK=2

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer Jessi Jezewska Stevens, to discuss her book, Ghost Pains. Please consider supporting your local bookshop.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening!For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders to Osman Yousefzada to Kylie Moore-Gilbert to Doreen Cunningham to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o to Sophie Ward to Damian Le Bas to Hanne Ørstavik to Khashayar J Khabushani to Daljit Nagra to Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ to Nastassja Martin to Ginanne Brownell to Hilary Bradt. All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the U.S. Senate seats that might turn from blue to red in 2024; The Fall of Roe with The New York Times's Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer; and the rise of Lauren Boebert with City Cast Denver's Bree Davies and Paul Karolyi.    Here are some notes and references from this week's show: The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter: 2024 CPR Senate Race Ratings Jonathan Weisman for The New York Times: 10 Senate Races to Watch in 2024 Ben Kamisar for NBC News: Rich people are spending more than ever to run for Congress. A big test is coming in Maryland. Nate Silver for 538: Are The Democrats Screwed In The Senate After 2024? The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer and The New York Times Magazine: The Untold Story of the Network That Took Down Roe v. Wade Ian Ward for Politico: The Group Behind Dobbs Does Not Want to Talk About What Comes Next Bree Davies and Paul Karolyi for City Cast Denver: Lauren Boebert Can't Lose  CBS Colorado: Beto O'Rourke Talks Gun Violence At Aurora Campaign Stop Here are this week's chatters: Emily: Law & Justice Journalism Project: 2024 Fellowship John: Katie Razzall, Darin Graham, and Larissa Kennelly for BBC News: FBI investigating missing ancient treasures from British Museum and Rebecca Mead for The New Yorker: The British Museum's Blockbuster Scandals David: Meilan Solly for Smithsonian Magazine: Giant Pandas Are Coming Back to Washington, D.C.; Maura Judkis and Travis M. Andrews for The Washington Post: Let's argue about the giant pandas; and Smithsonian's National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute: Red panda   Listener chatter from Annamarie Smith in Sacramento, California: Sukey Lewis and Julie Small for KQED: On Our Watch: New Folsom   For this week's Slate Plus bonus segment, Emily, John, and David talk about pronatalism and the Collins family. See Jenny Kleeman for The Guardian: America's premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids' to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death'. See also Luke Munn for The Conversation: Pronatalism is the latest Silicon Valley trend. What is it – and why is it disturbing?; Sarah Jones for Intelligencer: There's Nothing New About Pronatalism; and The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank by David Plotz.   In the next Gabfest Reads, David talks with Sierra Greer about her new book, Annie Bot: A Novel.   Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth Research by Julie Huygen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the U.S. Senate seats that might turn from blue to red in 2024; The Fall of Roe with The New York Times's Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer; and the rise of Lauren Boebert with City Cast Denver's Bree Davies and Paul Karolyi.    Here are some notes and references from this week's show: The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter: 2024 CPR Senate Race Ratings Jonathan Weisman for The New York Times: 10 Senate Races to Watch in 2024 Ben Kamisar for NBC News: Rich people are spending more than ever to run for Congress. A big test is coming in Maryland. Nate Silver for 538: Are The Democrats Screwed In The Senate After 2024? The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer and The New York Times Magazine: The Untold Story of the Network That Took Down Roe v. Wade Ian Ward for Politico: The Group Behind Dobbs Does Not Want to Talk About What Comes Next Bree Davies and Paul Karolyi for City Cast Denver: Lauren Boebert Can't Lose  CBS Colorado: Beto O'Rourke Talks Gun Violence At Aurora Campaign Stop Here are this week's chatters: Emily: Law & Justice Journalism Project: 2024 Fellowship John: Katie Razzall, Darin Graham, and Larissa Kennelly for BBC News: FBI investigating missing ancient treasures from British Museum and Rebecca Mead for The New Yorker: The British Museum's Blockbuster Scandals David: Meilan Solly for Smithsonian Magazine: Giant Pandas Are Coming Back to Washington, D.C.; Maura Judkis and Travis M. Andrews for The Washington Post: Let's argue about the giant pandas; and Smithsonian's National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute: Red panda   Listener chatter from Annamarie Smith in Sacramento, California: Sukey Lewis and Julie Small for KQED: On Our Watch: New Folsom   For this week's Slate Plus bonus segment, Emily, John, and David talk about pronatalism and the Collins family. See Jenny Kleeman for The Guardian: America's premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids' to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death'. See also Luke Munn for The Conversation: Pronatalism is the latest Silicon Valley trend. What is it – and why is it disturbing?; Sarah Jones for Intelligencer: There's Nothing New About Pronatalism; and The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank by David Plotz.   In the next Gabfest Reads, David talks with Sierra Greer about her new book, Annie Bot: A Novel.   Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth Research by Julie Huygen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the U.S. Senate seats that might turn from blue to red in 2024; The Fall of Roe with The New York Times's Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer; and the rise of Lauren Boebert with City Cast Denver's Bree Davies and Paul Karolyi.    Here are some notes and references from this week's show: The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter: 2024 CPR Senate Race Ratings Jonathan Weisman for The New York Times: 10 Senate Races to Watch in 2024 Ben Kamisar for NBC News: Rich people are spending more than ever to run for Congress. A big test is coming in Maryland. Nate Silver for 538: Are The Democrats Screwed In The Senate After 2024? The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer and The New York Times Magazine: The Untold Story of the Network That Took Down Roe v. Wade Ian Ward for Politico: The Group Behind Dobbs Does Not Want to Talk About What Comes Next Bree Davies and Paul Karolyi for City Cast Denver: Lauren Boebert Can't Lose  CBS Colorado: Beto O'Rourke Talks Gun Violence At Aurora Campaign Stop Here are this week's chatters: Emily: Law & Justice Journalism Project: 2024 Fellowship John: Katie Razzall, Darin Graham, and Larissa Kennelly for BBC News: FBI investigating missing ancient treasures from British Museum and Rebecca Mead for The New Yorker: The British Museum's Blockbuster Scandals David: Meilan Solly for Smithsonian Magazine: Giant Pandas Are Coming Back to Washington, D.C.; Maura Judkis and Travis M. Andrews for The Washington Post: Let's argue about the giant pandas; and Smithsonian's National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute: Red panda   Listener chatter from Annamarie Smith in Sacramento, California: Sukey Lewis and Julie Small for KQED: On Our Watch: New Folsom   For this week's Slate Plus bonus segment, Emily, John, and David talk about pronatalism and the Collins family. See Jenny Kleeman for The Guardian: America's premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids' to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death'. See also Luke Munn for The Conversation: Pronatalism is the latest Silicon Valley trend. What is it – and why is it disturbing?; Sarah Jones for Intelligencer: There's Nothing New About Pronatalism; and The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank by David Plotz.   In the next Gabfest Reads, David talks with Sierra Greer about her new book, Annie Bot: A Novel.   Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth Research by Julie Huygen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer Hilary Bradt to discuss Taking the Risk: My Adventures in Travel & Publishing. Please consider supporting your local bookshop.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders to Osman Yousefzada to Kylie Moore-Gilbert to Doreen Cunningham to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o to Sophie Ward to Damian Le Bas to Hanne Ørstavik to Khashayar J Khabushani to Daljit Nagra to Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ to Nastassja Martin to Ginanne Brownell. All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer Ginanne Brownell, to discuss her book, GHETTO CLASSICS: How a youth orchestra changed a Nairobi slum Please consider supporting your local bookshop.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders to Osman Yousefzada to Kylie Moore-Gilbert to Doreen Cunningham to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o to Sophie Ward to Damian Le Bas to Hanne Ørstavik to Khashayar J Khabushani to Daljit Nagra to Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ to Nastassja Martin. All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brains are not cheap. It takes a lot of calories to run a brain, and the bigger your brain, the more calories it takes. So how is it that, over the last couple million years, the human brain tripled in size. How could we possibly have afforded that? Where did the extra calories come from? There's no shortage of suggestions out there. Some say it was meat; others say it was tubers; many say it was by mastering fire and learning to cook. But now there's a newer proposal on the table and—spoiler—it's a bit funky. My guests today are Katherine Bryant, Postdoctoral Fellow at Aix-Marseille University, and Erin Hecht, Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. Katherine, Erin, and another colleague are the authors of a new paper titled 'Fermentation technology as a driver of human brain expansion.' In it, they argue that fermented foods could have provided the caloric boost that allowed our brains to expand. Here, we talk about how the human body differs from the bodies of other great apes, not just in terms of our brains but also in terms of our bowels. We discuss the different mechanisms by which fermented foods provide nutritional benefits over unfermented foods. We consider how fermentation—which basically happens whether you want it to or not—would have been cognitively easier to harness than fire. Along the way, we touch on kiviaq, chicha, makgeolli, hákarl, natto, Limburger cheese, salt-rising bread, and other arguably delectable products of fermentation.  This is a fun one friends. But before we get to it: a friendly reminder about this summer's Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute. This a yearly event in St Andrews, Scotland; it features a rich program of lectures and events devoted to the study of cognition, mind, and intelligence in all its forms. If you have a taste for cross-disciplinary ferment and bubbly conversation, DISI may be for you. The application window is now open but is closing soon. You can find more info at DISI.org. That's D-I-S-I.org. Alright, friends, on to my conversation with Erin Hecht and Katherine Bryant. Enjoy!    A transcript of this episode will be available soon.   Notes and links 3:00 – A popular science article about the “infectiously delicious confection” that is salt-rising bread. A recipe for the bread.  6:00 – An article about makgeolli, a Korean rice wine. An article about chicha, the traditional corn-based fermented beverage that has been banned in some places. 11:30 – An article about the role of the arcuate fasciculus in language processing. A recent paper by Dr. Bryant and colleagues comparing the arcuate in humans and chimpanzees. 12:30 – A recent article by Dr. Hecht and colleagues on the evolutionary neuroscience of domestication.   13:00 – For discussions of the encephalization quotient (aka EQ) and of human brain evolution, see our previous episodes here and here. 15:00 – The classic paper on the “expensive tissue hypothesis.” 22:00 – An article about the role of meat in human evolution; an article about the role of tubers. The cooking hypothesis is most strongly associated with Richard Wrangham and his book, Catching Fire.  26:00 – A recent article on evidence for the widespread control of fire in human groups by around 400,000 years ago. 31:30 – A paper on how fermenting cassava reduces its toxicity. 38:30 – There have been various claims in the ethnographic literature that the control of fire has been lost among small groups, such as in Tasmania. See footnote 2 in this article. 44:30 – A popular article about kiviaq.  45:00 – The article from the New Yorker, by Rebecca Mead, about the foodways of the Faroe Islands.  53:00 – For more discussion of the so-called drunken monkey hypothesis, see our previous episode about intoxication.   1:00:30 – A popular article about hákarl, which is fermented Greenland shark.   Recommendations The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan The Art of Fermentation, by Sandor Katz Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Katz “How humans evolved large brains,” by Karin Isler & Carel van Schaik   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.  For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer Nastassja Martin to discuss her book, IN THE EYE OF THE WILD. Please consider supporting your local bookshop.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders to Osman Yousefzada to Kylie Moore-Gilbert to Doreen Cunningham to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o to Sophie Ward to Damian Le Bas to Hanne Ørstavik to Khashayar J Khabushani to Daljit Nagra to Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀. All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ to discuss her new book, A Spell of Good Things. Please consider supporting your local bookshop.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders to Osman Yousefzada to Kylie Moore-Gilbert to Doreen Cunningham to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o to Sophie Ward to Damian Le Bas to Hanne Ørstavik to Khashayar J Khabushani to Daljit Nagra. All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After a summer filled with European travel, Lale catches up with The New Yorker's Rebecca Mead to learn a few surprising facts about one of the continent's most famous—and ancient—sites, Pompeii. Plus, she hears from a listener about what it felt like to explore a Greek landmark steeped in mythology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer Daljit Nagra to discuss his latest collection of poetry, Indiom.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice.Thank you for listening!For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders to Osman Yousefzada to Kylie Moore-Gilbert to Doreen Cunningham to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o to Sophie Ward to Damian Le Bas to Hanne Ørstavik to Khashayar J Khabushani.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer Khashayar J Khabushani to discuss his debut, I Will Greet the Sun Again.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Cox & Kings — Arranging captivating travel experiences for over 260 years.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening!For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders to Osman Yousefzada to Kylie Moore-Gilbert to Doreen Cunningham to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o to Sophie Ward to Damian Le Bas to Hanne Ørstavik.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer Hanne Ørstavik to discuss her book, Ti Amo. It is her 16th novel. Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast: Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders to Osman Yousefzada to Kylie Moore-Gilbert to Doreen Cunningham to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o to Sophie Ward to Damian Le Bas.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer Damian Le Bas to discuss his debut, The Stopping Places. Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders to Osman Yousefzada to Kylie Moore-Gilbert to Doreen Cunningham to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o to Sophie Ward. All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer Sophie Ward to discuss her novels, The Schoolhouse, and her debut Love and Other Thought Experiments, long listed for the Booker. Before that, a work of non-fiction, A Marriage Proposal: The Importance of Equal Marriage and What it Means for All of Us. Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders to Osman Yousefzada to Kylie Moore-Gilbert to Doreen Cunningham to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

On May 6th, King Charles will become the oldest person to ascend the throne of the United Kingdom. He is a bit of an odd duck to be the king, Rebecca Mead thinks. Charles has “long made clear that he considers his birthright a burden,” she writes. In fact, many things are a burden: during the ceremonies following the death of Queen Elizabeth, the new king “got into not one but two altercations with malfunctioning pens. . . . As his biographer Catherine Mayer puts it, ‘The world is against him—even inanimate objects are against him. That is absolutely central to his personality.' ” Mead—a subject of the king, as well as a staff writer—talks with David Remnick about Charles III's coronation, the problem of Harry and Meghan, and the future of the British monarchy itself.

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer and scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o to discuss his life's works including Wrestling with the Devil, which reflects on his imprisonment back in 1978. Also, his first novel Caitaani Mũtharabainĩ, in English, Devil on the Cross, which he wrote in prison. And Weep Not, Child; The River Between; A Grain of Wheat. More recently his memoirs, Birth of a Dream Weaver and In the House of the Interpreter, and a novel in verse, The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gikuyu and Mumbi.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Cox & Kings — Arranging captivating travel experiences for over 260 years.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice.Thank you for listening!For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders to Osman Yousefzada to Kylie Moore-Gilbert to Doreen Cunningham.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer Doreen Cunningham to discuss her debut, SOUNDINGS: Journeys in the company of whales. From the lagoons of Mexico to Arctic glaciers, Doreen followed the route of the gray whale on one of the longest mammalian migrations — with Max, her little boy, by her side. Her book mixes up memoir with nature, climate and science writing.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice.Thank you for listening!For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders and Osman Yousefzada to Kylie Moore-Gilbert.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 5, 2023 is: repartee • rep-er-TEE • noun Repartee can refer to either “a conversation in which clever statements and replies are made quickly” or a single “quick and witty reply.” It can also refer to one's cleverness and wit in conversation, as in “an aunt widely known for her repartee at family gatherings.” // The twins' repartee at the back of the class always cracked up their classmates, though their teacher was rarely amused. See the entry > Examples: “The language of the play moves between the vernacular and the elevated, informed by the repartee of TV sitcoms as well as by the poetry of William Blake.” — Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 19 June 2022 Did you know? Dorothy Parker was known for her repartee. Upon hearing that former president Calvin Coolidge had died, the poet, short-story writer, screenwriter, and critic—famous for her acerbic wit—replied, “How can they tell?” The taciturn Coolidge, aka “Silent Cal,” obviously didn't have a reputation for being the life of the party, but he could be counted on for the occasional bon mot, as when a Washington, D.C., hostess told him, “You must talk to me, Mr. President. I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you,” and he replied, “You lose.” Repartee, our word for a quick, sharp reply (and for skill with such replies) comes from the French repartie, of the same meaning. Repartie itself is formed from the French verb repartir, meaning “to retort.”

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I'm joined by the writer and scholar Kylie Moore-Gilbert to discuss her book, THE UNCAGED SKY: My 804 days in an Iranian prison. Kylie was arrested at Tehran Airport in September 2018 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards and convicted of espionage. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but released early in a three-nation prisoner swap.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders and Osman Yousefzada.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Osman Yousefzada to discuss his debut The Go-Between: A portrait of growing up between different worlds. It's a coming-of-age memoir, reflecting on his early life in Birmingham, a childhood within the embrace of an ultra-conservative community of immigrants from Pakistani Pashtun.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi to Frances Stonor Saunders.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Frances Stonor Saunders to discuss her book The Suitcase, Six Attempts to Cross a Border.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson to Justin Marozzi.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Justin Marozzi to discuss his book Islamic Empires: Fifteen cities that define a civilisation.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin to Roger Robinson.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Roger Robinson to discuss his book, Home Is Not A Place, a collaboration with photographer and writer Johny Pitts — it's a free-form composition of Roger's words with Johny's images, reflecting on Black Britishness and its resilience.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann to Anthony Sattin.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Anthony Sattin to discuss his book, NOMADS: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World. It documents the history of people who've lived their lives on the move, beyond walls and beyond borders — exploring how and how much nomads have contributed to human progress and development.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler to Ariana Neumann.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Ariana Neumann to discuss her book, When Time Stopped: A memoir of my father's war and what remains. It documents Ariana's journey to discovering her family's Jewish roots and their efforts to survive World War II in their homeland of Czechoslovakia, yet as so many were transported and murdered by the Nazis.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi to Tim Mackintosh-Smith to Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I talk to the mother and daughter pairing Karen Joy Fowler and Shannon Leone Fowler, to discuss their books: Booth, and Travelling with Ghosts, respectively.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi and Tim Mackintosh-Smith.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

George Prochnik rejoins the show to celebrate his new book, I Dream With Open Eyes: A Memoir About Reimagining Home (Counterpoint Press). We get into his family's decision after the 2016 election to leave America, how his book complements his wife Rebecca Mead's memoir about their move to the UK, the performative & symbolic aspects of their decision, the work of culture, and how it felt to write about the present moment for the first time. We talk about American exceptionalism, the nature of exile & self-exile, the centrality of Freud to different branches of his family, and why he decided to write about the nature of working as a writer and trying to get by as an artist in NYC. We also discuss the apocalyptic nature of our era, how the power of ignorance is stronger than power of knowledge, how we can recuperate the unknown as a space of possibility, and the warnings of two of his past literary subjects, Stefan Zweig and Gershom Scholem. Follow George on Twitter and Instagram, although he doesn't actually post at either very much • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Tim Mackintosh-Smith to discuss his latest book, Arabs: A 3,000-year history of peoples, tribes and empires.His body of work includes: Yemen, Travels in Dictionary Land; a trilogy on the 14th-century traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭah who, in his words, may well be the most widely travelled human before the age of steam; as well as completed translations, and a work of fiction Bloodstone set in the year 1368, as the Alhambra in Granada was being completed.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Mona Arshi to discuss her debut novel: Somebody Loves You, a coming-of-age story about a British girl, born to Indian parents, growing up in the suburbs of London. Mona's novel follows a body of work in poetry, including Dear Big Gods, and before that Small Hands, which won the Forward Prize for best first collection.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Winnie M Li to discuss her books: Complicit, a novel exploring sexual assault and consent in the US filmmaking industry, at the time of the #MeToo movement. It follows her first novel, Dark Chapter, a fictionalised retelling of her own experience of rape.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Jennifer Steil to discuss her book, Exile Music, a historical novel written from the perspective of a young Jewish girl, who flees Austria in the 1930s for La Paz, Bolivia — a country that offers her family refuge, as the Nazis rise up in Europe.Jennifer's two previous books include a memoir, The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American's Adventure in the Oldest City on Earth, on her experience as a journalist in Yemen, and The Ambassador's Wife, a novel about a hostage crisis..Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this special edition, I speak with Emmanuel Jal to discuss War Child, a memoir of his years growing up in Sudan, when his country was being rocked by civil war. Emmanuel was separated from his family and forced to become a child soldier. Up to two million people were killed in this war, and millions more displaced. On the cover of the book, there's a quote of Emmanuel's: “I believe I've survived for a reason to tell my story, to touch lives…”Since the publication of his book and release of a film of the same name, Emmanuel has become a World Music & hip-hop artist, and global peace ambassador. He is releasing a new album this month, title track Shangah, which plays in the podcast. Listen up. He'll get you dancing.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this special edition:Asilia — offering authentic East African safari experiences that leave a positive impact on crucial wilderness areasIf you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. The first season has twelve compelling editions, including conversations with Janine di Giovanni, Bernardine Evaristo, Afua Hirsch, Carla Power, Maaza Mengiste, Kapka Kassabova, Sara Wheeler, Brigid Delaney, Horatio Clare, Rebecca Mead, Preti Taneja and Kathryn D. Sullivan. The second season begins soon!

Celebrated New Yorker staff writer and author Rebecca Mead joined us virtually from across the pond to discuss her topical new memoir, Home/Land--a moving reflection on the complicated nature of home and homeland, and the heartache and adventure of leaving an adopted country in order to return to your native land. In conversation with fellow New Yorker staff writer and author of Trick Mirror Jia Tolentino, Mead lead us through a reading focused on the architectural idea of “historical movement”--the sinking and cracking of buildings as a city ages—and a conversation that wound through the privilege and pitfalls of moving one's home and the relationship between geography and the character of places. (Recorded March 3, 2022) 

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Kathryn D. Sullivan to discuss her book, Handprints on Hubble: An Astronaut's Story of Invention, about deploying the revolutionary telescope, and about the people who made it work.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporters of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.COMO Hotels & Resorts — Celebrating 30 years creating elegant properties around the world, from Bali to Bhutan; Tuscany to the Turks and Caicos; Perth, Australia, to the Pacific.TUMI — Creating world-class business, travel and performance luxury essentials.Ultimate Library — Creating bespoke book collections to educate and inspire.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Preti Taneja to discuss her book, AFTERMATH, which has just been published. It's a work of fragmented non-fiction, of life after the terrorist attack at Fishmongers' Hall in London in 2019. Preti knew one the victims of the attack and the perpetrator of the crime.Preti is also the author of WE THAT ARE YOUNG, which won the 2018 Desmond Elliot Prize for debut novelists. The story — set in contemporary India — holds parallels with Shakespeare's King Lear; it's a dynamic and devastating story of greed and corruption.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporters of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.TUMI — Creating world-class business, travel and performance luxury essentials.Ultimate Library — Creating bespoke book collections to educate and inspire.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

Welcome to The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the journalist and writer Rebecca Mead to discuss her latest book — Home/Land: A Memoir of Departure and Return. It recounts her personal to and fro, leaving her childhood home in England, moving to New York, and then returning 30 years later to London, this time with her husband and son.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporters of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.TUMI — Creating world-class business, travel and performance luxury essentials.Ultimate Library — Creating bespoke book collections to educate and inspire.If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where's next, and who's up next, I'm across socials @michellejchan. I'd love to hear from you.And if you've missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com

In this episode, Neil, Niki, and Natalia discuss recent developments in the politics of sex and marriage. https://www.patreon.com/pastpresentpodcast Here are some links and references mentioned during this week's show:  Republicans have both been sounding alarms about pedophilia and attempting to relax age-of-consent laws. Natalia referred to historian Clayton Howard's book, The Closet and the Cul-de-Sac: The Politics of Sexual Privacy in Northern California and Niki referenced Andrew Sullivan's 1995 book, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality. Neil and Natalia drew on Frank Bruni's New York Times opinion piece.   In our regular closing feature, What's Making History: Natalia recommended Anne-Helen Petersen's Bustle article, “Britney Falls in Love.” Neil discussed Rebecca Mead's New Yorker article, “Could Leopards Be Paid for Their Spots.” Niki shared Taylor Lorenz' Washington Post article, “Internet ‘algospeak' is changing our language in real time, ‘nip nops' to ‘le dollar bean'.”

Rebecca Mead joins the show to celebrate her amazing new memoir, Home/Land (Knopf)! We talk about the adventure of making a midlife leap — her departure from NYC after 30 years & her return to England —, the ways this memoir differs from My Life In Middlemarch, the moment she truly felt like she was a writer at The New Yorker, and more! Follow Rebecca on Twitter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Today Sara and Chelsey check in and discuss Middlemarch by George Eliot. What does this 800-page Victorian novel have in common with Love is Blind on Netflix? Tune in to hear literary analysis, pop culture connections, and personal reflections on reading this giant tome. Plus, Sara and Chelsey reveal plans for a new episode format, coming soon.  Join our Patreon community at patreon.com/novelpairings. Follow Novel Pairings on Instagram or Twitter.  Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get updates and behind-the-scenes info. Use our Libro.fm affiliate code NOVELPAIRINGS to get an audiobook subscription and support independent bookstores. Books mentioned:Middlemarch by George Eliot (Penguin Classics Deluxe)Emma by Jane Austen (The Annotated Version)Love and Friendship by Jane Austen Picks of the week: Chelsey: Love is Blind (Netflix) Sara: My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead  Also mentioned: “It Can Be Embarrassing to Love Dorothea” The Paris Review

This week, host June Thomas talks to New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead about her new memoir Home/Land, which traces her experience moving back to Britain after making a home for herself in New York and becoming a U.S. citizen. In the interview, Rebecca discusses the feelings she wanted to capture in the book and describes her impulse to document an important moment in her life. She also explains why Home/Land was more difficult to write than her previous books.  After the interview, June and co-host Karen Han talk about the challenges Rebecca faced while writing her book and what we can learn from them.  In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, June asks Rebecca for some moving tips.  Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Big Mood, Little Mood—and you'll be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, host June Thomas talks to New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead about her new memoir Home/Land, which traces her experience moving back to Britain after making a home for herself in New York and becoming a U.S. citizen. In the interview, Rebecca discusses the feelings she wanted to capture in the book and describes her impulse to document an important moment in her life. She also explains why Home/Land was more difficult to write than her previous books.  After the interview, June and co-host Karen Han talk about the challenges Rebecca faced while writing her book and what we can learn from them.  In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, June asks Rebecca for some moving tips.  Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Big Mood, Little Mood—and you'll be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, host June Thomas talks to New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead about her new memoir Home/Land, which traces her experience moving back to Britain after making a home for herself in New York and becoming a U.S. citizen. In the interview, Rebecca discusses the feelings she wanted to capture in the book and describes her impulse to document an important moment in her life. She also explains why Home/Land was more difficult to write than her previous books.  After the interview, June and co-host Karen Han talk about the challenges Rebecca faced while writing her book and what we can learn from them.  In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, June asks Rebecca for some moving tips.  Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Big Mood, Little Mood—and you'll be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Late last year, the British press reported that, at the height of the COVID lockdowns in the U.K., Prime Minister Boris Johnson and members of his staff hosted a series of parties and gatherings at 10 Downing Street, defying the strict protocols instigated by Johnson's own government. What seemed at first like a tabloid story has erupted into a crisis of confidence in Johnson's leadership, and some believe that he could be ousted by his party and removed from power. Rebecca Mead, a New Yorker staff writer based in London, joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the turmoil in the British government, the future of Boris Johnson's political career, and how the pandemic has changed the way we think about our elected leaders.

Slate Money is obsessed with Succession, HBO's wonderful drama about the lives of the superrich Roy family. So, every Monday we'll be discussing the previous night's episode with spoiler-filled glee. To kick us off after a long wait for season 3, Felix Salmon and Emily Peck are joined by The New Yorker's Rebecca Mead to talk about her piece, "The Real C.E.O of 'Succession'", how sorry we should feel for the Roy "children," and the mic drop ending of season 2. Podcast production by Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate Money is obsessed with Succession, HBO's wonderful drama about the lives of the superrich Roy family. So, every Monday we'll be discussing the previous night's episode with spoiler-filled glee. To kick us off after a long wait for season 3, Felix Salmon and Emily Peck are joined by The New Yorker's Rebecca Mead to talk about her piece, "The Real C.E.O of 'Succession'", how sorry we should feel for the Roy "children," and the mic drop ending of season 2. Podcast production by Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Books Mentioned: Folio Society edition of The Handmaid's Tale, illustrated by Anna and Elena Balbusso (2012) The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James (2020) You by Anonymous (1975) Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (1996) The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (2005) Other Media Mentioned: "[you fit into me]" by Margaret Atwood (1971) The Handmaid's Tale TV series (2017) Resources Used: "Banned Books Week: The Handmaid's Tale" by catieannelockhart "The Handmaid's Tale has been feared, banned and loved. Now it's scaring the bejeezus out of us again" by Monica Hesse "Margaret Atwood: The Prophet of Dystopia" by Rebecca Mead www.margaretatwood.ca Of Prurient Interest social media: Insta: @ofprurientinterest Twitter: @highlyprurient FB: /ofprurientinterest Litsy: @prurientinterest Email: ofprurientinterest@gmail.com Patreon: /ofprurientinterest Website: ofprurientinterest.com Kaelyn's Instagram: @lalatiburona Score by Rose Droll: @myhandsarepaws Logo by @irizofen If you like this podcast, consider becoming a patron either here on Anchor or on Patreon. You can also make a one-time donation through the website. Lastly, subscribe, rate, and review! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ofprurientinterest/support

Paul Holdengräber is joined by writer Rebecca Mead on episode 199 of The Quarantine Tapes. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker, Rebecca talks with Paul about writing and the changing experience of time under quarantine.Rebecca and Paul dig into some of her recent writing. They talk about her article, The Therapeutic Power of Gardening, and how Rebecca was able to feel closer to her mother thanks to her new gardening practice. Then, Rebecca explains the unique practice of cold water swimming in the UK and her own experience with the discipline. In a fascinating and focused discussion, Paul and Rebecca cover Winnicott, wild swimming, and Rebecca's upcoming book, Home/Land. Rebecca Mead was born in England and studied at Oxford and NYU. She joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 1997; among the many subjects she has profiled for the magazine are Lin-Manuel Miranda, Margaret Atwood, Nico Muhly, Slavoj Zizek, and Mary Beard. She has written hundreds of Talk of the Town stories and is a frequent contributor of essays and commentary to newyorker.com. She is the author of “My Life in Middlemarch” (2014), a New York Times bestseller; and “One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding” (2007). In 2018, Mead returned to England after three decades living in New York City. She is at work on a non-fiction book about that transition.  Oliver Sacks: Water BabiesPhoto Credit: James Prochnik

In this episode, we compare and discuss Bo Burnham's Netflix special Inside,  which explores the consequences of living in a digital world, and Rebecca Mead's New Yorker article, "How Nasty Was Nero, Really?"

Generations have speculated about the age and significance of a 55-metre-tall giant carved into the chalk of a hillside in south-west England. Was he a depiction of the legendary demi-god Hercules, an ancient fertility symbol or even a political lampoon of Oliver Cromwell?  State-of-the art archaeological analysis has thrown up a few surprises in the latest quest to date the Giant. 

US commentator Bruce Shapiro discusses the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, historian David Brophy looks at how Australia can take the middle road with China and New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead reveals new secrets about a giant chalk man etched into an English hill.

In 2015, a metre under English soil, two metal-detector enthusiasts (or detectorists) literally struck gold . They discovered an underground Viking treasure trove: a bangle, pendant and a ring, with a silver ingot plus hundreds of silver coins. Everything pointed towards their find being a hugely valuable 'hoard': a collection of valuables typically hidden to avoid looting by raiding parties. Such collections are subject to far tighter treasure-seeking controls than those applying to individual finds. So with question marks over their search rights over the land in question, they were faced with a dilemma. Their bumbling attempts to conceal the find are documented in Rebecca Mead's recent article 'The Curse of The Buried Treasure' in The New Yorker. Mead is a New Yorker staff writer and author of the critically acclaimed My Life in Middlemarch; a celebration of George Eliot, and the joys of literature.

In this episode, Cheryl Rice and Rebecca Mead wade into the riptide of mixing business with politics, and how in today's culture, even supporting a social cause can have political implications.  So as a small business, can you - should you - get political?  And if you do, how do you do it right? 

Hosts Cheryl Rice and Rebecca Mead chat about the challenges of marketing during the COVID pandemic, how to take advantage of the opportunities without being opportunistic, and how to stick to your strategies while adjusting your outreach.

Market Space is a podcast for everyone who’s sick of gimmicky, inauthentic marketing advice. Join hosts Cheryl Rice and Rebecca Mead for no-holds-barred, unscripted, and opinionated conversations on the world of small business marketing. With guests that are veterans of the marketing trenches, Market Space is always fun, always interesting, and always on-target with insights and ideas for business growth.

Eleanor Wachtel's 2014 conversation with Middlemarch enthusiasts Rebecca Mead, Nancy Henry and Francine Prose, to mark George Eliot's bicentenary. 

Writer Rebecca Mead, actor Fiona Shaw + academics Dafydd Mills Daniel, Philip Davis & Peggy Reynolds read George Eliot's 1860 novel portraying sibling relationships. Shahidha Bari hosts. George Eliot was born on 22 November 1819. Rebecca Mead is the author of The road to Middlemarch: my life with George Eliot. Dafydd Mills Daniel is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and AHRC to put academic research on the radio. Professor Peggy Reynolds teaches at Queen Mary University London and has edited anthologies of Victorian poets, the Sappho Companion and the Penguin edition of George Eliot's Adam Bede. Professor Philip Davis teaches at the University of Liverpool and is the author of The Transferred Life of George Eliot. Listen out for Radio 3's weekly curation of Words and Music which broadcasts each Sunday at 5.30pm and is available to listen here https://bbc.in/2E72xV0 A special episode also featuring Fiona Shaw as one of the readers hears extracts from Eliot's fiction, essays and journal set alongside the music she might have had on her playlist - composers including Clara Schumann, Liszt, whom Eliot met in 1854; and Tchaikovsky, who said his favourite writer was George Eliot. Producer: Fiona McLean

Shahidha Bari discusses the state of scholarship on George Eliot at her bicentenary with Ruth Livesey and Helen O'Neill, both at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Gail Marshall at the University of Reading. Ruth Livesey's AHRC funded research project on George Eliot is ‘Provincialism: Literature and the Cultural Politics of Middleness in Nineteenth-Century Britain’ https://georgeeliotprovincialism.home.blog/ Gail Marshall's blog on reading Middlemarch is here https://middlemarchin2019.wordpress.com/ A Free Thinking discussion of Mill on the Floss with writer Rebecca Mead, actor Fiona Shaw and academics Philip Davis, Dafydd Daniel and Peggy Reynolds is here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07vsc2h This episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. Producer: Luke Mulhall

En NotiPod Hoy Un estudio de Werk It mostró que las ganancias promedio por hora de los grupos de podcasters en EEUU oscilan entre los $30 y los $44 por hora. Sin embargo, las mujeres ganan menos. Spotify lanza el podcast NRDWARE, una serie original que reúne a los 4 geeks más grandes de México. Otro anuncio de Spotify: Introducen una nueva lista de reproducción con música y podcasts. Triton Digital adquiere la empresa de alojamiento australiana Omny Studio. Los podcasts de actualidad y política son los que captan más publicidad. Quake Media, es una«red de podcasts de suscripción» que ofrecerá programación netamente exclusiva y no tendrá ningún nivel gratuito. Brandon Hull asegura que ser parte de una red de podcasts es el mejor camino para generar conciencia sobre tu programa y posteriormente convertir la audiencia en ingresos. Diferentes marcas de revistas como: Hollywood Life, Trains Magazine y Popular Science están adoptando un enfoque más modesto e individualizado para el audio con la creación de uno o dos podcasts. TuneIn lanza Pod Club, una nueva serie de podcasts donde los anfitriones dan recomendaciones de podcasts. Según Rebecca Mead estamos viviendo una nueva era dorada de storytelling en forma de podcast. Podcast recomendado: El Valle de los tercos. Es un podcast en el que emprendedores, ejecutivos e inversionistas tech revelan sus secretos y aprendizajes sobre Silicon Valley. En uno de sus episodios más recientes Martín Siniawski, fundador de The Podcast App y Streema, cuenta cómo funciona la aceleradora top, Y Combinator a la que logró entrar en un segundo intento. Más detalles y otros episodios y contenidos sobre Podcasting en ViaPodcast.FM

Dan and Eric talk about Dan's recent hosting of Yiyun Li at Bryn Mawr College, and how she knows when a short story is complete; Amy Davidson Sorkin on the Mueller report and the profanity of Trump and his cronies; Rebecca Mead's piece about Airbnb in Barcelona; Greg Jackson's current story, "Poetry," and his earlier story, "Wagner in the Desert"; Nicholas Lemann on a new biography of John Hersey; Amanda Petrusich on a Jewish jazz trumpeter who performed for the Nazis, and spent the rest of his life in gratitude to jazz for saving him, in many ways; and Dan talks about recent reading of short story writer, William Trevor.  Plus, as always, so much more.

Are you creating unique, original work that helps you stand out in a market where everyone is a photographer?In episode 225 of the Bokeh Podcast, Jesse and Moira LaPlante discuss why and how they created unique sessions, called Alt Sessions, focusing on the important interests of their couples! Listen in as they share their process with Alt Sessions and four key ideas to creating a unique experience.The Bokeh Podcast is brought to you by Photographer’s Edit: Custom Editing for the Wedding and Portrait Photographer. You can also subscribe to the Bokeh podcast on the Apple podcast app, follow on Spotify, add to your playlist on Stitcher, or listen on Overcast.Technique for Time: Mental Health Monday - Force yourself to do something fun one day a week. Book Recommendations: Outliers by Malcom Gladwell: bit.ly/bp-outliersThe Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut: bit.ly/bp-SirensTitanOne Perfect Day by Rebecca Mead: bit.ly/bp-OnePerfectDay The Lesson: Find your niche & don’t try to copy others. Tenebrism: Violent contrasts of dark and light. Brand Position: Striving to take unique photos The Gear Bag: MagModifiers & Godox AD200 The Alt Session Process:1. Start each process with a “good fit” phone call to explain the idea behind the Alt Session.2. Once booked, schedule another phone call that allows you to get to know them so you can plan a unique session for them.3. Set the expectation that this is unique and anything can happen.4. Bond with your couple through the experience. 4 Key Ideas to Creating Unique Sessions:1. Start shooting for yourself, because you’ll start attracting like-minded clients and it will make your job so much more enjoyable.2. Don’t worry about what the wedding industry tells you to do.3. Don’t feel like you have to take every single client that comes to your door.4. Listen to your client without expectations of what they’ll say so that you can truly get to know them. Connect:jlaplante.cominstagram.com/j.laplante.photoIconoclasm Workshop: jlaplante.com/workshops Links:Mating in Captivity - Esther Perel: bit.ly/bp-micaptivityTed Talk - The Secret to Desire in a Long Term Relationship : bit.ly/bp-TedTalkEP1Ted Talk - Rethinking Infedelity: bit.ly/bp-TedTalkEP2Kurt Vonnegut: vonnegutlibrary.orgRay BradburyPhilip K DickThe Darkest HourPride & PrejudiceTo the Wonder See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Simon and Eleanor speak with Rebecca Mead, a longtime staff writer at the New Yorker magazine who recently returned to the UK after many years in the United States. Rebecca spoke about her early career as a fact-checker, how she moved into writing her own features, first at New York magazine and later for the New Yorker, and lifted the lid on some of the internal processes at the celebrated magazine, from the process of assigning stories to the practicalities of spending months reporting individual assignments. She also spoke about My Life in Middlemarch, her book length tribute to George Eliot's great nineteenth century novel. You can find us online at alwaystakenotes.com, on Twitter @takenotesalways, and on Facebook at facebook.com/alwaystakenotes. Our crowdfunding page is patreon.com/alwaystakenotes. Always Take Notes is presented by Eleanor Halls and Simon Akam, and produced by Nicola Kean. Zahra Hankir is our communities editor. Our music is by Jessica Dannheisser and our logo was designed by James Edgar.

White Whale time! Specifically George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Yes, Michael actually read the damn thing and Hannah read it for like the 60th time. Get their feelings about the book, some background on George herself, and a dose of what H & M are *actually* reading. Thank you for a great season two!! Books mentioned: My Life in Middlemarch, Rebecca Mead; The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt; Lethal White, Robert Galbraith. Resources: Rebecca Mead in the New Yorker, Henry James negging Middlemarch. Email us at thatbookpod@gmail.com. Friend us on Goodreads and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

What can a viral video of a teacher ripping up an elementary schooler's book tell us about government regulation and management? In this inaugural recording, Sam and Abram try to unpack some of the arguments and assumptions in Elizabeth Green's January 2018 article in The Atlantic: “The Charter School Crusader” about Eva Moskowitz and the school system she founded and now leads: Success Academy Charter Schools. First, we explore the context of the education reform movement in NYC and restructuring of public schools during the Bloomberg era. This gives way to a discussion of the terms revolutionary and radical—which we define as an effort to change the underlying structures and systems. Moskowitz positions herself as a revolutionary because she is changing the school system with entrepreneurial leadership and top-down authority, all while operating as a private citizen. Sam and Abram ask whether revolutionary change must include activating the power of a mass movement of the people, and holding oneself accountable to the public. This leads to a discussion about end goals, efficiency, and accountability. Moskowitz believes she can most effectively make change as a private citizen, but uses public funds in the process. Sam and Abram untangle this puzzle and raise more questions, like: Is efficiency more important than making schools equitable, accountable, and parent-friendly? How do we, as bureaucrats, hold ourselves accountable to the services we need to provide in real-time while also asking ourselves deeper question about our goals and measures? How do race and school segregation play into this debate? Additional reading: · The Charter School Crusader by Elizabeth Green, The Atlantic, January/February 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/success-academy-charter-schools-eva-moskowitz/546554/ · CREAD: Culturally Responsive Educators of the African Diaspora. https://creadnyc.com/ · Reinventing America's Schools: Creating a 21t Century Education System by David E. Osborne. September 2017. · She Breaks Rules While Expecting Students to Follow Them by Lisa Miller, New York Times book review of Eva Moskowitz' memoir. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/books/review/education-of-eva-moskowitz-memoir.html · The Education of Eva Moskowitz by Eva Moskowitz. September 2017. · Success Academy's Radical Educational Experiment by Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, December 2017. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/success-academys-radical-educational-experiment

In this episode, CERC's VP of Marketing is joined by CERC's Marketing Consultant, Rebecca Mead, to discuss a action steps to take before a municipality - or any organization for that matter - begins the process of the design and development of a new website.

Liberals and leftists hated Andrew Breitbart in life and cursed him in death. "F*ck him," wrote Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone immediately after Breitbart's death was announced in March 2012. "I couldn’t be happier that he’s dead." But even Taibbi had to concede that Breitbart's public humiliation of then-Senator, not-yet-pariah Anthony Weiner was a triumph of crass showmanship and perverse humor. But how to separate Breitbart the brand from Breitbart the man? Did his rage-fueled drive to build new, online conservative media help open the sewers for the Alt-Right? What would he think, were he still alive, about the site that still bears his name and the ugly trajectory it's followed in the past few years? Joe & Josh explore these questions by looking back at Rebecca Mead's 2010 profile of Breitbart, in which he's revealed as a petty visionary who screams a lot.“Rage Machine” by Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 2010https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/05/24/rage-machineOptional:“Finding Your Inner Gorilla” by Brianna Rennix and Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs, 2017https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/01/finding-your-inner-gorilla“Alt-White” by Joseph Bernstein, BuzzFeed, 2017https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalismLet us know what you think: essayquestionspodcast@gmail.com

Amanda and Jenn discuss Civil War reads, diverse middle-grade books, reading slumps, and more in this week's episode of Get Booked. This episode is sponsored by City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty and Weregirl & Chimera by C.D. Bell. Bookstore giveaway!   Questions 1. Dear Amanda and Jenn, I am a middle school English teacher and I have a student looking for a book recommendations. She has read To Kill a Mockingbird, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Giver, and Would You Reach Me and enjoyed them all. She seems to like books that tackle serious social issues as well as science fiction. Our school library is a little outdated and doesn't offer much in the way of books with diverse characters, so I'd like to direct her to something more current and with diverse characters. Thanks in advance. I love the podcast! --Rebecca   2. Hey Amanda and Jenn! I'm having baby #3 in December, and I'm looking for books to read on my e-reader during the middle-of-the-night feedings. I somehow missed this reading opportunity with my first baby, but with baby #2 a few years ago I read so much! Including at least one of Ruth Reichl's memoirs, Molly Wizenberg's Delancey and Homemade Life, but also a bit of romance, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and some other novels. I'm open to fiction, non-fiction, genre, etc. The main guidelines are: *fairly easy reads - no complex character lists and maps, and nothing too literary or high-minded. *conducive to reading in short bursts - easy to dip in and out of. Nothing so page-turner-y that I'll stay up even longer. Short chapters or frequent text breaks are a bonus, but not required. *nothing scary, dark, bloody, gory, etc... i.e. nothing where the jacket says (or could say) "chilling" or "haunting" *cozy and charming, but not cheesy *definitely no sick or dying kids/babies/children/moms, or disasters/apocalypses/tragedies *available as ebook (Kindle) So, what books can you suggest for me to read in the middle of the night as I nurse my new baby? --Betsy   3. I am looking for books about the Civil War for my father's 60th birthday. My mother is taking him on a trip to Gettysburg and I want to give him some books that will go along with his trip. He prefers non-fiction and has already read and enjoyed Killer Angels. I was going to get him a copy of Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy - but was hoping that you might have some other great recommendations! Thank you! Love the podcast! --Erin   4. Hi, Next year I am starting a feminist book club called SFF Fems that will read Science Fiction and Fantasy books by female authors only, with an emphasis on marginalised and own voice authors. Do you have any recommendations that would fit this criteria and make for great discussion at a book club meeting? Thanks so much --Tori   5. I'm trying to find books for my eleven year old daughter Cathy to read, but I'm a bit stumped. She's a voracious reader, and well above a usual eleven year old's reading level (this, just to be clear, isn't me being some annoying mom who likes to talk about how special my daughter is. She just happens to be ahead in reading.). She's read and loved Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and the Percy Jackson novels. She just read my copy of the Mists of Avalon and now has an obsession with arthurian legend. She loves history, and knights, and all that fun stuff, but I'm having a bit of trouble finding books for her. She's been reading some adult books on her own, and I'm very lax about what she's allowed to read and watch (the evidence being that I gave her The Mists of Avalon), and am not concerned about things being "appropriate" for her. We have a very open relationship and she comes to me with questions, we discuss what she's read, and honestly we are a very liberal family. However I would like to find her some age appropriate books as well, because I think it's important for her to read about characters her age to relate to. Everything we've been looking for together either doesn't interest her, or she finds condescending. Any ideas? I think some historical fiction would be good, but I just don't know what to look for. Thanks! --Jenna   6. Hi guys! I love the podcast and I'm so glad you're doing the show weekly now, it's my Friday treat to listen to you on the bus. I am in such a reading slump at the moment and I'm really hoping you can help. I had such a good reading year last year but since January, nothing is clicking with me. Could you suggest some books for getting out of a slump? I'm open to any genre, except horror (because I'm a wimp). If it helps, some books that I loved in 2015 were Spinster by Kate Bolick, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, A Fair Fight by Anna Freeman and The Queen of the Tearling. --Cat   7. Hello there! Not sure if you have already answered a question similar to this, but I figured I'd go ahead and ask anyway. I am a huge fan of The Gilmore Girls, and I was wondering if you guys know of any books that give the same overall feeling as the show. The fast-paced language, the quirky characters and small town feeling, intelligent women, etc. I am open to any and all genres! Thanks in advance! --Raven   Books Discussed Wolf-speaker (Immortals #2) by Tamora Pierce Get in Trouble by Kelly Link Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil Tijuana Book of the Dead by Luis Alberto Urrea Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi The Lotterys Plus One by Emma Donoghue (the review on Book Riot) The Pioneer Woman by Ree Drummond Take the Lead by Alexis Daria The Passing of the Armies by Joshua Chamberlain Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson (rec’d by Ta-Nehisi Coates) The Bloodprint by Ausma Zehanat Khan An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon No Good Deed by Kara Connolly Seeds of America trilogy (Chains #1) by Laurie Halse Anderson My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead 27 Hours by Tristina Wright Talking as Fast as I Can by Lauren Graham Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin

I remember when I was first on the periphery of what I guess we could call my screenwriting career and some Hollywood dickhead asked me “What’s your quote?” He meant “what’s your rate, your fee, your market value” — all of which was zero at the time. But what I thought he was after was more akin to “Play it again, Sam,” or “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a fuck” — you know, a movie quote. I mean that’s what people quote anyway — the movies. Except, I have a new quote — and it's not from the movies. In fact, I hate where I got it. It was the worst. It was a meme — you know, with an image of a sunset, the words hovering there, in all caps, over the shimmering sea as if belched directly from God, like some Wayne White word painting. It reads: “It's not too late to be what you might have been.” First off, fuck you, meme. And you too, God. And Wayne White -- okay, you get a pass, but... Fuck you to the person who didn’t credit the quote’s author, George Eliot (I looked it up). Which became its own wormhole, since everything I know about Eliot fits in two data points: He was a she. Or, rather, she used a male nom de plume because women writers weren’t taken seriously in the 19th century. She is not George Sand, who was also a 19th century writer and used her pseudonym for the same reasons. Also, names were just plain complicated for her, as she once wrote: "My name is not Marie-Aurore de Saxe, Marquise of Dudevant, as several of my biographers have asserted, but Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin.” And then she probably added, “Screw it, call me ‘George.’” So, George Eliot writes “It's not too late to be what you might have been” and a century and a half later, Rebecca Mead, in a New Yorker essay titled Middlemarch and Me tries to find the origin of the quotation, which she first read on a refrigerator magnet. Then Mead observes, “the sentence didn’t sound to me like anything George Eliot would say” and some literary sleuthing ensues. Spoiler alert — it’s made up. Probably by a refrigerator magnet scribe, who hopefully took her own advice and got out of the magnet business. Which is good advice. It's not too late to be what you might have been. What did you want to be? I wanted to be many things, too many things, surely. But the unified field theory always had art in the equation. I’m not entirely sure how that came to feel so far away until recently but I think it went like this: Art led to entertainment, which led to media, which will probably lead to memes if I’m not careful. I think I caught myself just in time, hence this public psychic striptease I’ve been conducting as I peel away a lifetime’s accumulated bullshit and become what I might have been. And if you come across a Hollywood dickhead, tell him what happened to me, then tell him that the rights are tied up in with a refrigerator magnet. Then run far, far away and hide — maybe change your name to George? — and then become what you might have been. It’s not too late. Theme: Shannon Ferguson Piano: Kevin MacLeod

This week: It's awesome in the sacred sense - but stressful in the practical sense. The Facts Surprisingly Awesome’s theme music is by Nicholas Britell. Our ad music is by Build Buildings. Additional music came from Kyle Morton, Sex Life, and Xolo We were edited this week by Annie-Rose Strasser, and produced by Rachel Ward, Christine Driscoll and Rikki Novetsky.  Our field producers were Sylvie Douglis and Nick Fountain.   Production Assistance came from Jacob Cruz, Emily Kennedy, Melanie Kruvelis, Jessica Langley,  Sarah Melton, and Sarah Stodder. Thank you to Meg Keene at A Practical Wedding, Erin Boll, proprietrix of the Instagram account Pisces Bride, Stevie Lane who designed our wedding invitation, and for helping us find Sue and Austin.  Learn More Source for the inverse relationship between the cost of weddings and duration of marriages: ‘A Diamond is Forever’ and Other Fairy Tales: The Relationship between Wedding Expenses and Marriage Duration. At one point this was the most downloaded paper on SSRN, the database we found it on. Here's the link to Tamara Sniezek's paper, Is It Our Day or the Bride’s Day? The Division of Wedding Labor and Its Meaning for Couples. You'll never look at invitations the same way again. Several years ago, Slate did a great, concise post about wedding averages and how they're reported, The Wedding Industry's Pricey Little Secret. Rebecca Mead's book is called One Perfect Day, and you can check it out at the library, like we did, or get it... you know where. (Amazon, you can buy books on Amazon.) Our Sponsors eero - For free overnight shipping, visit eero.com and at checkout select overnight shipping then enter “awesome" to make it free Hello Fresh - To get $35 off your first week of deliveries visit hellofresh.com and enter promo code "AWESOME"

There are ways today in which our topics are interconnected. Actress and writer Mellini Kantayya, wants to talk about the issues of diversity in casting. One of our other topics involves the fallout from Ira Glass's recent tweet that "Shakespeare sucks." New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead joins us to discuss her article deploring the modern vogue forSupport the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) talks to Rebecca Mead (My Life in Middlemarch) about her newest novel, The Signature of All Things, as well as the joys of being a grown-up and the independent will of ideas. Also: reviews of Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique and The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway, new releases for August 1st – 15th, 2014. Find all the titles discussed in this episode at Greenlightbookstore.com/radio3

Anita Shreve discusses her latest novel The Lives of Stella Bain and we take a look at the enduring appeal of George Eliot's Middlemarch with writers Rebecca Mead and Rebecca Stott

We talk with Kristina Wilfore, former director of the National Democratic Institute in Ukraine and founder of Women Lead, about women in the Ukrainian uprising. Then Jewels Smith, author of political satiric comic series (H)afrocentric joins us to talk about the recently released volume 3; and Rebecca Mead, author of My Life in Middlemarch, discusses the life and work of the great British writer, George Eliot. The post Women's Magazine – March 10, 2014 appeared first on KPFA.

This week: Stephen Malkmus on rock and roll fatherhood … Comedienne Annabelle Gurwitch makes an effort at etiquette …. Rebecca Mead revisits “Middlemarch” … Humble doughnuts get a sophisticated make-over … “The Act of Killing” is a difficult, fascinating, and important film to watch … Angel Olsen takes flight … Clown college admissions decline … […]

Ofsted chair Sally Morgan and Tim Montgomerie debate Ed Miliband's speech about parent power with Anne McElvoy. Bidisha and Rebecca Mead discuss literary heroines as role models.German artist Georg Baselitz discusses his artistic career as his work goes on show in two London Galleries. And literary depictions of flooding. What books you might want to avoid reading if you are faced with rising water levels.

Rebecca Mead first read George Eliot's Middlemarch as a teenager in England, and she's returned to the novel about every five years or since -- and what she discovers in her reading is much different now than it was then. My Life in Middlemarch discusses how her attitudes towards the story's characters have changed, as well as offering an appreciation of Eliot's role in literature from a deeply personal perspective.