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To celebrate the first anniversary of the Watchung Booksellers Podcast, we share a live recording of a book club discussion of Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt, led by authors Alice Elliott Dark and Dagmara Domińczyk. Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In The Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and is a professor at Rutgers-Newark in the English department and the MFA program.Dagmara Dominczyk is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama, and has starred in films, television, and on/off Broadway plays for the past twenty years. Dag was a series regular on the HBO hits Succession and We Own This City. She is the author of The Lullaby of Polish Girls and her essays have appeared in Huffington Post and in the book Pretty Bitches. She is currently finishing her second novel and working on a memoir. She is an avid reader and fierce library supporter, and lives in Montclair with her husband and two teenage sons.Books:A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available here. Register for Upcoming Events.The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, NJ. The show is edited by Kathryn Counsell. Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica. Art & design and social media by Evelyn Moulton. Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff. Thanks to all the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids' Room! If you liked our episode please like, follow, and share! Stay in touch!Email: wbpodcast@watchungbooksellers.comSocial: @watchungbooksellersSign up for our newsletter to get the latest on our shows, events, and book recommendations!
“We need to understand that pleasure is not a luxury—it's a necessity for sending good signals back to the brain.”When Dr. Nan Wise had a panic attack at just 21 years old, it sparked her lifelong fascination with the brain. Today, as a seasoned behavioral neuroscientist and sex therapist, Dr. Nan is at the forefront of research exploring the deep connection between sex, pleasure, and brain health, particularly as we age. Her studies have uncovered the vital role that orgasms play in boosting oxygen flow to the brain, underscoring the critical role pleasure plays in our overall well-being.Join Erin and Dr. Nan for an eye-opening conversation about the transformative power of pleasure and how it can help us cultivate healthier, more fulfilling relationships with ourselves and others as we grow older.Pleasure isn't a luxury—it's essential for a healthy brain and maintaining well-being.Why many women experience better sex as they ageUnpacking elements of modern life that diminish our ability to experience genuine pleasure.The importance of engaging in pleasurable activities for managing anxiety, depression, and stress.Why active sexual desire isn't necessary for a healthy sex lifeTips to maintaining and ‘rebooting' long-term relationships Cultivating an attuned relationship with your body and the things that bring you pleasureOUR GUEST: Dr. Nan Wise is a licensed psychotherapist, cognitive neuroscientist, certified sex therapist, and clinical hypnotherapist with 30 years of experience. Motivated by a deep curiosity about the brain's role in shaping moods and behaviors, she earned a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from Rutgers-Newark in 2014. Her research, particularly her fMRI study on female orgasm, has filled critical gaps in understanding the neural basis of human sexuality, attracting international recognition. Dr. Nan's journey is rooted in both personal and professional experiences, having faced anxiety from a young age and turning her challenges into a lifelong pursuit of emotional well-being.Want more Dr. Nan? Find her online and get a free consultation at https://askdoctornan.com and read her book Why Good Sex Matters. Follow her on: Instagram: @askdoctornan X/Twitter: @askdoctornanFacebook: @AskDoctorNan Want more Hotter Than Ever? Subscribe to the Hotter Than Ever Substack to dive deeper. Find episode transcripts at www.hotterthaneverpod.com Follow us on:Instagram: @hotterthaneverpod TikTok: @hotterthaneverpod Youtube: @hotterthaneverpod Facebook:
In this episode of the Watchung Booksellers Podcast, authors Joyce Maynard and Alice Elliott Dark rejoice in the launch of Maynard's latest novel How the Light Gets In, recorded in-store at Watchung Booksellers.Joyce Maynard has been publishing bestselling, literary books that shine a light on forbidden subjects for more than fifty years. She is the author of twelve previous novels and five books of nonfiction, as well as the syndicated column Domestic Affairs. Her bestselling memoir, At Home in the World, has been translated into sixteen languages. Her novels To Die For and Labor Day were both adapted for film. Deemed “a master storyteller at the top of her game” by Wally Lamb, she divides her time between homes in California, New Hampshire, and Guatemala.Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, as well as two collections of short stories, In the Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Times, Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry: Prize Stories, among others. Her award-winning story “In the Gloaming” was made into two films and was chosen for inclusion in Best American Stories of the Century. Dark is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is a professor at Rutgers-Newark in the English department and the MFA program.Resources:New York Times Book Review PodcastAnthem by Leonard Cohen Kintsugi John PrineSinead O'ConnorBooks:A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available here. Register for Upcoming Events.The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Silver Stream Studio in Montclair, NJ. The show is edited by Kathryn Counsell and Bree Testa. Special thanks to Timmy Kellenyi and Derek Mattheiss. Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica. Art & design and social media by Evelyn Moulton. Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff. Thanks to all the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids' Room! If you liked our episode please like, follow, and share! Stay in touch!Email: wbpodcast@watchungbooksellers.comSocial: @watchungbooksellersSign up for our newsletter to get the latest on our shows, events, and book recommendations!
Notes and Links to Antonio Lopez's Work For Episode 241, Pete welcomes Antonio Lopez, and the two discuss, among other topics, his bilingual and multicultural childhood in East Palo Alto, E-40 Fonzarelli, his experiences with bilingualism, formative and transformative reading, the greatness and timelessness of James Baldwin, seeds for Gentefication in the rhythms and cultures and camaraderie of home, his life as a politician and working together with the community towards a stellar achievement, and salient themes in his collection like faith, gentrification and attendant outcomes, grief, trauma, joy, the power of art, and youthful rage and passion. Antonio López is a poetician working at the intersection of poetry, politics and social change. He has received literary scholarships to attend the Community of Writers, Tin House, the Vermont Studio Center, and Bread Loaf. He is a proud member of the Macondo Writers Workshop and a CantoMundo Fellow. He holds degrees from Duke University, Rutgers-Newark, and the University of Oxford. He is pursuing a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. His debut poetry collection, Gentefication, was selected by Gregory Pardlo as the winner of the 2019 Levis Prize in Poetry. He recently won a Pushcart Prize for his poem “Our Lady of the Westside.” As district representative for California State Senator Josh Becker, he served as the liaison for the Latinx, veteran, and Muslim communities of State District 13. Antonio has fought gentrification in his hometown as the newest and youngest council member for the City of East Palo Alto, and he is now the city's mayor. Buy Gentefication Antonio's East Palo Alto Mayoral Page KQED Interview At about 3:00, The two discuss the diversity of the Bay Area At about 4:20, Antonio speaks about “education as a pillar of [his] life” and his relationship with languages and the written word and nurturing schools in East Palo Alto At about 7:15, The two sing the praises of PBS as an educational force, and Antonio recounts an amazing 3rd grade story involving the great Levar Burton At about 11:50, Antonio details some of his favorite texts from childhood, including The Hatchet! At about 13:20, Antonio responds to Pete's questions about ideas of representation in what he read and how he was educated, and Antonio expounded upon the interesting ways in which he grew up in an under resourced school and in the Silicon Valley At about 17:30, The two discuss the huge gap in wealth between Peninsula cities At about 20:00, Pete quotes from the book's Acknowledgements in asking Antonio about his “origin story”; Antonio talks about the personal gaze and gaze from outside East Palo Alto At about 22:25, Antonio reminiscences on the visual and aural feasts, including the music, of his community and the ways in which English was “malleable” and formational for him At about 26:20, The two discuss the ways in which East Palo Alto achieved a huge change, culminating in zero homicides in 2023 At about 30:30, Antonio reflects on the idea that “all art is political” At about 32:25, Pete highlights impressive and creative verbs and language Antonio uses At about 34:50, Pete asks about the pronunciation of the poetry collection and Antonio details the significance of the title At about 37:10, Pete quotes from the book's Prologue from Pardlo and asks Antonio about an early reference in the collection to James Baldwin; Antonio expounds upon the “mill” At about 41:25, The two discuss a memorable line about school reading that didn't feel familiar for Antonio and other resonant lines about education At about 44:15, Antonio responds to Pete's question about “the borderlands” referred to in the collection At about 47:45, Antonio gives background on a powerful poem, “Las Chacharas” and its sequel, as well as ideas of relativism as seen in the writing At about 50:40, Antonio talks about a “narrative wrapped around [him]” and his pride and ambivalence At about 54:15, The two explore ideas of gentrification and losses and beautiful gains that come with immigration, as featured in the collection, including a true story involving Antonio's paternal grandparents At about 57:20, Pete compliments the poem from the collection that is a sort of tribute to his mom, and Pete wonders about the usage of “Usted” and “Tú” At about 1:00:25, The two discuss coming-of-age themes in the collection, and Antonio expands upon ideas presented in a four-part poem At about 1:02:15, E-40 (!) and youthful and chaotic energy are the topics of discussion-Antonio reflects on the word “hyphy” At about 1:04:25, The two discuss religion and Catholicism/Christianity's links to colonialism and Antonio's beginnings with Muslim communities At about 1:08:40, Antonio talks about the importance of hadiths and a memorable poem from the collection-a letter written to a hate crime, the murder of Nabra Hassanen At about 1:12:45, DBQ's are highlighted and unique grading rubrics, as rendered in Antonio's work You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch this and other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode. I am very excited about having one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review-I'm looking forward to the partnership! Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com. Please tune in for Episode 242 with Santiago José Sánchez, a professor of English and a queer Colombian American writer whose writing has appeared in McSweeney's, ZYZZYVA, Subtropics, and Joyland and been distinguished in Best American Short Stories. They are the recipient of a Truman Capote Fellowship from the University of Iowa and an Emerging LGBTQ Voices Fellowship from Lambda Literary. The episode will go live on July 10 or so. Lastly, please go to ceasefiretoday.com, which features 10+ actions to help bring about Ceasefire in Gaza.
The image of the skyscraper is the hallmark of the modern city. Futuristic depictions of urban landscapes nearly always feature towering structures high above the clouds. Today, however, developing countries seem to be putting the greatest effort into building the most impressive skyscrapers, from the Burj Khalifa in the UAE, to the future Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia. Whether you love them or hate them, it's worth asking why we build skyscrapers and what their role will be in future cities. Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I sit down with Jason Barr, author of Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers.Barr is a professor of economics at Rutgers University – Newark, and is a member of the Rutgers Global Urban Systems PhD program. He is also the author of Building the Skyline: The Birth and Growth of Manhattan's Skyscrapers.In This Episode* Demand for the skyscraper (1:35)* The end of the skyscraper (9:00)* Pillars of commerce (14:05)* The sky's the limit (18:36)* Manhattan extension (23:04)* Trends and styles (24:23)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversationThe image of the skyscraper is the hallmark of the modern city. Futuristic depictions of urban landscapes nearly always feature towering structures high above the clouds. Today, however, developing countries seem to be putting the greatest effort into building the most impressive skyscrapers, from the Burj Khalifa in the UAE, to the future Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia. Whether you love them or hate them, it's worth asking why we build skyscrapers and what their role will be in future cities. Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I sit down with Jason Barr, author of Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers.Barr is a professor of economics at Rutgers University – Newark, and is a member of the Rutgers Global Urban Systems PhD program. He is also the author of Building the Skyline: The Birth and Growth of Manhattan's Skyscrapers.Demand for the skyscraper (1:35)Pethokoukis: You obviously love skyscrapers, you're fascinated by them. You wrote a whole book on them. So I want to just start the very basic question: Why do skyscrapers fascinate you, and the people who aren't fascinated by them, what are they missing?Barr: Great questions. Well, I grew up on Long Island, and so I was always really fascinated with Manhattan. I grew up in the '70s, and so New York back then was a very dark, mysterious place for a youngster. So when I grew up, actually when I was in college, I started hanging out in the city. So to me, the skyline of Manhattan and New York City, they're just two sides of the same coin. I really developed an interest in tall buildings through my interest and fascination with Manhattan's and New York City's history.So when I came to Rutgers Newark, I just started doing research on tall buildings, especially in New York City: what was driving the heights of these buildings; there's all these interesting height cycles over the last 150 years. So I wrote my first book on the Manhattan skyline, that was called Building the Skyline, and then after that I thought, let's see what's happening around the rest of the world. So to me, the tall building is an interesting thing because it's part and parcel with urbanization, and I just personally don't think you could have one without the other.I think some people might think that skyscrapers are, at least for rich countries, that they're kind of a 20th-century thing that we did as we were growing, and cities were getting bigger, and skyscrapers are a part of that, but now they're for other parts of the world, parts of the world which are still urbanizing, which are still getting richer. Are skyscrapers are still a thing for America?The short answer is yes, but, given how dense cities are, tall buildings are just being added a lot more slowly. In New York, the population's kind of slowly growing, and so tall buildings are either replacing old buildings that are wearing out, or there's always this push by big global corporations to be in the newest and latest tall building. And obviously there's this international demand from people abroad to have an apartment — or national demand — global demand to have some kind of residential presence in New York. But the thing is, people in other countries: cities, planners, residents in other countries, they look to New York, they look to Chicago, and I think, for many of them, they see New York as something they want to emulate, and New York is, on just about almost any metric, it's probably the top global city. And so I think cities today, especially in China, and Asia more broadly, they're trying to kind of replicate that, what you might call “the Manhattan magic,” and I don't really think people in this country realize how much tall building construction is going on in other cities around the world. People in this country are a little bit more cynical about the role of the tall building in urban growth and in housing affordability and stuff like this, but other cities are basically going gangbusters, is a way to put it.Is that driven by fundamental economic forces? Is it kind of a “national greatness” kinds of signaling projects? Are there fundamental reasons, not just to build skyscrapers, but to build very, very tall skyscrapers?“All of the above” is the answer. Fundamentally, if there's many, many people who want to be working, living, playing in the center, the only way to accommodate the demand to be in the center is to make more land in the center, so the skyscraper, at its heart, is what I would say is “land in the sky.” You just go vertical because there's constraints on how much land there is in the center.Having said that, definitely the skyscraper is seen as a kind of way to advertise, a way to increase confidence in the place, and so you boost foreign direct investment. Observatories are huge money makers, there's a big tourism component. A lot of critics will say, “Oh, it's all about spectacle and ego.” But really, for the book, and just more broadly my research, when you drill down on the economics of these super tall buildings, not all of them are profitable or profit-maximizing, but they all have a strong economic rationale.Now, I just also want to say, China has its own thing going on, which sort of compounds the skyscraper construction-building there because of their unique governance structure and land ownership structure, but China is building tall buildings because, at the end of the day, there's a kind of, what I call, a “tall building bling.” There's just something that says, “This city is growing, this city is drawing population.” So we build a tall building and we boost confidence in the city. And it works, really.The pictures don't have to be too old, if you look at a picture of Shanghai, it looks a lot different not too long ago. It's almost as if a whole other city just kind of fell from the sky, a city of skyscrapers, and where there were once goats or something grazing, there's now a bunch of massive skyscrapers.Yeah, absolutely, and there's a few reasons for this. One is, I think Chinese residents more broadly see tall building as a natural way to live. I've talked to many Chinese residents, whether it's Shanghai or other cities, and to them, to own an apartment in the sky is like the greatest thing. It's their equivalent of the single family home in the United States. Living in the clouds is something many people aspire to. The other aspect of it is, Shanghai, and the Pudong neighborhood in Shanghai, was chosen basically to become a financial hub. Basically, the leaders were looking at Hong Kong and they thought it was a, to quote, I forgot the author, but to quote him in the book, the Shanghai officials and the National Party officials saw Hong Kong as that frustratingly free city, and so they wanted to create a kind of a financial hub in Shanghai. And so the Shanghai Tower, for example, is part of that plan to really draw people's attention to Shanghai, itself. So it was part of a master plan.The end of the skyscraper (9:00)I certainly remember that, after 9/11, I heard about “the end of the skyscraper,” and then during the pandemic, I heard about “the end of the city.” Now I'm guessing that cities will continue to exist and we're going to continue to build tall buildings.Absolutely. What 9/11 did was just make sure that we make our building safer with fire protection measures. In many Asian countries, every 20 floors, let's say, are mechanical floors, so you have the electric equipment, and the heating, and the cooling, and water tanks. They can also surround these in concrete, and so if something's on fire, if a floor is on fire, they can go to this hermetically sealed floor, a refuge floor, and stay there and be protected. And the elevator cores, they're made of concrete, and so you wouldn't have something like what happened on 9/11. So it didn't really impact the demand; 9/11 didn't impact the demand for the tall building, it just made us make tall buildings safer. And of course the downside is if you want to go into an office building, you have to have a swipe and you have to have an entry, so the negative of 9/11 was more about heightened security and increasing protections in a way that engenders a little bit more mistrust of us. But the demand didn't go away.Same thing with Covid. For big cities like New York and San Francisco, I'm sure the empty-office problem is going to dissipate. It'll take a while. This may be an overly broad statement, but the truth is, our present and future is in cities. The funny thing about the internet and social media and all that, it was supposed to allow us to suburbanize more, or run away from these big, overcrowded cities, but the truth is, social media and internet technology has just made cities even more important. So, as long as cities are growing, there'll be a demand for tall buildingsOf the tallest, I don't know, half-dozen buildings, have you been to all of them?That's a good question. I've been to the Shanghai Tower, which was the second-tallest building in the world, now is the third-tallest. The one that replaced it, I think it's [Merdeka 118] in Kuala Lumpur, I believe. I didn't go to that one yet because that just opened up recently. I've been to the Burj Khalifa, which is the world's tallest building. I'd have to look at the list. I've been to the Sears Tower, Empire State Building . . . Anyway, so I've been to a handful of them. I can't say I've been to every single one of the super-tall buildings in the worldAnd in any of those super-tall buildings, can you open a window? Why can't you open the windows in these skyscrapers?Well, the wind forces are just tremendous! The biggest problem engineering tall buildings is making sure that the building doesn't sway so that people feel it. The really fascinating thing about engineering tall buildings is this question: How do you allow the building to sway enough so that you don't have to — you don't want to over-engineer a building so that you make it perfectly stiff because that's just completely uneconomic to do that, but you want to make sure the building sways just enough so if you're sitting there reading a newspaper or drinking a cup of coffee on the top floor, you don't feel it. And so the wind forces high, a thousand feet in the air, are just so tremendous. I think if you open the window, everything would just would just blow away.I was thinking about some of those very, super-skinny residential buildings, which I guess seem to be becoming more popular, and do those people really feel the motion?From what I can tell, the short answer is no. There's one lawsuit in Manhattan, in particular, where the engineering wasn't exactly perfectly right, but I think that represents the exception that proves the rule. The building is safe, that's not the problem, it's just that, when you're dealing with these super-skinny buildings — these are kind of a new kind of breed of super-tall buildings, so sometimes the engineering isn't perfectly right, so they will figure out ways to kind of fix those problems. The problems are solvable, but sometimes if you don't get it 100 percent right, people complain, and obviously there's lawsuits and you have to go back in and tweak the engineering. But these things are selling for 70, 80, 100 million dollars for a penthouse on the 90th floor, so people still value them, and if motion sickness was a problem, they'd be worthless.Pillars of commerce (14:05)In the book, you run through a number of myths: tall buildings being only for the rich, that they drive up housing prices in cities, again, that you mentioned a little bit earlier, that they're somehow bad economic deals. All these myths all tend to be very negative.I'm not going to rename your book, but I could call it “Cathedrals in the Sky,” I mean, I think these are beautiful buildings that say a lot about human aspiration and to create a sense of awe. Boy, but some people just do not see it that way.I think there's a few strands; I've been thinking about this. There's a kind of a NIMBY strand, and sort of a NIMBY/gentrification strand. So people in the middle income, let's say, they see their housing prices going up, their rent going up, and then they see these billionaire condos, and so they, in my opinion, or based on my research, there's a confusion of correlation and causation. So the most visible manifestation in people's minds of gentrification and affordability problems are the super-slim buildings, but New York City has something like 3.6 million housing units, and if you look at the outlying areas of Queens and Staten Island, they're just covered in one- and two-family homes. Those neighborhoods have added barely any housing. So all of the housing — I'm exaggerating here when I say the word “all,” but the vast majority of new housing units happens in the center where either the zoning is more permissive, or old industrial sites come online and things like this, so people don't realize that the problem of housing affordability is citywide, it just looks naturally to be in their neighborhood where high rises are going up.Then there's another strand, which I would say is kind of the “Jane Jacobs strand” / the anti-public-housing strand. Jane Jacobs has some great points in her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities about walkability, about eyes on the street. She wasn't a big fan of tall buildings, and this has kind of given rise to this whole movement of “human scale,” where five-story Greenwich Village buildings, or 10-story Parisian mansard-roof-type buildings are perfect, and any other deviation from that is somehow destroying the city. So there's that part of it, that people see tall buildings as somehow destroying the feel or the perfect fabric of the city. And lastly, obviously, some of the failures with the public housing policy has made people convinced that it's unhealthy to live in these tall buildings. I think that gets at what you're inquiring about. I think there's those different strains.I wonder if part of it stems for a confusion about what are cities for, and I mean cities are, for a large part, are where people to come together for jobs and to conduct commerce. And if you think of them that way, then certain things make sense; but if you think of them as, I don't know, some sort of urban retreat, where it's kind of like a garden or . . . I don't know, but it's a very different view, and perhaps it is not just about bike paths, but it's about what facilitates people to connect.Without jobs, without a labor market, there's no purpose to have a city. Maybe in the 18th or 19th century, you can create a city for the king or the empire, as are many examples, or the Vatican or something like this; so you can have these sort of political capital cities, or even Washington DC, but, fundamentally, 99 percent of the world's cities are places where people go to work, and so, if you don't allow the labor market to function properly, which means having a functioning housing market, then all these ideas about “the good city” and “the perfectly crafted city,” they kind of are irrelevant.So you have to start with: what makes a city grow, what makes people productive, and then how do we accommodate that? To the extent that we can improve design, all the better. There's always a million ways to make things better for people design-wise. I think bike lanes are great, and I think pedestrian-friendly cities are better than car-centric cities, but you can't start with designing the city first and then seeing what happens. You have to start with “let's make an attractive place to live and work” first, and then work on the design feature second.The sky's the limit (18:36)How tall are these buildings going to get?Okay, well, the next world's tallest building is going to be one kilometer: The Jeddah Tower, which had started, I think back in 2013 or 2015, had been stalled, there was some sort of political turmoil in Saudi Arabia, and they've just restarted this Jeddah Tower in the city of Jeddah. And so when that's completed, that's going to be one kilometer. There were some plans floated to have a two-kilometer building in Riyadh. I don't think anyone really thinks that's going to happen.How long does it take to get up to your office in a two-kilometer building?Well, that's the thing. They're coming up with new ways to get people up there faster. The old conventional steel cables could maybe go 500 meters or something like that, which is maybe 80 floors or something. Maybe if you had a really good cable, you can get people to 80 floors and then they'd have to switch. Now they have these composite . . . it's KONE UltraRope, which could go 1000 meters, which could go basically one kilometer continuously. So if you can get people from the ground floor to wherever their destination is within a minute, that's kind of like the golden rule here. People are not willing to wait more than a minute once they get in the elevator. The trick really is the ear pressure, and that's probably the hardest part because you're going up so quickly, the air pressure changes, so you have to figure out ways to make sure the cabin remains pressurized, and then there's the air pressure up on the highest floors. So that, I would argue, is the fundamental issue that's going to be coming next on the horizon is how to efficiently pressurize the highest floors. Let's say you're a mile high; if you're a mile high on the top floor, that's the equivalent of going from New York to Denver in a minute, or two minutes. So you have to figure out a way how to pressurize the entire building so it has a constant air pressure.If I were to look at the skyline of major American cities 50 years from now, would you expect them to be radically different, futuristic looking, maybe not two-kilometer buildings, but a lot of very, very tall buildings? Or is it again, if they're not growing, if population isn't growing, then that won't happen?People are always asking me what I think about the doom loops and all that. Pick New York as one end of the spectrum: It's always going to be adding new buildings, that's just in its DNA, and so you're going to have this kind of collage of different building styles. But other cities, smaller cities, maybe where people are moving now because working from home, they'll add a few tall buildings here, they'll have mini-skylines. Then the other cities, like a St. Louis, that's just going to have to kind of figure out a plan for growth. So I don't see the world as a kind of Jetsons-type world.I mean, you never know what's going to happen with the technology. There's one company, TK or Thyssenkrupp elevators, they're working on Maglev elevators, and this can actually be a game changer because you have these shafts, so the Maglev elevator cars, they can go up or down or they can go horizontal. Part of the goal with that is that everybody has their own — if it's an apartment building, they have their own elevator car, it takes them up to their apartment, it becomes the door. So that could be a real game changer . . . And then you could run these things horizontally. So if you have these Maglev elevators, you can not only run them horizontally within the building, but, in principle, if you could work out property rights or whatever, you could connect these things across buildings. But at the end of the day, it's really about preferences and a kind of cultural perception of the tall building, and I just don't see us in the United States us having a dramatic, country-wide rethinking of where we live. There's always going to be this desire for the single-family home in the suburbs. Now maybe that'll diminish to some degree, but as long as people see their own little house as their own little castle . . .Unlike China, where there seems to be a great desire to live in these kinds of buildings.Manhattan extension (23:04)Have you had any takers about your proposal to make Manhattan bigger?No.You would extend it by about 2000 acres and maybe build some tall buildings on that, I don't know.The idea would be to create a new mini-Manhattan extending Manhattan into New York Harbor. Just briefly, the idea was both to add more housing and add more land, and to protect lower Manhattan against sea level rises and so forth. I proposed this in a New York Times op-ed piece, and, naturally, I would say the majority of commenters and people had this sort of kneejerk reaction against it.I had a kneejerk reaction for it! I loved it!You are part of a small, select core of appreciators, let's say. Having said that, in the 21st century it's just not something I think most people are willing to wrap their heads around. SoTo me, that's an idea with the future, and I think you should not be dejected that it was not initially well-received. I think that kind of idea might actually have some legs.Trends and styles (24:23)Finally, let me ask you, whether it's because of computers or new materials, would we expect skyscrapers in the future to look any differently? I think some people would love to go back to the 1930s style. They love that style of skyscraper, and they don't like the glass-and-steel, very rectangular skyscraper; they want it to look like Gotham City or something.Actually, if you look in Manhattan, in Brooklyn there's one, I think they're calling it something like the “Dark Knight Tower” or the “Gotham Tower.” It's in Brooklyn and it has this almost art deco sort of —It slipped my mind, I was thinking art deco, yes.And there's a high rise apartment near Columbia University, which uses the same color masonry as the surrounding buildings. I think it's the Union Theological Seminary, which sold some of the land to build a high rise. It sort of blends in. So I guess the question is really architecturally speaking, and it's sort of hard to say. I think maybe there'll be some neo-historical buildings coming up here or there, but there's two things: One is that people like glass windows. People love to have light and views, and so that's really just pushing the glass buildings. I think developers like glass too, because it's easy to work with, and architects — if you're a developer and you want a super-tall building, you usually go to a handful of architects and you have some kind of design competition, and, chances are, you're going to get something that looks full of glass and has some funky geometry to it.But they seem more twisty than they used to, so they're not just perfect rectangles.Right, so you're creating a lot of illusion. The interesting thing is, at the end of the day, you can only have certain internal shapes because you need functional spaces, so you have to have illusion with the twisting and these sort of Jenga towers, and a lot of that is due to massive improvements in computer technology; so the rendering software has dramatically improved, the engineering know-how, the engineering technology improved, you can send your designs right to the manufacturer where they can then use the computer programs to design exactly the shapes and sizes.So it's the learning curve of every building that you do adds to the knowledge of how to do something a little bit different, or some version of something before, and also just massive computer power. I think there'll be a lot more of these sort of funky architectural shape. How they hold up, only time tells. In the '80s there was this massive postmodern boom with all kinds of pastiche-type buildings with all kinds of references to old buildings, and funky buildings, and some of those haven't held up as well.Frankly, I'm from Chicago, and I know exactly what you're talking about. Also being from Chicago, I appreciate you calling that building the Sears Tower rather than what other name they try to put on it. Last question: Do you have a favorite skyscraper?I'm from New York and I like the Empire State Building, and it's not just because architecturally a classic building, but it speaks to New York as a city of strivers. And the more research I did into the Empire State Building, the more I appreciate the sheer guts of these guys who built this building. And the thing is, when it was completed in 1931, Great Depression was really starting to kick into high gear, and so the building was unrented, and it kind of gave this whole mythology about how these guys didn't know what they were doing, but when you crunch the numbers, they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew what the landscape looked like for New York, and the costs, and the revenues. Nobody saw the Great Depression coming, and so to say that the Great Depression showed how foolish these were, I just think it's a bad standard to hold them to. And if you look at the revenues and them building value over its 90-whatever, 93-year history, it's been a money-maker for almost a century. After the Great Depression, it recovered and has become an icon and a moneymaker, so what's not to love about that?Faster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe
Ben Burgis is freshly back from New Jersey where among other things he did a Palestine teach-in at the Princeton encampment. He also recently sat down for a friendly debate with goodhearted but right-leaning philosophy podcaster Spencer Case. We watch most of that and then bring on Rutgers professor and New Jersey Uncommitted organizer Elektra Kostopoulou to talk about her Palestine activism and (a little bit) about her related academic work. Eleketra also sticks around for the postgame for GTAA patrons.Watch the full interview on Spencer's podcast:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ57COJSIIUCheck out the Uncommitted campaign in NJ:https://uncommittednj.org/Here's some coverage of the Rutgers-Newark encampment:https://www.pbs.org/video/rutgers-protest-1714597214/Follow Ben on Twitter: @BenBurgisFollow GTAA on Twitter: @Gtaa_ShowBecome a GTAA Patron and receive numerous benefits ranging from patron-exclusive postgames every Monday night to our undying love and gratitude for helping us keep this thing going:patreon.com/benburgisRead the weekly philosophy Substack:benburgis.substack.com
Tonight, on NJ Spotlight News…A counter-protester at a Pro-Palestinian encampment is arrested at Rutgers-Newark. Former Congressman Tom Malinowski weighs in on the impact these nationwide protests are having; Plus, BOOK BANS, a school librarian is facing renewed attacks as parental rights advocates fight to remove a book that explores sexuality; Also, LABOR FIGHT…Union nurses hit the picket line to criticize what they are calling unfair contract negotiations; And, SAVING MAM, Princeton high school students look to preserve an indigenous Mayan language by inventing an AI-powered robot.
In this episode of the Watchung Booksellers Podcast, long-time friends Dionne Ford and Alice Elliott Dark join us for a soulful conversation about living a writer's life. Diving into writing practices, self-care, writers' residencies, teaching, and more, these two share a wealth of knowledge that will captivate writers and readers alike. Guest bios:Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In The Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Associate Professor at Rutgers-Newark in the English department and the MFA program. Dionne Ford is author of the memoir Go Back and Get It and co-editor of the anthology Slavery's Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and a BA from Fordham University where she teaches creative writing. Books:A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available on our website.Podcasts:The Slowdown Residences/ Grants Mentioned: VCCAMacDowellNAERegister for Upcoming Events.The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup. Recording and editing by Timmy Kellenyi, Bree Testa, and Derek Mattheiss at Silver Stream Studio in Montclair, NJ. Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica. Art & design and social media by Evelyn Moulton. Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff. Thank you to the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids' Room for their hard work and love of books! If you liked our episode please like, follow, and share! Stay in touch!Email: wbpodcast@watchungbooksellers.comSocial: @watchungbooksellersSign up for our newsletter to get the latest on our shows, events, and book recommendations!
Jenn Russoniello is a family lawyer who started as a social worker disappointed in the system. Jenn highlights the emotional and practical challenges of divorce litigation, which often intertwine personal and legal complexities. She emphasizes the significance of client-centered representation, especially as it relates to the nuances of settlement negotiations, the decision to go to trial, and navigating the complexities of post-judgment issues. Throughout the conversation, Jenn emphasizes the role of empathy, practicality, and adaptability in providing effective legal assistance to families navigating challenging circumstances. Jenn Russoniello is a 2010 graduate of the University of Rutgers - Newark.This episode is hosted by Katya Valasek.Mentioned in this episode:Access LawHub today!Idaho LawLearn more about Idaho LawLearn more about Vermont LawLearn more about Rutgers LawIdaho LawLearn more about Idaho LawLearn more about William & Mary Law SchoolLearn more about Rutgers Law
On the February 10 WBGO Journal, a preview of the 44th MTW and Kate Hamill's The Scarlet Letter
Welcome to Episode 123 of the No Regulars Podcast hosted by Darris Watkins and Tyrone Bowens. In this episode we talk about some of the craziest unsolved mysterious of the NBA, the haunted dorm room at Rutgers Newark, and the states with the least amount of black people. Follow Our Socials Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noregulars.podcast/ TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@noregulars Discord: https://discord.gg/8ZNv2sUKBg Patreon: patreon.com/NoRegularsPodcast SoundCloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/qyg5hizQPdpehBvX6 Darris Watkins Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/__dlw.21/ Tyrone Bowens Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tyrone.jb/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@Op_Vision --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/no-regulars/support
As the United Nations has reiterated multiple times, Israel is in violation of international law through its settlements. The Israeli government's disproportionate response to Hamas's October 7th attack has resulted in the United Nations declaring that “there is an ongoing campaign by Israel resulting in crimes against humanity in Gaza.” They describe the situation in Gaza as an “occupation [that] needs to end” in which “there must be reparation, restitution and reconstruction, towards full justice for Palestinians” and a “call for prevention of genocide.” Amnesty International has declared that the Israeli government is guilty of “war crimes” due to their mass extermination of civilians in Gaza, and the leveling of entire apartment complexes in their unfolding ethnic cleansing campaign of the Palestinian people. This is in addition to their 280 page report from 2021 concluding that the Israeli government is guilty of apartheid and has violated international law. In light of all of this, the question arises: what can we do? Nihal sat down with Mohamad Habehh at American Muslims for Palestine to speak about how people througout the world can stand up for the people of Palestine. Mohamad Habehh serves as the Director of Community Outreach of American Muslims for Palestine NJ Chapter. He is a graduate from Rutgers-Newark where he studied social work and political science and served as the President of the Students for Justice in Palestine student organization on campus. He also serves as an advisor to the city of Hackensack on the access for all board and is an active community member in the Islamic Center of Passaic County where he serves as a volunteer coordinator and educator. Mohamad is currently working on achieving his Master's degree from Al-Manara institute in Islamic studies. -- Faith in Fine Print is hosted by Nihal Khan and is the official podcast of Maktab Academy. www.maktabacademy.net
A novel about womanhood, modern family, and the interior landscape of maternal life, as seen through the life of a young wife and mother on a single day. At night, Maisie Moore dreams that her life is perfect: the looming mortgages and credit card debt have magically vanished, and she can raise her four children, including newborn Esme, on an undulating current of maternal bliss, by turns oceanic and overwhelming, but awash in awe and wonder. Then she jolts awake and, after checking that her husband and baby are asleep beside her, remembers the real-world money problems to be resolved amid the long days of grocery shopping, gymnastics practices, and soccer games. From this moment, Eliza Minot draws readers into the psyche of the perceptive and warmhearted Maisie, who yearns to understand the world around her and overflows with fierce love for her growing family. Unfolding over the course of a single day in which Maisie and her husband take their children to pick apples, In the Orchard (Knopf, 2023) is luminous, masterfully crafted, revelatory--a shining exploration of motherhood, childhood, and love. Eliza Minot is the author of the critically acclaimed novels THE TINY ONE, THE BRAMBLES, and IN THE ORCHARD published by Knopf/Vintage. Her books have been named to various lists, including The New York Times Notable, Booksense 76, Nancy Pearl's, and Oprah's Top Ten Summer Picks. She went to Barnard College and received her MFA from Rutgers-Newark, where she was a Presidential Fellow. She has taught at Rutgers-Newark, Barnard College, and NYU. She received the Maplewood Library Literary Award in 2023. She grew up the youngest of seven children in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. She lives in Maplewood, NJ, with her family. Recommended Books: Anne Patchett, Tom Lake (audiobook) Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead (audiobook) Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning DOIREANN NIě GHRIěOFA, Ghost in the Throat Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A novel about womanhood, modern family, and the interior landscape of maternal life, as seen through the life of a young wife and mother on a single day. At night, Maisie Moore dreams that her life is perfect: the looming mortgages and credit card debt have magically vanished, and she can raise her four children, including newborn Esme, on an undulating current of maternal bliss, by turns oceanic and overwhelming, but awash in awe and wonder. Then she jolts awake and, after checking that her husband and baby are asleep beside her, remembers the real-world money problems to be resolved amid the long days of grocery shopping, gymnastics practices, and soccer games. From this moment, Eliza Minot draws readers into the psyche of the perceptive and warmhearted Maisie, who yearns to understand the world around her and overflows with fierce love for her growing family. Unfolding over the course of a single day in which Maisie and her husband take their children to pick apples, In the Orchard (Knopf, 2023) is luminous, masterfully crafted, revelatory--a shining exploration of motherhood, childhood, and love. Eliza Minot is the author of the critically acclaimed novels THE TINY ONE, THE BRAMBLES, and IN THE ORCHARD published by Knopf/Vintage. Her books have been named to various lists, including The New York Times Notable, Booksense 76, Nancy Pearl's, and Oprah's Top Ten Summer Picks. She went to Barnard College and received her MFA from Rutgers-Newark, where she was a Presidential Fellow. She has taught at Rutgers-Newark, Barnard College, and NYU. She received the Maplewood Library Literary Award in 2023. She grew up the youngest of seven children in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. She lives in Maplewood, NJ, with her family. Recommended Books: Anne Patchett, Tom Lake (audiobook) Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead (audiobook) Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning DOIREANN NIě GHRIěOFA, Ghost in the Throat Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
A novel about womanhood, modern family, and the interior landscape of maternal life, as seen through the life of a young wife and mother on a single day. At night, Maisie Moore dreams that her life is perfect: the looming mortgages and credit card debt have magically vanished, and she can raise her four children, including newborn Esme, on an undulating current of maternal bliss, by turns oceanic and overwhelming, but awash in awe and wonder. Then she jolts awake and, after checking that her husband and baby are asleep beside her, remembers the real-world money problems to be resolved amid the long days of grocery shopping, gymnastics practices, and soccer games. From this moment, Eliza Minot draws readers into the psyche of the perceptive and warmhearted Maisie, who yearns to understand the world around her and overflows with fierce love for her growing family. Unfolding over the course of a single day in which Maisie and her husband take their children to pick apples, In the Orchard (Knopf, 2023) is luminous, masterfully crafted, revelatory--a shining exploration of motherhood, childhood, and love. Eliza Minot is the author of the critically acclaimed novels THE TINY ONE, THE BRAMBLES, and IN THE ORCHARD published by Knopf/Vintage. Her books have been named to various lists, including The New York Times Notable, Booksense 76, Nancy Pearl's, and Oprah's Top Ten Summer Picks. She went to Barnard College and received her MFA from Rutgers-Newark, where she was a Presidential Fellow. She has taught at Rutgers-Newark, Barnard College, and NYU. She received the Maplewood Library Literary Award in 2023. She grew up the youngest of seven children in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. She lives in Maplewood, NJ, with her family. Recommended Books: Anne Patchett, Tom Lake (audiobook) Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead (audiobook) Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning DOIREANN NIě GHRIěOFA, Ghost in the Throat Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
A novel about womanhood, modern family, and the interior landscape of maternal life, as seen through the life of a young wife and mother on a single day. At night, Maisie Moore dreams that her life is perfect: the looming mortgages and credit card debt have magically vanished, and she can raise her four children, including newborn Esme, on an undulating current of maternal bliss, by turns oceanic and overwhelming, but awash in awe and wonder. Then she jolts awake and, after checking that her husband and baby are asleep beside her, remembers the real-world money problems to be resolved amid the long days of grocery shopping, gymnastics practices, and soccer games. From this moment, Eliza Minot draws readers into the psyche of the perceptive and warmhearted Maisie, who yearns to understand the world around her and overflows with fierce love for her growing family. Unfolding over the course of a single day in which Maisie and her husband take their children to pick apples, In the Orchard (Knopf, 2023) is luminous, masterfully crafted, revelatory--a shining exploration of motherhood, childhood, and love. Eliza Minot is the author of the critically acclaimed novels THE TINY ONE, THE BRAMBLES, and IN THE ORCHARD published by Knopf/Vintage. Her books have been named to various lists, including The New York Times Notable, Booksense 76, Nancy Pearl's, and Oprah's Top Ten Summer Picks. She went to Barnard College and received her MFA from Rutgers-Newark, where she was a Presidential Fellow. She has taught at Rutgers-Newark, Barnard College, and NYU. She received the Maplewood Library Literary Award in 2023. She grew up the youngest of seven children in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. She lives in Maplewood, NJ, with her family. Recommended Books: Anne Patchett, Tom Lake (audiobook) Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead (audiobook) Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning DOIREANN NIě GHRIěOFA, Ghost in the Throat Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
Fairfield Interim Coach Chris Casey joins host Bryan DeNovellis to talk about the Stags 3-game win streak over Rider, Yale and Sacred Heart. Other topics include, Fairfield's elite backcourt, the status of transfer Alexis Yetna, his 38-year coaching career at stops like St. John's Niagara, Central CT, LIU Post and Rutgers-Newark, and a letter he once received from HOF Coach Dean Smith
Tonight, on NJ Spotlight News …The U-S Department of Education opens an ethnic discrimination investigation at RUTGERS - Newark … meanwhile, the University SUSPENDS their chapter of STUDENTS for JUSTICE in PALESTINE; Plus, a coalition of Jersey progressive groups are calling on candidates in the 2024 U-S Senate race to help END THE PARTY LINE on primary ballots; And, if your child wants their own social media account, they may just need your PARENTAL CONSENT.
Get up and get informed! Here's all the local news you need to start your day: Governor Kathy Hochul reveals New York City ignored multiple state-offered migrant housing sites. Meanwhile, the upcoming replacement of the Rutgers-Newark chancellor has raised concerns for Mayor Ras Baraka. Additionally, amid a national surge in mail theft, Representative Grace Meng from Queens is inundated with reports from constituents about stolen documents and valuables.
Our guest this week is Sarah Trocchio, the founder of the Square Peg Club, LLC. When I asked her about the organization name she explained that all too often in academia and elsewhere people are encouraged and even pushed hard to fit into “round holes” that do not fit them nor their personalities. Square Peg Club LLC is Sarah's career and personal coaching program. She will tell us all about it and how she came to form her company. In addition to coaching, Sarah is an Assistant Professor of Sociology & Criminology at Rider University. She also is a full-time mom and partner. Her husband is a criminal defense lawyer which compliments Sarah's own Ph.D. in criminal Justice which she received from Rutgers-Newark in 2019. I found our conversation quite fascinating, illuminating, and, needless to say, quite stimulating. I hope you find our episode the same. Please let me know your thoughts. About the Guest: Sarah Trocchio, MSW, PhD is the proud founder and owner of the "Square Peg Club, LLC," a career coaching & strategy firm for badass academics of all stripes looking to stir shit up in their careers. With nearly two decades of experience as an intersectional inequity scholar, social worker, and educator, Sarah channels all of that curiosity and a honed advocacy tool kit to serve academics at critical professional junctures to bravely start their Next First Thing (NFT). She obtained her MSW from Boston University in 2011, her PhD in Criminal Justice from Rutgers-Newark in 2019, and became nationally board certified as a coach through the Center for Credentialing Education (CCE) in 2022. In addition to helping academics get real about their core values and how they can best be activated to prompt greater professional freedom & fulfillment, Sarah is an Assistant Professor of Sociology & Criminology at Rider University. Ways to connect with Alan: Link to my LinkedIn page: (4) Alan R. Garcia | LinkedIn Link to my GoFundMe page: https://gofund.me/6f090f1d About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson 01:21 And a pleasant hello to you once again. This is your host Michael Hingson or Mike Hinson. If you prefer, you are listening to unstoppable mindset. We're inclusion diversity in the unexpected meet and you've mostly if you've listened to this a lot heard that before but now you get to hear it again. But that's okay. Today we get to talk with Sara Trocchio who was the founder of the square peg club and we want to learn about that and a lots of other stuff. So we'll do that as we go forward. But Syria welcome, Sarah. Welcome to unstoppable mindset. Sara Trocchio 01:55 Thank you so much for having me, Mike. I'm so thrilled to be here and delighted to have had the invitation. Michael Hingson 02:01 Well, thank you. I'm really appreciate you agreeing to come on, from all the way back there in New Jersey all the way out here to Southern California. And we were just comparing notes before we started every one that I lived in Westfield for six years and had a lot of fun doing that different weather than California, although I think there are a lot of people, at least right now in the winter of California who would disagree with all the snow that Californians have had. Yeah. Have you Sara Trocchio 02:28 believe that? No, I was gonna say what do you believe in New Jersey we have not had where I live more than a tiny baby dusting. That is it once. Michael Hingson 02:38 So I relocated back to California at the beginning of 2002. We had been in the World Trade Center tooth in 2001 and escaped with my guide, dog Roselle. And Guide Dogs for the Blind asked me if I would come back and be a spokesperson for them. And for a variety of reasons. It seemed like a good idea, at least in part to do that. But I remember we were out in Northern California in Novato, which is about 27 miles north of San Francisco, and we were in Novato looking in that general area for a house to live in. And for us it's a little was a little bit more difficult because my wife has always been in a wheelchair. So we either have to find something accessible or find something that we can make accessible. And we got to Novato on a Sunday and Monday morning. We got a phone call from the realtor who sold us our property when we moved to New Jersey. And she said Why are you even thinking about moving back to California when we don't have any snow here and I guess it was a text because there was a picture of Petaluma which was about six or seven miles north of us and snow had fallen during the night and so there you go full circle moment there. We go. Petaluma doesn't get snow. So it was so funny. Of course, by the time we got up to Petaluma because we wanted to go look at it. It was basically all gone. But yeah, now of course, the winter of 23 in California, especially up in the mountains in the Sierras, but also in Southern California has just been wretched from a snow standpoint. Mm hmm. Sara Trocchio 04:20 And has it been really cold to like consistently or have you just had smatterings of bizarre weather? Michael Hingson 04:25 Well, we're I live in Victorville. We're about 20 850 feet above sea level it gets cold in winter so we get down to 2022. Wow. But the mountains within 30 or 35 miles are what really get hit with the snow so we didn't get any snow or just a little bit that lasted a few hours and then it was gone, but not too far away. There was a lot of snow huh? Sara Trocchio 04:49 What do you know what's also funny, Michael is we were talking a few minutes before we started about how I lived in Florida for four years with my partner and my baby when she was first born. And And apparently while we were there, it was the first time in like 36 years that in northern Florida and Tallahassee where we lived, there was snowfall. And I'm still a little angry because I was so exhausted in postpartum land. I think my baby was about five days old, and I've been so grumpy about moving somewhere with no stone. I remember my husband came to wake me from a precious nap to say, Sarah, you have to come outside. This is crazy. There's snow. And I looked at him and I snapped back and I said, I do not care. You shut that door, and you let me. But my baby went out there. And it was so funny, because the next day I had been walking my dog in the local park, and I saw this woman, I'm from Boston, so I'm used to cold weather. But I saw this lady walking her dog in a full on ski suit, like top to bottom, you know, face mask full on it was a pastel blue. She was wearing snow boots. And of course, by this point, the snow had stopped and it was now 45 degrees. Sara Trocchio 06:01 What a world huh? What a world I know. It's pretty funny. Michael Hingson 06:05 Well, tell us a little bit about you kind of growing up starting out. So you're from Boston. And we'd love to hear a little bit more about your childhood and things like that. That got you started down the road of where you are now. Sara Trocchio 06:17 Yeah, totally. So yeah, I grew up about an hour west of Boston, in Central Massachusetts. It's Worcester was also sometimes known as well. That's a good that's a good one. I like that. That's the you are coming. Correct. Michael. Michael Hingson 06:33 I lived in Winthrop mass for three years. So I know how to save. Sara Trocchio 06:37 You sure do. I worked in Winthrop, actually, for some time? Michael Hingson 06:39 Most of Worchester? Sara Trocchio 06:43 Yes, it is not Worchester. It is Worcester, even though that was a bit confusing. So my parents are not, we're not from there. They sort of ended up there randomly by virtue of, of job hunts. But my mom is a refugee. She's originally from Egypt. And they were asylees. In fact. So she grew up in Colorado Springs as a brown Jewish girl that had been recently resettled just randomly to the Mountain West, and specifically to Colorado Springs. And my dad grew up in a pretty rough and tumble neighborhood outside of Pittsburgh, by a single mom. And my parents ended up meeting in graduate school when they were becoming certified to become history teacher in Pittsburgh. So they match and they ended up sort of being on the pathway of of trying to apply for positions in various private schools. And so that took them to the northeast, because there's a lot of private schools out there. And that's what ended up taking us to Worcester, which is where I was born and grew up for quite some time. So this was, you know, the early 90s. My mother, by all accounts was both very career driven, and very, very family oriented. But we grew up without any sort of village, right, I sort of immediately felt the lack of having community of elders and family members in our immediate community, which on one hand, was wonderful for sort of chosen family development, on the other was was definitely challenging for two working parents. And my parents face their own challenges. My mother was Jewish, and Arabic and Jewish, and my father came from a pretty, you know, traditional third generation Italian Roman Catholic background. So there wasn't a lot of great vibes between my parents families. In fact, when they got married in the 70s, there was a good deal of tension that there was a sort of inter ethnic and inter religious rich. So that was certainly something that punctuated some of my childhood just sort of being aware that that difference and connection across difference was not always welcomed with open arms. But my parents did a wonderful job, sort of maintaining a value set that ended up transposing itself on to everything that I ended up doing afterwards, their own marriage, even though they ended up getting divorced after 26 years, was a real sort of model for me about both the challenges and the opportunities in connecting across difference. So that really catalyzed me at first think that I wanted to be a social worker. And I did that for a couple years. That's when I worked in Chelsea and Winthrop Michael, right near where you were. And soon after starting that process, I realized I was not going to be a social worker forever. I felt like I was participating in systems that themselves were problematic and began thinking, well, maybe I'll be a lawyer, or maybe I'll go and be a researcher. And so at that time, I made my way to Boston University and became a research assistant at a really wonderful research center that was housed in a school of social work. And for that, from there kind of caught the research bug and fell in love with things like focus groups and sort of all these skill sets that I've used as a social worker but thinking about how they could be applied to extrapolate really important insights about policy just really excited me But this was also at the height of mass incarceration. So we're talking like 2009. And I became, it was like everywhere I turned all leads, all roads lead back to the carceral system. So I ended up finding my way to Rutgers and getting a PhD in criminal justice. Very soon after going into that program, began feeling a bit isolated, in various ways, feeling like some of the ways that higher education, particularly PhD level education operated was very myopic, and did not have any kind of working knowledge of how to support people and living whole, authentic lives as they were also pursuing graduate work. So that was a tough point. In some ways. I had a lot of friends that were, you know, getting married and starting careers, and I was partnered very heavily, but we were, you know, struggling financially, I was struggling emotionally with a lot of this sort of cut through a culture that's really normative in graduate education, particularly having left a more collaborative environment of social work, and then going to this kind of cutthroat environment, I struggled mightily. And so since getting into the program, and learning, oh, this is a little different than they thought it was gonna be. This is not as collaborative and sort of mutual and supportive as I had hoped, particularly a program that was supposed to be around social justice, right? I just always sort of had my feelers up for for other things. And I always was disappointed that there wasn't more room in academic spaces for talking about the experiences, particularly of marginalized people, whether they were women identifying neurodivergent, experiencing disabilities, non white, etc, there just didn't seem to be a lot of room or space for those kinds of narratives. And so I was always seeking them on my own. I did some work in health tech company and worked with a wonderful company called wealthy that provides virtual concierge services for people that need chronic support, or that have chronic conditions that need support for caregivers. And I loved that work and thought about leaving the academy altogether, but got an opportunity to do a tenure track job. And I thought, why not do it. And then, of course, naturally, because the universe was laughing at me at all times, I had a 15 month old when I started that job. And seven months later, COVID hit me and I was even more smacked in the face with how inhospitable academic institutions were, and how hypocritical they were. Because so many of them talk about being so advanced and so progressive in terms of incorporating diverse value points and visions for like, what what the worlds can be and inviting of different perspectives, when in fact, I found there to be a real inhospitable nature. In the Academy for someone like me, that was a young mom, that was a second generation immigrant that was managing excessively difficult caregiving constraints during lockdown. And so I started getting kind of loud about it. And writing in our newspaper, and starting a book project that was about the experiences of academic motherhood. And through that started having this first mindset shift, which was, oh, I can just talk to people and be engaged in relationship building, professionally and otherwise, that feels good. And like is about connecting with people whose humanity I recognize and understand and appreciate. And so from there, I became a certified coach and have been doing my coaching practice now, working largely with folks that have experienced some degrees of marginalization in higher ed and are looking for some switch up in their careers to feel better and to feel more self actualized. Michael Hingson 13:48 Well, so you did a lot of work early on, and the whole MSW world. And it was very much a collaborative effort, in a lot of ways, and you are in a social scientist in it by any standard in terms of what you did. And now you're you're switching from dealing with all the external stuff that a social scientist deals with, to have more of an internal mindset, or not worrying so much about the collaborative world. And I'm wondering, how, what made you decide to do that? Well, I guess I understand a little bit about what made you decide to do it, but how did you do it? And how do you how do you find all that today? Huh? Sara Trocchio 14:36 Yeah, I mean, I think for a long time, even so I originally thought I was going to be a clinical social worker, right. I thought I was going to be a therapist. That's what I set out to do in college. That's when I went and got my master's degree what I thought I was going to do, and I think I got turned off by the internal world because as I was exposed to it, it was very sterile, right? It was very medical model really Did right when, when we were training therapists 15 years ago, I mean, we were trying to approximate what it was like to be a medical provider, right, just thinking about mental health rather than a physiological condition. And so part of me always felt like, this is incomplete, right? This isn't this doesn't capture sort of all the experiences that are structural and systematic and systemic that I know people like my parents encountered, and experience their life. And so with that, on top of the sort of sterility and sense that, oh, you're a therapist, but you should never talk about your own life, like that's not relevant to the client relationship. turns me off to this internal world. And I think I made assumptions about the internal world that were false, right. And that's part of growing and becoming wiser as we realize some of the ways that we've made assumptions that are short sighted and not fully sort of complete in their in their picture. And so I realized that as much as those structural facets and conditions are really important, it's also really important for us to understand how we think and see the world and in turn, how we think and see ourselves as being positioned within that world. And how much being able to see our own potential, and our own desire actually can be expansive in terms of the external world. And so I would say that now, I'm more integrated, or integrative in my approach I, in my work with clients, we don't pretend that the structural stuff doesn't exist, it's surely a frame that we use to think about our internal worlds. But I'm also no longer at a place in my life, where I feel like the internal aspects of our identities and our universes should be ignore, right, in place of thinking exclusively about external facets. So there's been some personal growth in that way, as I've also been growing professionally. Michael Hingson 16:58 How well tell me a little bit more about what you mean, in terms of the the differences between the internal world and the external world? Sara Trocchio 17:06 Yeah, I mean, so my training is as a critical social scientist, right? And so critical theory is about systems and processes and often policy right? And so thinking about how does one's identity map on to larger historical patterns, right, larger for instances of oppression when we're talking about women, or gender or sexual identity, or disability or age or, or race or ethnicity? And so that's the frame that I ended up moving, like fully into, when I decided, nope, I'm not going to be a therapist. And I think part of me said, I'm gonna have this clean break. And I'm going to start thinking largely on the aggregate, like, largely in terms of macro level trends, and not necessarily what's happening with respect to one's internal world, because I was so used to looking outward and being outward facing in terms of the things that I was researching, right. So it's this person's experience, as they experience the court system is a representation, right of these giant, massive structural problems. And that's how I was trained to think as a social scientist. And that's what a lot of my work used to focus on. And I think, going through this deeply painful experience of COVID, and being a new professor and a new mom at the same time, and a really inhospitable place, made me realize that I could lean on those sorts of external explanations, all I wanted, and I could continue to be talking about them and writing about them and advocating for change. But that wasn't the complete picture, either. And there was internal work that I needed to do to shift the way I thought about my circumstances and what was possible in those circumstances. And that's something that I spend a good deal of time focusing on with my clients. Michael Hingson 18:56 So do psychologists and psychiatrists focus more on the internal or are they really more victims of the external world as well? Sara Trocchio 19:06 I think traditionally, psychologists and psychiatrists are deeply internally facing right, we're used to having a psychologist or a mental health practitioner, have a big DSM five diagnostic book and listen to what a client's saying, but to be able to match that expression of one's internal life with diagnosis, right. And then for that therapist or that mental health practitioner to provide expert guidance about how to quiet or calm one's internal world, and there's not often much attention, I think increasingly there is now as actually ironically, coaching principles have made their way into psychotherapy, much more so than they did 15 or 20 years ago. But when I was being trained, it was much more about one's internal life and internal circumstances. Michael Hingson 19:55 Do you think that even in the EMS world, there's any movement toward a Understanding and empathizing a little bit more with internal kinds of things for people, or are they really still looking for those outside norms and do everything according to the patterns that they think they see externally? Yeah, I Sara Trocchio 20:15 would say there's a little bit more integration happening on both ends, I think yes. In the way that I was sharing about sort of mental health practitioners, we're seeing more integration of, of acknowledgment that external factors are deeply important in shaping one's internal life. And I do think to some extent, there has been greater focus on how one views themself, and possibilities that exist in lie within our own selfhood. In in social science, I certainly think that there is some movement happening there Michael Hingson 20:45 to know Are you still a professor today? Sara Trocchio 20:49 I am, as of today, I am still a professor. Yes. So I'm very busy. I basically have 1.75 jobs right now. And it takes a lot of a lot of balancing a lot of work, and sometimes some flailing to make it happen. Michael Hingson 21:06 What kind of mindset shifts? Did you have to go through though, to really get more into the coaching environment? You've talked some about that, but I'd love to learn a little bit more about that. And, and how did you also learn to be able to if you'd had to do so switch back and forth between the two worlds? Sara Trocchio 21:25 Oh, yes. I mean, like today, just to give you an example, I was actually I'm on a search committee for two faculty searches right now in my full time job. So we had six back to back interviews for that, I took my dog for a quick walk, because that for me is meditative. Came back, and I'm doing this wonderful call with you. And then I have a call the coaching clients before I go turn on the mom hat. So yes, it requires agility. And I will say that, you know, again, coming back to this notion of like how the internal and external worlds are integrated, because PhD programs are so terribly funded in our country. I was always required to sort of hustle as a PhD student, I had to learn from the get go, that I was not just going to be a PhD student or graduate student, or doing dissertation research or teaching, but I was also going to be doing all those things, and have another part time job or to, to be able to pay the bills. And so I think, in part, and again, this is kind of a mindset shift, mindset shift, framing, myself, traditionally, as a victim of my circumstances, like, Oh, this is so terrible, I don't get paid enough. This is so ridiculous. I'm nearly 30. All my other friends are having careers buying houses. And I'm, you know, making $18,000 a year a baseline to work 50 hours a week, and then on top of that have to work more. But what I will say is that got me very comfortable and adept and agile at switching between roles and sort of accepting that as something that that helps keep me fresh and smart, and in tune with what's happening in the world. So I think that that those circumstances, whoever challenging they were, allowed me to have a very sort of entrepreneurial thanks that, even though I didn't see it that way, necessarily, since becoming a PhD student over, you know, at this point, nearly 15 years ago, Michael Hingson 23:24 it seems that in our world, more and more, we need to really deal with different kinds of situations and be able to adapt and go from one thing to another, it isn't good enough to just be a blacksmith, and then you go home and somebody else is doing the rest of the work and so on how do we get more people to adopt or learn how to create an environment where in their own lives, where they can move from one thing to another and be comfortable about doing that? Sara Trocchio 23:56 I think that is such a good question. And I will say, I have seen in my teaching, and I've been teaching college students for a decade and masters students for over a decade in various combinations. But I have actually seen for all the increased technology and all the instant gratification that's available, that agility is decreasing. And it concerns me actually. And I think part of it is connected to the fact that we are so invested in sort of the next step, we're what we're doing that is going to amplify us in some way educationally or professionally, that we don't fully stop to be that playful in what we're doing. And I have found that having a playful spirit. And thinking about oneself is sort of being on a playground and moving from structure to structure from the seesaw to the swings. excetera is what keeps me sort of buoyed and buoyant as I'm moving between different identities and different roles. I think that the more that we sort of let go of this really narrow focus on solely sort of getting the things crossed off our list that we need to get crossed off to be on this one, you know, ascendant path or trajectory, the more playful we are. And the less seriously we take our investment in just one particular lane or one particular area of focus. And the more fun we have, and the more easy it becomes for us to move agilely between different areas and identities and tasks. Do you think that's Michael Hingson 25:35 more of a worldwide thing? Or is it something that probably we see in the US that we just take things so seriously, and we we don't play? Hmm, Sara Trocchio 25:46 I think that's also a great question. I'm not sure I would, I would think that in a lot of industrialized Western societies, we've moved a little away from play, particularly as technology and an access to education has changed, in that people now sort of have, to some extent greater ability to access technology to quote unquote, get ahead, whether that's somebody that has a personal computer, or is able to easily go to a library and use one, of course, smartphones have created some some more uniform access to sort of like goal setting and goal attainment, however, sort of jumbled attention might be in those pursuits. And I think, you know, to some extent, those are patterns that probably are happening worldwide. So I think, in the United States, particularly with our puritanical roots and our bootstrapping sort of mentality that I would expect it to be especially pronounced here. Yeah. Michael Hingson 26:44 And we take things so seriously, I, every time I have these kinds of discussions, reminds me of, I think in places like France, where people are supposed to take the month of August off and relax and play. Yeah. And we don't have nearly enough of that here. And we don't encourage it. Do you think that COVID as maybe started us down a road of shifting away from that a little bit and maybe working a little bit toward play? Or do you think we'll just go back to kind of the the typical way we do things in the typical mindsets that we've established? Sara Trocchio 27:18 That's also such a great question, Michael, I think that I saw glimmers of that sort of in the immediate return to in person learning in person meetings. And now I kind of see people be relatively shell shocked by all of the sort of consequences to our mental health and our well being that the pandemic created, but feverishly kind of trying to get back on task or back on track. So I did see part of that sort of that possibility, that little glistening moment of like, oh, maybe we can all just enjoy the human beings a little bit more and be a little bit more playful. But I have seen that sort of begin to erode and noisy a lot of people, whether they're Gen Z students, or millennial professionals saying, Okay, that was all well and good. But now I need to get back on track. Michael Hingson 28:10 How do we get people to recognize that we can't get back to open quote, normal End of quote, because normal will never be the same again. Sara Trocchio 28:20 Yeah, Sara Trocchio 28:21 I mean, I think I'm, I think I still struggle with that to some extent, because we're, we're fighting against the grain of decades or years of socialization about that sort of way that we are just taught to put our head down and put one foot in front of the other until we get to the thing, and then the next thing after that, and then the next thing after that. And, you know, it's so fascinating, I was just talking to a really good friend of mine, who is she works in elementary, middle school. And she was saying that, you know, she's had so many parents reach out to her because she does the Gifted and Talented program. And she just said to me, Sarah, I just wish that we could all just let kids be kids a little bit more. And she said, I saw that, you know, as we were returning back from COVID. And she said, it takes such intentional conversations with parents and with children to say, you know, what, actually like this is the period of life where we it is so developmentally appropriate to play. And if we rush past that so much, then we're going to get to the point which I see now as a professor, where 1920 and 21 year olds are so distracted by their to do list and to their, you know, goal setting for their trajectory that they can't even sit in a class and enjoy it. I just got an email from a student that said, Hey, Dr. Chi, I've been so disengaged. I can't even focus on being present in class because all I'm thinking about are my grad school applications. Right? And so I think it's about having people model that that is okay that it's okay to go off course sometimes. In fact, sometimes the most beauty and power is in those moments that are off course and if we so so certainly regulate and curate our time. And so that we don't allow ourselves to go off course, we're missing out on so much of the joy and fun and splendor of this human experience. Michael Hingson 30:09 So what will you say to that student? Or have you yet? Or how do you respond to that? Sara Trocchio 30:14 You know, that's so interesting. I have not responded to them yet. Because I've been marinating on that. I've been thinking, what do I want to say to the student that I've known, you know, for three years, and they were able to, even during COVID, sort of be more present. And now that they're getting to this natural inflection point of, oh, I'm about to graduate, they feel this intense pressure. And so I think I will just try to tell them, It's okay to slow down, it's okay to be off course, it's okay to circumvent a traditional path or trajectory. And in many ways, you know, I work with my clients who are often, you know, professors, and, you know, some of them are in their 50s, or 60s, when they come to me that this idea of like having such a solid and rigid five year plan is both silly, right? Because we all know, like, not care, what we set out to do many times. And it actually takes us away from some of our core best functions as human beings, which are to be present focused, to be off course, to be in the moment of our humanity, to find humor and joy in those moments. And then once we've reset, and rest from the sort of rigor of our goal, achievement, come back to our goals and figure out with critical reflection, is this even something that I actually want and desire? Michael Hingson 31:31 Yeah, and, you know, I think, as, as a person who does some writing, although I don't do the prolific amount of writing that number of people do, but I've learned a lot about writer's block, and how writers work and so on. And also just about thinking, and one of the things that comes to mind when we're having this discussion is that if you are able to let things go, and go think of something else. The reality is that you probably know what you really need to do, but you need to let it come out. And if you go off and do other things, the answer, the solution will come to you. But you have to let it come to you. You can't just force it. And all too often writers just you know, they work and they work and they work. But I always hear from people that I know of as professional writers, when they get writer's block, if they just stop and go do something else, take a walk or do something else or whatever, go on vacation, something will break loose, and the answer will actually come and like your students the same sort of thing. Why are you worried about getting into graduate school? What can you do? Right, this second? Have you done your applications? Well, if you have, then what can you do? It is not under your control anymore. So don't worry about the things that you can't control focus on what you can let the rest deal with itself. Sara Trocchio 33:00 Yes, and in fact, to, to have a student that's already burnt out, right, the further burning themselves out by stress of continuing education, you know, kind of makes your point beautifully, and we have so much research on creativity, that speaks exactly to what you're saying, empirically, Michael, which is that you can't rush it and in our brains are other are like other muscles, they need rest time, right? They they're not going to atrophy if we're not using them at 95% 95% of the time, and engaging different parts of our bodies and minds and spirits is actually really good for our brains, you know, using our physical bodies connecting over laughter over humor, loving someone else. If that's not, quote, unquote, productive, those are all things that we know can actually spur creativity and a wish people felt more of a permission structure in our society at this time to lean into those things. Michael Hingson 34:00 Yeah, play is an interesting concept. And we've talked about it but the reality is play is something that can take on many forms, it doesn't necessarily mean that you go play as we're typically used to it. It may very well be that you just let your mind wander and you go off and you do something else. You go read, that's play. You go watch TV. Well, I'm not sure about watching TV, but you know, there's not much on TV. Well, there is sometimes. But you know, the point is that it can take on so many different forms. But if you don't allow it to happen, and history shows us the value of allowing it to happen. If you don't allow the brain to just take its time and put things together. Then we get very unproductive and we go crazy. Mm. Sara Trocchio 34:50 And even if we are productive, we're not always sure that the things that we're producing are in alignment with who we are and what we want, because we haven't taken time Apart from the work itself to draw meaning about the work itself, and that is a cyclical thing that I see so many people struggle with, whether they're new college students, or hearing from my friend that works in an elementary school system, you know, fourth graders up to people that are, you know, tenured professors looking for the next thing, because all this productivity, even if you've mastered the productivity itself, isn't generative, right in a way that we would want it to be, if we were actually moving in alignment with our values and our human needs. Michael Hingson 35:35 There is something to be said for trying to be more like a kid, because kids haven't learned to lock down on all of these different things. And kids do play, they let their brains wander, they do so many different things. And in reality, a lot of the times, especially if given the opportunity, they do them well, and we could learn so much from them. And it's something that we just don't see nearly as much as we should, that is being like a kid taking the time, letting yourself be distracted. It don't have to be on 24 hours a day, I had a guide dog, my six guide dog, who, as I describe it had a type A mentality and personality. She could not leave work at the office, if you will, when we got home from work, she still followed me around, she always had to monitor what I was doing. The other dogs in the House wanted to play and she would actually curl her lip at them she wouldn't play. She was so serious, that after about 18 months, she literally became afraid of guiding, she just stressed herself out. And it's been a lesson that has stuck with me ever since how she could have done so much better if she had just allowed herself to relax a little bit more. And the reality is it is just like people, I'd never seen it in a dog like that before. But the reality is it was there. And it was such a vivid example of the kinds of things that you're talking about and the kinds of things that all of us should do. Sara Trocchio 37:20 And interestingly, one of the reasons that I love dogs so much, because they they pull us out of that impulse that we've been trained into, leaning into, which is to go go go produce, produce, produce, think about the next thing, think about the next thing. So powerful story that a dog that sort of ran counter to that taught you your own lesson in that. Michael Hingson 37:43 Yeah, that was so it was so surprising to experience it. And it was so sad that we had to retire her and she went back to the people who raised her. I don't know anything about what her life was like there, but she didn't have to guide so maybe she learned to relax. I would like to think that she did. Sara Trocchio 38:02 Yeah, me too. Well, Michael Hingson 38:05 so in your coaching, I'd love some stories or my examples about mindset shifts, and the kinds of things that you've been able to help your, your your clients do, and how they really shifted in how that affected them as they went forward from working with you. Sara Trocchio 38:25 Yeah, I mean, one of the things I love so much about coaching is that it is, by definition, something that is client centered where the client is creating the agenda. And it is not a top down relationship whatsoever. So I work in full, collective partnership with a client. So there's no one, you know, client story that maps on to perfectly another client story. But what is so powerful to me is seeing how in the early phases of working together, and on average, I spend usually about four to six weeks, you know, sort of getting to know a client and then beginning to have them identify what they are most jazzed about once they learn to sort of block out all the other noise about what they've been told they should care about what they should be focusing on. And I would say that, you know, over the length of the what usually ends up being about five months that we work together. At the beginning, there is such a discomfort about looking inward. And again, that discomfort that I have shared with clients, you know, in my own path and trajectory. There's such a discomfort about actually asking, What do I desire. And it's such a simple, simple thing, but it actually takes months often to get people comfortable with identifying and then naming and then claiming those desires. And when I see clients that are able to do that it is just very powerful. Particularly because an academic settings, there are all of these mandates, right? Have you need to be this productive in this way you need to publish in this regard, you need to be on this speaker circuit that is very, very easy for these people that have spent so much time with their brains and their intellect, just being completely unable to use those same sort of like rigorous intellectual skills to ascertain and then go after what they actually want. So that is like, in a nutshell, what I work with clients on and I have had so many amazing stories I've had, you know, stories of people that were, you know, shut out of academic job searches that felt like they were gonna have to leave that worked with me. And were actually really able to get clear on what is this thing called, like, bi directional fit? And why does it matter? Like why should I not just be concerned with being deferential to the point that anybody that could hire me will? Why don't I really laser focus on what it is in an employment setting that I want in need, and being pretty ruthless about seeking out those kinds of settings. So I've had folks that were on job searches for years and years, and then started working with me and ended up getting like, really wonderful, quote unquote, non prestigious academic jobs that have made them so damn happy. I've worked with other people that have completely renegotiated the terms, their jobs in their institutions, right that at first, when they came to see me thought, I am so done with X place or y place, I just want to run away and go work at Trader Joe's stocking shelves. Well, was it really that or was it that they had not felt empowered to actually identify a name what they needed, which in some cases is, I don't want to be teaching anymore, I want to shift into a different role where I'm doing strategic programming that's focused on Dei, for instance, I've had other people just realize, you know, this whole higher ed thing, it's just not for me, I just want way more time to be able to work remotely plug and chug at something and then have so much so much energy and time for my family. And so I've had people that have been able to name that and left for industry jobs, and are now in the process of moving abroad with their families, because now their jobs and the flexibilities have allowed them to, for the first time in their lives, actually have the possibility of moving to Portugal, for instance, be a real thing that they can not just express wanting, but actually go out and get. And so there isn't one typical story, but truly, it's about, like, what is this process of self actualization? What is this thing of being self centered in quotes that we've often been taught, particularly women, we should not be? And how do we sort of massage the edges of that socialization and get people first, being comfortable being uncomfortable with the focus being on themselves and their desire? And then secondly, equipping them with their competence and the skills that they need to actually go get the stuff they Michael Hingson 43:04 want? Well, so one of the questions that comes to mind is, have you ever said to anyone, nothing wrong with going off and having a second job of socking sales at Trader Joe's, it'll take your mind off of stuff. What do you think? Sara Trocchio 43:20 Totally. Yeah. And that's, that's something we entertain, right. And I've had clients that say, Yeah, I'd like to just use my hands, right? Like I've been in such a, you know, myopically intellectual space for so long. I just want to use my hands. So I've worked with other clients. Thinking about for instance, launching their own businesses where they do like event and artists retreats, even though they're they're trained in the humanities and have been professors, but they want to go become photographers, and then create retreats where other people can go and explore something artistic, that has nothing to do right with what their PhD was in, or what their dissertation focused on, or what their quote unquote area of expertise says that they have on their website. But guess what, it makes them really happy. And that's great. Michael Hingson 44:08 And that's great. I, when I've worked too hard, I like to cook. And there are parts of cooking that I like or not that I like that I do well and parts that I don't, but when it's time to stop doing, whether it's podcasts or other kinds of things, or preparing to do a speech, I'll go look at cooking something. And I have the luxury of listening to books a lot, as opposed to reading braille, and I read Braille too, but I love to cook and read at the same time because both of those are different than what I do most of the time. And they take my mind off the other stuff and I when I start to see my mind drifting back to Well, I gotta think about this. I will say, ah, that comes later. And it works. It does. Sara Trocchio 44:57 It does. And that's the thing like realizing that we can have moving meditation in so much of what we do, right, this notion that you have to be in some, you know, forest in the woods, you know, sitting in silence to have that reset, I think keeps a lot of people from feeling like they can ever get a break. And that is actually one of my favorite things. When I'm not doing yoga, or running or walking my dog, or just being playful with five year olds, I love to turn on an audio book, or an album that I really love and just cook, right. And I think it's so important that we like normalize those kinds of desires as much as we normalize any intellectual or professional desire to because they're equally as important. Michael Hingson 45:44 Yeah, we need to recognize that not only don't we control everything, but we don't need to control everything. And it is so hard to get people to see that because in our society, we seem to always want to just be forced, or we accept going down the road of well, you just got to control it all on it doesn't work. Totally. Because control is there, when there are things that we have control over that we sometimes don't realize, but take, you know all the stuff that's going on in our political arena right now. So everybody's mad at Donald Trump, or they're mad at Joe Biden, or whatever. The issue is, how much of that do you have control over? Well, the answer is you do every four years, or whenever. But once that decision is made, what are you going to be able to do about it? Well, you can write to Congress, or whatever the case happens to be. But still, if we take it personally, we don't recognize we made our choice as a country at any given time, we now need to recognize it. We don't have control over it for a while. Let's step back and observe what goes on. And that's part of the problem. We don't tend to do that. One of the things that I advocate a lot is every night before you go to sleep, while you're lying in bed, even just lay back and think about what happened today. How did it go? What worked? What didn't work in your mind? Even with what worked and worked? Well? Could I have done it better? And the things that didn't work? Well? Why didn't they work? Well, and what can I do about it? I've been saying a number of times lately, I'm my own worst critic. So when I listen to a speech that I've given, I'm my own worst critic. I'm tougher on me than anybody else. But I realized that's the wrong thing to say, I'm my own best teacher, go back and listen to the speech, but listen to it, and go, oh, there's not a learning moment or a teaching moment that didn't go like it should, I'm not going to beat myself up over it, I am going to do better next time. And here's what I'm going to do better. And take that time at the end of the day to think about and analyze, it doesn't take a long time. But invariably, not only does it help me sleep better. But invariably, what it also does is it helps me recognize what all happened. And if I do it consistently, I won't make the same mistakes, or do the same things in the same way. When they should change too many times before I change it. I my own best teacher. Sara Trocchio 48:28 Yeah, yeah. And that's that's a mindset thing, right. But I think many people that I work with, because academic spaces are so hypercritical are just so fundamentally unsure of how to even begin changing that narrative. And it takes a lot of like massaging the edges of that big, old self hating that, that so many of us ended up getting getting sucked in, and believe that if we have not been perfect, then we have completely failed. And in fact, that is not how so much of our lives work. And there are so much there. There are so many lessons and so much actual joy that can come in those messy middle moments too. Michael Hingson 49:16 And that's again, why I have realized I should not be hypercritical and say I'm my own worst critic. I'm my own best teacher, because it's a much more positive way of doing the same thing. You're not changing the whole environment, but you're changing how you approach it and what you look at. And invariably, there's no doubt I think anywhere that when you do things in a positive way, it's going to stick with you more and you're going to feel more and feel better about it. Then, if it's always negative, well, I screwed that up and I've got to deal with it right? I didn't screw it up. All right, I need to look at what needs to become better and become more positive. about that. Sara Trocchio 50:02 Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Michael Hingson 50:06 So you go through mindset shifts all the time. I mean, you talk today about what you've already done, and then you came back here and you're doing this and then you're going off to another call, then you go get to deal with a five year old. Lot of minds, mind shifts, how does all that work for you? How do you do that? Yeah, having talked about dealing with your husband and talking about legal things, or anything, yeah, but that's another story. Sara Trocchio 50:32 Yeah, that's another story. Yeah, I mean, I think it's about you know, just staying grounded and feeling like, there is a thread that connects all of this. And so long as the thread that is connecting, all of it is joyful to me ultimately, and is in alignment with who I am and what I value, then I actually see them as much more sort of like, complementary and integrated parts. So, you know, my experience, as a professor deeply informs how I show up as a coach, right? My experience as a coach deeply informs how I show up. As a professor, as a friend, as a researcher, my experience talking to people that I meet on social media, or in other avenues, like yourself, make makes me a richer person. And I bring that richness and depth to the way that I approach my client work or being a professor or writing or showing up in partnership. And so I think of them all sort of as these different branches that emanate from the same route. And I think the problem is that sometimes people have built roots that are either in authentic order rotting, or unstable, and so then all the branches that flow from them are mired in that IK. And as much as we can sort of double down and making sure that the thread or the root of what we're doing is all connected to who we are. And what we believe in, it makes it so much easier to move with agility, across different dimensions and in different roles. Michael Hingson 52:02 What are some of the tools or resources or exercises or processes that you teach people, or that you could advise people who are listening to this that they could put in place to help with their own mindset shifts, and just adopting a better and more positive mindset in their lives? Sara Trocchio 52:18 One of my favorite things is just what I call the 10 Slash 80 rule, which is literally in a given moment, can you take a quick audit of what you're doing, how you're reacting to it, how you're moving through space, how you're showing up in a given role? And again, this will connect to everything we've been talking about, Michael, but what would your 10 year old self say about it? And what do you think your 80 year old self will say about it? And it's just really like, take a moment, take a beat, in the midst of all of the stress and all of the sort of like existential questioning that we can sometimes do about three career for me, is this the right thing that I'm doing? Is this the right role? Was a speaking engagement successful? And I've really tried to have my clients feel excited about approaching their tasks in their roles with that kind of curiosity, which is, what would my 10 year old self say about what I'm doing right now? Am I honoring that 10 year old self, and am I also on the other side of things, honoring the memory I want to have at this moment when I'm 80 years old. And that has been a really powerful shift for people, and also just making people in vain, also, sort of comfortable with going into their bodies and into their sensory experiences. I'm obviously like, I love my brain and spend a lot of time thinking about my mind, you know, but it's also important for us to just be in touch with the rest of our bodies and what it feels like to be in a rhythm that honors our whole selfhood. And so sometimes asking those questions, makes people kind of think like, am I actually like, in this continuity of the human experience that I'm having? Am I honoring all the pieces of myself? And if I'm not like, Is my would my 10 year old self say I'm not honoring them, because I'm not being curious enough or playful enough. And what my 80 year old self say that I'm not honoring them, because I'm perhaps straying a little bit from my core values that I know, like, really, really anchor me to this human experience. So that's one thing I'd share what else? I think, you know, just the idea that it is so deeply important to take space and time to flesh out what we want, and to flesh out how we get there and in the gogogo life, right, like it's so we've normalized to some extent taking an hour every two weeks or so for therapy. But the coaching conversations that I have people just say having someone bearing witness to my humanity and allowing me to spaciously sort of like be in my Self is so deeply liberatory and expansive. So finding those moments finding those times to have the agenda be about increasing the spaciousness with which you are showing up in a given moment of sort of like luxury being like beat taking as a luxury but unnecessary one, being in your desire, sharing what you wish for what you hope, and having people that are lovingly sort of holding you accountable to making sure that you are living according to those things that you consistently say, are important and necessary for your life, not just your career, but your life and your humanity. Michael Hingson 55:39 So you have been coaching and you formed the square peg club. Where did where did you come up with that name, and is that the organization that you created for your your coaching career? Sara Trocchio 55:54 It is yes. And, and I came up with a square peg club, because I want people to feel like they have, like I said, the space, the safety, the nurturing and the play, to find this the shape that suits them best right to not keep feeling like they have to J, you know, this square peg into a round hole, because that's what they've been told they need to just push on and be a professor, you've got this golden ticket of becoming a professor. So you better sit down and put your head down and be grateful. We're in fact, if we can just say maybe you need a different container. However, broadly, we wanted to find that. And that's okay. And that's the ethos of the square peg club. That's why I named it what it is, and then called it a club because of playfulness, right? Because I want people to feel like this is not some always Uber serious venture, that even figuring out who we are, and what we need can be fun and should be playful and inherently collaborative. Michael Hingson 56:57 So one of these days, you'll have to get all your plans together and have a party somewhere. Sara Trocchio 57:01 Absolutely, I am totally there for that. I'll invite you to you can come and bring a dog or two or three that Delight me Michael Hingson 57:07 always glad to do that. And my dog will go anywhere and take the harness off, and he will be around the room in New York seconds. Awesome. I Sara Trocchio 57:17 love it. Mind you. Michael Hingson 57:18 He's he's quite the cutie. Oh, I Sara Trocchio 57:22 love it. Michael Hingson 57:23 You know, the the whole idea, though, is absolutely fascinating. One of the things that you said just a little while ago, it's still my favorite thing is curiosity. I think we are just never curious enough. And, you know, I will go to museums, and I'll go even into stores, and I'll start touching people or touching things. Now people don't want to do that, that gets dangerous, but touching things. And and people Why are you doing that? I'm looking at it. You know? Why don't we do more to be more curious and to allow curiosity. And it's such a frustrating thing. Because we don't encourage it when people ask me about the internet. And on I hear people talking about the internet or now we got things like chat GPT and other things. And people are talking about the bad parts about it. And there are bad parts about it. There are bad ways that it's misused. But it's all part of such a treasure trove that we're creating an expanding that can help us in so many ways. One of the things that I do is I work for accessiBe, which is a company that makes products to help make the internet website world more accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities. And some people really knock the artificial intelligence part of what accessiBE does. And my response is, you're showing your lack of vision, because that AI is something that will grow over time. And in the internet, in general, is such a treasure trove, if we choose to use it that way. Mm Sara Trocchio 58:54 hmm. I love that. I agree. Right? Curiosity play all the things. Michael Hingson 58:58 It is it is it is all the same. What's some of the best advice you've ever received about mindsets? And just in general? Oh, Sara Trocchio 59:08 that is just so it's such a good big question. I know, have fun, like don't forget to have fun. You know, this notion that we think we have more control than we do has actually been really, really helpful to me and present, you know, present centering my life and the experiences that I have, whether they be professional or not. And you know, another piece that I've received that I think is really helpful is you know, give yourself permission to get rid of a five year plan. Give yourself permission to just see and to know that inherently human beings are afraid of risk like we are psychologically wired to be afraid of risk. But risk taking is part of one of the things that connects me to my humanity in the boldest ways and you know risk taking is actually part of a well lived life, not completely reckless risk taking. But intentional, enthusiastic, necessarily knowing what's on the other side risk taking is one of the richest ways we can engage with the world. Michael Hingson 1:00:17 Do you think we're psychologically wired to be risk averse? Or is it a learned behavior? Sara Trocchio 1:00:23 I think it's both. But I think we have a lot of evidence showing that we are actually psychologically averse to it, because of our evolution and not wanting to run the runway and find ourselves in the mouth of a cheetah. But I think some of it as well in connection to what we were sharing earlier about, just the way that we are especially focused on, you know, goal, achieving, and having a plan and sticking to it has certainly created learned behaviors that have, I think, exacerbated that instinctive response, Michael Hingson 1:00:54 I think about my parents who were in the political world, and well, in the political world, conservative, and in the educational world, not as well educated as some, my mother was a high school graduate, my father graduated eighth grade. And we're both pretty much self taught after that. But they were told when I was born, that I should just be sent off to a home because no blind child could ever grow up to amount to anything. And my parents said, You're wrong, he can grow up to be whatever he wants. And they took risks by any standard that you would be, they let me explore my neighborhoods, they let me ride a bike. And they didn't prevent that stuff. And I think all too often, people don't do that, and won't do that. They don't allow kids, especially blind kids, or kids with disabilities to explore as much as they can, especially in the case of blind kids who can move about, but need to have that ability and need to create the ability to explore and then have the opportunity to do it, to learn the world. And I realized that today, we're in a much scarier world where there's so many predators out there, but still, we've got to give people the opportunity to grow. Sara Trocchio 1:02:08 Absolutely, I mean, grow through play, and failures, replay. Michael Hingson 1:02:11 And, and learning experiences. Yeah. What's the best advice contrasting to what you've received? What's the best advice you've ever given? Do you think to people? Sara Trocchio 1:02:21 Or would it be the same? I think it would be the same. And just don't be afraid to take up space. Don't be afraid to take up space. You have written books. I have a co Sara Trocchio 1:02:36 edited book. Yes. That's coming out on academic motherhood and virtual communities. Yeah. That's contributed to other books. Yeah. Michael Hingson 1:02:44 Yeah. That's great. Well, we, we certainly hope that that is very successful. And when will it be coming out? Sara Trocchio 1:02:52 It will be coming out in July. It's being published by Palgrave Macmillan. And it's called it takes a village Sara Trocchio 1:02:58 as it does. Absolutely. And that's the way that'd be good to have a village. Yes, absolutely. Michael Hingson 1:03:08 Well, Sarah, this has absolutely been enjoyable. And I don't know whether you have watched clocks. I just looked at the clock. Now, our in two minutes, so we've been having fun. So I want to, I want to thank you, again, for being here. And I want to thank you for listening to us today. If people want to reach out to you, how do they do that? Sara Trocchio 1:03:28 They can find me on Twitter at S B T R O C C H I O, they can find me on LinkedIn, they can also find the Square Peg Club on Facebook, as well as on LinkedIn. And I have a public coaching profile on practice, P R A C T I C E.do. You can look me up there, and my new website is coming out imminently. So be on the Be on the lookout for that. Michael Hingson 1:03:51 Well, we need to talk to you to make sure that the website when it comes out is accessible. And I would love to help with that. Sara Trocchio 1:03:56 Ab
Dr. Timothy K. Eatman is the inaugural dean of the Honors Living-Learning Community and Professor of Urban Education at Rutgers University—Newark. Among many other leadership and consultancy roles, he serves as a member of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Humanities Center's National Advisory Board, and he recently joined Dean Jordan for a discussion of his own life and work, the role of the humanities in confronting social challenges, news ways of approaching honors education and the role of higher education in addressing racial issues in America. The episode of PBS Newshour in which Dean Eatman's work at Rutgers—Newark is highlighted can be watched at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/at-this-college-academic-excellence-requires-passion-for-the-social-good, and the Langston Hughes poem “I Dream a World,” which Dr. Eatman shares during this episode, can be read online at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/at-this-college-academic-excellence-requires-passion-for-the-social-good.
On Season 3, Episode 4 of The Art Career Podcast, Emily McElwreath interviews Rebecca Jampol. Rebecca Pauline Jampol is the Co-Director of Project for Empty Space, a public art curator, and designer based in Newark, NJ. Her interdisciplinary creative practice focuses on cultivating impactful social dialogue and change. She explores social activism and empowerment through a range of methods that range from curating gallery exhibitions and publishing to public art programs.Ms. Jampol is a serial self-starter. In 2010, she launched her first major business Solo(s) Project House, which provided studios and exhibition space for local artists. This innovative model set the stage for her next venture, Project for Empty Space (PES), a nonprofit dedicated to fostering intersectional cultural discourse. Since 2013, she has grown this ‘third space' endeavor, which has now become a staple in the larger Newark arts scene, and a community unto itself for multidisciplinary artists and a space for social discourse, activism, and change.In addition to running PES, Ms. Jampol has led an array of significant public art programs both as an organizer/curator and a designer. Over the last decade, she has overseen large projects including Portals, Newark (2016), the longest mural on the east coast, approx. 1.34 miles Gateways to Newark (2016), Four Corners Public Arts (2019 - 2022), Mayor Ras J. Baraka's Community Ground Murals (2020), and more recently Audible's Newark Artist Collaboration (2021+). She co-designed a large scale project at the Bronx Museum entitled See Me, an interactive project about visibility, intersectionality, and identity that kicked off the Museum's 50th anniversary. She also organized and chaired the design team for a new initiative for residents without addresses called Newark Hope Village, a low-barrier shelter community built from repurposed shipping containers and transformed into a therapeutic service-oriented community.Outside of her role as an arts nonprofit director and public art curator/designer, Ms. Jampol is also core faculty at Rutgers-Newark, her Alma Mater. She lives and works in Newark, NJ with her fierce four-year old daughter Adele-Rae.Rebecca Jampol's work can be seen at projectforemptyspace.org, gatewaystonewark.org, fourcornerspublicarts.org and newarkartistcollaboration.com. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com/TAC today and get 10% off your first month. theartcareer.com Follow us: @theartcareer Follow Rebecca : @rjampol Follow Project For Empty Space: @projectforemptyspace Podcast host: @emilymcelwreath_art Social Media: @lilap3arl Music: Chase Johnson Editing: @benjamin.galloway
NJFF is the largest student-run folk festival in the country. It has operated out of the American Studies Department at Rutgers University New Brunswick since its founding in 1975. Since then, countless students have interned with the festival, learning valuable skills, and developing relationships with mentors and peers. The people behind the festival are what makes it so unique—the people you don't see on the stage or on the craft path but who are indispensable pieces of this puzzle. Through this podcast episode, you will meet two of these people, a mother and daughter, both Board of Trustees members, who have spent the last few decades volunteering their time, talents, and enthusiasm to the New Jersey Folk Festival. Gillian Dauer is a 2022 graduate of Rutgers University New Brunswick. She interned with the New Jersey Folk Festival from the fall of 2019 to the spring of 2022 in several roles. Elena Rossi is the President of the New Jersey Folk Festival Board of Trustees, and mother to Catherine and Gabrielle Rossi. Elena has been heavily involved with the Folk Festival since her daughters served as interns, but she has been a fan of the festival since its inception in 1975. Gabrielle Rossi is a member of the Board of Trustees. She was a student intern with the festival at Rutgers from 2010 to 2014. She went on to earn a Master's in Nonprofit Management from Columbia University, and is now a doctoral student at Rutgers-Newark in the School of Public Affairs and Administration. Gabrielle is also the founder of The Dream Project, which facilitates cross country fundraising bike rides for college students. For more information about the New Jersey Folk Festival 2023 please visit our website at: https://www.njfolkfest.org/ or join us on our social media pages linked below! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/njfolkfest/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NJFolkFestival/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/njfolkfest
Today is the 20th anniversary of the U.S invasion of Iraq, which marked the beginning of the Iraq War. Amir ElSaffar is a classically trained Iraqi-American trumpeter, vocalist, composer, and Satur player, who returned to his father's native country before the war to study with masters of Iraqi Maqam, the classical musical tradition of Iraq. Inspired by the 20th anniversary of the invasion, ElSaffar is performing a string of concerts with his ensembles to mourn the suffering of the Iraqi people, and celebrate Iraqi culture. He joins to preview the concerts and talk about his music. ElSaffar will be performing at Drom NYC on April 2, Rutgers-Newark on April 10, and Symphony Space on April 14. This segment is guest-hosted by Tiffany Hanssen.
How colleges and universities evaluate applicants and how they structure the post-secondary learning experience tethers K-12 to many practices that work against the shift to more human-centered approaches. In this episode we're going to learn about how one post-secondary program is working to revolutionize the idea of the "honors college.” The Honors Living and Learning Community at Rutgers Newark is interrogating the structures and systems in K-12 and higher education that fail to recognize the brilliance and talent of so many students who are the promise of tomorrow. What lessons does their approach offer us as we work to broaden our conception of human potential and success?Relevant LinksDefining the Skills Citizens Will Need in the FutureThe Future of Jobs
If you've been feeling extra tired during the COVID-19 pandemic, you're not alone. Elizabeth Tricomi, associate professor of psychology at Rutgers University – Newark, examines why this may be. Elizabeth Tricomi received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2006. Her dissertation research focused on how the brain responds to positive and […]
Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In The Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in, among others, The New Yorker, Harper's, DoubleTake, Ploughshares, A Public Space, Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, and has been translated into many languages. "In the Gloaming," a story, was chosen by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of The Century and was made into films by HBO and Trinity Playhouse. Her non-fiction reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many anthologies. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Associate Professor at Rutgers-Newark in the English department and the MFA program. Books Recommended in this episode: Fellowship Point (Simon and Schuster, 2022) Alice Recommends: Elena Ferrante, The Neapolitan Quartet Jean Stafford, The Catherine Wheel Willa Cather, The Professor's House Joanne Beard, Festival Days Mary Oliver, Upstream Rebecca Solnit, Orwell's Roses Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In The Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in, among others, The New Yorker, Harper's, DoubleTake, Ploughshares, A Public Space, Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, and has been translated into many languages. "In the Gloaming," a story, was chosen by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of The Century and was made into films by HBO and Trinity Playhouse. Her non-fiction reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many anthologies. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Associate Professor at Rutgers-Newark in the English department and the MFA program. Books Recommended in this episode: Fellowship Point (Simon and Schuster, 2022) Alice Recommends: Elena Ferrante, The Neapolitan Quartet Jean Stafford, The Catherine Wheel Willa Cather, The Professor's House Joanne Beard, Festival Days Mary Oliver, Upstream Rebecca Solnit, Orwell's Roses Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In The Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in, among others, The New Yorker, Harper's, DoubleTake, Ploughshares, A Public Space, Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, and has been translated into many languages. "In the Gloaming," a story, was chosen by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of The Century and was made into films by HBO and Trinity Playhouse. Her non-fiction reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many anthologies. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Associate Professor at Rutgers-Newark in the English department and the MFA program. Books Recommended in this episode: Fellowship Point (Simon and Schuster, 2022) Alice Recommends: Elena Ferrante, The Neapolitan Quartet Jean Stafford, The Catherine Wheel Willa Cather, The Professor's House Joanne Beard, Festival Days Mary Oliver, Upstream Rebecca Solnit, Orwell's Roses Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In The Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in, among others, The New Yorker, Harper's, DoubleTake, Ploughshares, A Public Space, Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, and has been translated into many languages. "In the Gloaming," a story, was chosen by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of The Century and was made into films by HBO and Trinity Playhouse. Her non-fiction reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many anthologies. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Associate Professor at Rutgers-Newark in the English department and the MFA program. Books Recommended in this episode: Fellowship Point (Simon and Schuster, 2022) Alice Recommends: Elena Ferrante, The Neapolitan Quartet Jean Stafford, The Catherine Wheel Willa Cather, The Professor's House Joanne Beard, Festival Days Mary Oliver, Upstream Rebecca Solnit, Orwell's Roses Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
Episode 131 Notes and Links to Alice Elliott Dark's Work On Episode 131 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Alice Elliott Dark, and the two discuss, among other topics, Alice's upbringing and schooling that provided much room for intellectual growth and inquiry, her poetry writing days and gradual transfer to writing prose, her electrifying short story that made all-century lists, the story's presentation on the big screen, and the “saga” of her latest novel and its accompanying themes. Alice Elliott Dark, author of the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, and whose story "In the Gloaming” was chosen by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of The Century and made into films by HBO and Trinity Playhouse. Her non-fiction reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many anthologies. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Associate Professor at Rutgers-Newark in the English department and the MFA program. Alice Elliott Dark's Website Alice's Wikipedia Page Buy Alice's Books Publisher's Weekly Review of Fellowship Point Kirkus Reviews Review of Fellowship Point At about 2:00, Alice details her childhood and adolescent relationship with language and reading At about 4:40, Alice describes a formative experience where she realized that she, too, could become a professional writer At about 5:20, Alice describes the books and writers who she loved as a kid, including A Stone for Danny Fisher and work by Irwin Shaw At about 9:30, Alice responds to Pete's questions about what it was like growing up in Philadelphia and its cultures and ethos, including the Quaker influences At about 13:35, Alice talks about her early days of writing poetry and how she read widely, particularly poetry At about 14:30, Alice discusses how her college Asian Studies major happily upset her ideas of form At about 17:00, Alice responds to Pete's question about any “ ‘Eureka' moments” that convinced her of her writing prowess, as well as how watching a lot of 1970s UK punk helped her shift to writing prose At about 19:40, Alice gives background on the origins of her legendary short story “In the Gloaming” At about 22:15, Alice explains the meanings of the iconic first line of the short story At about 24:00, Alice defines “gloaming” and Pete and Alice discuss the story's beginning as Laird perks up around twilight At about 25:20, Alice describes how she “step[s] aside” to let her characters develop and communication between mother and son At about 28:40, Alice talks about her writing process and the importance of “picturing” the storyline, characters, etc. At about 29:35, Pete and Alice discuss Martin, the father in the story, and his isolation, as well as intimacy between mother and son At about 31:30, Pete and Alice talk about Laird's illness in terms of an AIDS diagnosis At about 33:15, Alice and Pete compare ideas of anonymity/Everyman/Everywoman in Alice's writing and Chekhov's At about 34:25, Laird's friend's letter is referenced as juxtaposition with Laird's deteriorating physical condition, and comparisons between Covid and AIDS are mentioned At about 36:20, Pete reads and compliments the second-to-last sentence of the story At about 37:40, Alice details the processes in which her story became a film and her experiences in watching the process unfold and witnessing the final product At about 39:20, Alice discusses Christopher Reeve's role in making the movie At about 40:35, Pete wonders about Alice's experience in having the story as part of At about 41:50, Pete and Alice discuss the critical acclaim for Fellowship Point and the “saga” of the book's long life before being finished and published At about 45:45, Alice details themes and aims for the book, and how some subtleties of herself came through, though the book is truly fiction At about 46:40, Alice replies to Pete's questions about perspectives shifting as the book's saga played out At about 48:35, Alice responds to Pete's question about if the characters are/were real to her At about 50:45, Alice examines Covid's impact on her and others' writing At about 52:25, Pete wonders how Alice saw and sees the finished product of Fellowship Point, and Alice highlights Mary Sue Rucci's great help in editing and revising At about 54:45, Pete and Alice discuss the characteristics of the book's main characters At about 58:10, The relationship between main character Agnes and an editor, Maud is discussed At about 58:50, Ideas of land ownership and parallel themes are discussed in context of the book At about 1:01:45, The theme of feminism is discussed, with regard to Agnes, and how the term is limiting for her At about 1:03:50, Alice discusses what she has to say in the book about themes of aging (particularly with older women being ignored/underestimated) and At about 1:05:50-friendship lasting and love as shown in different ways At about 1:07:00-Alice gives her contact info, and highlights great work by Mary Sue Rucci Books, Scribner, and Cassandra Campbell for the reading of the audiobook 1:08:50-Alice provides her social media info You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode. This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com. Please tune in for Episode 132 with Morgan Talty, a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation where he grew up. Morgan teaches courses in both English and Native American Studies, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in creative writing. His highly-anticipated short story collection, Night of the Living Rez, is forthcoming from Tin House Books, on July 5. The episode will air on July 11.
Lee Hall, 30 Years of Nonhuman Personhood Lee Hall holds an LL.M. in environmental law with a focus on climate change, and has taught law as an adjunct at Rutgers–Newark and at Widener–Delaware Law. Lee is an author, public speaker, and creator of the Studio for the Art of Animal Liberation on Patreon. Links mentioned in the program: For Happy the Elephant, Personhood Is Yet Another Cage On Their Own Terms: Animal Liberation for the 21st Century is now available free, open-to-everyone, as an abridged, audio version of the last one: On Their Own Terms: Animal Liberation for the 21st Century in audio form.
Michelle Hart's fiction has appeared in Joyland and Electric Literature, and she has written nonfiction for Catapult, NYLON, The Rumpus, and The New Yorker online. Previously, she was the Assistant Books Editor at O, the Oprah Magazine and Oprah Daily. She received her MFA from Rutgers-Newark and lives in New Jersey. Her debut novel is called We Do What We Do In the Dark. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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It's a great day to be Eric Reardon. Rutgers opened the 2022 season with a convincing 3-game road sweep, the first time the Scarlet Knights have opened a season 3-0 since 2006. Meanwhile, his new team, Rutgers-Newark starts ITS season Friday, the day Eric becomes a full-fledged college baseball coach. Eric may not be an active pitcher any more, but one thing hasn't changed - it's all Rutgers. You see, the Reardons are perhaps the all-time great Rutgers family, or at least they should be under consideration. Eric was part of that 2006 team as a batboy. His mother, Meg, graduated from there, and works at the school. His father, John, has worked at the school, has served as equipment manager for many sports, including baseball for decades, and while not every RU fan knows his face, they most certainly know his VOICE - he's been the PA announcer at Jersey Mike's Arena (aka the RAC) for years. His parents even met for the first time when RU men's hoops played in the NCAA Tournament in 1991. After graduation, Eric, who also starred locally at North Brunswick HS, quickly accepted the Pitching Coach role at Rutgers-Newark and who better to convey the emotions and experience of wearing the Scarlet and Black. True Rutgers fans will LOVE this edition of TGIM!
Jessica Ware is an Associate curator in invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Ware's research focuses on the evolution of behavioral and physiological adaptations in insects, with an emphasis on how these occur in Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) and Dictyoptera (termites, cockroaches and mantises). Her research group focuses on phylogenetics/phylogenomics and uses these tools to inform their work on reproductive, social and flight behaviors in insects. Jessica holds a BSc from the University of British Columbia in Canada, and a PhD from Rutgers, New Brunswick. She was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the AMNH 2008-2010, before being hired at Rutgers Newark where she was an associate professor of evolutionary biology. She is the current president of the Worldwide Dragonfly Association, and VP of the Entomological Society of America. She was recently awarded a PECASE medal from the US government for her work on insect evolution. website: www.jessicalwarelab.com Other website: https://www.amnh.org/research/invertebrate-zoology/staff/curators/jessica-ware Jessica Ware | AMNH American Museum of Natural History 200 Central Park West New York, NY 10024-5102 Phone: 212-769-5100. Open Wednesday–Sunday, 10 am–5:30 pm. Also Open: Monday, March 29 and Tuesday, March 30 www.amnh.org Twitter: @jessicalwarelab Kids Book: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781684492114 Systematic Biology: https://www.systbio.org/dei-committee.html DEI Committee - Society of Systematic Biologists DEI Director: Dr. Jessica Ware Bio: Jessica Ware is an associate curator in invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. Her research focuses on the evolution of behavioral and physiological adaptations in insects, with an emphasis on how these occur in Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) and Dictyoptera (termites, cockroaches and mantises). www.systbio.org Entomological Society of America: https://www.entsoc.org/jessica-ware-elected-vice-president-elect-entomological-society-america World Dragonfly Association: https://worlddragonfly.org/about/board-of-trustees/ Board of Trustees | Worldwide Dragonfly Association 2019–2021 Board President Jessica WareDepartment of Biological SciencesRutgers University, Newark, NJ, USAwebsite President-elect Yoshitaka TsubakiKyoto UniversityJapan Immediate Past President Frank SuhlingInstitute of GeoecologyLandscape Ecology and Environmental Systems AnalysisTechnische Universität BraunschweigBraunschweig, Germanywebsite Secretary/Treasurer Peter Brownemail: wda ... worlddragonfly.org Entomologists of Color: www.entopoc.org #ENTOPOC Diversifying Entomology. Help us support People of Color (POC) members in Entomological ( ento ) Societies. www.entopoc.org Black In Ento: www.blackinento.com
Jason and Matthew interview Dr. Barry Komisaruk, Neurophysiologist from the Psychology Department at Rutgers University. Barry has been researching sexuality for over 50 years and is maybe best known for the seminal work: The Science of Orgasm. We talk about the history of his research and discoveries, the historical challenges around sexual function research and ideas for how to further this area of research to benefit folks with SCI. Pay particular attention to the latter half of the podcast if you're interested in participating in a study idea that we landed on collectively. If it piques your interest, send us a message at curecast@u2fp.org and we'll connect you. --- Barry R. Komisaruk received a B.S. in biology at The City University of New York and Ph.D. in psychobiology from Rutgers University. He was a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellow in neuroendocrinology at the Brain Research Institute, University of California at Los Angeles. Joining the Rutgers-Newark faculty in 1966, Komisaruk was a professor in the Institute of Animal Behavior and Department of Zoology. He is now Distinguished Professor in the Psychology Department, director of the Minority Biomedical Research Support Program, and former associate dean of the Graduate School. With a penchant for finding new research avenues to explore, Komisaruk received a Board of Trustees of Rutgers University Excellence in Research award and the Hugo G. Beigel Research Award of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. His major research interests include: functional neuroimaging of genital sensory response; neurophysiology, neuropharmacology and neuroendocrinology of reproductive behavior; and neural control of autonomic genital function. He is senior author of The Science of Orgasm, a comprehensive look at the biology and neuroscience of orgasm, published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, as well as The Orgasm Answer Guide, a general readership book from the same publisher. He has published more than 155 academic journal articles and chapters.
Dave McHugh has been in California for more than a week and was able to sit down and put an episode of Hoopsville together. It includes early season reactions and thoughts to outcomes plus hearing from two coaches who faced one another not only as coaches, but as husband and wife. Dave chats with Ryan Scott, of D3hoops.com, and Bob Quillman, of IWUHoops.com, about the early season results, expectations, and much more. Plus, what are some of the big games that we may be talking about in February and March. And have you ever seen a husband and wife coach against one another? Phil Stern, of Mt. St. Vincent, and Ashley Cieplicki, of Rutgers-Newark, join the show to chat about their respective women's squads and the game against one another (which Mt. St. Vincent won, by the way). How did the two meet? When did it develop into a relationship? And when did the idea of facing one another on the basketball court take shape?
Dr. Andrew Kelley is a physical therapist in the state of New Jersey who treats a wide range of patients, including athletes rehabbing from sports-related injuries. He talks about growing up in Ringwood, New Jersey, playing multiple sports growing up, being a big Duke Basketball fan, and his great basketball, soccer, and track career at Lakeland Regional High School. Andrew then discusses becoming interested in physical therapy after rehabbing an injury, playing soccer at Delaware Valley University for 2 years, his decision to transfer to the University of Delaware, his time on the club soccer team for UDel, and getting to work with athletes like Elena Delle Donne. He explains the road to becoming a physical therapist and going to Rutgers-Newark for Physical Therapy school after receiving an undergraduate degree from UDel, going through clinicals, getting his doctorate, and the other certifications he has. Andrew describes a day in the life of a physical therapist, working with people of all ages, the major sports related injuries he sees, how he helps athletes get back on their feet after injuries, and how he follows their careers afterwards.
Director of the Form Design Studio and a Professor in the Arts, Culture, and Media department at Rutgers-Newark, Keary sits down with Fran in this first episode of Rock Steady, Season 3. Keary discusses how the Form Design Studio, at the beginning of the pandemic, pivoted from creating 3D art for faculty, students, and community to a studio that created Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for the medical community in New Jersey. In his personal art practice Keary has been working on a piece called "The Mirror Test and The Book of Life."
In episode 4 of Hiding in Plain Sight: The Neighbors You Never Hear From, Host Tia Ryans speaks with Jason Conway, who explains with a proud veteran who gave a vivid description of the parallels between his time serving in the military and his sentence in New Jersey's state prison.Jason D. Conway is currently enrolled in the M.P.A. program at Rutgers University-Newark School of Policy and Public Administration. He received his Associate's of Arts for Mercer County College and Bachelors from Rutgers- Newark. Jason is a proud student of New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons (NJ-STEP) initiative; an association of higher education institutions in New Jersey that provide college courses inside correctional facilities.Jason supports his community by actively participating in several social justice and criminal justice reform organizations and spaces such as the Brick City Alliance, All of Us or None-Northern NJ, Newark City Street Team, and Transformative Justice Initiative.When asked about navigating his reentry experience Jason states that he is simply “trying to navigate the spaces provided to me with an open mind and positive thought.”Jason's Recommended Book ListThe New Jim Crow, By Michelle AlexanderThe Body Keeps the Score, By Bessel van der KolkThe Power Broker, By Robert CaroTo support the continued work of NJ F.O.R.T.E House and learn more about the organization, visit: njfortehouse.orgGet involved: All of us or None-Northern NJHiding In Plain Sight: The Neighbors You Never Hear From is produced by Tia Ryans, Brit Harley, and Dionysus Augus.Theme music provided by Vacation Collective, Bright Ideas Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!) || https://uppbeat.io/t/fe77a/vacation-collective || License code: 4HIKHJVTF3RTDLGWThis series is part of the Newark News, and Story Collaborative made possible with funding support from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Victoria Foundation. The Newark News and Story Collaborative is committed to elevating community-driven storytelling to fill information gaps in local and national media. The Collaborative trains community members in storytelling, media-making, and other creative art forms to share and amplify their experiences. It's laying the groundwork for a collaborative network that will address longstanding information inequities in Newark, New Jersey. For more information and to hear local stories, visit newarkstories.com.
Meet this week's guest before the episode airs, Dr Jessica L Ware, assistant curator in invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Ware's research focuses on the evolution of behavioral and physiological adaptations in insects, with an emphasis on how these occur in Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) and Dictyoptera (termites, cockroaches and mantises). Her research group focuses on phylogenetics/phylogenomics and uses these tools to inform their work on reproductive, social and flight behaviors in insects. Jessica holds a BSc from the University of British Columbia in Canada, and a PhD from Rutgers, New Brunswick. She was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the AMNH 2008-2010, before being hired at Rutgers Newark where she was an associate professor of evolutionary biology. She is the current president of the Worldwide Dragonfly Association, and serves as an elected board member on the executive committee of the Entomological Society of America Governing Board. She was recently awarded a PECASE medal from the US government for her work on insect evolution. https://charity.gofundme.com/o/en/donate-widget/30694 (Make a donation to our 501(c)3 organization) https://blog.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=2305d8aac3a24b336b10d645e&id=6915ba78da (Sign up for our Newsletter!) https://www.patreon.com/thewildlife (Become a Member-Supporter) https://linktr.ee/TheWildLifePod (Follow us on all of our platforms) Dr Ware's Must-Read Book Picks: https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Dragonflies-Natural-Cultural-Personal/dp/0810142309 (Chasing Dragonflies) https://www.amazon.com/Dragonflies-Damselflies-Princeton-Field-Guides/dp/0691122830/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=dennis+paulson+dragonflies+of+east&qid=1620823252&s=books&sr=1-1 (Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East) https://www.amazon.com/Utterly-Bugged-Ken-Tennessen-ebook/dp/B00KYT3ZKY/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=ken+tennessen&qid=1620823371&s=books&sr=1-2 (Utterly Bugged) Support this podcast
Nancy Cantor is a distinguished social psychologist and a national leader on the importance of community engagement, diversity, inclusion, and racial justice to excellence in higher education. As Provost of the University of Michigan in the 1990s, she helped lead the university's successful defense of affirmative action before the U.S. Supreme Court. As Chancellor of Syracuse University and now Rutgers University-Newark, she has stressed the role of colleges and universities as anchor institutions in and with their communities. In response to current crises of the pandemic, poverty, and racism, she argues here, higher education needs to become radically committed to changing “from the outside in,” putting community needs, priorities, and strengths at the heart of our institutions, in everything from admissions and hiring to budgets, teaching, and research. In this episode, Nancy Cantor describes several innovative initiatives at Rutgers-Newark, including the university's Honors Living-Learning Community and its Center on Law, Inequality, and Metropolitan Equity. She also discusses the Anchor Institutions Task Force, a consortium of institutions committed to the kind of community engagement and reciprocity she advocates. Nancy Cantor's essays and speeches are also illuminating; see, for instance, “Transforming the Academy: The Urgency of Recommitting Higher Education to the Public Good” and “A 21st Century Challenges: Empathetic Leaders and Inclusive Institutions.” The Way Forward is a production of Bringing Theory to Practice; to learn more about our work, visit us at www.bttop.org. Send us your thoughts—and suggestions for future episodes—at info@btop.org. The podcast is produced by Jabari Butler, and Dan Rudin composed our music.
Historians of Latin America have long appreciated the central role of mining and metallurgy in the region. The Spanish Empire in particular was created for and founded upon the mining and coining of silver ore from its colonies. Our knowledge about this vital industry, however, remains invariably tethered to the elite sources and perspectives that were preserved in the written record. In Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (UNC Press 2020), Allison Bigelow provides an important historiographical contribution by demonstrating how we can revisit these sources to trace the transmission of metallurgical knowledge from the colonized indigenous laborers who worked the ore to the metropolitan authors who codified practices and knowledge. Rather than European science diffusing to colonial outposts, Bigelow's studies of gold, silver, copper, and iron illustrate that the technologies that sustained Iberian imperialism were amalgamations like the ores themselves. From prospecting to refining, the making of imperial wealth required learning from indigenous ways of knowing and working the earth and its resources. Moreover, Mining Language goes beyond finding hybridity in the archive by teasing out how Europeans systematically (and sometimes not so systematically) erased the indigenous roots of knowledge and practices. Bigelow shows how as information traveled from American soils to European academies through translations and retranslations, identities became reified, fantasies were confirmed, meanings were lost and occasionally pure nonsense got into the mix. Overall, Mining Language demonstrates the possibilities opened when we reconsider the history of technology to no longer center eye-popping inventions but instead the more quotidian practices that sustain life, create wealth, and enforce power. Seen thusly, the history of technology, power, and imperialism is not a story of implementation and adaptation, but rather one of syncretism and erasure. Scholars and readers interested in the social politics of knowledge production will find Mining Language a compelling and thought-provoking work that provides essential historical background to related issues in the 21st century. Allison Bigelow is the Tom Scully Discovery Chair Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia. Lance C. Thurner teaches history at Rutgers Newark. His research and writing address the production of knowledge, political subjectivities, and racial and national identities in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Mexico. He is broadly interested in the methods and politics of applying a global perspective to the history of science and medicine and the role of the humanities in the age of the Anthropocene. More at http://empiresprogeny.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Historians of Latin America have long appreciated the central role of mining and metallurgy in the region. The Spanish Empire in particular was created for and founded upon the mining and coining of silver ore from its colonies. Our knowledge about this vital industry, however, remains invariably tethered to the elite sources and perspectives that were preserved in the written record. In Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (UNC Press 2020), Allison Bigelow provides an important historiographical contribution by demonstrating how we can revisit these sources to trace the transmission of metallurgical knowledge from the colonized indigenous laborers who worked the ore to the metropolitan authors who codified practices and knowledge. Rather than European science diffusing to colonial outposts, Bigelow's studies of gold, silver, copper, and iron illustrate that the technologies that sustained Iberian imperialism were amalgamations like the ores themselves. From prospecting to refining, the making of imperial wealth required learning from indigenous ways of knowing and working the earth and its resources. Moreover, Mining Language goes beyond finding hybridity in the archive by teasing out how Europeans systematically (and sometimes not so systematically) erased the indigenous roots of knowledge and practices. Bigelow shows how as information traveled from American soils to European academies through translations and retranslations, identities became reified, fantasies were confirmed, meanings were lost and occasionally pure nonsense got into the mix. Overall, Mining Language demonstrates the possibilities opened when we reconsider the history of technology to no longer center eye-popping inventions but instead the more quotidian practices that sustain life, create wealth, and enforce power. Seen thusly, the history of technology, power, and imperialism is not a story of implementation and adaptation, but rather one of syncretism and erasure. Scholars and readers interested in the social politics of knowledge production will find Mining Language a compelling and thought-provoking work that provides essential historical background to related issues in the 21st century. Allison Bigelow is the Tom Scully Discovery Chair Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia. Lance C. Thurner teaches history at Rutgers Newark. His research and writing address the production of knowledge, political subjectivities, and racial and national identities in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Mexico. He is broadly interested in the methods and politics of applying a global perspective to the history of science and medicine and the role of the humanities in the age of the Anthropocene. More at http://empiresprogeny.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Historians of Latin America have long appreciated the central role of mining and metallurgy in the region. The Spanish Empire in particular was created for and founded upon the mining and coining of silver ore from its colonies. Our knowledge about this vital industry, however, remains invariably tethered to the elite sources and perspectives that were preserved in the written record. In Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (UNC Press 2020), Allison Bigelow provides an important historiographical contribution by demonstrating how we can revisit these sources to trace the transmission of metallurgical knowledge from the colonized indigenous laborers who worked the ore to the metropolitan authors who codified practices and knowledge. Rather than European science diffusing to colonial outposts, Bigelow's studies of gold, silver, copper, and iron illustrate that the technologies that sustained Iberian imperialism were amalgamations like the ores themselves. From prospecting to refining, the making of imperial wealth required learning from indigenous ways of knowing and working the earth and its resources. Moreover, Mining Language goes beyond finding hybridity in the archive by teasing out how Europeans systematically (and sometimes not so systematically) erased the indigenous roots of knowledge and practices. Bigelow shows how as information traveled from American soils to European academies through translations and retranslations, identities became reified, fantasies were confirmed, meanings were lost and occasionally pure nonsense got into the mix. Overall, Mining Language demonstrates the possibilities opened when we reconsider the history of technology to no longer center eye-popping inventions but instead the more quotidian practices that sustain life, create wealth, and enforce power. Seen thusly, the history of technology, power, and imperialism is not a story of implementation and adaptation, but rather one of syncretism and erasure. Scholars and readers interested in the social politics of knowledge production will find Mining Language a compelling and thought-provoking work that provides essential historical background to related issues in the 21st century. Allison Bigelow is the Tom Scully Discovery Chair Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia. Lance C. Thurner teaches history at Rutgers Newark. His research and writing address the production of knowledge, political subjectivities, and racial and national identities in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Mexico. He is broadly interested in the methods and politics of applying a global perspective to the history of science and medicine and the role of the humanities in the age of the Anthropocene. More at http://empiresprogeny.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Historians of Latin America have long appreciated the central role of mining and metallurgy in the region. The Spanish Empire in particular was created for and founded upon the mining and coining of silver ore from its colonies. Our knowledge about this vital industry, however, remains invariably tethered to the elite sources and perspectives that were preserved in the written record. In Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (UNC Press 2020), Allison Bigelow provides an important historiographical contribution by demonstrating how we can revisit these sources to trace the transmission of metallurgical knowledge from the colonized indigenous laborers who worked the ore to the metropolitan authors who codified practices and knowledge. Rather than European science diffusing to colonial outposts, Bigelow's studies of gold, silver, copper, and iron illustrate that the technologies that sustained Iberian imperialism were amalgamations like the ores themselves. From prospecting to refining, the making of imperial wealth required learning from indigenous ways of knowing and working the earth and its resources. Moreover, Mining Language goes beyond finding hybridity in the archive by teasing out how Europeans systematically (and sometimes not so systematically) erased the indigenous roots of knowledge and practices. Bigelow shows how as information traveled from American soils to European academies through translations and retranslations, identities became reified, fantasies were confirmed, meanings were lost and occasionally pure nonsense got into the mix. Overall, Mining Language demonstrates the possibilities opened when we reconsider the history of technology to no longer center eye-popping inventions but instead the more quotidian practices that sustain life, create wealth, and enforce power. Seen thusly, the history of technology, power, and imperialism is not a story of implementation and adaptation, but rather one of syncretism and erasure. Scholars and readers interested in the social politics of knowledge production will find Mining Language a compelling and thought-provoking work that provides essential historical background to related issues in the 21st century. Allison Bigelow is the Tom Scully Discovery Chair Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia. Lance C. Thurner teaches history at Rutgers Newark. His research and writing address the production of knowledge, political subjectivities, and racial and national identities in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Mexico. He is broadly interested in the methods and politics of applying a global perspective to the history of science and medicine and the role of the humanities in the age of the Anthropocene. More at http://empiresprogeny.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Historians of Latin America have long appreciated the central role of mining and metallurgy in the region. The Spanish Empire in particular was created for and founded upon the mining and coining of silver ore from its colonies. Our knowledge about this vital industry, however, remains invariably tethered to the elite sources and perspectives that were preserved in the written record. In Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (UNC Press 2020), Allison Bigelow provides an important historiographical contribution by demonstrating how we can revisit these sources to trace the transmission of metallurgical knowledge from the colonized indigenous laborers who worked the ore to the metropolitan authors who codified practices and knowledge. Rather than European science diffusing to colonial outposts, Bigelow's studies of gold, silver, copper, and iron illustrate that the technologies that sustained Iberian imperialism were amalgamations like the ores themselves. From prospecting to refining, the making of imperial wealth required learning from indigenous ways of knowing and working the earth and its resources. Moreover, Mining Language goes beyond finding hybridity in the archive by teasing out how Europeans systematically (and sometimes not so systematically) erased the indigenous roots of knowledge and practices. Bigelow shows how as information traveled from American soils to European academies through translations and retranslations, identities became reified, fantasies were confirmed, meanings were lost and occasionally pure nonsense got into the mix. Overall, Mining Language demonstrates the possibilities opened when we reconsider the history of technology to no longer center eye-popping inventions but instead the more quotidian practices that sustain life, create wealth, and enforce power. Seen thusly, the history of technology, power, and imperialism is not a story of implementation and adaptation, but rather one of syncretism and erasure. Scholars and readers interested in the social politics of knowledge production will find Mining Language a compelling and thought-provoking work that provides essential historical background to related issues in the 21st century. Allison Bigelow is the Tom Scully Discovery Chair Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia. Lance C. Thurner teaches history at Rutgers Newark. His research and writing address the production of knowledge, political subjectivities, and racial and national identities in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Mexico. He is broadly interested in the methods and politics of applying a global perspective to the history of science and medicine and the role of the humanities in the age of the Anthropocene. More at http://empiresprogeny.org.
Feminism in the Coptic Church? Optometry? Mariam Elias, Rutgers Newark graduate and future optometry student, will help open our eyes about both (yes, pun intended). We often close our minds to ideas that might make us slightly uncomfortable to talk about. But doing so, stunts our growth as a community. The truth is our Middle Eastern culture sometimes clashes with our Coptic faith, feminism being a prime example of these clashes. By addressing these ideas, we are being true to our faith as a church and bringing Christ into our daily lives.
Latin America – especially colonial Latin America – is not particularly known for futurism. For popular audiences, the region's history likely evokes images of book burning, the Inquisition, and other symbols of orthodoxy and fatalism. Specialists too tend to associate Latin America with a deep sense of historicism: the weight of memory – conquest, genocide, state violence – deeply marks the region's politics and culture. On the other hand, in traditional historical narratives, a cognitive orientation towards the future is the province of northern Europe, the scientific revolution, liberalism, capitalism – in a word, modernity. In The History of the Future in Colonial Mexico (Yale University Press, 2018), however, Matthew O'Hara uncovers a vast array of social practices in colonial Mexico that force us to reconsider who owns the future. Noted intellectuals were not the only ones planning ahead; instead, common people managed overlapping temporalities as they negotiated personal finance, heavenly salvation, health, and the climate. In addition to detailing the subjectivities such structures and practices produced, O'Hara also traces a long arc of change over three centuries of Spanish rule. Improvised financial mechanisms, revised modes of discerning natural truths, and personalized notions of spiritual self-improvement transformed the colonial experience of time. But rather than tracking these to European philosophes, O'Hara finds them emerging from the fabric of colonial experience and developing into a unique temporality in which tradition and change were mutually constructive. For any readers interested in time and temporality, The History of the Future in Colonial Mexico will give you much to think with. Lance C. Thurner teaches history at Rutgers Newark. His research and writing address the production of knowledge, political subjectivities, and racial and national identities in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Mexico. He is broadly interested in the methods and politics of applying a global perspective to the history of science and medicine and the role of the humanities in the age of the Anthropocene. More at http://empiresprogeny.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work (Duke UP, 2019), Cara New Daggett suggests that reassessing our relationships with fossil fuels in the face of climate change also requires that we rethink the concept of energy itself. Although a seemingly self-evident and natural scientific object, the idea of energy that informed the development of fossil fueled capitalism is a surprisingly modern invention. In the 19th century, as tinkerers sought to explain mystical steam power, they rehashed this ancient word to conceptualize limitless potential and ceaseless expansion. Daggett demonstrates that not only did this new abstraction explain and empower novel technologies and fields of physics, but also became an ideological fulcrum with which to describe and proscribe the emerging societies of industrial capitalism. The harnessing of energy and maximizing its efficiency became not only the principles of mechanical engineering, but also of workplace organization and worker discipline. At home, energy served as a measure of virtue, self-control, and good citizenship; and abroad agents of empire used it to inculcate colonized peoples with those values and habits of supposed modernity. The historical knotting together of virtue, labor, and fossil fuel power – argues Daggett – means that reimagining the role of energy in society requires a fuller transformation of the politics of work. Cara New Daggett is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech. Lance C. Thurner teaches history at Rutgers Newark. His research and writing address the production of knowledge, political subjectivities, and racial and national identities in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Mexico. He is broadly interested in the methods and politics of applying a global perspective to the history of science and medicine and the role of the humanities in the age of the Anthropocene. More at http://empiresprogeny.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices