Podcasts about spectacle the astonishing life

Pamela Newkirk (@ptnewkirk) chats with Ink Slingers via Skype about her books, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga (2015) and Diversity, Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business (2019). Books by Pamela Newkirk: Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media (2000) A Love No Less: Two Centuries of African American Love Letters (2003) Letters from Black America (2009) Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga (2015) Diversity, Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business (2019) Want to connect with Ink Slingers? Tweet us @inkslingers2 or catch us on Instagram @inkslingerspodcast. Music: Dub Feral by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3683-dub-feral License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In this week’s episode, we interview Pamela Newkirk, award-winning author of Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga (2015). Her latest book, published this year, is Diversity, Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business. This […]

What does it mean to be media-savvy? What is the truth in a post-factual era -- and who defines it? How can we achieve basic media literacy in an age when telling lies has become a method to undermine our faith in facts? What constitutes productive criticism and healthy skepticism of the press and what is an unfounded attack? I spoke with Pamela Newkirk about ways of maintaining the right kind of skepticism toward the media in an age when the independent press is under constant attack. Pamela Newkirk is a widely published journalist and scholar who holds an appointment as Professor in the Department of Journalism at New York University. Most recently her award-winning book Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga examines how pernicious racial attitudes contributed to the 1906 exhibition of a young Congolese man in the Bronx Zoo monkey house.Her articles on media, race and African American art and culture have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation and Artnews.

The Bronx Zoo unveiled a controversial exhibit in 1906 -- a Congolese man in a cage in the primate house. The display attracted jeering crowds to the park, but for the man himself it was only the latest in a string of indignities. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll review the sad tale of Ota Benga and his life in early 20th-century America. We'll also delve into fugue states and puzzle over a second interstate speeder. Intro: Finnegans Wake contains nine thunderclaps of precisely the same length. In 1928 a British steamer seemed to receive an SOS from a perfectly sound ship. Sources for our feature on Ota Benga: Pamela Newkirk, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga, 2015. Phillips Verner Bradford and Harvey Blume, Ota: The Pygmy in the Zoo, 1992. Pascal Blanchard, et al., eds., Human Zoos: Science and Spectacle in the Age of Colonial Empires, 2008. Pascal Blanchard, Gilles Boëtsch, and Nanette Jacomijn Snoep, eds., Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage, 2011. Rikke Andreassen, Human Exhibitions, 2016. Karen Sotiropoulos, "'Town of God': Ota Benga, the Batetela Boys, and the Promise of Black America," Journal of World History 26:1 (March 2015), 41-76. Sarah Zielinski, "The Tragic Tale of the Pygmy in the Zoo," Smithsonian, Dec. 2, 2008. Pamela Newkirk, "Bigotry on Display," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 26, 2015. Geoffrey C. Ward, "The Man in the Zoo," American Heritage 43:6 (October 1992), 12. Paul Raffaele, "The Pygmies' Plight," Smithsonian 39:9 (December 2008), 70-77. Pamela Newkirk, "The Man Who Was Caged in a Zoo," Guardian, June 3, 2015. "A Fresh Lens on the Notorious Episode of Ota Benga," New York Times, May 29, 2015. Pamela Newkirk, "When the Bronx Zoo Exhibited a Man in an Iron Cage," CNN, June 3, 2015. Michael Coard, "Ota Benga, an African, Caged in a U.S. Zoo," Philadelphia Tribune, March 19, 2016. Mitch Keller, "The Scandal at the Zoo," New York Times, Aug. 6, 2006. "Looking Back at the Strange Case of Ota Benga," News & Notes, National Public Radio, Oct. 9, 2006. Ann Hornaday, "A Critical Connection to the Curious Case of Ota Benga," Washington Post, Jan. 3, 2009. Eileen Reynolds, "Ota Benga, Captive: The Man the Bronx Zoo Kept in a Cage," NYU, Aug. 7, 2015. Samuel P. Verner, "The Story of Ota Benga, the Pygmy," Bulletin of the New York Zoological Society 19:4 (July 1916), 1377-1379. "The True Story of Ota Benga," Scrap Book 3:1 (March 1907), 61. "Pygmy Ota and His Pet Chimpanzee," McCook [Neb.] Tribune, Oct. 5, 1906, 8. "A Northern Outrage," Lafayette [La.] Advertiser, Oct. 10, 1906, 2. Harper Barnes, "The Pygmies in the Park," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 4, 1992, 1C. Listener mail: Wikipedia, "Fugue State" (accessed Jan. 25, 2018). "Dissociative Amnesia," Merck Manual (accessed Jan. 25, 2018). Steve Bressert, "Dissociative Fugue Symptoms," PsychCentral (accessed Jan. 25, 2018). Steve Bressert, "Dissociative Amnesia Symptoms," PsychCentral (accessed Jan. 25, 2018). Bill Donahue, "Fixing Diane's Brain," Runner's World 56:2 (February 2011), 56. Neel Burton, "Dissociative Fugue: The Mystery of Agatha Christie," Psychology Today, March 17, 2012. Stefania de Vito and Sergio Della Sala, "Was Agatha Christie's Mysterious Amnesia Real or Revenge on Her Cheating Spouse?", Scientific American, Aug. 2, 2017. Vanessa Thorpe, "Christie's Most Famous Mystery Solved at Last," Guardian, Oct. 14, 2006. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Martin Bentley. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

On this week’s Past Present podcast, Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, and Neil Young discuss Playboy magazine’s decision to stop publishing nude photos, the strength and stability of the nation’s political parties, and the whitening of American cities.  Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Many commentators attributed Playboy’s decision to stop publishing nude photos as the inevitable result for a print magazine caught in a culture awash in Internet pornography. Neil pointed out that in addition to its famous centerfolds, the magazine has a long history of publishing serious articles, including interviews with leading cultural and political figures like, Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jimmy Carter.There’s been lots of talk about the brokenness of the Republican Party, but others are beginning to suggest the Democrats aren’t in great shape either. Niki contended that political polarization and party hostility have contributed to the instability of the parties.The Washington Post recently reported that the white population is growing in 45 of the nation’s 50 biggest cities. Neil argued it wasn’t right to see this development as the “reversal of white flight.” (For an excellent history of “white flight,” see Kevin Kruse’s 2005 study of Atlanta.) Natalia suggested that Thomas Frank’s book, The Conquest of Cool, provided a useful way to think about why cities have become so attractive to white professionals again. In our regular closing feature, What’s Making History: Natalia discussed the New York Times article, “The Lonely Death of George Bell.” Natalia contrasted the detached manner with which readers have seemed to respond to this story of an old man’s isolated death as compared to the outrage Americans felt about reports in 1964 that Kitty Genovese had been stabbed to death over several hours while her neighbors did nothing. (See the New York Times’ original article about Genovese’s murder here.)Neil commented on the controversy regarding Mark Juergensmeyer’s decision to boycott a conference at Brigham Young University in protest of the school’s policy of expelling LDS students who lose their Mormon faith or convert to another religion. Juergensmeyer had been alerted to this policy by the student group Free BYU which is pressuring the university to reverse its policy.Niki recommended Pamela Newkirk’s book, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga, which tells the story of the Congolese man put on display in a monkey cage at the New York Zoological Gardens in 1906. 

On today’s show, award-winning journalist Pamela Newkirk talks about her new book, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga (Amistad/HarperCollins, June 2015). Ota Benga was a young man from the Congo, kidnapped and put on display at the St. Louis World’s Fair and the Bronx Zoo at the dawn of the 20th century. Newkirk explores…

Pamela Newkirk joins Bob Herbert's Op-Ed.TV to discuss her new book "Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga," which tells the true story of a young man from the Congo who was captured and placed on display at The Bronx Zoo in the early 20th century.