Podcast appearances and mentions of stephanie bastek

Amanda Holmes reads verse 31 from Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali. Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Rachel Wetzsteon's “Sakura Park.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared that the third Sunday in June would henceforth be celebrated as Father's Day. It was a symbolic gesture aimed at strengthening paternal bonds, as well as a tacit rejection of the policies recommended by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had just left Johnson's administration in disgrace after his controversial report on Black family life and poverty was leaked. “As we know it,” Scholar contributor Augustine Sedgewick writes in his new book, “Father's Day is an unintended consequence of the fractious American politics of race, gender, and class.” Sedgewick's book, Fatherhood: A History of Love and Power, is the story of how such politics ensnarled parental care, and of the men who expanded the domain of fathers across generations of crisis and change, from Aristotle and Henry VIII to Freud and Bob Dylan. Go beyond the episode:Augustine Sedgewick's Fatherhood: A History of Love and PowerThe far right's signature style is less about dad pants and more about fatherhood: read Sedgewick's essay “Ku Klux Khaki”“Thoreau's Pencils,” Sedgwick explores the abolitionist's relationship with his family—and his family business's ties to slaveryFor more on the Moynihan Report and political interventions on parenting, read Melinda Cooper's Family ValuesTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads W. S. Merwin's “The Last One.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Nizar Qabbani's “In the Summer.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads James Wright's “A Blessing.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For centuries, polyglots and the linguistically curious have pointed out the similarities between certain languages of the Eurasian continent. Dante stirred controversy when he first posited that all the Romance languages—Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian—derived from Latin. But by 1786, the British judge and philologist Sir William “Oriental” Jones was applauded when he famously asserted that Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek had “sprung from some common source.” Some 450 years later, linguists and archaeologists have filled in many of the gaps in our knowledge of this common source, called Proto-Indo-European, and sketched out its family tree, the branches of which extend from Scotland to China. But over the past two decades, the study of paleogenetics has radically advanced our understanding of this language—and the people who spoke it some 5,000 years ago. In her new book, Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, science journalist Laura Spinney tells their story, and that of their linguistic—and in some cases, genetic—offspring, which constitute the world's largest language family.Go beyond the episode:Laura Spinney's Proto: How One Ancient Language Went GlobalOne enduring Indo-European mystery? How Celtic got to IrelandRead the two landmark 2015 studies in Nature identifying the Yamnaya's genetic contributions to EuropePreviously on Smarty Pants: how a language dies, how to live like a NeolithicTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Robert Hayden's “Those Winter Sundays.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Nikki Giovanni's “That Day.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1978, a Swedish shipbuilder began construction on two new barges, never anticipating that the journey of these vessels would come to exemplify enormous changes in international law and the global economy. In his new book, Empty Vessel, Harvard historian Ian Kumekawa follows the ships' journey from the docks of Stockholm to offshore oil rigs in Scotland, across the North Sea to West Germany, to deployment in the Falklands War. One of them becomes a floating prison not only in New York City, but also in Portland, England, before once again serving as housing for offshore oil workers, 40 years after its construction and eight names later. The history of the Vessel, as Kumekawa dubs it, mirrors the rise of offshore markets, labor exploitation, the caprices of international law, and the earth-shattering changes in the past 40 years of the global economy itself.Go beyond the episode:Ian Kumekawa's Empty VesselRead an excerpt from the book's introductionTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Claudia Emerson's “Piano Fire.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Etheridge Knight's “Pin Pricks of Loneliness.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his award-winning 2003 graphic novel Blankets, Craig Thompson depicted his teenage love and fall from faith in rural Wisconsin. Now he returns to the story of his life with Ginseng Roots, which focuses on a minor detail that Blankets omitted: namely, 10 summers he spent as a boy weeding and harvesting American ginseng for a dollar an hour. Thompson maps the roots of the 300-year-old global ginseng trade from China and Korea to Marathon, Wisconsin, and profiles the other people tangled in the industry's whiskers: Hmong harvesters who migrated from Laos, American workers and industrial farmers caught up in the vicissitudes of global agriculture, and wild ginseng hunters the world over.Go beyond the episode:Craig Thompson's Ginseng Roots: A MemoirRead Matthew Denton-Edmunson's essay about wild ginseng hunters, “The Root Problem”Also mentioned: Scout McCloud's Understanding Comics: The Invisiible Art, Ted J. Kaptchuk's The Orb That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine, Joe Sacco's breakthrough works of graphic journalismMore about the United States's “Secret War” in LaosTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Galway Kinnell's “Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Elinor Wylie's “Wild Peaches.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We take our muscles for granted: every time we step or stand—or even fall asleep!—we are experiencing a complex system of muscles moving in concert. And yet our notion of strength is still bogged down in stereotypes and preconceptions, some of them holdovers from 2,000 years ago. In our Spring 2025 issue, Michael Joseph Gross wrote about how the ancient Greeks perceived strength—and muscles themselves—in an entirely different way than we do. This week, Gross joins us to talk about his new book, Stronger: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives, which looks at weight training through historical, social, and medical lenses to show its transformative power over time. His guides are leading scholars in the intersecting fields of kinesiology, classics, gender studies, and medicine, whose work has been shifting the narrative about strength for more than half a century.Go beyond the episode:Michael Joseph Gross's Stronger: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our LivesRead an excerpt, “Mr. Olympia,” from our Spring 2025 IssueExplore the Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports at the University of Texas at AustinTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Czesław Miłosz's “Campo dei Fiori.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Theodore Roethke's “The Dream.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yoko Ono is arguably the most famous Japanese person outside of Japan, and easily the most maligned. She's spoken of (falsely) as the woman who broke up the Beatles—not the woman who co-wrote “Imagine.” She's known as a woman who can't sing—not as a woman who used years of classical music training to subvert norms on more than a dozen experimental albums. Why don't more people know about her mischievous One Woman Show at MOMA, a performance piece staged outside the museum, without its permission, that slyly railed against its exclusion of female and Asian artists? Or about the clever all-white chess set she once sent to Reagan and Gorbachev at the height of the Cold War in 1987, simply titled Play It By Trust? “Everybody knows her name,” her Beatle husband once said, “but no one knows what she does.” Now, thanks to David Sheff's new biography, simply titled Yoko, no one has an excuse not to know anymore: about her art, her activism, her music, and her astonishing journey from war-torn Tokyo to the avant-garde art scenes of London and New York. Go beyond the episode:David Sheff's Yoko: A BiographyThe artist's official websiteWatch Cut Piece in its 1965 or 1966 incarnations Visitors to the Kunsthaus Zürich reactivated Bag Piece, originally performed in 1966, in 2022 Traveling to Berlin before August 31, 2025? See Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind at Gropius BauRead the original Playboy interviews that Sheff conducted with Yoko Ono and John Lennon in September 1980Tune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Muriel Rukeyser's “Käthe Kollwitz.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads John Clare's “The Yellowhammer's Nest.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Irish Potato Famine, which began in 1845, looms large not only in the imagination of that country, but also here in the United States, where so many Irish migrants arrived in desperation. Phytophthora infestans caused blight across Europe—but only in Ireland did crop failures result in devastation so vast that the period is known in that country simply as the “Great Hunger.” Why did the blight strike Ireland, newly part of the United Kingdom, so much harder than it did elsewhere in Europe? In Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine, historian Padraic X. Scanlan identifies the policies of the British Empire as the primary reason for the deaths of roughly a million people and the exodus of two million more. But Britain didn't perpetuate a genocide, Scanlan argues—its choices reflected deep political beliefs in market forces that would reveal themselves to be anything but natural.Go beyond the episode:Padraic X. Scanlan's Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish FamineFor more on the famines that struck the rest of the British Empire, check out Mike Davis's Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third WorldCATU Ireland organizes around housing and community issues across the islandIt's true: Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series is all about the Irish housing marketTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Emily Dickinson's “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Denise Levertov's “Writing in the Dark.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lists of canonical works of fiction should inspire skepticism—we all bring our own notions of quality to the books we read. But every so often, we encounter an acknowledged classic that so captures our imagination as to make us wonder why we didn't come to it earlier. Smarty Pants host Stephanie Bastek, for example, recently read Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, originally published in 1929, for the first time. And she's glad she waited: Kurt Beals's new translation faithfully mirrors the original German. Beals brings an immediacy to what has been called the greatest war novel of all time, refreshing the text for a new generation of readers who might have only seen the Netflix version of Paul Bäumer and his comrades navigating the trenches of the First World War. Reworking a classic is challenging, but, as Beals writes in his introduction, the greater ordeal was “to spend months with these young soldiers, in the trenches and in their heads, to know them intimately enough to give them new voices in a new language, and then to watch them die.”Go beyond the episode:Kurt Beals's new translation of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria RemarqueWatch the original 1930 American adaptation of the novelWar poets who wrote in the trenches: August Stramm, Wilfred Owen, Rupert BrookeTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Yuliya Musakovska's “The Vow,” translated from the Ukrainian by the author and Olena Jennings. Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Elizabeth Bishop's “Faustina, or, Rock Roses.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since the publication of King: A Biography in 1970, the historian David Levering Lewis has been chronicling the lives of Black Americans in award-winning volumes that tell the American story from an African-American perspective. Now, for the first time, Lewis turns his attention to his own family history in a new book,The Stained Glass Window, inspired by a moment of reflection in the Atlanta church where his family has prayed for generations—and where, in the archives, he began a search that led to the discovery of a previously unknown forbear. Lewis's lineage reveals the tortuous and tortured racial history of our nation, as he follows the historical trail to two prominent white slaveholding families in Georgia, and a family of free persons of color who themselves owned slaves in South Carolina. Twice the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, one for each volume of his biography of W. E. B. Du Bois, David Levering Lewis joins us from New York City to tell his own family's story.Go beyond the episode:David Levering Lewis's The Stained Glass Window: A Family History as the American Story, 1790-1958Read his 2021 essay on why Black biography matters ( “A Prophet and a President”) and “The Autobiography of Biography” Tune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Mark Strand's “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Stevie Smith's “The Frog Prince.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vikings and valkyries have captivated our imaginations for centuries, with greater and lesser degrees of historical accuracy. But as so often happens, the very people reading Snorri Sturluson or the Sagas of Icelanders today are the ones who were left out of history to begin with—the ordinary people doing the quietly heroic work of farming, midwifing, blacksmithing, and any number of difficult daily tasks. In her new book, Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age, the historian Eleanor Barraclough puts ordinary people at the center of the story. The sagas may tell of “warriors scrubbing beer kegs and Valkyries pouring glasses of wine in the afterlife,” but the exploits of the everyday Viking were every bit as interesting. Their stories bring to life a world of “wood, wool, flax, bone, stone, leather and antler, hand-wrought and fashioned”—a world that remains endlessly captivating, from the runes women carved to fetch their lovers home from the pub to the scribblings of a wee child.Go beyond the episode:Eleanor Barraclough's Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking AgeVisit our episode page for primary source links and historical fiction we loveTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Jack Gilbert's “The White Heart of God.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Wisława Szymborska's “The Terrorist, He's Watching,” translated from the Polish by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh. Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pasta thin as thread, a mirror believed to show your true self, a history passed down for 27 generations of the same family—these may sound like elements of fairy tale, but they exist in our very own modern world. In his new book, Custodians of Wonder, BBC reporter Eliot Stein tells the stories of the people keeping traditions like these alive, across 10 countries and five continents, in an effort to save the cultures that shaped them. Far from being a litany of all the rites we've lost over the years, Stein's book is a paean to human ingenuity in the face of evolving technology and culture, and to the creative spirit that continues to fuel the places that we call home. Go beyond the episode:Eliot Stein's Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them AliveWatch videos from Stein's travels on the BBC's “Custom Made”: the keeper of the 750-year old secret of soy sauce, Taiwan's last film poster painter, Germany's matchmaking tree, and, of course, Sardinia's su filindeuInterested in learning a traditional craft? Check out our interview with Alexander Langlands about his book CraeftTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Robinson Jeffers's “The Purse-Seine.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Ted Hughes's “The Horses.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Edwin Muir's “The Horses.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Louis MacNeice's “Snow. Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Celia Thaxter's “Guests.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Identity can be difficult enough to navigate without bureaucratic interference. For Native people, the question of identity is mired in more than a century of federal intrusion in the form of tribal rolls, blood quantum, and boarding schools—not to mention genocide. And yet, the number of people who identify as Native has increased by 85 percent in just 10 years—from 5.2 million in 2010 to 9.7 million in 2020 according to the U.S. Census. But tribal enrollment, hovering at about two million, has not grown at the same rate. This phenomenon is just one of the things that Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz addresses in her new book, The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America. Her own story of enrollment in the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina opens the door to many more stories that reveal how Native life still reverberates with the consequences of 19th-century federal policy.Go beyond the episode:Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz's The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in AmericaFor more on citizenship in the Creek nation, listen to our interview with Caleb Gayle on the complicated history of Black enrollmentTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Judith Wright's “Full Moon Rhyme.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads William Butler Yeats's “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his previous book, Junkyard Planet, journalist Adam Minter went around the world to see what happened to American recyclables such as cardboard, shredded cars, and Christmas lights around the world as they became new things. In Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale, Minter looks at what happens to all the things that get resold and reused, objects that end up in Arizona thrift stores, Malaysian flea markets, Tokyo vintage shops, and Ghanaian used-electronics shops. Who's buying the tons of goods that get downsized, decluttered, or discarded every year? Does the fact that we can just pass something off to a thrift shop justify our buying more things? What about the sheer scale of it all? Minter joins us in the studio to talk about how we filled the world with all this stuff, and what really needs to change for us to get out from under it—no matter where we live.Go beyond the episode:Adam Minter's Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage SaleVisit our episode page for further reading about fast fashion, the dark side of Goodwill, and the moral hazards of recyclingAbandon your idols: Mari Kondo has begun selling you junk to replace the junk you just KonMari'dRead more about why local textile industries are dying in Ghana and African countries more broadlyLearn more about the Right to Repair movementTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Carolyn Rodgers's “how i got ovah.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Kahlil Gibran's “Defeat.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's the summer after graduation, and Munir Hachemi and his friends G, Ernesto, and Álex leave Madrid for an idyllic summer picking grapes in the French countryside—because, as Munir writes in the sixth edict of his “decalogue of decalogues about experience as literary capital”: “What sets a novelist apart is having a unique worldview as well as something to say about it. So try living a little first. Not just in books or in bars, but out there, in real life. Wait until you've been scarred by the world, until it has left its mark.” But the scars end up a little deeper than Munir anticipated. There's no grape harvest—thanks to climate change—and the four friends end up working alongside the “etcetera of Europe” at a series of nightmarish factory farms where they do everything from injecting monstrous chickens with mysterious vaccines to artificially inseminating genetically modified corn. At least, that's the premise of Hachemi's 2018 novel, Living Things, published earlier this year in an English translation by Julia Sanches. But how much of this tale is really fiction? And what's the point of fiction in an inhumane world anyway? Munir Hachemi joins us in the studio to talk about storytelling, machismo, and going vegan.Go beyond the episode: Living Things by Munir HachemiSome of Hachemi's inspirations include Artificial Respiration by Ricardo Piglia, Tomás Downey, María Sonia Cristoff, Pablo Katchadjian, Emiliano Monge, and, of course, Borges Tune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you'd like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads W. B. Yeats's “A Prayer for My Daughter.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Howard Nemerov's “To David, About His Education.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Ai's “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amanda Holmes reads Anna Akhmatova's “Three Things Enchanted Him …” translated from the Russian by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward. Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you'll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman. This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.