Smarty Pants

What’s spookier than the Tower of London, home to the ghosts of queens and the rest of Henry the VIII’s enemies? How about the half-dozen black ravens that inhabit it—without which, as legend has it, the Tower will crumble and the kingdom will fall? Since there haven’t been dead bodies littering the Tower Green for centuries, someone has to keep the ravens alive—and that person is the Ravenmaster, Christopher Skaife. As a Yeoman Warder, Skaife is one of the custodians of the Tower’s rich history and traditions, and he joins us to offer a bird’s-eye view of his life among the ravens.Go beyond the episode:Christopher Skaife’s The RavenmasterRead an excerpt about the birds’ daily routineFollow Merlina the raven (with help from the Ravenmaster) on TwitterFor more scary tales, read ex-Yeoman Warder Geoffrey Abott’s book, Ghosts of the Tower of London For photographs that Skaife says “come very close to capturing the true majesty and mystery of the birds,” see Masahisa Fukase’s Ravens seriesBehold, the funerals of crowsFor one of the “best books in the world on bird behavior,” according to Skaife, see Nathan Emery’s Bird Brain, and for dozens more recommended books on the Tower and its inhabitants, see the “Suggested Reading” section at the back of The RavenmasterTune in every 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.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave 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!Music featured from Master Toad (“Dreadful Mansion”) courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Not everyone believes in witches: in Siberia, after all, locals blame misdeeds on ghosts, and the Irish have fairies. But for those who do, witchcraft can be incredibly threatening—and an accusation of witchcraft can be a powerful tool to control people and entire societies. To get you into the Halloween spirit, we’re revisiting our interview with one of the world’s foremost experts on witchcraft, the historian Ronald Hutton.Go beyond the episode:Ronald Hutton’s The WitchFor the flip side of witchcraft, watch Ronald Hutton’s dramatic documentary about the good ones—A Very British Witchcraft, about the founder of modern WiccaFrances F. Denny’s exhibition “Major Arcana: Witches in America,” on view at the ClampArt gallery in New York, explores the contemporary idea of witches through portraits of those who identify as such. One of Denny’s foremothers was accused of witchcraft in 1674, and 20 years later another of her ancestors presided as a judge in the Salem Witch Trials.And for some spooky Halloween viewing, watch The Witch, our host’s favorite movie about witches—featured on Vulture’s list of top 15 witch movies, if you’re dying for moreTune in every 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.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave 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! Music featured from Master Toad (“Dreadful Mansion”) and 8bit Betty (“Spooky Loop”), courtesy of the Free Music Archive. Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jordy Rosenberg is a transgender writer and scholar who focuses on 18th-century literature and queer/trans theory. His first novel, Confessions of the Fox, smashes those two disciplines together by retelling the story of two notorious thieves, jailbreakers, and lovers: Jack Sheppard and Edgeworth Bess, both real people who lived and breathed the fetid London air. But in Rosenberg's imagining, Jack is trans and Bess is the daughter of a South Asian sailor and an Englishwoman from the soon-to-be-drained fen. Confessions of the Fox is the title of both the novel and a long-lost manuscript that may or may not be their confessions, discovered by a scholar named Dr. Voth. He obsessively annotates the novel and presents it to us, the reader, with an introduction and footnotes that unspool into a conspiratorial tale of surveillance, resistance, and suspense. Rosenberg joins us on the podcast to talk about what it’s like to rewrite history.Also, we have a copy of the novel to give away! So please, tell one person that you're a fan of the podcast, write us a pithy review on iTunes, and email podcast@theamericanscholar.org to tell us you’ve done so for your chance to win a copy of Confessions of the Fox. We will randomly select a winner on October 12.Go beyond the episode:Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the FoxProof that Jack Sheppard is, in fact, real, and not a fantastical invention: his Encyclopedia Britannica entryListen to the 1958 recording of The Threepenny Opera (1928) by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from The Beggar’s Opera (1728) by John GayFor more about how the spectacle of capital punishment was used in the 18th century, check out Peter Linebaugh’s The London HangedTune in every 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.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. This episode features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Someday soon, you might be finally able to count all the grains of sand on the beach, because there might be no beaches—and no sand—left. With the global population and its attendant consumption booming, we’re running out of sand in our quest to build larger cities and better smartphones. This essential resource, so easy to overlook, ranks just below air and water on a global scale of how much we use. But as journalist Vince Beiser explains in his new book, The World in a Grain, its over-extraction is harming us, whether in the form of murder in the black markets of India, pollution from fracking sand mines in Wisconsin, or islands that have simply disappeared.Go beyond the episode:Vince Beiser’s The World in a GrainRead his article on India’s black market in Wired, “The Deadly Global War for Sand”For more on how sand mining works, watch this aerial video (from a sand mine worker) of a quarry in Central TexasVisit our episode page to see photographs from Adam Ferguson, who accompanied Beiser on his visit to IndiaTune in every 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.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave 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! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How much do you know about Oklahoma City? Probably you know about the bombing, the Dust Bowl, and the Trail of Tears. Maybe, if you’re a basketball fan, you know about the drama of their basketball team, the Thunder. A feeble history, then, of a flyover city in the public imagination. Sam Anderson wants to change all that. As a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, he was sent off to O.K.C. a few years ago to write about a stolen basketball team, and fell so hard for what he calls “one of the great weirdo cities of the world” that he wrote a whole book about it.Go beyond the episode:Sam Anderson’s Boom TownRead his original reporting on the Oklahoma City Thunder, “A Basketball Fairy Tale in Middle America”And his Summer 2004 essay for us, “Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Joyce,” as strange a travelogue of Dublin as you’ll ever readPeruse the Oklahoma Historical Society’s materials on the Land Run of 1889Read the original coverage of the Land Run in the May 18, 1889 edition of Harper’s Weekly (click here for a more legible text-only version) or in The New York TimesTune in every 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.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave 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! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why does New York City smell? Is its smell distinguishable from that of other large cities? Does that smell tell us something about the world that our other senses cannot? Last year we spoke to historian Melanie Kiechle, who has devoted a considerable amount of brain- and nose-power to our long relationship with the scents around us. Her book, Smell Detectives, is an olfactory history of 19th-century urban America, from delightful scents to foul stenches, including those that everyday citizens used to bolster the budding environmental movement.Go beyond the episode:Melanie Kiechle’s Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban AmericaOn our episode page, we've got sanitary surveys of New Orleans and New York, along with sketches of the early respirators people used to protect themselves from foul odorsCheck out a modern-day smell map of the City of Light (and odor), from graphic designer Kate McLeanLive in Pittsburgh? Download Smell PGH, the app that tracks pollution odors (read more here) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In case you missed it, last month Forbes published an op-ed that stoked so much public outrage that the editors felt compelled to delete it. Libraries, it argued, should be replaced by Amazon to save taxpayers money. Yet Panos Moudoukoutas’s piece was based on a common misconception: that libraries are only repositories of books, whereas in truth, they provide myriad other services—and generate an enormous return on investment. To bust the myth that libraries could ever be replaced by a for-profit enterprise, we hit the stacks ourselves and spoke to librarian Amanda Oliver about the services that libraries don’t get enough credit for.Go beyond the episode:Read Amanda Oliver’s stirring defense of the libraryHere are some of the Twitter highlights in response to Moudoukoutas’s op-ed (be sure to grab some popcorn)Read Ray Bradbury’s 1971 essay, “How, Instead of Being Educated in College, I was Graduated From Libraries,” fittingly published in the Wilson Library BulletinExplore the DC Public Library’s Punk Archive documenting the singular Washington music sceneLearn more about the services that social workers provide to librariesA New York Times reporter spent a year reporting the life of a homeless woman who was a fixture at her local libraryIf you really love libraries, move to Finland: in addition to cutting-edge architecture and dazzlingly democratic services, Finnish kirjasto also offer library royalties to Finnish writers—nearly as much per borrowed book as per paperback soldTune in every 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.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave 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!This episode features a beloved song from PBS’s Arthur. Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Forsyth County, Georgia, is infamous for being—for a remarkably long stretch of the 20th century—one of the only all-white counties in America. This week, we’re revisiting our interview with Patrick Phillips, whose book Blood at the Root is both a history of the county where he grew up and a personal reckoning with the “ghost story” that he heard for most of his childhood: the racial cleansing of 1912, when white night riders violently drove all 1,098 black citizens out of their homes, and out of the county. But the people who pushed out Forsyth’s black residents weren’t Klan members: their identities might well surprise you.Go beyond the episode:Read more about Forsyth in Patrick Phillips’s new book, Blood at the RootView a slideshow of images from the book on our episode pageWatch Oprah Winfrey’s televised 1987 visit to Forsyth County, GeorgiaLearn more about Forsyth, and other black citizens driven out of their communities, in the documentary Banished: American Ethnic CleansingsTune in every 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.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave 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!This episode features Billie Holiday’s rendition of “Strange Fruit.” Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eighteen years ago, Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell turned their 3,500-acre farm in West Sussex, England, into a massive outdoor laboratory. They decided to cede control of their land to nature and watched it slowly grow wild again. Now, at what they call Knepp Wildland, herds of fallow deer, Exmoor ponies, and longhorn cows do battle with scrubland and tree branches, while Tamworth pigs rustle in the hedgerows and strengthen mycorrhizal networks in the soil. The result of this experiment is burgeoning biodiversity and resilience, as endangered species like turtledoves, nightingales, and rare butterflies inhabit a landscape unseen in England since the Middle Ages. Isabella Tree joins us to talk about what life is like in a wild world, and how Knepp has ignited a reckoning with traditional methods of land stewardship and conservation.Go beyond the episode:Isabella Tree’s Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British FarmView photos and video from Knepp Wildland on our episode pageRead more about Knepp (and plan a visit!) on their websiteWatch a short video about Knepp’s beaver-like efforts to return the River Adur to a rewilded stateCheck out the whole range of “Kneppflix” wildlife videosElizabeth Kolbert’s profile of Frans Vera’s work at the OostvaardersplassenLearn more about rewilding efforts across Europe, from Portugal to PolandTune in every 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.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave 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! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In her summer cover story for the Scholar, “In the Labyrinth of #MeToo,” Sandra M. Gilbert looks at how far the newest feminist movement has come—and how far we have to go yet to achieve feminism’s goals. Her essay places the latest wave in the mythic feminist tradition, expresses her qualms about certain directions the movement has taken, and asks how we should regard the work of artists whose offensive behavior has been revealed. On our podcast, she these questions and much more.Go beyond the episode:“An Open Letter from Dylan Farrow,” and her first television interview detailing her sexual assault allegations against Woody AllenThe full letter that the survivor in the Stanford rape case read at Brock Turner's trialRoxane Gay, “Can I Enjoy the Art but Denounce the Artist?”Hadley Freeman, “What does Hollywood’s reverence for child rapist Roman Polanski tell us?”A. O. Scott, “My Woody Allen Problem”Claire Dederer, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?”Jason Farago, “Gaugin: It’s Not Just Genius vs. Monster”Tune in every 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 BastekSubscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave 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! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.