Smarty Pants

Stories of the undead tormenting the living supposedly entered the English-speaking world in 1732, with a report from the Hapsburg military of events in Serbia—events that would go on to inspire the most famous vampire of all, Dracula. But the count from Transylvania was neither the first undead man in England (British corpses went walking in 680, and again in 1090) nor the most emblematic of the folk tales that preceded him (that would be Carmilla, who embodies a type seen from China to the Eastern Roman Empire). In Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World, John Blair uses examples from the far-flung ancient world—a “vampire belt” stretching from Scandinavia and the North Sea through central and eastern Europe, western Russia, the Near East, India, and China to Indonesia—to make the case that “corpse-killing is mainstream and not marginal, therapeutic and not pathological.” The undead have seemingly always been with us, as has our need to kill them to exorcise our own anxieties. “Killing the dead is better than killing the living,” Blair writes. “Like other extreme rituals, it is depressing at the time but leaves people feeling good afterwards.”Go beyond the episode:John Blair’s Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New WorldListen to our interview about the modern vampire with Nick Groom, the Prof of Goth, and our conversation with Ronald Hutton about witch persecutions through the agesYou know we love horror—visit our episode page for a list of spookiest episodesTune 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!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.

Foraging has been part of the human story forever, and its post-pandemic resurgence is a return to ways of living with the natural world that have only recently been forgotten. Gabrielle Cerberville, or the Chaotic Forager, as she’s known online, is one of the voices championing the practice on social media. Her videos distill the beauty of living with the seasons into bite-size videos, many of them including recipes, from pine-syrup mugolio to simple dry-sauteed mushrooms. Her new book, Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life, combines personal essays with a kind of narrative field guide, along with—of course—dozens of wildly creative recipes, making for the book version of walking through the woods with a friend.Go beyond the episode:Gabrielle Cerberville’s Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal LifeFind foraging workshops and videos on her website, TikTok, and InstagramRead Michael Autrey’s account of foraging for mushrooms, or Matthew Desmond’s reporting on the wild ginseng trade in AppalachiaVisit our episode page for a list of recommended field guides and cookbooksTune 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 • PandoraHave 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.

Boxy Moskvitch and Lada cars, pastel-green concrete tiles, derelict playgrounds, intermittent hot water: these were the markers of Izidora Angel’s childhood in 1980s Sofia. “Banana-Yellow Trabants,” her essay for our Autumn 2025 issue, takes its name from the Duroplast car that her grandfather, and then her father, Solomon, drove in the 1980s. But bananas show up elsewhere, too: in the myths that young girls would tell each other about the diets of Bulgaria’s famed rhythmic gymnastics team and once, miraculously, on her family’s holiday table. The Angel family's antics suffuse the essay with warmth and humor, but churning beneath the surface is Solomon’s ambition. “He would be the boss, the creative vision and force behind all his future endeavors,” Angel writes, “opening the hottest nightclub in the capital, running five restaurants, renovating city landmarks, building the first manufacturing plant in the country after communism, developing plans to build a whole city.” That city was never built, and Angel lives in Chicago today, sent here alone on a plane more than 20 years ago. She joins us to talk about how her life has been an act of translation.Go beyond the episode:Read Izidora Angel’s “Banana-Yellow Trabants” in our Autumn 2025 issue, and an essay on translation and her father, “The Alphabet of Supposition”For more on Angel’s translation, read this interview from Reading in Translation about her forthcoming translation of She Who Remains by Rene KarabashIn 2023, the Bulgarian novel Time Shelter, written by Georgi Gospodinov and translated by Angela Rodel, won the International Booker Prize—here are more Bulgarian books in translationTune 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 • PandoraHave 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.

From 1968 through the early 1980s, thousands of fires raged through the Bronx. The precise number is unknown and it’s uncertain who was responsible for setting them. But at the time, most fingers pointed to the working-class Black and Puerto Rican tenants who lived in the borough. The newspapers said as much, as did the Blaxploitation movies of the late 1970s. Politicians, too: in the words of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “People don’t want housing in the South Bronx, or they wouldn’t burn it down.” The Bronxites who lived that history, however, have long identified a different culprit, and over the past decade, historians have arrived at a new explanation for the arsons. Bench Ansfield’s new book, Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City, is unequivocal: “The hand that torched the Bronx and scores of other cities was that of a landlord impelled by the market and guided by the state.” The story that unfolds is one of fire and a new FIRE economy, insurance and disinvestment, profit and privatization.Go beyond the episode:Bench Ansfield’s Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American CityWatch Decade of Fire, Vivian Vázquez Irizarry’s 2018 documentary, and Born in Flames (1993) from which Ansfield’s book takes its titleFor a film on the pathologization of public housing, there’s no better place to start than Candyman (1992)Across the Hudson, Hoboken was burning, tooTune 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.

“Several years ago, the musician Mike Mattison fixated on the story of how Charlie Idaho killed the Mercy Man,” Eric McHenry writes in our Summer issue. Mattison had found the tale in the writings of folklorist Alan Lomax, whose source identified a powerful Mississippi levee boss as the murderer of an SPCA officer. Not finding any existing ballads about the crime, Mattison wrote the eerily beautiful track “Charlie Idaho,” which caught the attention of McHenry, who specializes in poring over old newspapers for musical breadcrumbs about the blues. He quickly discovered that Mattison wasn’t the first person to put the story to song—and “Charlie Idaho” masked the name of the Mercy Man’s true killer.Go beyond the episode:Read Eric McHenry’s investigation, “Who Killed the Mercy Man?”Listen to Mike Mattison’s ballad “Charlie Idaho” Sampled in the episode:Sampson Pittman’s “I’ve Been Down in the Circle Before”Ed Lewis’s “Levee Camp Holler” and his commentary, recorded by Alan Lomax in 1959 (Courtesy of the Association for Cultural Equity, from the Alan Lomax Collection at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress)Alger “Texas” Alexander’s “Levee Camp Moan Blues”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.

For the past few decades, American democracy has crystallized around the central importance of voting: making an informed decision about a candidate or a referendum, and expressing it at the ballot box. The marketplace of ideas—enshrined in our constitutional right to free speech—will ensure that the best arguments, and thus the best candidates, win the election. If that idea sounds a little tired, you’ve probably been paying attention. In her new book, Don’t Talk About Politics, Sarah Stein Lubrano draws on everything from Aristotle to cutting-edge neuroscience to illuminate the surprising truth underlying our political behavior. Spoiler: we are far less rational than the marketplaces of ideas would suggest, whether we’re voting or doing something else. But, as Stein Lubrano contends, that’s not entirely a bad thing—and understanding the psychology behind our beliefs might just lead to better actions.Go beyond the episode:Sarah Stein Lubrano’s Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century MindsFollow her on Instagram or Substack, where she writes articles like “In the Apocalypse, the Person Who Saves You is Your Neighbor” Read “The Perils of Social Atrophy” 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.

In a fascinating conversation, linguist and content creator Adam Aleksic, known as the Etymology Nerd, dives into how social media is revolutionizing language. He discusses the rapid rise of new slang, like 'brain rot' and 'unalive,' and how algorithms shape our communication. Aleksic explores the evolution of incel slang from niche forums to mainstream culture, revealing how it reflects broader societal shifts. He also shares insights from middle schoolers on contemporary language, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking in the age of digital slang.

American men are having a hard time right now. They're behind in school, staying single, earning less, drinking more, and dying younger. They’re also taking out their anger on women online, in the home, and in mass shootings, and taking dubious advice from social media influencers pushing ice baths and raw meat diets. They'd be better off looking to the films of Michael Douglas, argues Jessa Crispin in her new book, What Is Wrong With Men: Patriarchy, the Crisis of Masculinity, and How (Of Course) Michael Douglas Films Explain Everything. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, Douglas’s characters were a mirror for our times, reflecting seismic economic and cultural shifts: “He was our president, our Wall Street overlord, our mass shooter, our failed husband, our midlife crisis, our cop, and our canary in the patriarchal coal mine.” Not that these characters offer a how-to guide today (just as they didn’t a few decades ago). Rather, as Crispin writes, Douglas “embodied the torments and confusions of the modern man, letting the invisible trouble become discernible.” While feminists have spent the past half-century manifesting alternatives, however imperfect or in progress, to previous norms of femininity, men like Douglas have been stuck trying to play the same role as the stage they’d stood on changed. Crispin dares to ask: in a post-Michael Douglas world, of what will the men dream? Go beyond the episode:Jessa Crispin’s What Is Wrong With Men: Patriarchy, the Crisis of Masculinity, and How (Of Course) Michael Douglas Films Explain EverythingListen to our interview with Elizabeth D. SametReadPaul Crenshaw’s cover story on masculinity, gun violence, and Pearl JamTune 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.

On June 5, 1975, on the seedy stage of CBGB on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a band named Talking Heads took the stage for the first time. Unlike the Ramones, for whom they were opening, they weren’t sporting black leather jackets or edgy haircuts. David Byrne and Chris Frantz had met at art school a few years before, and the bassist, Tina Weymouth, had only learned to play her instrument six months prior. But within a few weeks, Talking Heads would be plastered on the cover of The Village Voice, well on their way to utterly transforming the downtown New York music scene. After Jerry Harrison joined Talking Heads in 1977, the band would go on to radically alter rock music’s relationship to avant-garde art and performance. In his new book, Burning Down the House, Jonathan Gould tells the story of how Talking Heads experimented their way to a singular musical style over the course of eight studio albums and one incredible concert film, Stop Making Sense, and he discusses their enduring influence despite having disbanded more than 30 years ago.Go beyond the episode:Jonathan Gould’s Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed RockRead about the origin of Stop Making Sense—and then watch it, of courseCheck out the new “Psycho Killer” music video starring Saoirse Ronan, made in honor of the 40th anniversary of the first Talking Heads performanceTune 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.

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.