Smarty Pants

One thing we’re thinking about at the Scholar as we’re all shut away, working from home, is how much we depend—emotionally and logistically—on contact with other people. As coming together in public parks, offices, arts hubs, and community spaces has become verboten in the age of social distancing, what will happen to the urban commons in cities? Amanda Huron, an associate professor of interdisciplinary social sciences at the University of the District of Columbia, was thinking about the urban commons long before we started longing for it. She joins us on the show for a conversation about what “the commons” is and how we can protect it in the midst of a pandemic.Go beyond the episode:Amanda Huron’s Carving Out the Commons and her other researchRead about the disappearance of our host’s beloved punk rock houses“Our Cities Are Designed for Loneliness,” says Vice, while The Guardian asks, “What’s the world’s loneliest city?”There’s even a Loneliness Lab working to fight the problem of alienation in citiesIn an earlier issue, we wondered whether coffeeshops encourage conversation or isolationTune 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 book Going Viral, pop culture critic and film professor Dahlia Schweizer asks why, and when, outbreak narratives became such a part of our culture. She divides these narratives into three distinct waves of film starting in the early 1990s: first globalization, then terrorism and conspiracy, and then post-apocalypse and zombie films. What's surprising about these outbreak narratives, though, is that they aren't just limited to movies—we've got zombie video games and novels, of course, but we've also got infection and plague narratives saturating news media and government budget documents even before the current coronavirus pandemic made it all real. Journalism, movies, and governments all influence each other, blurring the line between fact and fiction. In her book, Schweizer explores why these outbreak narratives have infected the public conversation and how they have affected the way we see the world, from our neighbors to the government. Dahlia Schweizer joined us in the studio to talk about zombie viruses and bioengineered plagues. A previous version of this interview aired in February 2018.Go beyond the episode:Dahlia Schweitzer’s Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the WorldCheck out this chart of the three film cycles of outbreak narrativesWant to be comforted after all that terror? Here’s an outline of all the female scientists who save the day in these filmsWatch a how the film Pandemic (2016) blurs fact and fiction with actual news footageIn case you had any doubts about Dawn of the Dead (1978) was about consumerism: here’s the mall sceneAnd check out the whole “syllabus” for Going ViralTune 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!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are all inundated with news about the COVID-19 pandemic, but one thing is glaringly missing from the coverage: the underlying structural reasons for why this is happening. Yes, in our globalized economy, travel has increased exponentially in the past 20 years, not just for pleasure, but also for profit. Still, that alone does not explain why we’ve had a litany of infectious disease outbreaks over the same period, each one coming hot on the heels of the last and doing nothing to alter our public health response. What does? Evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace, of the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota, has some answers. For the past 25 years, he’s been studying the evolution and spread of influenzas and other pathogens. His research shows that if you really want to understand the nature of global outbreaks, you have to look at global agriculture. Where are large industrial farms or monocultural plantations encroaching on the habitats of wild animals that are the natural hosts for pathogens, like bats and civets and pangolins? Who has pushed people on the margins of society off their subsistence farms and deeper into hinterlands that used to regulate themselves before their ecosystems were destroyed? Who is really to blame for our current predicament?Go beyond the episode:Rob Wallace’s Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Influenza, Agriculture, and the Nature of ScienceRead his article connecting coronavirus to agriculture, “Notes on a novel coronavirus”Check out “How to Think About the Coronavirus,” the first in Philip Alcabes’s weekly updates on the spread of COVID-19For more of Wallace’s work on Ebola, check out “Ebola’s Ecologies,” co-written with RodrickWallace (or these two academic articles)The most critical thing we can do now: flattening the coronavirus curve“Inequalities of US health system put coronavirus fight at risk, experts say”“This is where universal health care coverage and security intersect”: Read W.H.O. official Dr. Bruce Aylward, leader of the team that visited China, on how its free medical care stacks up against the U.S.Yes, there really is facial recognition technology for pigsTune 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. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.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.

Social science research confirms what seems obvious: our decisions don’t occur in a void, but rather are hugely influenced by our peers and social context. Society influences our behavior but, in turn, our behavior influences society. To put it another way, our social behaviors are contagious. Because of our respective environments, we may feel compelled to cheat on our taxes, drive heavy cars, or waste energy, because that’s what our peers are doing. In his new book, Under The Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work, Cornell economist and New York Times columnist Robert H. Frank combines psychological insight with economics to argue that we can’t build public policy on the assumption that individuals will make completely independent decisions. Most of our choices—whether it’s to buy an SUV or an electric car, to bike or drive or take the bus to work, to smoke or quit—are shaped by the society we live in. So why don’t we use the insights of behavioral contagion to push society in the direction we want it to go? Frank argues that we should, by using government policies—and especially taxes—in a much more clever and targeted way than before.Go beyond the episode:Robert H. Frank’s Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to WorkRead his essay about how individual decisions can produce cascading effects: “How peer pressure can stop climate change”For more on how behavioral cascades happen, check out the 1992 study, “A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades”Why tax evasion is trendy: read Jesse Eisinger and Paul Kiel’s story, “The IRS Tried to Take on the Ultrawealthy. It Didn’t Go Well.”People who buy bigger houses aren’t happier, those who spent more on lavish weddings don’t stay married longer, and other examples of why spending money on material goods can’t buy you happinessTune 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. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.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.

As of 2019, 49.7% of American renters spend more than a third of their household income on rent. One quarter of all renters are spending at least half their income on rent. Whole generations are being shut out of the housing market by the skyrocketing price of buying a home. How did we get here? To find out, you have to go much further back than the 2008 financial crisis, which was infamously built on the shaky foundations of subprime mortgages. In his new book, Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America, New York Times reporter Conor Dougherty uses the current housing crisis in California as a case study for the rest of the country, chronicling the building-level struggles, municipal policy fights, and sweeping economic changes that continue to rattle our notion of home.Go beyond the episode:Conor Dougherty’s Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in AmericaRead a 2019 report on just how much rent is eating into America's pocketbookTenants used rent strikes to win rent control in post–World War I New York City. Today, rent strikes are on the rise nationally, from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The rent control debates: a Stanford study from September 2019 blamed rent control for rising rents (though noting that it did lower displacement); another 2019 study from the Columbia Business School begged to differ; tenant advocates blamed industry-created loopholes in the law insteadWhy can’t we just build more affordable housing? Blame the Faircloth Amendment, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1999.For ideas from further afield, check out Berlin’s five-year rent freeze (or as a recent Bloomberg headline memorably put it: “No City Hates Its Landlords Like Berlin Does”)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 Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.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.

Marie Arana is the award-winning Peruvian-American author of Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story, a book about a whole continent that manages not to be a thousand pages long—even though it covers about a thousand years of history. She makes the compelling case that there are really three driving forces behind the entire region: exploitation and extraction; violence; and religion. Of course, all of these forces are deeply interrelated—and that’s the point. To drive home how tangled the past is with the present, Arana weaves the stories of three contemporary Latin Americans together with a millennium of history to ultimately show why you can’t really explain the rest of the world without first understanding the story of Latin America.Go beyond the episode:Marie Arana’s Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American StoryRead Richard Moe’s review on our website (“a long-overdue and persuasive corrective”)Here’s a less blood-soaked tale from the cloisters of Peru: librarian Helen Hazen on a clutch of rare books tucked away in an Andean conventTune 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. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.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.

Everywhere, all the time, it seems like we’re being sold on the idea that getting rid of things will solve our problems—from the life-changing magic of Marie Kondo to the streamlining of all those DVDs into digital subscriptions—and it’s all being sold under the label of minimalism. In his new book, The Longing for Less, Kyle Chayka criticizes this trend as a kind of upscale austerity designed to get you to buy and consume things. Maybe fewer things, but things nonetheless. Have we lost the true meaning of minimalism? Chayka takes readers through a history of art, design, and philosophy that goes much further back than the 1960s work of Agnes Martin, Donald Judd, and John Cage, to show that maybe the most meaningful part of “minimalism” is the search for meaning. Chayka has written for The New York Times Magazine, n+1, and The Paris Review, and he joins us in the studio to offer up a brand of minimalism that won’t bankrupt you, emotionally or financially.Go beyond the episode:Kyle Chayka’s The Longing for Less: Living with MinimalismWatch a short documentary about the painter Agnes Martin from the TateView Donald Judd's massive installations in Marfa or New York, and be sure to stop by Walter De Maria’s The Earth Room while you're at itPoke around Philip Johnson’s Glass HouseListen to Julius Eastman's hypnotic composition “Stay on It” (and read more about him here)Two Japanese touchstones of minimalism: Sei Shōnagon’s The Pillow Book and Junichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of ShadowsTune 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. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.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 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 his new book, Secondhand, 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.This is our last episode of 2019. We’ll be back at the end of January, refreshed and ready to introduce you to some of the most interesting voices writing today. See you in 2020! ’Til then, take care, and stay sharp.Go beyond the episode:Adam Minter’s Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage SaleWant to learn more about the impacts of fast fashion on consumption and waste? Listen to our episode “Fashion Kills” with Dana ThomasFor our Autumn 2019 issue, Rob G. Green visited Kumasi, Ghana, to write about another problem created by the secondhand market—toxic scrap-tire firesWhere does the money that Goodwill makes from selling donations actually go?Learn more about the staggering scale of Anglo-American consumption in Susan Strasser’s Waste and Want: A Social History of TrashAbandon 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 broadlyMight recycling pose a similar “moral hazard” to wearing seat belts? Some consumer psychologists suspect that the option to recycle might actually increase resource consumptionLearn more about the Right to Repair movementTune 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. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.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.

Two years ago, Carmen Maria Machado pushed the weird and gothic into the mainstream with her debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and made her a Guggenheim Fellow. Now she’s back with In the Dream House, a memoir of a harrowing relationship told in a splintered, fractured style. The list of chapters reads like an introduction to literary tropes 101: dream house as an exercise in point of view, as a memory palace, as a stranger comes to town, as a plot twist. Ultimately it is, as one title puts it, an exercise in style, but one in which Machado considers all the territory surrounding the dream house: stereotypes about lesbian relationships as safe or as hysterical, her religious adolescence, the insufficiency of the law, and the absence in the archives of stories that don’t fit traditional demographics of abuse.Go beyond the episode:Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House (and read the prologue)Read the collection that inspired the devious chapter, “Dream House as Choose Your Own Adventure,” Kevin Brockmeier’s The Human Soul as a Rube Goldberg DeviceRead about the 1940s thriller that gave us the phrase “gaslighting” in J. Hoberman’s essay, “Why ‘Gaslight’ Hasn’t Lost Its Glow”Two essays Machado cites in her afterword, both about intimate partner violence: Conner Habib’s “If You Ever Did Write Anything About Me, I’d Want It to Be About Love” and Jane Eaton Hamilton’s “Never Say I Didn’t Bring You Flowers”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 Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.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.

When thinking of the past, one of the hardest things is to imagine what it would have been like to inhabit a physical body in a world so different in look, smell, and feel from our own. What was it like to go to the doctor 800 years ago? If you cut your finger and bled, what would that blood mean to you? What about the blood of saints—would that be different? What about exercising, eating, giving birth, having sex, burying the dead? The way we think about these experiences fundamentally changes how we experience them. So how has our thinking changed since the Middle Ages? Jack Hartnell’s new book, Medieval Bodies, explores the answers to these questions through a series of vivid objects, stories, texts, and paintings, starting with the head and meandering through skin and heart and stomach all the way to the feet. Along the way, he constructs a living, breathing body of evidence that helps us understand our physical past.Quick note: In our sign off, we promised a Thanksgiving episode—but a holiday cold has made liars of us, and we cannot put one out! We'll be back with a brand new interview on Friday, December 6th. Til then, take care, and stay warm!Go beyond the episode:Jack Hartnell’s Medieval Bodies: Life and Death in the Middle Ages (read an excerpt here)View a slideshow of related bodily medieval images on the episode pageFor more on medieval women’s medicine, check out Monica Green’s Making Women’s Medicine Masculine or her paper, “Gendering the History of Women’s Healthcare”For another unusual angle of medieval history, check out our interview with Marion Turner, who wrote an innovative biography of Geoffrey ChaucerTune 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. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.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.