Smarty Pants

Steven Greenhouse was the labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times for 19 years. His last book, The Big Squeeze, is a detailed report on how American workers are being abused by corporations and bosses: freezing wages; replacing long-term employees with contractors, subcontractors, and freelancers; reducing hours. And where full-time employees are to be found, bosses are replacing pensions with 401Ks; trimming down paid holidays, vacations, and sick days; pressuring workers to do more per hour; forcing arbitration instead of lawsuits; mandating non-compete causes—not to mention off-shoring jobs to countries with fewer labor or environmental protections and cheaper wages. In the 10 years since Greenhouse’s book appeared, corporations haven't exactly changed their tune—but the labor movement has. There’s been a surge in organizing from the service industry to Silicon Valley: the Fight for Fifteen, #REDforED teachers’ strikes, walkouts at Google and Wayfair, and, this month, 11,000 airline catering workers across 28 cities voting to authorize a strike for better conditions. Where did this momentum come from? In his new book, Beaten Down, Worked Up, Steven Greenhouse tries to answer that question, alongside its corollaries. Why did worker power decline so much over the past 50 years? And what can we do to rekindle that collective power?Go beyond the episode:Steven Greenhouse’s Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American LaborExplore labor statistics for the 35 industrialized nations of the Organization for Economic and Co-operation and Development—including the United States’s damning absence of paid parental leaveRead a comparison of working at McDonald’s in three starkly different countriesAnd read more about the U.S. airline catering workers at American, Delta, and United Airlines who are demanding a living wageTune 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.

Travel to any of the hundred-odd countries where malaria is endemic, and the mosquito is not merely a pest: it is a killer. Factor in the laundry list of other diseases that this insect can transmit—dengue fever, yellow fever, chikungunya, filiaraisis, and a litany of encephalitises—and the mosquito was responsible for some 830,000 human deaths in 2018 alone. This is the lowest figure on record: for context, one estimate puts the mosquito’s death toll for all of human history at 52 billion, which accounts for almost half our human ancestors. How did such a wee little insect manage all that, and escape every attempt to thwart its deadly power? To answer that question, Timothy C. Winegard wrote The Mosquito, a book spanning human history from its origins in Africa through the present and toward the future of gene-editing. In its 496 pages and 1.6 pounds—the equivalent of 291,000 Anopheles mosquitoes—he outlines how the insect contributed to the rise and fall of Rome, the spread of Christianity, and countless wars—not to mention the conquest of South America, in which the mosquito both sparked the West African slave trade and, ironically, led to its end in the United States.Go beyond the episode:Timothy C. Winegard’s The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest PredatorVisit the episode page on our website for a gallery of sometimes amusing warnings against the mosquito’s dangersIf it seems like we’re linking to Harriet A. Washington’s essay “The Well Curve” with every other episode—you’d be right! The majority of the neglected tropical diseases she identifies are borne by—you guessed it—mosquitoes.To help you sleep even less at night, here is the WHO’s list of mosquito-borne diseases and a 2019 report on how climate change puts billions more at riskWe recommend listening to this episode with a citronella candle at hand—and you can consult the CDC’s guidelines for preventing mosquito bites for more tipsTune 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.

For our 100th episode, we welcome back science journalist Angela Saini, whose work deflates the myths we tell ourselves about science existing in an apolitical vacuum. With far-right nationalism and white supremacy on the rise around the world, pseudoscientific and pseudointellectual justifications for racism are on the rise—and troublingly mainstream. Race is a relatively recent concept, but dress it up in a white lab coat and it becomes an incredibly toxic justification for a whole range of policies, from health to immigration. It is tempting to dismiss white-supremacist cranks who chug milk to show their superior lactose tolerance, but it’s harder to do so when those in positions of power—like senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller or pseudointellectual Jordan Peterson—spout the same rhetoric. The consequences can be more insidious, too: consider how we discuss the health outcomes for different groups of people as biological inevitabilities, not the results of social inequality. Drawing on archives and interviews with dozens of prominent scientists, Saini shows how race science never really left us—and that in 2019, scientists are as obsessed as ever with the vanishingly small biological differences between us. Go beyond the episode:Angela Saini’s Superior: The Return of Race ScienceMeet the Cheddar Man—and the many puns about his discovery in Cheddar Gorge—the first prehistoric Briton of his era whose genome was analyzedLearn how recent archaeological evidence discredits the idea that Native Americans were decimated solely due to European diseases. As with health disparities today, these outbreaks were more connected to government policies leading to poverty and malnutrition.In this excerpt from Saini’s book, she investigates the scientists behind the white supremacist journal Mankind Quarterly, which has a network of contributors who sit on the editorial boards of more widely trusted scientific publicationsRead Harriet A. Washington’s cover story for us on “The Well Curve,” which points to the social inequalities that lead to health disparities, especially with regard to tropical diseasesTune 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.

There are 40,000 Asian elephants left in the world, tucked into the mountainous forests of the continent. They used to roam all over India and far up into China, almost as far north as Beijing—but as humans have expanded into their habitats, the elephants have retreated further into the forests. Nearly a quarter of those elephants, around 9,000, are doing work alongside humans that is invisible to the urban eye: carrying people and supplies across remote areas, going where roads cannot, especially at the height of monsoon season. Paradoxically, the logging industry relies on the work of elephants that need the very forest being cut. The balance of that unseen work—and the complicated, often life-long relationship between the elephant and its handler—is the subject of Jacob Shell's new book, Giants of the Monsoon Forest. He joins us on the podcast to document a disappearing way of life, and to explain how these centuries-long traditions might hold the key to the Asian elephant's survival.Go beyond the episode:Jacob Shell’s Giants of the Monsoon ForestWatch (and read) a New York Times report on “Myanmar’s Unemployed Elephants”Watch footage of elephants rescuing stranded people during the devastating 2017 floods in NepalNPR reports on a new elephant refuge in LaosTune 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.

Did you notice when it suddenly became okay not to say goodbye at the end of a text message conversation? Have you responded to work emails solely using 😃? Is ~ this ~ your favorite punctuation mark for conveying exactly just how much you just don’t care about something? Welcome, Internet Person—you’re using a different kind of English from the previous generation. But these conversational norms weren’t set on high, and how they evolved over the past decades of Internet usage tells us a lot about how language has always been created: collaboratively. Or, as Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch puts it, “Language is humanity’s most spectacular open source project.” She joins us to analyze the language we use online and off—how it got this way, where it’s going, and why it’s a good thing that our words are changing so quickly.Go beyond the episode:Gretchen McCulloch’s Because InternetRead her Resident Linguist column at Wired, formerly at The Toast (you may remember reading about the grammar of doge, perhaps? Much wow) or catch up on the Lingthusiasm PodcastPhone calls have been supplanted by text messages—will voice texting be next? Or are the people using voice texting pointing out a fundamental lack, in language or keyboard support?Inevitably, Godwin’s Law states, “as an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches 1.” Read creator Mike Godwin’s explanation for why he created his counter-meme, and why, in the case of actual fascists, calling someone a Nazi is well within the norms of discoursePeruse the LOLCat Bible or the Creepypasta Wiki, deemed worthy of archive by the Library of Congress (file under folklore)If all these memes confuse you, you can always find your footing at Know Your MemeTune 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.

Aaron Bobrow-Strain is a politics professor at Whitman College with decades of history working on the U.S.-Mexico Border. His new book, The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez, mixes nonfiction and novel, ethnography and essay, to tell the tale of a single woman as she’s pulled back and forth across this imaginary line. Aida Hernandez—which is not her real name—was brought to the United States when she was in elementary school, ferried across the border from the Mexican town of Agua Prieta to its other half: Douglas, Arizona. She grew up there and had an American son, but she was deported—without him—and only made it back to Douglas after enduring immigration court, for-profit detention, family separation, gendered violence, and a host of attendant traumas. Aida’s is not a Cinderella story, and she’s not a bootstrap immigrant fantasy. Bobrow-Strain joins us on the podcast to talk about how Aida’s life illuminates the everyday consequences of our immigration policy. Go beyond the episode:Aaron Bobrow-Strain’s The Death and Life of Aida HernandezLooking to support groups doing work on the border? Bobrow-Strain offers a list of worthy organizations“Rape Trees and Rosary Beads,” by Brendan Linehan, a former Border Patrol agent and current civil rights attorney“Paying to Be Locked Up,” by Keramet Reiter, about the criminalization of uncharged detaineesTune 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.

The tiny village of Gapun in Papua New Guinea is home to an equally tiny language called Tayap. No more than a few hundred people have lived in Gapun, so no more than a few hundred people have ever spoken this isolate language, unrelated to any other on the planet. Our guest this episode, the anthropologist Don Kulick, has been visiting the village since 1985, at one point living there for 15 months to document the Gapun way of life, eat a lot of sago palm pudding, and study Tayap—which, even when he arrived more than 30 years ago, was dying. Today, only about 40 people speak it, and Kulick predicts that the language will be “stone cold dead” in less than 50 years. How did that happen? Perhaps more importantly, what cultural and economic losses paved the way? The answer might lie in the backward way we’ve been framing language death. Go beyond the episode:Don Kulick’s A Death in the RainforestKulick returned to Gapun earlier this year—proudly bearing a copy of his new dictionary—only to learn that all of the village’s young men had possibly rendered themselves impotentExplore these dazzling maps of the 851 individual languages of Papua New Guinea (including Tayap, listed as number 187)Watch the arduous process of harvesting sago palm, a staple food in the countryNational Geographic reports on various initiatives to save the world’s disappearing languages, including the Rosetta Project and WikitonguesTune 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.

On June 28, 1969, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn rebelled against a police raid and lit the spark for the gay liberation movement. Stonewall patrons were among the poorest and most marginalized people in society: the queens and queers who tended not to show up in the papers of record, because society would have preferred that they didn’t exist at all. But when queer existence was acknowledged, it was criminalized—and never so explicitly as in the true crime stories that exploded in popularity after World War I. Newspapers reported on the murder of men by other men in lurid detail, and breathlessly repeated the suspect’s defenses—that he was driven to violence by the victim’s “indecent advances,” to which the only appropriate response was murder. James Polchin joins us on the podcast to discuss how these stories shaped the public imagination about “deviant” behavior, and were fuel for homophobic discrimination from the sex panics of the 1930s to the Lavender Scare of the 1950s—and even today, when queer and trans people are still subjected to conversion therapy and newspapers underreport the murders of trans women of color.Go beyond the episode:James Polchin’s Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before StonewallPeruse the scrapbooks of Carl Van Vechten, which inspired Polchin’s work, through the digital collection of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at YaleRead an interview with artist William E. Jones, whose 2007 film Tearoom presents 1962 police surveillance footage of an Ohio crackdown on “homosexual depravity,” as the local Mansfield News Journal reportedWatch the just-released PBS series The Lavender Scare, about the FBI campaign to fire tens of thousands of queer government workers for their sexuality (and presumed communist sympathies)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.

Americans love their cars. But why? When did cars become so wrapped up in the idea of American identity that we can’t pull ourselves away from them, knowing full well that they’re expensive, emissions-spewing death machines? Why are we so wedded to the idea of cars that we’re now developing all-electric and driverless cars instead of investing in mass transportation? To answer some of these questions, we’re joined this episode by Dan Albert, who writes about the past, present, and future of cars, from Henry Ford’s dirt-cheap and democratic Model T to the predicted death of the automobile in the 1970s—and again, today.Go beyond the episode:Dan Albert’s Are We There Yet?In our summer issue, Steve Lagerfeld mourns what wonders might be lost with the end of drivingFor more on how highways made modern America, read Albert’s essay “The Highway and the City”Julie Beck reports on the decline of driving (and driver’s licenses)An academic analysis of how different modes of transport shape urban travel patternsFor a deeper look at Tesla and Uber, Albert recommends Edward Niedermeyer’s Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors and Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped: The Battle for UberMore on how cars shape the way we view the world from Gijs Mom, and how driverless cars might change the world from Samuel SchwartzTimeOut ranks the 50 best road trip songs of all time (though we would have added Gary Numan’s “Cars”)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.

Geoffrey Chaucer was born a wine-merchant’s son in 1340s London. He survived the plague, the Hundred Years’ War, the Great Rising, and an adolescence spent wearing tight pants in a rich woman’s house to become one of the most celebrated poets in English. In the first biography of Chaucer in a generation, historian Marion Turner makes the case that the man we think of as a great English poet was, in fact, a great European one. He was inspired by the literature of Italy, Spain, France, and elsewhere—but more importantly, he drew on his interactions with the people he encountered during his travels, and from the places he visited. For example, how did the frescoes of Florence give rise to the perspectives in The House of Fame? Did Chaucer’s visits to his daughter’s none-too-chaste nunnery influence the bawdy Nun’s Priest's Tale? Marion Turner takes us back to the Middle Ages to find out.  Go beyond the episode:Marion Turner’s Chaucer: A European LifeBrush up on your Middle English with the Norton edition of The Canterbury Tales or The Riverside 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.