Across the Margin: The Podcast

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, and music producer Stuart Bogie. Bogie has toured and recorded extensively with groups such as Antibalas, Arcade Fire, TV on the Radio, and Iron and Wine, to name a few, and he performed as the featured soloist in the original Broadway production of Fela!. As a composer/arranger, he scored the Oscar nominated documentary How To Survive a Plague, which featured performances by the Kronos Quartet alongside Bogie’s group Superhuman Happiness. He has appeared on recordings by renowned artists such as Craig Finn (of The Hold Steady), Cass McCombs, Sharon Van Etten, Angelique Kidjo (2 Grammy winning albums), Medeski Martin and Wood, Yeasayer, Spencer Day, Holly Miranda, Foals, Passion Pit, Mac Miller, and legendary improvised conductor Butch Morris. Bogie currently leads The Bogie Band featuring Joe Russo, a nine piece Winds and Drum group that just released their debut album entitled The Prophets In The City (Royal Potato Family) — the main focus of this episode. The Prophets in the City is a collaboration between old friends, as Bogie teams with drummer extraordinaire Joe Russo most known for helming Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. Heightening Bogie's fiery arrangements and Russo's dynamic drumming, The Prophets in the City features a supporting cast of musicians whose resumes run through some of New York City's most beloved bands including Antibalas, The Dap-Kings, Budos Band, St. Vincent, and David Byrne's American Utopia.The resulting efforts on the debut album are riotous and jubilant, pushing the boundaries of instrumental music. In this episode host Michael Shields and Stuart Bogie discuss how New York City’s energy and spirit directly inspired The Prophets in the City. They discuss the brilliant grouping of players on the album and what it's like for Bogie to work with the phenomenally talented Joe Russo. They discuss music that has influenced Bogie over the years, a variety of his other projects, and so much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Across The Margin : The Podcast host Michael Shields interviews Elijah Anderson, the Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University. Anderson is one of the leading urban ethnographers in the United States and his publications include Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (1999); Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community (1990); and the classic sociological work, A Place on the Corner (1978). He also wrote The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life (2011) and his latest book — the subject of this episode — is Black In White Space which sheds fresh light on the dire persistence of racial discrimination in our country. A birder strolling in Central Park. A college student lounging on a university quad. Two men sitting in a coffee shop. Perfectly ordinary actions in ordinary settings — and yet, they sparked jarring and inflammatory responses that involved the police and attracted national media coverage. Why? In essence, Elijah Anderson would argue, because these were Black people existing in white spaces. In Black In White Space, Anderson brings his immense knowledge and ethnography to bear in this timely study of the racial barriers that are still firmly entrenched in our society at every class level. He focuses on symbolic racism, a new form of racism in America caused by the stubbornly powerful stereotype of the ghetto embedded in the white imagination, which subconsciously connects all Black people with crime and poverty regardless of their social or economic position. From Philadelphia street-corner conversations to Anderson’s own morning jogs through a Cape Cod vacation town, he probes a wealth of experiences to shed new light on how symbolic racism makes all Black people uniquely vulnerable to implicit bias in police stops and racial discrimination in our country. Throughout this episode Michael Shields and Elijah Anderson discuss how Black In White Space is part of a larger, and critically important, body of work by Anderson. They define and explore the role of ethnographers in social science while breaking down the idea of symbolic racism, the ghetto as a symbol and a mental space, places that Anderson defines as “cosmopolitan canopies,” and so much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Across The Margin : The Podcast host Michael Shields interviews Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University where she is also the principal investigator for the Democratic Knowledge Project. In 2020, she won the Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, administered by the Library of Congress, that recognizes work in disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prizes. She is the author or co-editor of many books, including Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, and Democracy in the time of Coronavirus, which is the focus of this episode. In Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus Allen untangles the U.S. government’s COVID-19 victories and failures to offer a plan for creating a more resilient democratic polity — one that can better respond to both the present pandemic and future crises. Looking to history, Allen also identifies the challenges faced by democracies in other times that required strong government action. In an analysis spanning from ancient Greece to the Reconstruction Amendments and the present day, Allen argues for the relative effectiveness of collaborative federalism over authoritarian compulsion and for the unifying power of a common cause. But for democracy to endure, we — as participatory citizens — must commit to that cause: a just and equal social contract and support for good governance. In this episode Michael Shields and Danielle Allen explore what exactly an ideal social contract that serves as the basis for a functioning constitutional democracy would look like while examining how currently that social contract is fundamentally broken. They discuss how important leadership is when dealing with massive crises, how the prospect of a "common purpose" could be the most powerful tool in the democratic tool kit, how federalism can be an asset in trying times, what the federal and state governments should have done to combat Covid 19, and much, much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Phil Freeman, a renowned music journalist specializing in jazz and metal. He is the former managing editor of the world music magazine Global Rhythm, the former editor-in-chief of the metal magazine Metal Edge, the founder of MSN Entertainment's Headbäng daily metal blog, and currently writes a monthly jazz column, Ugly Beauty, for Stereogum. Freeman is also the co-creator of Burning Ambulance, a quarterly journal of arts and culture that encompasses a website, a podcast, and a record label. His latest book, Ugly Beauty: Jazz in the 21st Century, the focus of this episode, highlights how vibrant and diverse today’s Jazz scene truly is. What does jazz “mean” 20 years into the 21st century? Has streaming culture rendered music literally meaningless, thanks to the removal of all context beyond the playlist? Are there any traditions left to explore? Has the destruction of the apprenticeship model (young musicians learning from their elders) changed the music irrevocably? Are any sounds off limits? How far out can you go and still call it “jazz”? Or should the term be retired? These questions, and many more, are answered in Ugly Beauty, as Phil Freeman digs through his own experiences and conversations with present-day players. In this episode host Michael Shields and Freeman discuss what to expect when exploring the pages of Ugly Beauty while expounding on the unique jazz sounds coming out of the four cities focused on in the book: Los Angeles, London, Chicago, and New York City. They talk about the current surge in jazz appreciation abounding and the reasons for it, what it meant when Kamasi Washington broke through garnering masses of fans from outside of the Jazz world, and how hip-hop has dramatically affected Jazz in the 21st century. They also praise a slew of artists who cannot be contained by traditional views of what is and isn’t jazz, and so much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with guitarist Scott Metzger, a musician who has spent the past decade earning a reputation as one of the most adventurous improvisers in live music. When he wasn’t sharing the stage with the likes of Phil Lesh, John Scofield or Nels Cline, he was playing to massive crowds with Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. His musical interests, however, run broader than his bonafides might suggest. During downtime from JRAD Metzger pursued projects like WOLF!, a hard-charging, fully electrified guitar trio that balanced tight compositions with group improvisation, and the Showdown Kids, an acoustic gypsy jazz trio. When the global pandemic darkened stages everywhere, Metzger hunkered down in Brooklyn and did what came naturally — he picked up the guitar every day and wrote instrumental music. Shortly thereafter, he booked time at a Brooklyn recording studio to document the guitar pieces he’d created. The result of those efforts is Too Close to Reason — Metzger’s first solo album and the focus of this episode. The 12-track collection, released by Royal Potato Family, showcases a more contemplative side of his musical personality. From the first swelling notes of the atmospheric ”Appropriate Wattage,” the album is full of musical surprises, starting with the fact that Metzger plays nearly every note of this primarily acoustic guitar-based album. The sole exception is “Only Child,” a ballad with Katie Jacoby, violinist for The Who (and Metzger’s wife). Too Close To Reason exposes trace elements of Metzger’s musical DNA through influences like Chet Atkins, Django Reinhardt, Jim Hall, and Richard Thompson, but it ultimately presents his own fully-formed and distinct voice as a guitarist. In short, his debut reveals an artist in full bloom who has honed his craft and knows himself, contradictions and all. Within this episode host Michael Shields and Scott Metzger discuss the musicians, the guitar, and the pandemic that inspired his new album. They expound upon the fascinating ways in which the first two singles, “Don’t Be a Stranger” and “Waltz For Beverly,” came to life while conversing about how special it is that he has had the opportunity to create music with his wife, violinist Katie Jacoby. They even discuss how the artist's recent addiction to running bolstered his capabilities in regard to his performing with Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, and so much more. Scott Metzger will celebrate the release of Too Close To Reason with four East Coast performances beginning at the end of March (currently on-sale) in Cambridge, New York City, Washington, DC and Philadelphia. Too Close To Reason is available March 4th, pre-order a 180-gram vinyl here! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Ian Tyrrell, emeritus professor of history at the University of New South Wales. He is the author of numerous books, including True Gardens of the Gods: Californian-Australian Environmental Reform, 1860 –1930 and Historians in Public. His latest book, American Exceptionalism: A New History of an Old Idea, is the focus of this episode and persists as an important and remarkably comprehensive examination of an extremely contentious notion. The idea that the United States is unlike every other country in world history is a surprisingly resilient one. Throughout his distinguished career, Ian Tyrrell has been one of the most influential historians researching the idea of American Exceptionalism, but he has never written a book focused solely on it, until now. The notion that American identity might be exceptional emerged, Tyrrell shows in his book, from the belief that the nascent early republic was not simply a postcolonial state but a genuinely new experiment in an imperialist world dominated by Britain. Prior to the Civil War, American Exceptionalism fostered declarations of cultural, economic, and spatial independence. As the country grew in population and size, becoming a major player in the global order, its exceptionalist beliefs came more and more into focus — and into question. Over time, a political divide emerged: those who believed that America’s exceptionalism was the basis of its virtue and those who saw America as either a long way from perfect or actually fully unexceptional. Tyrrell masterfully articulates in his book the many forces that made American Exceptionalism such a divisive and definitional concept. Today, the demands that people acknowledge America’s Exceptionalism have grown ever more strident, even as the material and moral evidence for that exceptionalism — to the extent that there ever was any — has withered away. In this episode host Michael Shields and Ian Tyrrell discuss the origins of American Exceptionalism, how one would go about quantifying a nation’s exceptionalism, how American Exceptionalism persists as ideology representing reality rather than an account of American actuality, the rise of religious-based American Exceptionalism in the 1970s and 80s, how America can increasingly be perceived as exceptional in a negative light, and much, much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast looks back on the distressing events of January 6th, 2021 with an examination of the documentary Day of Rage, a film that culls thousands of hours of videos and audio from rioters and police body cams to tell the story of the Capitol insurrection. The product of a six-month New York Times investigation, Day of Rage provides the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why. To properly delve into this powerful documentary, this episode features an interview the senior producer of the New York Times Visual Investigations team who produced and co-directed Day of Rage, Malachy Browne. Browne was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for international reporting for coverage of Russian culpability in crimes around the world, including the bombing of hospitals in Syria. He has has led investigations into the killing of Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans by police, the Las Vegas mass shooting, chemical weapons attacks in Syria, extra-judicial military shootings in Nigeria, and the killing of a young Palestinian medic along the Gaza-Israel border. In this episode host Michael Shields and Malachy Browne discuss a bevy of the shocking particulars of the January 6th insurrection that were featured in Day of Rage. They converse upon the massive effort in bringing the documentary to life, who exactly the rioters were as exposed in Day of Rage, the evidence present in the film that that the storming of the Capitol was assuredly premeditated, how the Capitol police were let down by their superiors on that fateful day, and so much more. Join in on an episode that pays tribute to a documentary that lays out plainly just how fragile democracy can be.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast features an interview with Lina Zeldovich, a writer and editor specializing in the journalism of solutions. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Smithsonian, Popular Science, Scientific American, Atlantic, and Newsweek, among many other popular outlets, and she has won awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York, the Society of Professional Journalists Deadline Club, and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Her first book, The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste Into Wealth and Heath, is the focus of this episode. Did you know that the average person produces about four hundred pounds of excrement a year (keep in mind, more than seven billion people live on this planet!). Because of the diseases it spreads, humankind has learned to distance themselves from our waste, but the long line of engineering marvels we’ve created to do so — from Roman sewage systems and medieval latrines to the immense, computerized treatment plants we use today — has also done considerable damage to the earth’s ecology. Now scientists tell us that we have been wasting our waste. When recycled correctly, this resource, cheap and widely available, can be converted into a sustainable energy source, act as an organic fertilizer, and provide effective medicinal therapy for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection. In clear and engaging prose that draws on her extensive research and interviews, Lina Zeldovich documents the massive redistribution of nutrients and sanitation inequities across the globe. She profiles the pioneers of waste upcycling, from startups in African villages to innovators in American cities that convert sewage into fertilizer, biogas, crude oil, and even life-saving medicine. She breaks taboos surrounding sewage disposal and shows how hygienic waste repurposing can help battle Climate Change, reduce acid rain, and eliminate toxic algal blooms. Ultimately, she implores us to use our innate organic power for the greater good. In this episode host Michael Shields and Lina Zeldovich discuss the stigmas around human waste that has led it to being undervalued throughout history. They converse upon many invaluable uses of our organic matter, from fertilizer to biofuels and beyond. And they explore how sewage technologies and greening up fuel can help fight Climate Change. Grossly ambitious and rooted in scientific scholarship, The Other Dark Matter shows how human excrement can be a life-saving, money-making resource — if we make better use of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast introduces you to American Gadlfy, a documentary that tells the story of how, a decade since his last campaign, 89-year-old former senator and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Gravel came out of retirement when a group of teenagers convinces him to run for president one last time. Through the senator’s official Twitter account, the four “Gravel teens” embark on an unlikely adventure to qualify him for the Democratic debates in order to advance an anti-war, anti-corruption, and direct democracy agenda in the 2020 presidential race. Working together, the young activists and the experienced politician confuse and amaze the generations between them. To properly delve into this powerful, inspiring documentary, this episode features an interview with the director of American Gadfly, Skye Wallin. For over a decade, Wallin has been deeply immersed in the worlds of documentary, journalism, and activism. He spent several years filming with scientists and activists at more than twenty water-related disasters across the United States. Wallin worked closely with Mark Ruffalo on this project, leading video and short documentary production for Ruffalo’s organization Water Defense for three years. Wallin's work helped to expose multiple water pollution scandals that had been covered up, including EXXON's poisoning of Lake Conway in Arkansas and millions of organic crops being watered with oil-contaminated water sold to farmers by Chevron, the latter of which resulted in front page coverage in the Los Angeles Times. His latest effort, American Gadlfy, isn’t simply a documentary about an underdog trying to win an election. It's about how the next generation understands democracy, engages in politics and influences ordinary people with passion, humor and honesty. So tune in to learn all about this rousing political adventure  on this latest episode of Across the Margin: The Podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast features an interview with Jake Poller, the author of Aldous Huxley, which is the focus of this episode, and also Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality. Poller edited the essay collection Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century and his articles have appeared in the Aldous Huxley Annual, the D.H. Lawrence Review, Aries, Literature and Theology and International Journal for the Study of New Religions. His research focuses on the intersection of alternative spirituality, Western esotericism, philosophy and psychoanalysis with twentieth-century literature and culture. Aldous Huxley was one of the twentieth century’s most prescient thinkers. Poller’s biography, named after the philosopher, is a rich and lucid account that charts the different phases of Huxley’s career, from the early satirist who depicted the glamorous despair of the postwar generation, to the committed pacifist of the 1930s, the spiritual seeker of the 1940s, the psychedelic sage of the 1950s — who affirmed the spiritual potential of mescaline and LSD — to the New Age prophet that defined his later years. While Huxley is still best known as the author of Brave New World, Jake Poller argues that it is The Perennial Philosophy, The Doors of Perception, and Island — Huxley’s blueprint for a utopian society — that have had the most cultural impact. Huxley’s influence was vast. We see it today in the ever increasing appetite for spiritual experiences, meditation retreats, ayahuasca holidays, the multi-billion dollar “shroom boom,” the popularity of yoga, tai-chi and other mind-body practices, and the rise of spiritual communities and centers. Now more than ever, Poller points out so vividly in his book, the work of Aldous Huxley leads the way. In this episode host Michael Shields and Jake Poller discuss what compelled Huxley to seek out transcendent experiences and how psychedelics changed his life and worldview. They explore what his novel Island means to his legacy and why his bounteous, insightful essays deserve a much wider readership, and much, much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.