#200: A Literary Love Letter to Egypt

This week, Smarty Pants host Stephanie Bastek revisits a conversation from 2023 that originally sparked her desire to return to the debate over Humanities 110 at Reed College. The idea of “Western civilization” looms large in the popular imagination, but it’s no longer taken seriously in academia. In her book, The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives, historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney examines why the West won’t die and, in the process, dismantles ahistorical concepts like the “clash of civilizations” and the notion of a linear progression from Greek and Roman ideals to those of our present day—“from Plato to NATO.” Through biographical portraits of figures both well-known and forgotten—Herodotus and Francis Bacon, Livilla and Phyllis Wheatley, Tullia d’Aragona and Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi—Mac Sweeney assembles a history that resembles less of a grand narrative than a spiderweb of influence. Successive empires (whether Ottoman, Holy Roman, British, or American) built up self-mythologies in the service of their expansionist, patriarchal, or, later, racist ideologies. Mac Sweeney joins the podcast to talk about why the West has been such a dominant idea and on what values we might base a new vision of contemporary “western” identity.Go beyond the episode:Naoíse Mac Sweeney’s The West: A New History in Fourteen LivesIn “Claiming the Classical,” Mac Sweeney and her co-authors examine how classical antiquity is used by 21st-century political actorsSubscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHosted by Stephanie Bastek. Theme music by Nathan Prillaman. Exploding the Canon returns next week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Smarty Pants host and Scholar senior editor Stephanie Bastek delves into the history of Black Studies at her alma mater, Reed College, drawing connections between the fight for a Black Studies program in 1968 and the efforts of Reedies Against Racism to diversify the college’s mandatory freshman humanities course 48 years later. Speaking with former students and members of Reed’s Black Student Union, Bastek recounts the 1968 BSU occupation of Eliot Hall, one of the largest buildings on campus, as part of the campaign for a Black Studies program. The program was established, but not without backlash—and rifts among faculty members would threaten Reed's foundation for decades to come.Read Martin White’s essay, “The Black Studies Controversy at Reed College, 1968–1970” in the Oregon Historical QuarterlyIn Memoriam: Linda Gordon Howard, Calvin FreemanVisit our episode page to see more of Stephen Robinson's photographs from 1968Transcript available on our websiteFeatured voices in this episode: Andre Wooten, Mary Frankie McFarlane Forte, Martin White, Stephen Robinson, Roger Porter, George Brandon, Steve Engel, and Suzanne Snively. Ron Herndon oral history audio courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society. Archival recording of the October 28, 1968 BSU town hall featuring Cathy Allen and Ron Herndon courtesy of the Reed College Library.Produced and hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Original music by Rhae Royal. Audio storytelling consulting by Mickey Capper. Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS Feed Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The autumn of 2016 at Reed College was tumultuous. On September 26, students organized a boycott of classes in response to recent police killings of Black people, both to allow time to mourn and to highlight the ways in which they felt Reed was failing people of color. They also put forward a list of demands—including an overhaul of the mandatory freshman humanities course, Humanities 110, which, they alleged, focused too narrowly on European history and ideas, wrongly discounting the contributions of other cultures. That same week, they would begin a year-long occupation of Vollum Hall, where lectures were held, thereby creating fissures among the faculty and kickstarting the process of changing the course.RAR’s 25 demandsReed’s November and December 2016 Progress Reports in response Featured voices in this episode: Addison Bates, Eden Daniel, alea adigweme, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Peter Steinberger, Jan Mieskowski, Pancho Savery, Mary James, Nathalia King, and Mary Frankie McFarlane Forte. Newsreel: KOIN News.Produced and hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Original music by Rhae Royal. Audio storytelling consulting by Mickey Capper.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedTranscript available on our episode page. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At Reed College in 2016, a student group named Reedies Against Racism began protesting the syllabus of the mandatory freshman humanities course and the college’s perceived failure to support Black students. After a year of sustained action, the students won the largest-ever revision of Humanities 110—but half a decade on, emotions are still raw. Smarty Pants host Stephanie Bastek graduated from Reed in 2013, and she returned last year to find out how much the culture had really changed. Humanities 110 Syllabi: 2009-10, 2016-17, 2023-24Visit our episode page for a visual representation of the regions of study in Hum 110, 1944–2015 (graph by Michael Song)Featured voices in this episode: Nigel Nicholson, Jan Mieszkowski, Peter Steinberger, Nathalia King, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Pancho Savery, Libby Drumm, and Eden Daniel. Reed College documentary audio from Give Up Steam (1991) by Daniel Levin. Newsreel commentators: Michael Jones and Jennifer Kabbany. Transcript available on our episode page.Produced and hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Original music by Rhae Royal. Audio storytelling consulting by Mickey Capper.Follow The American Scholar on Twitter and Instagram. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Smarty Pants returns on March 29 with a new miniseries: Exploding the Canon, about an all-out culture war at Reed College.  In 2016, a student group named Reedies Against Racism began protesting the syllabus of the mandatory freshman humanities course and the college’s failure to support Black students. After a year of sustained protest, the students won the largest-ever revision of Humanities 110—but half a decade on, emotions are still raw. Smarty Pants host Stephanie Bastek graduated from Reed in 2013, and she returned last year to find out how much Reed’s culture had really changed.Trailer produced by Mickey Capper. Original music by Rhae Royal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our Summer 2023 issue, Julian Saporiti writes about the George Igawa Orchestra, which entertained thousands of incarcerated Japanese Americans at a World War II internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. But Saporiti, who releases music as No-No Boy, has been singing about the “best god damn band in Wyoming” since 2021, when his album 1975 came out. No-No Boy—named for the Japanese Americans who twice answered “no” on a wartime loyalty questionnaire—has been releasing songs about forgotten pockets of Asian-American history for years: Burmese migrants, Cambodian kids whose parents survived the Khmer Rouge, Saigon teens, and his mother’s experience as a Vietnamese refugee of an American war. We caught up with Saporiti at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, where he performed a set in celebration of the 75th anniversary of Smithsonian Folkways, to talk about reciprocity, scholars by waterfalls, and how to smuggle in history with a few strummed chords.Go beyond the episode:Listen to No-No Boy’s previous two albums, 1975 and 1942, and pre-order the next releaseRead “Last Dance,” Saporiti’s story of the George Igawa OrchestraUnfamiliar with the history of the no-no boys? Listen to our interview with Frank Abe about John Okada’s seminal novel No-No Boy about a Nisei draft-resisterTune 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 • 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.

Longtime style reporter Dana Thomas’s book, Fashionopolis, is an indictment of the true costs of fashion—like poisoned water, crushed workers, and overflowing landfills—that never make it onto the price tag of a dress or pair of jeans. Between 2000 and 2014, the annual number of garments produced doubled to 100 billion: 14 new garments per person per year for every person on the planet. The average garment is only worn seven times before being tossed—assuming it’s not one of the 20 billion clothing items that go unsold and unworn. It’s no surprise, then, that the fashion industry accounts for at least 10 percent of global carbon emissions and 20 percent of all industrial water pollution. Though the industry employs one out of every six people globally, fewer than two percent of them earn a living wage—more than 98 percent of workers are not only underpaid, they also toil in unsafe, unsanitary conditions. But change is underfoot: retailers are shifting their supply models, circular and slow fashion are on the rise, and new technology is making the manufacture of new and recycled fabrics cleaner. Dana Thomas joins the podcast to explain what will be required to fix a broken system. This episode originally aired in 2019.Go beyond the episode:Dana Thomas’s Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of ClothesThomas’s tips for weaning yourself off fast fashionWhy donating secondhand clothes to developing countries can actually prevent development—and kill local textile industriesWhat is “slow fashion”? The New York Times explainsMartha Stewart teaches Clothing Repair 101Tune 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.Subscribe: iTunes • 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.

Atlantic bluefin tuna have been swimming in our oceans, and in the human imagination, for millions of years. Topping out at more than 1,500 pounds apiece, these apex predators face their greatest threat not from sharks or a dwindling food supply but from our unwillingness to stop overfishing them (to say nothing of the occasional catastrophic oil spill). But our understanding of how these majestic creatures navigate the ocean, defined by an imaginary line through the middle of the Atlantic, has been challenged by recent discoveries—and the life story of one tuna in particular. Karen Pinchin’s new book, Kings of Their Own Ocean, tells the story of that fish: an Atlantic bluefin named Amelia, tagged in 2004 by the fisherman Al Anderson off the coast of Rhode Island and recaptured twice more before her ultimate death in the Mediterranean. Pinchin joins the podcast to talk about what Amelia’s tale has to tell us about fishing and climate, science and commerce, and the future of the seas.Go beyond the episode:Karen Pinchin’s Kings of Their Own Ocean: Tuna, Obsession, and the Future of Our SeasLet the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch do the work of choosing sustainable seafood for you (you can even download and print little pocket guides for each region—en español tambien!)In our Winter 2023 issue, Juli Berwald considered what coral might teach us about avoiding ecological catastropheJohn Dos Passos loved fishing for tuna just as much as Papa Hemingway didAnna Badhken spoke to us in 2018 about how overfishing and warming waters have devastated a Senegalese fishing communityTune 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 • 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.

The litany of contemporary conspiracy theories runs long: Pizzagate, QAnon, chemtrails, “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams,” “birds aren’t real.” Some of these are funny—the rumor that Avril Lavigne and/or Paul McCartney have been replaced by doppelgängers—and some have deadly consequences, like the mass murders motivated by replacement theory or the Chronicles of the Elders of Zion. We might like to think this is a recent phenomenon, but the first American president to espouse a conspiracy theory was actually George Washington, a freemason who believed that the Illuminati caused the French Revolution. In his new book, Under the Eye of Power, Colin Dickey asks, “What if paranoia, particularly a paranoia of secret, subversive societies, is not just peripheral to the functioning of democracy, but at its very heart?”Go beyond the episode:Colin Dickey’s Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American DemocracyListen to our previous conversation about cryptids, aliens, and other weird encountersJust a hop, skip, and a jump away from conspiracy theories? Belief in quack Covid cures and New Age elixirs, which Dickey wrote about for us last yearThe “groomers” conspiracy draws on a long history of trans- and homophobiaFor more about the Satanic Panic, listen to this episode of the You’re Wrong About podcastTune 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 • 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.

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. This episode originally aired in 2019.Go beyond the episode:Timothy C. Winegard’s The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest PredatorTo 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 tipsVisit our episode page for a gallery of anti-mosquito efforts, courtesy of Dutton 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 • 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.