Category: 3-BookTalkSometimeCommentary

Grandfather of the Treaties: Finding our Future Through the Wampum Covenant (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025) by Daniel Coleman is an essential read for Canadians looking to understand our nation’s complicated history. In this ambiance episode host Hollay Ghadery talks to Daniel as well as Indigenous artist, writer, and historian Rick Hill about wampum, early settler relations, and how we can use wampum agreements to move forward today.

Grandfather of the Treaties shares Coleman’s extensive study of Haudenosaunee wampum agreements with European nations, which was done in close consultation with many Indigenous scholars, shows how we can chart a new future for everyone living in what we now call Canada—Indigenous, settler, more recent arrival—by tracing wampum’s long-employed, now-neglected past. The Covenant Chain-Two Row treaty tradition models how to develop good minds so that we can live peacefully together on the river of life that sustains us all. It is a philosophy, an ethical system, a way of learning to live as relatives with our human and more-than-human neighbours. This covenant has been called the “grandfather of the treaties,” and is also considered the grandmother of Canada’s Constitution.

About Daniel Coleman:

Daniel Coleman recently retired from being a professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University and an associate professor at Six Nations Polytechnic on the Grand River territory. He is a writer who is fascinated by the power of narrative arts to generate a sense of place and community, mindfulness, curiosity and wonder

About Rick Hill:

Rick Hill is a citizen of the Beaver Clan of the Tuscarora Nation of the Haudenosaunee at Grand River. A practicing artist, curator, art historian, writer, and public speaker, who has worked with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, and Six Nations Polytechnic here in Ontario, Rick has been involved in wampum repatriation and interpretation since the 1970s.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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Harriett Gilbert talks with Michelle de Kretser about her eighth novel, Scary Monsters, which won the 2023 Rathbones Folio Fiction Prize.

This diptych novel consists of the tale of two immigrants, one in the past, and one in a dystopian future that seems all too possible. Which story to start with? That’s the reader’s decision.

In the past, Lili. Her family migrated to Australia from Asia when she was a child. Now, in the 1980s, she teaches in Montpellier, in the south of France. Her life revolves around her desires to carve out a space for herself, and become a great woman like Simone de Beauvoir. She tries to make friends, observes the treatment of other immigrants to France who don’t have the shield of an Australian passport, and continually has to dodge her creepy downstairs neighbour, as stories of serial killers dominate news headlines.

In the future, Lyle works for a government department in near-future Australia where Islam has been banned, a pandemic has only recently passed, and the elderly are encouraged to take advantage of The Amendment - a law that allows, if not encourages, assisted suicide. An Asian migrant, Lyle is terrified of repatriation and spends all his energy on embracing "Australian values", which in this future involve rampant consumerism, an obsession with the real estate market, and never mentioning the environmental catastrophe even as wildfires choke the air with a permanent smoke cloud. He's also preoccupied by his callously ambitious wife, his rebellious children and his elderly mother who refuses to capitulate to his desperate desire to invisibly blend in with society.

We love it, not just because of the playful dual structure, but because Michelle’s writing tackles the monsters - racism, misogyny, ageism - with keen observations and biting humour, shining a light not just on how society treats newcomers, but how we relate to our idea of our shared history, and what kind of future will be built from the world we live in now.

On this week’s show, the hosts discuss Apple TV’s latest ode (tragic comedy?) to the movie industry with The Studio. Then, they step up to the plate and take a swing at the baseball film Eephus. Finally, they invite Slate’s Rebecca Onion to discuss the new edition to Panem’s dystopia: Suzanne Collin’s Sunrise on the Reaping.

Endorsements:

Dana: A French Village Podcast

Steve: “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship” by Hannah Arendt

Dan: Sky Daddy’ by Kate Folk

Podcast production and research by Vic Whitley-Berry. Email us at culturefest@slate.com.

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Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State (University of Arizona Press, 2025) by Dr. Andrew Canessa & Dr. Manuela Lavinas Picq takes the provocative view that Indigenous people have been fundamental to how contemporary state sovereignty was imagined, theorized, and practiced.

Delving into European political philosophy, comparative politics, and contemporary international law, this open-access book shows how the concept of indigeneity has shaped the development of the modern state. The exclusion of Indigenous people was not a collateral byproduct; it was a political project in its own right. The book argues that indigeneity is a political identity relational to modern nation-states and that Indigenous politics, although marking the boundary of the state, are co-constitutive of colonial processes of state-making. In showing how indigeneity is central to how the international system of states operates, the book forefronts Indigenous peoples as political actors to reject essentializing views that reduce them to cultural “survivors” rooted in the past.

With insights drawn from diverse global contexts and empirical research from Bolivia and Ecuador, this work advocates for the relevance of Indigenous studies within political science and argues for an ethnography of sovereignty in anthropology. Savages and Citizens makes a compelling case for the centrality of Indigenous perspectives to understand the modern state from political theory to international studies.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Look in the nonfiction section of any bookstore and you’ll find dozens of history books making the same bold claim: that their narrow, unexpected subject somehow changed the world. Potatoes, kudzu, soccer, coffee, Iceland, bees, oak trees, sand, chickens—there are books about all of them, and many more besides, with the phrase “changed the world” or something similarly grandiose right there in the title. These books are sometimes called “microhistories” or “thing biographies” and they’ve been a trope in publishing for decades. In this episode, we establish where this trend came from, figure out why it’s been so persistent, and then we put a bunch of authors on the spot, asking them to make the case for why their subjects changed the world.

The writers you’ll hear from include: 

• Simon Garfield (Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World)
• Mark Kurlansky (Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World)
• George Gibson, publisher of Cod and Dava Sobel’s Longitude
• Historian Bronwen Everill
• Slate writer Henry Grabar (Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World)
• Gastropod co-host Nicola Twilley (Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves)
• Tim Queeney (Rope: How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization)
• Leila Philip (Beaver Land: How One Weird Rodent Made America). 

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman also produce our show. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Thank you to Joshua Specht, author of Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America; Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World; Tina Lupton; Dan Kois; and Nancy Miller.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen.

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In this episode of Outward, Jules Gill-Peterson sits down with Colby Gordon to talk about his new book, Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature. Gordon digs into early modern religious texts that, instead of rejecting trans existence, actually provided ways to think about gender transformation—socially, surgically, and theologically. They explore what Shakespeare, Milton, and other writers had to say about gender, how history challenges today’s assumptions about transition, and why the right-wing war on trans people gets the past all wrong.

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To some, the act of writing a memoir might seem daunting, invasive, or navel-gazing. But excavating memories, noticing patterns, and revisiting events from other points of view can lead to healing—regardless of whether your work gets published.

On this episode of How To!, Carvell Wallace brings on Melissa Febos. Melissa is the bestselling author of five books, including Girlhood—winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism—and a forthcoming memoir, The Dry Season. She teaches us how to create our own narrative in ways that are safe for you and empathetic of others. 

If you liked this episode check out: Carvell Wallace on Another Word for Love, How To Start Writing (with Anna Quindlen and John Dickerson), and How To Get Your Book Published

Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

The show is produced by Rosemary Belson, with Kevin Bendis. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.

Want more How To!? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the How To! show page. Or, visit slate.com/howtoplus to get access wherever you listen.

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David Plotz talks with author Adam Higginbotham about his new book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. They discuss the feats of engineering that took place, the political cynicism and cost-cutting that played a role in the tragedy, the heroism and tragic loss of the people on board the shuttle, and more.   

Tweet us your questions @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages could be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Podcast production by Cheyna Roth.

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The final installment of our series explores the conversations that most of us dread, like frank discussions of our differences or a negative performance review at work. We often anticipate that these chats will go badly—and end in hurt feelings or embarrassment—but there are proven ways to make them easier to navigate.

Host Charles Duhigg talks with psychologist Jay Van Bavel about strategies for having the hardest conversations. And: Vernā Myers, Netflix’s former vice president for inclusion strategy, tells the story of what happened inside the company after an executive was fired for using a racial slur. 

This Slate miniseries dives into the art and science of meaningful conversations, inspired by Duhigg’s bestselling book, Supercommunicators. The guides we mention in this episode can be found at charlesduhigg.com/tools/

Supercommunicators was produced by Sophie Summergrad and Derek John, who also did the sound design. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.

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This week, Bryan Lowder sits down with activist and author Dean Spade to discuss his latest book, Love in a F*cked Up World. Together, they unpack how capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy shape our desires, the pitfalls of the “relationship escalator,” and why collective care might be the most radical love of all. From breaking free of toxic relationship scripts to reimagining intimacy beyond hierarchy and control, this conversation challenges everything we’ve been taught about love—and offers a vision for something more liberatory.

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