Month: May 2015

Posted on

The Gist - Dylan’s 14-Month Miracle

In a span of just 14 months, Bob Dylan wrote, recorded, and released three of the greatest albums of all time. Today on The Gist, David Kinney explains how it happened. He’s the author of The Dylanologists: Adventures in the Land of Bob. For the Spiel, you can’t find a better man than David Letterman. Today’s sponsor: Stamps.com. Buy and print official U.S. postage right from your desk using your own computer and printer. Right now, get a no-risk trial and a $110 bonus offer by going to Stamps.com and using the promo code THEGIST. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus.  

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Posted on

The Gist - Nine out of 10 Germs Agree

Today on The Gist, what does the looong campaign mean for 2016’s candidates? Annie Lowrey from New York magazine joins us for a reasonable amount of time. She’s part of a new Panoply podcast called Podcast for America, which debuts Tuesday on Soundcloud and iTunes.  Then, in another installment of “Is That Bulls--t?” Mike asks Maria Konnikova of the New Yorker if hand sanitizer is a reasonable use of purse space. Her new book The Confidence Game is now available for preorder. For the Spiel, Mike explores the growing popularity of the breastaurant—and does it partly in rhyme. Today’s sponsor: Harry’s, the shaving company that offers German-engineered blades, well-designed handles, and shipping right to your door. Visit Harrys.com for $5 off your first purchase with the promo code GIST. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Posted on

Social Science Bites - Steven Lukes on Émile Durkheim

If anyone can lay claim to be the father of sociology, it’s Émile Durkheim. By the time of the French academic’s death in 1917, he’d produced an extraordinary body of work on an eclectic range of topics, and had become a major contributor to French intellectual life. Above all, his ambition was to establish sociology as a legitimate science.

Steven Lukes, a political and social theorist at New York University, was transfixed by Durkheim from early in his academic career -- his first major book was 1972's Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work. A Historical and Critical Study -- and has gone on to become one of the world’s leading Durkheim scholars. Of course, that’s almost a sidelight to Lukes’ own sociological theorizing, in particular his “radical” view of power that examines power in three dimensions – the overt, the covert and the power to shape desires and beliefs.”

In this Social Science Bites podcast, Lukes tells interviewer Nigel Warburton how Durkheim's exploration of issues like labor, suicide and religion proved intriguing to a young academic and enduring for an established one.

 

 

Posted on

The Gist - Why We Lost It Over Beanie Babies

Today on The Gist, we remind you of what’s in that crate in the back corner of your basement. Author Zac Bissonnette tells the tale of Ty Warner and the craze that launched e-commerce. He’s the author of The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute. For the Spiel, a Gist-vestigation into college diploma mills. Today’s sponsor: Stamps.com. Buy and print official U.S. postage right from your desk using your own computer and printer. Right now, get a no-risk trial and a $110 bonus offer by going to Stamps.com and using the promo code THEGIST. And: QuickBooks. If you work for yourself, try QuickBooks Self-Employed. See what QuickBooks Self-Employed can do for you with a free thirty-day trial at tryselfemployed.com/thegist. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus.    

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Posted on

New Books in Native American Studies - Nancy Shoemaker, “Native American Whalemen and the World” (UNC Press, 2015)

For as long as Herman Melville’s Moby Dick has been a staple of the American literary canon, one element often goes unnoticed.

The ship commanded by the monomanacial Ahab on his quest to slay the great white whale is named the Pequod, just one letter of difference from Pequot, a Native nation living within what is now southern New England. Perhaps Mellville was just participating in the widespread romantic nostalgia of the age, when many corporate enterprises and vessels took the name of the supposedly disappearing and noble Indians.

Or, maybe he was simply gesturing at the reality of the industry.

In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, when Moby Dick takes place, Native men from New England constituted a huge portion of the whaling workforce, some spending decades at sea, encountering diverse peoples across two oceans, and invigorating their economically marginalized reservations with vital income. These forgotten seamen finally have a chronicler in Nancy Shoemaker, professor of history at the University of Connecticut. Author or editor of seven books, her latest is Native American Whalemen and the World: Indigenous Encounters and the Contingency of Race (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

Posted on

Start the Week - Joseph Stiglitz and Steve Hilton on Inequality

On Start the Week Andrew Marr finds out if it's possible to create a world less impersonal and more equal. David Cameron's former senior adviser, Steve Hilton, believes our governments and institutions are too big, and he argues for a more human-focused society. The US economist Joseph Stiglitz tackles rising inequality in the West and blames the unjust and misguided priorities of neoliberalism. The Russian writer Masha Gessen looks at the struggle between assimilation and alienation as she asks why two brothers turned terrorist, bombing the Boston Marathon.

Producer: Katy Hickman.