Month: September 2021

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Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College - S2 | Ep 2: Bret Ellis, Valley Boy

Los Angeles, 1980-1981. “There was just this huge sense that the world was gay, gay, gay.” The origin story of Bret Easton Ellis (and Less Than Zero), Part One.

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Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College - S2 | Ep 1: Dis-Orientation

Bennington. Autumn, 1982. Donna, Jonathan and Bret arrive on the campus of the school nicknamed “The Little Red Whorehouse on the Hill.” One of them comes with a steamer trunk. One of them comes with a Kangol cap. One of them comes with a “suitcase full of drugs.”

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NPR's Book of the Day - Colson Whitehead Finally Gets To Flex His Comedy Muscle

After writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning books The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, author Colson Whitehead needed a change of pace. So for his next novel, Harlem Shuffle, he decided to tackle topics near and dear to his heart: heists and New York real estate. In today's episode, Morning Edition host Noel King talks to Whitehead about his book's protagonist, a furniture retailer named Ray Carney, and what draws him to a double life of crime.
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60 Songs That Explain the '90s - R.E.M.—“Nightswimming”

Rob explores alternative rock band R.E.M.’s piano ballad “Nightswimming” by discussing the band’s musical journey and their songs’ frequent lack of lyrical coherence.

This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music.

Host: Rob Harvilla

Guest: Jay Caspian Kang

Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles


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Everything Everywhere Daily - Alexandria

In the year 331 BC, fresh from his conquest of Egypt, Alexander the Great established a new city in Egypt named after himself. This new city, situated on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, at the end of the Nile Delta, would go on to become one of the most important cities in the world, and Alexander’s city is still alive and vibrant today. Learn more about Alexandria, the "Bride of the Mediterranean" on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College - Welcome to “Once Upon A Time… at Bennington College”

It’s the groves of academe: Bennington College, the wildest and wickedest school in America. In the last great decade: the 1980s. Bennington class of ’86, class of Bret Easton Ellis, future writer of American Psycho and co-leader of the literary Brat Pack; Jonathan Lethem, future writer of Motherless Brooklyn and MacArthur Fellow; and Donna Tartt, future writer of The Secret History and Pulitzer Prize winner. All three are, at various times, infatuated and disappointed with one another, their friendships stimulated and fueled by rivalry as much as affection. And all three will mythologize Bennington in their fiction—fiction that, as we’ll discover, isn’t always fiction, is often fact—and thereby become myths themselves. From the Peabody-nominated C13Originals studios and Vanity Fair's Lili Anolik, comes the latest installment in the “Once Upon a Time…” franchise, Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College. This is a tale of money, murder, madness, and—of course—genius. This is, too, a multi-dimensional expose: the secret history of The Secret History revealed; the secret history of three of the greatest writers of Generation X revealed; and the secret history of Generation X itself revealed.

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Read Me a Poem - “The Lightkeeper” by Carolyn Forché

Amanda Holmes reads Carolyn Forché’s poem “The Lightkeeper.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.


This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.


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Everything Everywhere Daily - Survivorship Bias

During World War II, the US Army assigned statistician Abraham Wald the task of statistically figuring out where extra armor should be added to American bombers. After analyzing the evidence and sharing it with the Army, he recommended the exact opposite of what the Army assumed. The reason was that the Army had engaged in a logical fallacy. Learn more about survivorship bias and how it manifests itself into everyday thinking, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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