Author Jenny Tinghui Zhang is out with a new historical fiction novel, Four Treasures In The Sky. Set in the 1800s during the height of anti-Chinese sentiment, a young girl named Daiyu is kidnapped and brought to the U.S. Zhang told NPR's Ayesha Rascoe that she has seen a lot of reviews that refer to this book as 'timely' – and that she does not think that is a good thing when a book is about racism.
Amanda Holmes reads Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poem “The Love I Gave You Once.” 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.
The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.
A note on notes: We’d much rather you just went into each episode of The Memory Palace cold. And just let the story take you where it well. So, we don’t suggest looking into the show notes first.
Music
Dance PM from Horishi Yoshimura
Amor - C.B. Rework by Clark
Here’s What You’re Missin by Bing and Ruth
Meredith Monk’s Ellis Island as played by Bruce Brubaker
Alto Paraiso by Aukai
Opening from Nathaniel Bartlett
Rivers That you Cannot See by North Americans
First of the Tide by Erland Cooper featuring Benge
Notes
The episode old episode I mention in the credits as a companion to this one is here.
Most of the biographical details in this were found in the official biography written for the National Academy of Sciences by his Uranium-hunting colleague, George Tilton, and a terrific, entertaining oral history interview.
Also, if you’ve left episode in the mode where you’d just like to know some more, I came across this old Mental Floss article by Lucas Reilly that I thought did a particularly good job of weaving a lot of the back story (some of which I’d covered before in the Midgely episode linked above) into Patterson’s story. Just wanted to shine a light on it.
You never really know someone…especially online. In today’s world, the power of influence can be the quickest path to money and fame, and it often ends in ruin. These are the stories of the world’s most insidious Scamfluencers. And we are their prey. On Wondery’s new weekly series, join co-hosts Scaachi Koul and Sarah Hagi as they unpack epic stories of deception from the worlds of social media, fashion, finance, health, and wellness. These influencers claim to be everything from charismatic healers to trusted financial insiders to experts in dating. They cast spells over millions. Why do we believe them, and how does our culture allow them to thrive? From Black Swan Murder to a fake social media influencer to an audacious Hollywood Ponzi schemer, each season will take the listener along the twists and turns, the impact on victims, and what’s left when the facade falls away.
April is National Poetry Month, so to celebrate we are bringing you a conversation with poet Ocean Vuong. His new collection, Time Is A Mother, is about his grief after losing family members. Vuong told Morning Edition's Rachel Martin that time is different now that he has lost his mother: "when I look at my life since she died in 2019, I only see two days: Today when she's not here, and the big, big yesterday when I had her."
