In this episode, Mary Katharine speaks with Matt Van Swol, who’s been working on the ground in western North Carolina. Together, they discuss the region’s ongoing recovery efforts and the widespread damage, from devastated infrastructure to displaced communities, four months after Hurricane Helene.
Between the 1870s and 1930s, American social reformers, working closely with the US government, transformed sexual vice into an international political and humanitarian concern. As these activists worked to eradicate prostitution and trafficking, they promoted sexual self-control for both men and women as a cornerstone of civilization and a basis of American exceptionalism. Empire of Purity: The History of Americans' Global War on Prostitution (Princeton University Press, 2024) by Dr. Eva Payne traces the history of these efforts, showing how the policing and penalization of sexuality was used to justify American interventions around the world.
Dr. Eva Payne describes how American reformers successfully pushed for international anti-trafficking agreements that mirrored US laws, calling for states to criminalize prostitution and restrict migration, and harming the very women they claimed to protect. She argues that Americans’ ambitions to reshape global sexual morality and law advanced an ideology of racial hierarchy that viewed women of color, immigrants, and sexual minorities as dangerous vectors of disease. Dr. Payne tells the stories of the sex workers themselves, revealing how these women’s experiences defy the dichotomies that have shaped American cultural and legal conceptions of prostitution and trafficking, such as choice and coercion, free and unfree labor, and white sexual innocence and the assumed depravity of nonwhites.
Drawing on archives in Europe, the United States, and Latin America, Empire of Purity ties the war on sexual vice to American imperial ambitions and a politicization of sexuality that continues to govern both domestic and international policy today.
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.
Andrew Laird, of Brown University, discusses Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico(Oxford University Press, 2024). In 1536, only fifteen years after the fall of the Aztec empire, Franciscan missionaries began teaching Latin, classical rhetoric, and Aristotelian philosophy to native youths in central Mexico. The remarkable linguistic and cultural exchanges that would result from that initiative are the subject of this book. Aztec Latin highlights the importance of Renaissance humanist education for early colonial indigenous history, showing how practices central to humanism — the cultivation of eloquence, the training of leaders, scholarly translation, and antiquarian research — were transformed in New Spain to serve Indian elites as well as the Spanish authorities and religious orders.
While Franciscan friars, inspired by Erasmus' ideal of a common tongue, applied principles of Latin grammar to Amerindian languages, native scholars translated the Gospels, a range of devotional literature, and even Aesop's fables into the Mexican language of Nahuatl. They also produced significant new writings in Latin and Nahuatl, adorning accounts of their ancestral past with parallels from Greek and Roman history and importing themes from classical and Christian sources to interpret pre-Hispanic customs and beliefs. Aztec Latin reveals the full extent to which the first Mexican authors mastered and made use of European learning and provides a timely reassessment of what those indigenous authors really achieved.
It’s official: the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law banning the popular social media app TikTok over national security concerns unless its Chinese owners sell it by Sunday (Jan 19).
Our guests today help explain what a TikTok ban might actually look like, what its 170 million American users can expect next, and more.
First, TheWall Street Journal tech reporter Sarah Needleman shares more about what will happen with the app starting tomorrow, and whether TikTok may still be saved. Then, constitutional law expert Jessica Levinson talks about the Supreme Court justices’ decision, and what the options are, legally, for President-elect Trump moving forward.
Join us again for our 10-minute daily news roundups every Mon-Fri!
On the "CBS News Weekend Roundup," host Allison Keyes looks ahead to Inauguration Day with CBS's Nancy Cordes. The Supreme Court upholds a federal law banning TikTok in the U.S. We'll speak with Robert Berger about the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal. In the "Kaleidoscope with Allison Keyes" segment, a look at the impact of Monday's two very different federal holidays in this very divided nation.
Featured: CBS's Linda Kenyon looks at President Biden's unusual farewell speech to the nation.
Emily Bazelon talks with author Yael van der Wouden about her debut novel, The Safekeep. They discuss why Yael chose a queer love story, how Yael’s own Dutch and Jewish heritage influenced her writing, the history of dispossession after World War II, 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.)
Donald Trump becomes president again on Monday, and as Joe Biden leaves the White House, we’re on the brink of a massive change in how the law is interpreted. Pam Bondi’s confirmation hearing was one of a host of clues this week that we are in for a wild legal and constitutional ride. On this episode of Amicus, host Dahlia Lithwick is joined by constitutional scholar Professor Pamela Karlan to pick through what we learned this week about what the law is and what it is about to become –– from Jack Smith’s report, to the new (presumptive) Attorney General of the United States’ apparent ignorance of birthright citizenship and therefore the 14th amendment.
All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.
Mutual Aid & the LA Fires
CES 2025: AI Toys Are Coming For Your Kids
From Anti-Satanic Crusaders to Congresswoman: Tracing an Anti-Trans Harassment Campaign
CES 2025: The Best And Worst Tech Products Coming Soon
The Years of Lead Paint (Or Why There Will Be More Tesla Car Bombs)
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