Category: 3-BookTalkSometimeCommentary

Indigenous thinker and leader, Ailton Krenak, exposes the destructive tendencies of our ‘civilization’ in Life is not Useful  (Polity, 2023), which is translated by Jamille Pinheiro Dias & Alex Brostoff. The problematic symptoms of our modernity include rampant consumerism, environmental devastation, and a narrow and restricted understanding of humanity’s place on this Earth. For many centuries, Brazil’s Indigenous peoples have bravely faced threats of total annihilation and, in extremely adverse conditions, have reinvented their lives and communities. 

At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the rest of the world to reconsider its lifestyle, Ailton Krenak’s clear and urgent thinking emerges with newfound impact and offers a vital perspective on the enormous challenges we face today: the ravages of the pandemic and the devastation caused by global warming, to name just two. Krenak questions the value of going back to normal when ‘normal’ is a vision of humanity divorced from nature, actively destroying the planet and digging deep trenches of inequality between peoples and societies. The ‘civilized’ world insists on giving life a purpose but life is not ‘useful’ and ‘civilization’ is not destiny. We must learn to embrace the joy of living life to its fullest, and inhabit the stillness that comes with not always being useful. In the wake of the pandemic, we have an opportunity to create deep and meaningful change in the way we live: this, more than ever, is a time to listen to voices that are one with the body of the Earth.

Takeshi Morisato is philosopher and sometimes academic. He is the editor of the European Journal of Japanese Philosophy. He specializes in comparative and Japanese philosophy but he is also interested in making Japan and philosophy accessible to a wider audience.

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In When Forests Run Amok: War and Its Afterlives in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian Territories (Duke University Press, 2023) Daniel Ruiz-Serna follows the afterlives of war, showing how they affect the variety of human and nonhuman beings that compose the region of Bajo Atrato: the traditional land of Indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples. Attending to Colombia’s armed conflict as an experience that resounds in the lives and deaths of people, animals, trees, rivers, and spirits, Ruiz-Serna traces a lasting damage that brought Indigenous peoples to compel the Colombian government to legally recognize their territories as victims of war. Although this recognition extends transitional justice into new terrains, Ruiz-Serna considers the collective and individual wounds that continue unsettling spirits, preventing shamans from containing evil, attracting jaguars to the taste of human flesh, troubling the flow of rivers, and impeding the ability of people to properly deal with the dead. Ruiz-Serna raises potent questions about the meanings of justice, the forms it can take, and the limits of human-rights frameworks to repair the cosmic order that war unravels when it unsettles more-than-human worlds—causing forests to run amok.

Daniel Ruiz-Serna is Lecturer of Anthropology at Dawson College.

Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

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This week, Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, and Elizabeth Spiers discuss Felix’s new book The Phoenix Economy: Work, Life, and Money in the New Not Normal.  

 

In the Plus segment: monkeys and immigration policy.

 

Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Patrick Fort.

 

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The persistent stereotype that role-playing, tabletop game players are overwhelmingly white is rooted in race, housing, and history. The suburban homes where people could dedicate a surface to a sprawling, multiplayer board game used to be almost exclusively white. And the knights, wizards, and other fantastic creatures in these games were closely tied to European mythology. But a more diverse world of game playing is rising, with more people of color getting a seat at the creative table. On today’s episode of A Word, Jason Johnson discusses diversity in hobby games with Aaron Trammell, a professor of informatics at U.C. Irvine. He’s also the author of the new book The Privilege of Play: A History of Hobby Games, Race and Geek Culture.

Guest: Aaron Trammell, author of The Privilege of Play: A History of Hobby Games, Race and Geek Culture

Podcast production by Kristie Taiwo-Makanjuola

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Emily Bazelon talks with author author Curtis Sittenfeld about her new book Romantic Comedy. 

 

They discuss why ordinary guys get to be with famous women, but usually not the other way around, the fun of writing a fictional version of Saturday Night Live, and how to write witty email exchanges.  

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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Best-selling American author Curtis Sittenfeld discusses her acclaimed debut novel, Prep. Set in an exclusive boarding school in north-eastern America, Prep is an insightful, caustic and funny coming-of-age story and a savage dissection of class, race, and gender.

Clever, aspirational Lee Fiora is fourteen years old when her father drops her at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts that she has won a scholarship to. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, she becomes a shrewd observer of, and ultimately a participant in, their snobby culture and rituals.

She forms intense friendships with other girls; complicated relationships with teachers and an all-consuming infatuation with a boy from the cool crowd, all of which leads to conflicts with her parents back home in the mid-West, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant.

Other novels about boarding schools mentioned in this programme include Make your Home among Strangers by Jennine Capó Crucet, Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School by Kendra James and Black Ice by Lorene Cary.

(Photo: Curtis Sittenfeld. Credit: Jenn Ackerman)

On this week’s episode of The Waves, we’re doing a very special Mom and Dad Are Fighting crossover with host Jamilah Lemieux. Jamilah sits down with author Virginia Sole-Smith to talk about her new book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. They discuss helping kids accept their bodies in whatever form they take, dealing with our own internalized fatphobia, and more.

In Slate Plus, answering a listener’s question on secret snacking.

If you liked this episode, check out Making Friends As An Adult.

Podcast production by Cheyna Roth and Rosemary Belson with editorial oversight by Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery.

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On this episode: Elizabeth talks with Chris Balme, author of Finding the Magic In Middle School. He explains what drives tweens, why this period is fundamentally different than high school, and how to guide them through this transition. Jamilah, Zak, and Elizabeth also open up the mailbag and give some recommendations. 

Recommendations: 

Zak: Watch David Byrne sing When Doves Cry at a karaoke bar

Elizabeth: Professor Noggin Cards, Binder Rings

Jamilah: Florida Man on Netflix

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Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today’s show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes. You can also call our phone line: (646) 357-9318! 

Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson and Maura Currie.

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Felix Salmon, Emily Peck and Elizabeth Spiers are joined by Semafor editor-in-chief Ben Smith to discuss his new book. They also break down Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News and the end of Buzzfeed News.

In the Plus: A throwback to the olden days of blogging. 

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Podcast production by Patrick Fort.

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On this month’s episode of Future Tense Fiction, host Maddie Stone talks to David Iserson about “This, but Again.” The story follows Marcus, who is forced to relive his life over and over again in a never-ending computer simulation. Thanks to a glitch, Marcus already knows everything that will happen—but he can change almost nothing. That is until he meets Sara, who helps him break from the simulation’s script. But that, as you might expect, is not without consequences.After the story, Iserson and host Maddie Stone discuss what it would really be like to live in a computer simulation (and why it may actually be more hopeful than dystopian).

Guest: David Iserson, film and television writer-producer and author of Firecracker, a novel

Story read by David Iserson

Podcast production by Tiara Darnell

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