In this episode, we share two interviews on books that look at the ways in which food and family go hand in hand. First, NPR's Scott Simon talks to singer Linda Ronstadt about her memoir Feels Like Home, in which she writes about living by the Mexican-American border and how food brought her closer to those around her. Then, Scott Simon visits French chef Jaques Pepin at his house to talk about his book Art of the Chicken. Pepin tells Simon that cooking a good meal at home helps him hold on to the memory of his late wife. Both books feature recipes close to the writers' hearts.
There’s no question that today, the nine-county Bay Area votes solidly blue. But it hasn’t always been this way. One of the most conservative Republican candidates ever picked, Barry Goldwater, was nominated right here in 1964. So, how did the Bay Area become a bastion of blue?
This story was reported by Scott Shafer. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Amanda Font and Brendan Willard. Our Social Video Intern is Darren Tu. Additional support from Kyana Moghadam, Jen Chien, Jasmine Garnett, Carly Severn, Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, Jenny Pritchett and Holly Kernan.
In 1816, the world experienced something that it had never seen before. All over the Northern Hemisphere in Europe, Asia, and North America, summer never came.
…or at least it didn’t in any way which it did before.
It caused chaos and misery all around the world.
Learn more about 1816, the year without a summer, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
From carnival shows to the early days of television. In this week’s episode: How pro wrestling grew up in America and had a flashy, sporty heyday in Chicago.
Young adult author Emiko Jean is out with her first book for adults – Mika in Real Life. In this episode, we hear Jean in conversation with WBUR's Celeste Headlee about the book, in which a teen girl – Penny – tries to connect with her birth mother Mika. Jean says that just as Penny and Mika struggle to figure out who they are, much of the book mirrors the author's own identity struggle as a Japanese-American woman.
For thousands of years, humans knew that certain foods could treat certain ailments. However, why or how the foods did this was totally unknown.
It wasn’t until the early 20th century that researchers discovered exactly what chemicals were in food that prevented and cured many diseases.
Today, that knowledge has led to an entire industry dedicated to providing and supplementing nutrients.
Learn more about vitamins, what they are, how they were discovered, and what happens if you lack them in your diet on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
In this episode, WBUR's Robin Young talks with author Andrew Sean Greer about his new novel Less is Lost, the sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Less. This time, Greer's protagonist Arthur Less takes a tour of America in a van, and in the process learns about what it means to be an author today. Less is disappointed by how things are going, but doesn't realize how good things actually are for him. Greer says that he almost didn't write a second book, but by satirizing the literary crowd, he saw the importance of critiquing himself.
Centuries ago, if you were a ruler, you needed to protect yourself and your realm. You’d obviously need an army and soldiers, but you would also need some sort of defensive fortification to protect yourself from attack.
The solution to this problem in the middle ages was the development of massive structures which could resist direct attack and often served as a seat of administration for a region.
Over the centuries, the thought and engineering which went into these structures became one of the era's highlights.
Learn more about medieval castles and fortifications and how and why they were built on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
In her memoir Making a Scene, actress Constance Wu writes about the sexual harassment and abuse she faced on her breakout show Fresh off the Boat, and why she hesitated to speak out at first. She tells WBUR's Scott Tong that "trauma and feelings don't go away simply because you will them to." And when she finally spoke up about that trauma on social media, she received a wave of online hate. A warning that this episode – and the book – includes descriptions of assault and a suicide attempt.
By the late 1980s, most Ivy League schools were a fifth or a quarter Jewish—and the University of Pennsylvania was more Jewish than most. For starters, unlike several other Ivies, Penn was never a Christian divinity school. It’s located in the heart of a big city that has had a large Jewish population going back to colonial times. Plus, it offered a plethora of professional schools, which, as we’ve learned in this series, appealed to students seeking social mobility in the early and mid-20th century. In the 1980s, where this episode picks up, Penn was a place where Jews felt truly comfortable.
In this episode of Gatecrashers, we explore Jewish Greek life. Jewish sororities like Alpha Epsilon Pi and Sigma Delta Tau were founded in the early 20th century by Jewish women who were excluded from the Greek system and wanted to create their own sense of sisterhood and social structure. But in the late 1980s, that sense of solidarity seems to have faded. The national headquarters of Sigma Delta Tau stepped in to make some unusual adjustments to the Penn chapter, which had been facing a membership decline. They put the entire chapter on probation following a suspicious underage drinking charge, and brought in a social club called Alpha Zeta to fill the chapter’s ranks and leadership positions.
What does it mean to be a representative of Jewish womanhood, particularly in the 1980s, when stereotypes of Jewish women permeated American culture? What do the actions of SDT’s national leadership tell us about Jews’ place in the Ivy League, and in the wider culture, at that time? And when a minority reaches the point of feeling truly comfortable, is in-fighting inevitable?
Episode 7 of Gatecrashers features historian Shira Kohn on the rise and role of Jewish sororities, Judith Silverman Hodara on Penn’s Jewish history, and several SDT and Penn alumni on the events of 1987.
