Smarty Pants

Henry David Thoreau is known for Walden Pond, his writings on solitude and nature, and his staunch, even strident, abolitionism. He is not known for his pencils. But it’s his pencils, writes the historian Augustine Sedgewick in our Autumn issue, that have been overlooked by scholars for so many years, along with one particularly damning detail that Sedgewick discovered for the first time: the cedar in those pencils, which the Thoreau family manufactured to great success, was logged by enslaved laborers. That a connection to slavery was “discovered” in the unlikeliest of places—on the desk of an iconic American abolitionist—speaks to how limiting this idea of discovery is. Connections to slavery in 19th-century America, after all, were everywhere and rarely hidden. Sedgewick's essay has already been making waves in Thoreauvian circles, and it has the real potential to change the narrative not only about Thoreau, but also about how we talk about racial justice and reparations in this country.Go beyond the episode:Augustine Sedgewick’s essay “Thoreau’s Pencils”Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”Tune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

In 1748, Lord Chesterfield told his son not to expect much from women: they “are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid, reasoning good sense, I never knew in my life one who had it, or who reasoned and acted consequentially for four-and-twenty hours together.” In 1739, an anonymous pamphleteer laid out the case for Man Superior to Woman; or, a Vindication of Man’s Natural Right of Sovereign Authority over the Woman, writing that even if a woman was educated, “if this Lady is a scholar she is a very sluttish one; and the much she reads is to very little Purpose.” This was the terrain, writes the Irish historian Susannah Gibson in her new book, The Bluestockings, in which Elizabeth Montagu dared to host weekly salons about the intellectual debates of the moment—among the hottest of which was whether or not women should even be engaging in such discussions in the company of men. At Montagu’s table, Samuel Johnson rubbed elbows with the likes of the classicist Elizabeth Carter, the historian Catharine Macauley, and the novelist Frances Burney. Gibson’s new book paints a group portrait of these varied women, the polite challenge they posed to the patriarchy, and the forces that would eventually lead to the unraveling of their power.Go beyond the episode:Susannah Gibson’s The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women’s MovementWe have too many links to the Bluestockings’ own books, so visit our episode page for the full list!Tune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

We’re often reminded of the splendors of the night sky—lunar eclipses, blood moons, meteors, stars—but what of the nighttime splendors of the earth? In her Autumn 2024 cover story for The American Scholar, nature writer Leigh Ann Henion keeps her eyes closer to the ground, on the night-blooming tobacco at a North Carolina farm. As these white flowers slowly unfurl, their blossoms attract nocturnal hawk moths so large that they are often mistaken for hummingbirds. But jasmine tobacco isn’t the only attraction of the dark: in her new book, Night Magic, Henion witnesses the electric squirming of glowworms, the dance of fireflies, and the phosphorescence of foxfire. Henion, who begins her exploration just outside her front door in Boone, North Carolina, soon devotes her evenings to Appalachian adventures further afield—bats in Alabama, a moth festival in Ohio, lightning bugs in Tennessee—but returns to the wonders lurking in her back yard.Go beyond the episode: Read Leigh Ann Henion’s cover story for us, “Moondance,” adapted from her new book, Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the DarkExplore Foxfire Books, a series of anthologies about Appalachian culture (and cookery!)DarkSky International works to protect the night around the worldKeep an eye out for these annual nighttime events: Mothapalooza, Grandfather Glows, Glowworms in the DismalitesTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!  

A tooth is not simply a tooth, as zoologist Bill Schutt writes in his new book, Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans. Teeth first showed up among vertebrates some 500 million years ago, and ever since, they’ve had much to do with the survival of many species. There are teeth that sharpen themselves with every snap (as with dogs and wolves), teeth that grow forever (as the poor babirusa knows all too well), and teeth that grow in a conveyer belt (ask a crocodile, but don’t get too close). The shape and appearance of teeth can tell us a lot about how animals evolved—and in the case of humans, where we stand on the social ladder. And there’s much more still to be learned, both about past life on this planet and future innovations in dentistry. Bill Schutt, a vertebrate zoologist and retired biology preofssor, is a research associate at the American Museum of Natural history, and he joins us today from New York. Go beyond the episode:Bill Schutt’s Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to HumansVisit our episode page to see some of Patricia J. Wynne's original illustrations for the bookTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

On August 22 1831, Nat Turner led a group of enslaved people in a rebellion that resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred people, Black and white, in Virginia’s Southampton County, near the border with North Carolina. Though the conflict only lasted a few days, Nat himself evaded capture for two months, until he surrendered on October 30. Before his execution on November 11, he spoke at length about his thoughts and deeds, which were written down by the lawyer Thomas Gray as The Confessions of Nat Turner. In a new book, the late historian Anthony E. Kaye and his collaborator Gregory P. Downs make the case that the religious dimension of Nat’s uprising has been underplayed or overlooked in popular accounts of his work—despite the prevalence of divine vision both in the Confessions and in prior rebellions. Nat Turner, Black Prophet aims to tell the full story of this “uniquely troublesome historical figure, too dangerous for some, too strange for others.”Go beyond the episode:Nat Turner, Black Prophet: A Visionary History by Anthony E. Kaye with Gregory P. DownsNat’s bible is on view at the National Museum of African American History and CultureFor more on how the place of religion has changed in modern society—and how religious men like Nat saw themselves in theirs—see Charles Taylor, A Secular Age Historians increasingly write about the Civil War as the largest (and most successful) slave rebellion in history—but W. E. B. DuBois said it firstTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

At this year’s Olympics, the men’s gymnastics team made it onto the podium for the first time since 2008, winning bronze thanks to stunning overall performances and a perfect routine from Stephen Nederoscik, the Pommel Horse Guy. Team USA’s stars have, for many years now, been on the women’s team, with Simone Biles the most decorated American gymnast in history. But there’s one record Biles hasn’t beaten yet: the six medals that George Eyser won on a single day in October 1904—which he managed to do on one leg. How this incredible athlete accomplished his feat—and how much else has been forgotten about him besides his disability—is the subject of Joshua Prager’s Summer cover story for The American Scholar, “A Forgotten Turner Classic.” Prager, himself disabled, traces what little we know about George Eyser, from his troubled childhood in Germany to his new home in Denver, Colorado, from his incredible 1904 wins to his devastating 1919 suicide.Go beyond the episode:Read Joshua Prager’s cover story, “A Forgotten Turner Classic” Meet the Team USA’s 2024 bronze winnersTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

Who defines paradise, and who gets to live in its verdant incarnation on Earth? This is the question animating Olivia Laing’s new book, The Garden Against Time, which ranges across the history of the English landscape, from John Milton’s writing of Paradise Lost to Laing’s own restoration of a walled garden. Alighting on the heartbreaking pastorals of 19th-century poet John Clare and the queer visions of 20th-century artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman, Laing pulls strands of history, literature, and resistance from the green blur that, for now, still surrounds us, even as it deceives us. Landscape architects like Capability Brown—so named for his capability to impose his will on any vista—were, as Laing writes, able “to fake nature so insidiously that even now those landscapes and the power relations they embody are mistaken for being just the way things are, natural, eternal, blandly reassuring, though what has actually taken place is the seizure of once common ground.” The author of five books of nonfiction and a novel, Olivia Laing joins Smarty Pants this week to explore both the powers that shaped the garden as we know it, and the power it has to change how we treat the earth, and ourselves. Go beyond the episode:Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common ParadiseListen to John Clare’s “I Love to See the Summer Beaming Forth” on our sister podcast, Read Me a PoemIn the essay “Jane Austen’s Ivory Cage,” Mikita Brottman looks over the ha-has of Mansfield Park to see who else might be enclosed alongside the gardenWe have visited stately houses and their grounds twice before on Smarty Pants: with Adrian Tinniswood, who discussed the history of the country house after World War II, and with Hopwood DePree, who was attempting to restore his crumbling ancestral pile Tune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!  

Synchronized, scientific, ornamental, fancy, pretty: so many adjectives have been attached over the years to performative swimming, especially when done by women. Now known at the highest level as “artistic swimming,” it was for decades one of the few athletic activities women could pursue, albeit in uncomfortable, baggy, and not exactly aerodynamic attire. Despite—or perhaps because of—its popularity, synchronized swimming's status as a legitimate, elite sport would be contested for just as long—until 1984, in fact, when it finally debuted at the Los Angeles Olympics in all its sparkly glory. In her new book, Swimming Pretty, Scholar contributor Vicki Valosik dives into “the untold story of women in water,” from Victorian starlets like Lurline the Water Queen to Annette Kellerman, the godmother of synchronized swimming and the woman we can all thank for not having to wear petticoats in the water. Go beyond the episode:Vicki Valosik’s Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in WaterRead all about the aquatic theater that Wilbert E. Longfellow devised in the name of safetyLearn some killer moves from Everard Digby’s 1587 manual The Art of Swimming Dip your toes into the films of Esther Williams with this iconic scene from Million Dollar Mermaid, about the life of swimming Annette KellermanVisit our episode page to view more imagesTune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora • RSS FeedHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!