A podcast that talks to experts about one thing that is profoundly and perhaps unexpectedly significant and that they will argue should matter to everyone. Your hosts, Sean Johnson Andrews and Madhurima Chakraborty, will need to be convinced. Join us as we talk with informed and passionate people about things that we and you may have missed, asking them, “So what?”
A podcast that talks to experts about one thing that is profoundly and perhaps unexpectedly significant and that they will argue should matter to everyone. Your hosts, Sean Johnson Andrews and Madhurima Chakraborty, will need to be convinced. Join us as we talk with informed and passionate people about things that we and you may have missed, asking them, “So what?”
In this episode, we speak with Debra Riley Parr about her research in scent studies and especially the cultural significance of fragrance and odors as both indexes of hierarchy and means of resistance against them. Debra is Associate Professor Emerita of Art and Design History and Theory at Columbia College Chicago.
Sources / Show Notes
In the episode, Debra refers to many scholars and artists working in olfactory studies. Perfumer and cultural historian Nuri McBride offered the workshop that Debra mentions at the top of the show. She also mentions The feminist art and activist collective Hilma’s Ghost, which has conducted several exhibitions and workshops on spell jars, including those that are meant to ward off the evil spirits now haunting the streets of many cities under the banner of protecting the homeland. If you are interested in checking out more academic analyses of this intersection of smells, spells, and resistance, check out Olfactory Art and the Political in an Age of Resistance, which she co-edited with Gwenn-Aël Lynn. It is currently on sale.
Credits
Cover art: The graphic for this episode is a screenshot taken from the December “jobs report” which illustrates the gap we discuss in this program.
Hosts: Madhurima Chakraborty madhurimachakraborty.net, Sean Johnson Andrews breakingculture.substack.com
Show music: composed by Kris Stokes krisstokes.com
In this episode, we speak with Wailin Wong about the importance of accurate data - and the threat of its politicization in the current era. In particular, she talks about what is commonly referred to as the “jobs report,” produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Wailin is the host of The Indicator podcast from Planet Money on National Public Radio.
Show Notes:
In the episode, we talk quite a bit about this episode of The Indicator, where Wailin and her Co-Host discuss the very laborious process behind the collection of these jobs numbers. A more recent episode covers what it means when we get revisions to these numbers. And if you are interested in exploring the Project Pan Subreddit, check it out here.
Credits
Cover art: The graphic for this episode is a screenshot taken from the December “jobs report” which illustrates the gap we discuss in this program.
Hosts: Madhurima Chakraborty madhurimachakraborty.net, Sean Johnson Andrews breakingculture.substack.com
Show music: composed by Kris Stokes krisstokes.com
In this episode, we speak with Chris Shaw, who is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Columbia College Chicago. He wanted to talk about the concept of the golden ratio, which is often used as an index of perfect proportion and symmetry in art, architecture, beauty, and nature. But, given that it applies to few of the things that supposedly exhibit this ideal proportion, Chris argues we probably shouldn’t care about the golden ratio, even as he helps us to understand it.
Show Notes
If you are interested in looking at some external resources, the first thing you should check out is some info/images of the Vitruvian Man, which we discuss at several points, but, of course, can’t show you on the podcast. We also discuss George Markowsky’s 1992 article, “Misconceptions about the Golden Ratio,” which appeared in The College Mathematics Journal. Near the end of the episode, Madhurima also talks a bit about the recent book by Mario Livio, who calls the Golden Ratio “The World’s Most Astonishing Number,” which is an easy claim to make if you aren’t too picky about actual measurements and proportions. But if you are charmed (or at least marginally curious) about the ultimate claim our math expert makes in this episode - that there are a lot of cool numbers related to art and nature - then you should check out the open educational resource that Chris Shaw has just published. Philosophical Geometry: Finding Math in Art and Nature is available for free. Listeners will find chapter four of special importance: and if you want to see the full version of the golden rectangle above, scroll to page 69.
Credits
Cover art: The image for this episode is actually a photo of a wood sculpture created by one of Chris’s students, Mercedes Soria, to represent a golden rectangle. This is hard to tell because we have had to crop it to the size of a square for the purposes of fitting into these podcast platforms. But were you to see the whole creation, it would be one of the select art works that actually adheres to the golden ratio.
Hosts: Madhurima Chakraborty madhurimachakraborty.net, Sean Johnson Andrews breakingculture.substack.com
Show music: composed by Kris Stokes krisstokes.com
In this episode we talk with Kathalene Razzano about the history and implications of the argument that “children need fathers,” how this has been repeatedly (and especially recently) reappropriated by politicians, and how it can be seen in popular television talk show tropes where DNA tests solve paternity disputes. Katy is a media and cultural studies scholar who teaches at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Sources / Show Notes
In the episode, Katy’s 2014 article that fleshes out this topic more. It is available here. There is lot written on the Moynihan Report, which we discuss quite a bit. But the best place to start might be the Wikipedia article on it (and the bibliography at the bottom.) Though we don’t talk about it, one of the most important articles critiquing this report and its ahistorical, apolitical understanding of gender and the Black family is Hortense Spillers “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe.” A lot has been written on the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” but one place to start is just to look at the number of times the word “father” appears in the document. Finally, if you so choose, you can find the 2020 podcast with J.D. Vance that we discuss at the end here - or here if you’d just rather read the transcript.
The screenshot is from an episode of the May 7, 2023 episode of the The Steve Wilkos Show, titled “That Baby Looks NOTHING Like Me!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOp2yUwTVoA.
Which Katy has written about elsewhere. FYI - The baby is his!
Credits:
Hosts: Sean Johnson Andrews, breakingculture.substack.com
Madhurima Chakraborty
Show music: composed by Kris Stokes
In this episode, Sean and Madhurima speak with the biographer and science fiction writer Alec Nevala-Lee about a short story he says has a deeper significance than even he understood for his first thirty years as a fan of it. Jorge Luis-Borges’ “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” was first published in 1940, but Nevala-Lee argues it is even more important today.
Sources / Show Notes
Alec mentions the piece he wrote for The Daily Beast back in 2012, considering the way that the story relates to the propaganda and other efforts of Karl Rove and the George W. Bush administration. The piece is behind a paywall on The Daily Beast site, but an archived version is available in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which the characters in the short story would have found to be a really convenient service for finding old books.
If you want to take Alec up on his recommendation, you can read the entire short story here. Or you can check out his intellectual history of science fiction, which he mentions at the end - Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Credits:
Hosts: Sean Johnson Andrews, breakingculture.substack.com
Madhurima Chakraborty
Episode Cover Art: "Plate 2 from the Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius Exhibition" by Mark Peatfield - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67124981
Show music: composed by Kris Stokes
Sean Johnson Andrews and Madhurima Chakraborty are starting a podcast where they talk to experts about one thing in their field that they will try to convince us is important. For Episode Zero, they talk about Exotica musician from the mid twentieth century, Korla Pandit, who wasn't exactly what he seemed.
Sources / Show Notes
In the episode, we discuss R. J. Smith’s 2001 Los Angeles magazine article on Korla Pandit - titled “The Many Faces of Korla Pandit.” An archived version of it can be found here.
Sean also brings up this article by Kimberlé Crenshaw: “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6 (Jul., 1991), pp. 1241-1299.
https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/critique1313/files/2020/02/1229039.pdf
If you are interested in exploring Pandit’s life and legacy further, you can track down a copy of Korla, a documentary produced by two filmmakers who worked at San Francisco’s KGO-TV, where Korla Pandit’s TV program aired for decades. Or, since you are already here, you can listen to what Spotify has made available of his discography.
Credits:
Hosts: Sean Johnson Andrews, breakingculture.substack.com
Madhurima Chakraborty,
Episode Art: "Korla Pandit" by Clint Chilcott https://www.flickr.com/photos/_elemenoh_/18025092
Production Assistance: Kannon Steinmeyer
Show music: composed by Kris Stokes