Episode 54: Female Body Image, Media and College

“Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so.”
— Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth
“‘That’s sad. How plastic and artificial life has become. It gets harder and harder to find something…real.’ Nin interlocked his fingers, and stretched out his arms. ‘Real love, real friends, real body parts…’”
— Jess C. Scott, The Other Side of Life
“Beauty shouldn’t be about changing yourself to achieve an ideal or be more socially acceptable. Real beauty, the interesting, truly pleasing kind, is about honoring the beauty within you and without you. It’s about knowing that someone else’s definition of pretty has no hold over you.”
— Golda Poretsky

Although cultural and societal ideas of feminine beauty are far too large to tackle on their own, we wanted to take a stab at relevant issues this week. We welcome Logan Bialik to our conversation on personal experiences with female body image, its construction and the impact of college life and mass media on values of feminine appearance. It is of course a sensitive issue and one we intend to revisit and examine in the future. Our special thanks to Caroline and Logan for sharing personal anecdotes and feelings regarding the topic.

Episode 53: Local Farming and Our Food

“When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
— Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”
— Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

With various grocery stores, restaurants and even food delivery services in the world, it is worth considering our food sources and how they affect local agriculture. This week we welcome Charlotte Graham, who has worked as a local food coordinator at Peirce Dining Hall in Kenyon College, to explain the impact of these systems. Our discussion ventures through issues of health, science, civic responsibility and economic considerations.

Episode 52: The Lasting Impact of Dreams

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.”
— Gloria Steinem
“Dreams free us from normality. Daydreams, especially, take us somewhere between the real world and the dream world.”
— Fennel Hudson, A Waterside Year - Fennel's Journal - No. 2
“Reality worked its way into my dreams where it wasn’t welcome.”
— Emilyann Girdner, The Labyrinth Wall

When we go to sleep, we often pass through countless scenes, images and worlds themselves. Our dreams reveal our unspoken thoughts, our realities and our unbridled fantasies. We stand to learn much from what and how we dream in the privacy of our minds. This week we welcome Zac Caputo to share some personal experiences with dreams. We also discuss our reactions in the real world to thoughts and feelings conjured in dreams.

Episode 51: Serial

“Koenig wants to find the truth, whatever it is, more for human reasons than for legal ones. The team started producing “Serial” without knowing how it would end; in fact, they still don’t know. Earlier, when I had asked Snyder about this, she said, “We don’t know exactly how much we have figured out.” They’ve figured out plenty, but what is the whole truth? And how do you know when you’ve found it? Can it even be found?”
— Sarah Larson of The New Yorker
“It’s funny, I feel like I’m not reporting this any differently than I report any story for This American Life. The structuring is also very much the same, except you’re structuring two things at once: you’re structuring each episode so it’s a self-contained thing that makes sense and has an internal logic and arc, but they’re all a part of this much larger thing that you also have to keep in mind. That’s very different, to have that extra layer of the big story you’re telling.”
— Sarah Koenig in an interview with The Guardian's Lilah Raptopoulos

As the most popular podcast of all time with over 94 million downloads since its 2014 launch, Serial deserves the attention, analysis and general interest it has received. It experiments with podcasting, storytelling and uncovering the "truth" behind the 1999 murder of 17-year-old resident of Baltimore, Hae Min Lee. Much of the podcast follows her supposed killer, former boyfriend Adnan Syed and his whereabouts during the tragedy. The host, Sarah Koenig asks crucial questions in both her interviews and of her audience. This week we welcome Gabe Brison-Trezise to review and discuss this podcast and critique Koenig's efforts and her creation.

Episode 50: The Haka and Cultural Appropriation

“The All Blacks perform two haka: the traditional Ka Mate dating back to the earliest All Blacks tours in the 1900s, and Kapa o Pango, first performed in 2005 and written especially for the All Blacks. It is Kapa o Pango that contains the violent motion Sheehan objects to: a throat-slitting motion at the end.

Both haka in fact have benign origins. Although haka are best known as war dances, they have many uses in Maori culture, including to welcome distinguished guests and to acknowledge significant occasions. Ka Mate has an extensive folk tradition in centuries of Maori culture, typically used as a peace-making song or a rallying cry.”
— André Brett of The Conversation

In an increasingly global world, we are constantly exposed to new cultures, ideas and perspectives, many of which originate in remote spaces and times. As such, we often risk losing their original meanings and purposes. As peoples encounter new cultures, they often adopt and adapt foreign practices for different functions. This week, we welcome back Joe Walsh to discuss the phenomenon of cultural appropriation as it pertains to the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand and the All Blacks rugby team.