🎧 Episode 05 Food Fight | Revisionist History

Listened to Episode 05 Food Fight by Malcolm GladwellMalcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History


Bowdoin College in Maine and Vassar College in upstate New York are roughly the same size. They compete for the same students. Both have long traditions of academic excellence. But one of those schools is trying hard to close the gap between rich and poor in American society—and paying a high price for its effort. The other is making that problem worse—and reaping rewards as a result.

“Food Fight,” the second of the three-part Revisionist History miniseries on opening up college to poor kids, focuses on a seemingly unlikely target: how the food each school serves in its cafeteria can improve or distort the educational system.

It would be nice to figure out a way to nudge some capitalistic tendencies into this system to help fix it–but what?

https://instagram.com/p/BE6H59wldxA/?utm_source=ig_embed

🎧 Episode 04 Carlos Doesn’t Remember | Revisionist History

Listened to Episode 04 Carlos Doesn't Remember by Malcolm GladwellMalcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History


Carlos is a brilliant student from South Los Angeles. He attends an exclusive private school on an academic scholarship. He is the kind of person the American meritocracy is supposed to reward. But in the hidden details of his life lies a cautionary tale about how hard it is to rise from the bottom to the top—and why the American school system, despite its best efforts, continues to leave an extraordinary amount of talent on the table.

Eric Eisner and students from his YES Program featured above. Photo credit: David Lauridsen and Los Angeles Magazine “Carlos Doesn’t Remember” is the first in a three-part Revisionist History miniseries taking a critical look at the idea of capitalization—the measure of how well America is making use of its human potential.

Eric Eisner and students from his YES Program featured above. Photo credit: David Lauridsen and Los Angeles Magazine
Certainly a stunning episode! Some of this is just painful to hear though.

We should easily be able to make things simpler, fairer, and more resilient for a lot of the poor we’re overlooking in society. As a larger group competing against other countries, we’re heavily undervaluing a major portion of our populace, and we’re going to need them just to keep pace. America can’t be the “greatest” country without them.

🎧 This Week in Google 454 The Oldsmobile of Email | TWiT.TV

Listened to This Week in Google 454 The Oldsmobile of Email by Jason Howell, Jeff Jarvis, Mathew Ingram from TWiT.tv

Facebook and Google earnings. Gmail's big redesign. Tasks is back. Google Chat: explaining RCS. YouTube Remix will end Google Play Music. Google fixes its podcasts strategy. Amazon's new robots and in-car delivery.

  • Jeff's Numbers: Jeopardy contestant wants Taco Bell, AI assistants ranked
  • Mathew's Stuff: 100m+ Amazon Prime members
  • Jason's App: Datally by Google

🎧 Introducing ‘Caliphate,’ a New York Times Audio Series | New York Times

Listened to Introducing ‘Caliphate,’ a New York Times Audio Series by Michael Barbaro, Rukmini Callimachi from nytimes.com

The New York Times has introduced a documentary audio series that follows Rukmini Callimachi, a foreign correspondent for The Times and a frequent voice on “The Daily,” as she reports on the Islamic State and the fall of the Iraqi city of Mosul. With the producer Andy Mills, Rukmini journeys to the heart of the conflict to grapple with the most pressing questions about ISIS and to comprehend the power and global pull of the militant group.

Today, instead of our usual show, we offer the Prologue and Chapter 1 of “Caliphate.” This episode includes disturbing language and scenes of graphic violence.

You can listen to “Caliphate” above, or by searching for “Caliphate” wherever you get your podcasts. (If you’re on an Apple device, that’s probably Apple Podcasts. Users of Apple or Android devices can find us on RadioPublicStitcherSpotify or the podcast platform of your choice.)

Each episode will be available to New York Times subscribers a week early, as a way to thank them for their support of this kind of reporting. If you’re a Times subscriber, you can get an early listen to the next episode here. If you’re not, consider becoming one. Either way, sign up to receive weekly dispatches from Rukmini and learn when new episodes are live.

Background reading:

• On five trips to Iraq, Times journalists scoured old Islamic State offices, gathering thousands of files abandoned by the militants.

• The documents that were unearthed reveal extreme brutality and detailed record-keeping.

🎧 ‘The Daily’: Fired Over an Instagram Post | New York Times

Listened to 'The Daily’: Fired Over an Instagram Post by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com
The dismissal of a professional cheerleader has drawn attention to the sports industry, which seemed to be operating outside the #MeToo movement. Until now, that is.

Holy crap! Radicals in the US decry Sharia law as making its way into our system–little did they know that it has apparently taken root within the NFL first. I always thought the whole professional cheerleader bit was horrible and generally pathetic from a broader social perspective, but with the types of workplace repression and environment cheerleaders are apparently working within, prostitution almost sounds like a Sunday picnic. Given what they do for the NFL and what they go through to have their jobs in the first place, I’m appalled that they’re making minimum wage–or less really since very little of their wardrobe and direct needs are covered by the organization.

There are a myriad number of additional social reasons to do so, but I’m going to boycott the NFL until they can manage to remedy this kind of toxic environment.

🎧 ‘The Daily’: Trump’s Fixer | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: Trump’s Fixer by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com
For months, the federal inquiry into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia focused on Washington. Now, it has led back to New York, and to Michael D. Cohen.

🎧 ‘The Daily’: California vs. the E.P.A. | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: California vs. the E.P.A. by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com
An auto emissions battle is brewing between the Environmental Protection Agency and the state of California. Separately, James Comey tore into the president on national TV.

🎧 This Week in Google 453 Naked Egg Taco | TWiT.TV

Listened to This Week in Google 453 Naked Egg Taco by Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, Stacey Higginbotham from TWiT.tv

Marissa Meyer is back at Google ('s old offices.) Microsoft announces IoT security Azure Sphere. Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer. Netflix vs. Cannes. Google AIY is the new Heathkit. Grasshopper teaches kids to code. Google's new Gmail. Google Maps tells you to turn right at the Taco Bell. Tesla puts its bumper to the grindstone. Android P gets some ideas from iPhone X. Yahoo and AOL start scanning your email. Will the real President Obama please stand up?

  • Jeff's Pick: Kanye's Twitter philosophy book
  • Stacey's Pick: Ecobee Switch Plus with Alexa

🎧 Barges and bread | Eat This Podcast

Listened to Barges and bread: A new book looks at London and the grain trade by Jeremy Cherfas from Eat This Podcast

Time was, not so long ago, when you could barely move on the Thames in London for ships and boats of all shapes and sizes. Goods flowed in from the Empire in tall-masted sailing ships and stocky steamers and were transferred to barges and lighters for moving on. The canals, too, were driven by, and served, the industrial revolution, bringing coal and other raw materials to factories and taking away the finished goods by water, the cheapest and quickest system for bulk transport. By the late 1960s, much of the waterborne traffic had gone. Ships unloaded in the docks and goods were transferred by road and rail. A bit of freight continued to move on the water, some of that in the hands of Tam and Di Murrell. Di Murrell’s new book, Barges & Bread: canals & grain to bread & baking traces the interwined development of the grain trade and bread as it played out in the Thames basin and beyond.

The importance of bread (and beer) to the people is encapsulated in the Assize of Bread and Ale, a statue of 1266 (though it appears to have codified earlier laws) and the first law in England to deal with food. Loaves were sold by size for a penny, a half-penny and, most commonly, a farthing (quarter of a penny). The finer the flour, the smaller the loaf you got at each price point. The price of grain naturally varied from year to year and from place to place, but the Assize fixed not the price but the weight of a penny loaf and also regulated in minute detail the baker’s profit and allowable expenses.

Very roughly, if the price of wheat was 12 pence a quarter (a quarter weighing 240 pounds) then the baker had to ensure that a farthing loaf of the best white bread, called Wastel bread, weighed 5.6 pounds. Wastel bread was not the most expensive. Simnel bread, “because it has been baked twice,” cost a bit more and so called French bread, enriched with milk and eggs, a bit more still. The coarsest “bread of common wheat” was less than half the cost of wastel bread.

From every quarter of wheat, the baker was permitted to sell 418 pounds of bread. Anything he could squeeze above that was called advantage bread, and was essentially pure profit. There was, naturally, every incentive for bakers and millers alike to add all sorts of things to increase the weight of flour and bread.

It is the connection between money and the weight of bread that is most intriguing. Weights, like money, were expressed as pounds. A pound in money was the pound-weight of silver, while the penny – the only coin in circulation – was a pennyweight of silver. But how much was a penny weight? 32 Wheat Corns in the midst of the Ear according to the Assize of Bread and Ale, which then explained that the 20 pence-weight made an ounce, and 12 ounces made one pound.

Notes

  1. Di Murrell’s book Barges & Bread: canals & grain to bread & baking, is available from Amazon and elsewhere, including direct from the publisher, Prospect Books.
  2. Di also has a website, Foodieafloat.
  3. If you really want to get to grips with the Assize of Bread, you need to read Alan S. C. Ross. “The Assize of Bread.” The Economic History Review, vol. 9, no. 2, 1956, pp. 332–342. JSTOR.
  4. Incidental music is the Impromptu from Zez Confrey’s Three Little Oddities, played by Rowan Belt
Sad that they managed to win their court case for shipping grain, but were still frozen out of the market.

🎧 Whatever happened to British veal? | Eat This Podcast

Listened to Whatever happened to British veal? Too cute to eat, or the only ethical response? by Jeremy Cherfas from Eat This Podcast
Dairy cows unavoidably produce male calves that are of no use to the dairy industry. They used to end up as veal, and in 1960, Britons ate more than 600,000 calves worth of the stuff. By the 1980s, that had dropped to less than 35,000. Ten years ago, a UK trade magazine said that “public opinion … generally regards veal as ethically somewhere between dodo omelettes and panda fritters”.

And yet, today there’s no shortage of veal and no surplus of dairy bullocks.

Time was when veal calves were kept in the dark. These days, it may be the shoppers who have helped to solve the problem of surplus male dairy calves. Behind the shift is a complicated story of moral outrage, utterly unpredictable disease outbreaks and the willingness of some strange bedfellows to work together to solve a difficult problem for the food supply system.

Notes

  1. Gillian Hopkinson is a senior lecturer at Lancaster University School of Management.
  2. Clips from BBC Radio 4 – You and Yours and BBC World Service – Witness, Mad cow disease – CJD.
  3. Music by Podington Bear.
  4. Banner photo of two Dutch dairy calves by Peter Nijenhuis and cover by debstreasures.
The realities of milk and beef production may not always square with our societal morality. Things are more complicated than they may seem and require second and third level thought and problem solving to come up with worthwhile solutions. I remember outcry when I was younger and knew that things had shifted, but haven’t heard any follow up stories until now. Glad to know that things seem to have reached some sort of equilibrium that seems generally acceptable.

🎧 Hoptopia | Eat This Podcast

Listened to Hoptopia How the Willamette valley conquered the world of tasty beer by Jeremy Cherfas from Eat This Podcast

Brewers have long appreciated the value of hops from the Pacific northwest, but it was Cascade, a variety practically synonymous with craft brewing, that made the area more generally famous among beer drinkers. Cascade was named for the Cascade Range, which runs down the west coast of North America. The home of the Cascade hop is the Willamette valley, roughly halfway between the mountains and the coast. Cascade was released in 1972, but the history of hops in the Willamette valley goes back to the 1830s. The industry has seen more than its fair share of ups and downs, all examined by historian Peter Kopp in his book Hoptopia.

The whole question of changing tastes in beer, and how that affects the fortunes of different hops, is fascinating. If you’ve been a listener forever, you may remember a very early Eat This Podcast, about the rediscovery of an English hop known prosaically as OZ97a. Deemed too hoppy and abandoned when first tried, the vogue for craft beers resurrected its fortunes. It’s a fun story, though I say so myself.

Notes

  1. Peter Kopp’s book is Hoptopia: A World of Agriculture and Beer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
  2. Cover photo is Ezra Meeker, the early grower of hops in the Willamette valley who pioneered the global marketing of Oregon hops. The booming hop business made him the territory’s first millionnaire, and perhaps also its biggest bust. Hop King: Ezra Meeker’s Boom Years chronicles that part of his long, rich life.
  3. Banner photo of hops by Paul on Flickr.
I had a roommate in college from the Czech Republic who fondly remembered spending time on hops farms picking what he called the county’s “green gold”. It’s interesting to think about the economic and cultural differences and norms built up around such a product. I hadn’t known that the Pacific Northwest figured so prominently in production and find it amazing that the economic timing for the industry was so fortuitous.

What a fantastic episode on all fronts.

🎧 Episode 03 The Big Man Can’t Shoot | Revisionist History

Listened to Episode 03 The Big Man Can't Shoot by Malcolm GladwellMalcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History

The basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain had only one flaw: he couldn’t shoot free throws. In 1962, Chamberlain switched to making his foul shots underhanded—and fixed his only weakness.

But then he switched back.

“The Big Man Can’t Shoot” is a meditation on the puzzle of why smart people do dumb things—why excellence is such a difficult and elusive goal, even for the best-intentioned.

I’m really addicted to this podcast now.

Good ideas and why they have difficulty spreading. Somewhat related to the ideas in Made to Stick.

🎧 Episode 02 Saigon, 1965 | Revisionist History

Listened to Episode 02 Saigon, 1965 by Malcolm GladwellMalcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History

In the early 1960s, the Pentagon set up a top-secret research project in an old villa in downtown Saigon. The task? To interview captured North Vietnamese soldiers and guerrillas in order to measure their morale: Was the relentless U.S. bombing pushing them to the brink of capitulation?

Mai Elliott, working in the RAND villa on Rue Pasteur. The windows are taped to prevent the glass from shattering in case of an explosion from a mortar round.

Mai Elliott, working in the RAND villa on Rue Pasteur. The windows are taped to prevent the glass from shattering in case of an explosion from a mortar round. Saigon, 1965 is the story of three people who got caught up in that effort: a young Vietnamese woman, a refugee from Nazi Germany, and a brilliant Russian émigré. All saw the same things. All reached different conclusions. The Pentagon effort, run by the Rand Corporation, was one of the most ambitious studies of enemy combatants ever conducted—and no one could agree on what it meant.

VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION COURTESY OF RONNY CHIENG
"My father-in-law was a government scholar and later government official in South Vietnam during the Vietnam war. After listening to this compelling and well crafted episode of Revisionist History, I knew he too would find this perspective on the war fascinating. So I set about to produce a Vietnamese translation of the episode so he could fully understand all the nuances of the story in his native language. Thankfully I found the extremely capable professional translator Miss Died Ngoc Bui who not only created the written translation, but also went out of her way to create the audio translation below. I hope all Vietnamese speakers, including the elderly Vietnamese diaspora who lived through the events described in the story can listen to this episode and get as much out of it as I did."
- Ronny Chieng

The American RAND staff and Vietnamese interviewers on the front porch of the villa on Rue Pasteur. Courtesy of Hanh Easterbrook. A disclosure, in the fall of 2015, I was named to the Board of Directors of the RAND Corporation—the subject of this episode. It’s not a paid position (RAND is a non-profit). And I did the bulk of my reporting for this episode before taking the position. But you should know, that when I say that Rand is a incredibly fascinating place, I’m biased. And if you were on the RAND board, I daresay you’d think the same thing.

Some really great history and analysis here. It reminds me I need to go back the Vietnam doc on PBS.

🎧 Episode 01 The Lady Vanishes | Revisionist History

Listened to Episode 01 The Lady Vanishes from Revisionist History

In the late 19th, a painting by a virtually unknown artist took England by storm: The Roll Call but after that brilliant first effort, the artist all but disappeared. Why?

The Lady Vanishes explores the world of art and politics to examines the strange phenomenon of the “token”—the outsider whose success serves not to alleviate discrimination but perpetuate it. If a country elects a female president, does that mean the door is now open for all women to follow? Or does that simply give the status quo the justification to close the door again?

The roll call
Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2016

I can tell that I’m going to love this series already. Strong and interesting theses melded with some great stories.

What does it mean to be the first of something? Does it improve things for those who come (or don’t) after?

🎧 Revisionist History Podcast (trailer)

Listened to Revisionist History Podcast (Episode 0 / Trailer) by Malcolm GladwellMalcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History

Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell's journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Every episode re-examines something from the past—an event, a person, an idea, even a song—and asks whether we got it right the first time. From Panoply Media. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance.