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Vietnam Vet Tim Keenan Discusses His Journey On The Appalachian Trail and His Book "The Good Hike"
In 1967, Tim Keenan grew to loathe the impenetrable jungle of Vietnam during his one-year tour of duty as a combat soldier. For the 47 years following, he couldn’t shake his dread of the woods, until he confronted his fears head-on and began a hike of the 2,178.3-mile Appalachian Trail.
The Good Hike is Keenan’s story of finally coming to peace with himself, buoyed by the healing powers of nature and his fellow hikers. His story weaves in the beautiful towns and mountains of the great Appalachian Trail with his experiences in the jungle and battle zones around Dak To, including the infamous Hill 1338.
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Is the News Fake and the Facts Alternative? Why People Hear What They Want to Hear and How to Effectively Bridge the Divide
Fake news is only fake to those who don’t believe it. In other words, what we already think can color how we evaluate new persuasive messages, particularly about topics in which we are deeply invested (e.g., gun control, climate change, health recommendations).
This talk will explore some common pitfalls when evaluating information about which we already have opinions, as well as why we are so motivated to feel right (even when we may not be), and will conclude with some strategies for reducing these biases.
Dr. Allison Earl is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Director of the Health, Attitudes, and Influence Lab (HAILab) at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses primarily on what information people approach or avoid – and why – and how these tendencies impact what we think, feel, and do.
This program is presented in partnership with the University of Michigan Department of Psychology.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin talks to author Drew Philp about his new book: A $500 House in Detroit: Rebuilding an Abandoned Home and an American City.
Martin talks to author Drew Philp about his new book: A $500 House in Detroit: Rebuilding an Abandoned Home and an American City.
Drew Philp, an idealistic college student from a working-class Michigan family, decides to live where he can make a difference. He sets his sights on Detroit, the failed metropolis of abandoned buildings, widespread poverty, and rampant crime. Arriving with no job, no friends, and no money, Philp buys a ramshackle house for five hundred dollars in the east side neighborhood known as Poletown. The roomy Queen Anne he now owns is little more than a clapboard shell on a crumbling brick foundation, missing windows, heat, water, electricity, and a functional roof.
A $500 House in Detroit is Philp’s raw and earnest account of rebuilding everything but the frame of his house, nail by nail and room by room. We witness his concept of Detroit shift, expand, and evolve as his plan to save the city gives way to a life forged from political meaning, personal connection, and collective purpose. As he assimilates into the community of Detroiters around him, Philp guides readers through the city’s vibrant history and engages in urgent conversations about gentrification, racial tensions, and class warfare.
Part social history, part brash generational statement, part comeback story, A $500 House in Detroit “shines in its depiction of the radical neighborliness of ordinary people in desperate circumstances. This is an unforgettable, intimate account of the tentative revival of an American city and a glimpse at a new way forward for generations to come.
Martin’s interview with Drew Philp was recorded on May 23, 2017.
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"Spring Awakening:" How a 19th-Century German Play Rocks with Relevance Today
Originally written as a 19th century German play, Spring Awakening is an eight-time Tony Award-winning rock musical that uses alternative rock and a folk-infused score to explore topics of adolescence, consent, sexuality, suicide, and the stress of school.
In anticipation of Ann Arbor in Concert's upcoming Spring Awakening performance, Craig VanKempen will discuss a history of the play and how the social issues it portrays continue to be important to the youth of today.
Craig VanKempen holds a Bachelor’s Degree in German and Theatre from the University of Michigan’s Residential College and a Masters in Social Work and Public Health from the U-M. He is a Social Worker and Health Educator at the Corner Health Center of Ypsilanti and works with adolescents in individual psychotherapy as well as in the Teen Peer Education Theatre Troupe.
This program is presented in partnership with Ann Arbor in Concert.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin interviews veteran sports journalist Tom Gage about The Big 50: The Men and Moments that Made the Detroit Tigers.
In his first-ever book, the award-winning beat writer Tom Gage recounts the living history of the Tigers, counting down from No. 50 to No. 1. The Big 50 brilliantly brings to life the Tigers' remarkable story, from Ty Cobb and Kirk Gibson to the rollercoaster that was the ‘Bless You Boys’ era to Justin Verlander's no-hitters and up to today.
Tom Gage covered the Detroit Tigers beat for The Detroit News from 1979 to 2014. In 2015, Gage was elected the 2015 winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. The longtime chairman of the Detroit Chapter of the BBWAA, Gage also serves on the screening committee that formulates the annual Hall of Fame ballot. The forward to The Big 50 was written by the 1984 World Series MVP Alan Trammell, who was a six-time All-Star while playing for the Detroit Tigers from 1977-1996.
The interview with Tom Gage was recorded on May 2, 2017.
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The Long and Winding Road to Knowing Thyself: Why Accurate Self-Knowledge is So Difficult to Achieve
“Know thyself!” exhorted the ancient Greeks, but it turns out that accurate self-understanding is difficult to gain, particularly when it comes to evaluating our knowledge and expertise.
David Dunning, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan and Faculty Affiliate of the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Institute of Social Research, discusses recent research showing common biases people display when judging their skill and know-how, and the costs (and occasional benefits) of those biases. He describes best practices to potentially avoid them. It all boils down to following this old, wise admonishment: When arguing with a fool, just make sure that the other person is not likewise engaged.
Professor Dunning taught for several years at Cornell University, where he is Professor Emeritus. An author, co-author, or co-editor of nearly 150 journal articles, book chapters, commentaries, and reviews, he has served as president of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and the Society for the Study of Motivation. He received the 2016 Award for Lifetime Achievement from the International Society for Self and Identity.
His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the Templeton Foundation, as well as featured in more popular outlets as diverse as the New York Times, This American Life, and Doonesbury. This talk is part of the "Exploring the Mind" series and is cosponsored by the University of Michigan Department of Psychology.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin interviews Martin Torgoff, author of "Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs"
From the author of the acclaimed Can't Find My Way Home comes the gripping story of the rise of early drug culture in America.
With an intricate storyline that unites engaging characters and themes and reads like a novel, Bop Apocalypse details the rise of early drug culture in America by weaving together the disparate elements that formed this new and revolutionary segment of the American social fabric.
Drawing upon his rich decades of writing experience, master storyteller Martin Torgoff connects the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the first drug laws, Louis Armstrong, Mezz Mezzrow, Harry Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, swing, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, the Savoy Ballroom, Reefer Madness, Charlie Parker, the birth of bebop, the rise of the Beat Generation, and the coming of heroin to Harlem. Aficionados of jazz, the Beats, counterculture, and drug history will all find much to enjoy here, with a cast of characters that includes vivid and memorable depictions of Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Herbert Huncke, Terry Southern, and countless others.
Bop Apocalypse is also a living history that teaches us much about the conflicts and questions surrounding drugs today, casting many contemporary issues in a new light by connecting them back to the events of this transformative era. At a time when marijuana legalization is rapidly becoming a reality, it takes us back to the advent of marijuana prohibition, when the templates of modern drug law, policy, and culture were first established, along with the concomitant racial stereotypes. As a new opioid epidemic sweeps through white working- and middle-class communities, it brings us back to when heroin first arrived on the streets of Harlem in the 1940s. And as we debate and grapple with the gross racial disparities of mass incarceration, it puts into sharp and provocative focus the racism at the very roots of our drug war.
Having spent a lifetime at the nexus of drugs and music, Torgoff reveals material never before disclosed and offers new insights, crafting and contextualizing Bop Apocalypse into a truly novel contribution to our understanding of jazz, race, literature, drug culture, and American social and cultural history.
Martin’s interview with Martin Torgoff was originally recorded March 7, 2017.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin talks to Ed Ward about The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1: 1920-1963.
Ed Ward covers the first half of the history of rock & roll in this sweeping and definitive narrative: from the 1920s, when the music of rambling medicine shows mingled with the songs of vaudeville and minstrel acts to create the very early sounds of country and rhythm and blues, to the rise of the first independent record labels post-World War II, and concluding in December 1963, just as an immense change in the airwaves took hold and the Beatles prepared for their first American tour. The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1 shines a light on the far corners of the genre to reveal the stories behind the hugely influential artists who changed the musical landscape forever.
In this first volume of a two-part series, Ward shares his endless depth of knowledge and through engrossing storytelling hops seamlessly from Memphis to Chicago, Detroit, England, New York, and everywhere in between. He covers the trajectories of the big name acts like Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and Ray Charles, while also filling in gaps of knowledge and celebrating forgotten heroes such as the Burnette brothers, the “5” Royales, and Marion Keisker, Sam Phillips’s assistant, who played an integral part in launching Elvis’s career.
For all music lovers and rock & roll fans, Ward spins story after story of some of the most unforgettable and groundbreaking moments in rock history, introducing us along the way to the musicians, DJs, record executives, and producers who were at the forefront of the genre and had a hand in creating the music we all know and love today.
The interview was originally recorded on February 7, 2017.
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Washtenaw Reads 2017 Author Event: Kathryn J. Edin & H. Luke Shaefer, Authors of "$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America"
Hundreds of community members throughout Washtenaw County read and discussed the award-winning book $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn J. Edin & H. Luke Shaefer, which was selected as the Washtenaw Reads in September 2016 by a panel of community judges.
About the book:
After two decades of groundbreaking research on American poverty, Kathryn Edin noticed something she hadn’t seen before — households surviving on virtually no income, a level of destitution so deep as to be unthought-of in the world’s most advanced capitalist economy. Edin teamed with Luke Shaefer, an expert on surveys of the incomes of the poor, to discover that the number of American families living on $2.00 per person, per day, has skyrocketed to 1.5 million American households, including about 3 million children.
The result of their investigative teamwork is this book, which received much critical acclaim. "$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America" won the prestigious Hillman Prize for Book Journalism by the Sidney Hillman Foundation, was short-listed for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation and was named a New York Times Notable Book and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
About the authors:
Kathryn J. Edin, the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, is the coauthor of "Promises I Can’t Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage" and "Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work." H. Luke Shaefer, Ph.D. is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, where he studies poverty and social welfare policy in the United States.. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, and received the 2013 Early Career Achievement Award, given by the Society for Social Work and Research.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin talks to author Mark Ribowsky about Hank: The Short Life and Long Country Road of Hank Williams.
After he died in the backseat of a Cadillac at the age of twenty-nine, Hank Williams -- a frail, flawed man who had become country music's first real star --- instantly morphed into its first tragic martyr. Having hit the heights with simple songs of despair, depression, and tainted love, he would, with that outlaw swagger, become in death a template for the rock generation to follow. Six decades later, Mark Ribowsky now weaves together the first fully realized biography of Hank Williams in a generation. Examining his music while also re-creating days and nights choked in booze and desperation, Ribowsky traces the miraculous rise of this music legend from the dirt roads of rural Alabama to the now-immortal stage of the Grand Ole Opry, and finally to a sad, lonely end on New Year's Day, 1953. The result is an original work that promises to uncover the real Hank beneath the myths that have long enshrouded his legacy.
The interview was recorded on January 26, 2017.