Staff Picks

I would like to recommend a new podcast called Now & Then. The show is hosted by two professors of American History, Joanne Freeman of Yale University and Heather Cox Richardson of Boston College, who are obviously friends and enjoy conversation with each other as well as sharing a deep knowledge about our past. (Richardson has Maine ties.) I have been familiar with both of them through past podcasts (Freeman was on a great show called Backstory that unfortunately ended last year), and Richardson seems to have gotten fairly famous chronicling daily events of the past couple of years on her Substack newsletter. Both of them have written books that are available through Minerva.

If you go looking for this one through your podcast player, be careful that you are not subscribing one several other podcasts with the same name.

We had a nice discussion of Stranger Than Paradise over Zoom on Wednesday, May 26, even though it put some of us off a little. During our talk, I mentioned an essay by the critic J. Hoberman than I had found online that talks about Stranger Than Paradise within the context of a number of other films that came out around the same time. I cannot tell by the way it is dated whether he wrote it contemporaneously or twenty years later. I found the essay interesting and worth sharing.

I suspect everybody loves lists of The Greatest ____s and hates them at the same time, whether they are lists of books, movies, albums, or anything else. I think lists exist primarily to rile up the emotions of anyone with an opinion, but they also contain good suggestions for future viewing, reading, listening, etc. I came across a couple of lists on the BBC website while poking around the other day: one is a list of 100 greatest films of the 21st century, and the other is a list of the 100 greatest American films ever. I have only seen 70 of the 21st century films and 90 of the American ones. Looks like I have some watching to do! (By the way, after you read these lists, keep scrolling down for more fun content.)

Two prominent authors just died. Beverly Cleary was 104 and wrote a number of books I read when I was a kid. Larry McMurtry wrote some beloved Westerns, including The Last Picture Show, which was made into the film we recently discussed with the Merrill Film Society.

Do you have any thoughts or memories about these authors that you would like to share?