Stephanie Bastek

Stephanie Bastek is the senior editor of the Scholar and the producer/host of the Smarty Pants podcast.

Zombies and Plagues and Bombs, Oh My!

How hyperbolic outbreak narratives have infected our worldview—from media to the government

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday February 23, 2018

Renaissance Rumor Mill

The man behind the great men of the Renaissance

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday February 16, 2018

Reclaiming Craftiness

What the things we make with our hands tell us about ourselves

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday February 9, 2018

A Revolutionary Change of Heart

How a moving essay on war and suffering sprang from a childhood book

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday February 2, 2018

School’s Out for Segregation

How charter schools and other private measures undermine a public good

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday January 26, 2018

Seeing Red

How the artistic avant-garde made a modern China

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday January 12, 2018

CSI: Roman Empire

How climate change and disease might have been the real killers

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday December 22, 2017

Brainwaves

A composer and a neuroscientist unravel the story of human creativity

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday December 15, 2017

Funny Business

Cullen Murphy on growing up in the golden age of make-believe

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday December 8, 2017

Jane Austen and the Making of Desire

On being a Regency fanboy, and America’s weird relationship with sex

By Stephanie Bastek | Monday November 20, 2017

Riot Girls

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday July 24, 2026

To the Manor Born

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday July 10, 2026

The Geek Squad

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday June 12, 2026

For Better or for Wurst

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday May 15, 2026

Safe From Sin

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday April 17, 2026

Hue and Cry

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday April 3, 2026

Shotgun Ornithology

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday March 20, 2026

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