Stephanie Bastek

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

Ghostland

Read an excerpt from Colin Dickey’s history of America’s most haunted places

By Stephanie Bastek | Monday October 17, 2016

Ku Klux Kounty

Plus, tall tales from Claude Monet and Betty MacDonald

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday October 7, 2016

How to Travel Without Seeing

Read an excerpt from Andrés Neuman’s dispatches from Latin America

By Stephanie Bastek | Monday September 26, 2016

Weapons of Math Destruction

Read an excerpt from Cathy O’Neil’s book on how Big Data increases inequality and threatens democracy

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday September 9, 2016

The Story of Egypt

Read an excerpt from Joann Fletcher’s book about the civilization that shaped the world

By Stephanie Bastek | Tuesday August 30, 2016

A Road Unforeseen

Read an excerpt from Meredith Tax’s book about the women fighting the Islamic State—and winning

By Stephanie Bastek | Tuesday August 23, 2016

Women v. ISIS

Feminism in the Syrian desert, microbes everywhere, and one agony aunt

By Stephanie Bastek | Tuesday August 23, 2016

I Contain Multitudes

Read an excerpt from Ed Yong’s new book about the microbes within us

By Stephanie Bastek | Tuesday August 9, 2016

A New Story for Black Americans

Plus: secrets of political conventions and the alchemy of crowdsourced poetry

By Stephanie Bastek | Tuesday August 9, 2016

Catullus’ Bedspread

Read an excerpt from Daisy Dunn’s new biography of Rome’s most erotic poet

By Stephanie Bastek | Wednesday July 27, 2016

The Extreme Path

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday September 18, 2026

Call It Macaroni

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday September 4, 2026

Blades of Grass

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday August 21, 2026

The Translator Stuck

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday August 7, 2026

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

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