Stephanie Bastek

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

Family Values

Augustine Sedgewick on the history of paternity and patriarchy

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday June 13, 2025

Lingua Obscura

Laura Spinney on the spread of Proto-Indo-European

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday May 23, 2025

The Shipping News

Ian Kumekawa tells the story of the global economy in one barge

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday May 9, 2025

Coming Home

Craig Thompson digs up memories of farm labor and the history of ginseng

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday April 25, 2025

Muscle Memory

Michael Joseph Gross on the importance of strength, past and present

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday April 11, 2025

The Most Famous Unknown Artist

David Sheff puts Yoko Ono in the spotlight

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday March 28, 2025

The Root Cause

Padraic X. Scanlan tells the real history of the Irish Potato Famine

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday March 14, 2025

Something New in the West

Kurt Beals on translating All Quiet on the Western Front

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday February 28, 2025

Family/History

David Levering Lewis digs into his own origin story

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday February 14, 2025

The Epic Viking Saga of the Everyday

Eleanor Barraclough on the ordinary people of Norse history

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday January 31, 2025

Imagined Cuisines

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday June 23, 2023

What Could Be Wurst?

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday June 16, 2023

Why the West Won’t Die

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday June 9, 2023

No-No-Novel

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday June 2, 2023

Lines from the Front

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday May 19, 2023

Losing the Lot

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday May 12, 2023

A Home in Chinatown

By Stephanie Bastek | Friday April 28, 2023

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