F&M Picks: Top Movies and Podcasts
Which movies and podcasts do Franklin & Marshall College faculty and staff turn to when it’s time to unwind? Students begin spring break today, so we sought recommendations for the best media during downtime. Check out top picks from familiar faces at F&M, including several of this semester’s featured Common Hour speakers.
Movie: Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009, 20th Century Studios)
From the producer: Devil-may-care Mr. Fox quits chicken-thieving to start a family with Mrs. Fox, but 12 years later, he leaves his columnist job to rob poultry from three mean farmers who devise a plan to trap Fox and others in the burrowing animal community. With his friends and neighbors, Fox saves his animal community and beats the farmers at their own game.
Dan says: “Beautiful stop-motion animation with a heartwarming story and a great soundtrack. Animation isn't just for kids; trust me and indulge.”
Podcast: People's Party with Talib Kweli, by Talib Kweli
From the producer: A weekly interview show hosted by hip-hop legend Talib Kweli. The show features big-name guests exploring hip-hop, culture, and politics.
David says: “Talib Kweli has intimate conversations with his peers that detail the ins and outs of their experiences in activism and the entertainment industries. As a music nerd myself, I enjoy hearing about artists' ways into the industry, and how they've navigated the ever-changing landscape of the music business. But, as a person always striving to impact my community, it's amazing to hear the paths activists have taken, as well as how they were able to build movements to make lasting change for their communities.”
Podcast: The Memory Palace, by Nate DiMeo
From the producer: A storytelling podcast and occasional radio segment created and produced by Nate DiMeo (former artist in residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) in 2008.
Evan says: “With every episode running between five and 20 minutes, this non-serialized podcast on wonderful, weird and wholesome stories from our past is easily digestible and is sure to tug on your heartstrings. Two of my favorite episodes are episode 127 (No Summer) and episode 135 (Revolutions).”
Podcast: The Great Women Artists Podcast, by Katy Hessel
From the producer: Presented by art historian and curator Katy Hessel, The Great Women Artists Podcast interviews artists on their career, or curators, writers, or general art lovers, on the female artist who means the most to them. Katy is also the presenter of Dior Talks.
Sandra says: “People want to think the arts field has reached greater parity than it actually has. Katy Hessel's incredibly entertaining interviews shed light on influential artists left out from the canon, and inspiring talks with artists today. This living archive of rebellious and intimate stories shows intersections between life and art, across class and culture. Katy Hessel is so passionate in her curiosity and need to uncover these stories – I listen to them in the studio, very addictive!”
(For eye-opening facts about gender representation in the arts, visit the homepage of the National Museum of Women in the Arts).
Podcast: American History Tellers, by Lindsay Graham
From the producer: The Cold War, Prohibition, the Gold Rush, the Space Race. Every part of your life – the words you speak, the ideas you share – can be traced to our history, but how well do you really know the stories that made America?
Amy says: “The podcast has dozens of seasons that tell the story of specific historical events. It's a combination of narration and dramatic retellings and the stories are captivating. I've learned so much about history I thought I knew, but had no idea about. My favorite one is about piracy – who knew the eye patch was actually a way for sailors to keep one pupil dilated so they could see better in the dark with that eye? The episodes are an easy listen, so it's a good podcast to have on when you're working on a project.”
Documentary: Fight The Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World (2022, PBS)
From the producer: Chuck D from Public Enemy explores hip-hop’s political awakening over the last 50 years.
Gretchel says: “In four episodes, this truly shows how the brilliant musical culture of hip-hop, based around social events and social justice, impacted the history of many nations.”
Movie: Black Panther (2018) & Wakanda Forever (2022) (Marvel)
From the producer: Marvel Studios’ Black Panther follows T’Challa who, after the death of his father, the King of Wakanda, returns home to the isolated, technologically advanced African nation to succeed to the throne and take his rightful place as king.
Gretchel says: “When you watch these movies back-to-back, you will see how brilliantly the second movie, Wakanda Forever, picked up on the nuances of the original Black Panther and weaved the themes through the movies.”
Series: Finding Your Roots (2012-present, PBS)
From the producer: Henry Louis Gates Jr. has explored the ancestry of dozens of influential people from diverse backgrounds, taking millions of viewers deep into the past to reveal the connections that bind us all.
Gretchel says: ”You will have a better understanding around the concept of race being a social construct. You will also see the impact of finding one's roots and ancestry has on famous and popular individuals.”
Movie: Clueless (1995, Paramount Movies)
From the producer: Jane Austen might never have imagined that her 1816 novel, “Emma,” could be turned into a fresh and satirical look at ultra-rich teenagers in a Beverly Hills high school.
Courtnee says: “Having grown up in California, I enjoy the satire. I also think it is such a cool snapshot in time, from the clothing to the catch-phrases and cultural references. It's like a ’90s version of Mean Girls.”
Podcast: This Land, by Rebecca Nagle
From the producer: How a string of custody battles over Native children became a federal lawsuit that threatens everything from tribal sovereignty to civil rights.
Alison says: “Each season focuses on the backstory of a Supreme Court case related to Native American rights. This season is about a case involving the Indian Child Welfare Act. The Court has heard the case, but has not ye
Movie: The Banshees of Inisherin (2022, Searchlight Pictures)
From the producer: Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them.
Amelia says: “It's got everything you might want for St. Patrick's Day: an Irish island in the 1920s, eccentric characters with unexplained grudges and affections, excellent wool sweaters, humor, drama, pathos and surprise. Drop everything and watch it!”
Movie: Farha (2021, Picture Tree International)
From the producer: Farha is a 14-year-old girl who lives in a small village in Palestine in 1948. Girls her age are traditionally married off or spoken for, yet Farha wants to continue her education despite traditions and the restrictions on schooling in her village for boys only.
Adeem says: “It’s at once devastatingly beautiful and claustrophobically unsettling in the ways in which it filters the brutality of settler-colonial violence through the eyes of a young girl, challenging the audience constantly to rethink how our silent witnessing reveals our complicity in the sustenance and intensification of such projects.”
Podcast: Bad Faith, by Briahnna Joy Gray
From the producer: Bad Faith is two shows in one: a panel show about politics and pop culture with a rotating cast of performers and politicians, artists and activists, writers and radicals; and a two-way podcast where two people from two very different parts of the left make the case for one less terrible world.
Adeem says: Former lawyer and former Bernie Sanders' communications and media manager Briahnna Joy Gray is a refreshing ray of historically informed, incisively thoughtful and profoundly empathetic sunshine amidst the morass of USian political media commentariat. She curates important conversations, twice a week, that really hone in on our (USian) place and role in the world today.
Latest Bell & Tower
- Liberal Arts is the Future of WorkLiberal arts colleges and educational leaders from around the country will gather at Franklin & Marshall College June 1-3 for a conference to imagine the workplace of tomorrow. “The Liberal Arts and the Future of Work” is expected to focus on the changing nature of education and work and the central role the liberal arts can play in the workplace now emerging. “We’ve reached an inflection point where there is a need for liberal arts colleges to become more forward-looking, to envision and create the knowledge needed for the future,” said Professor of Legal Studies Jeffrey Nesteruk, deputy provost for new academic initiatives.Leading the conference, Nesteruk said this does not mean abandoning the liberal arts’ invaluable tradition of preserving and transmitting the wisdom of the past, but rather it means folding that wisdom into new curricular programs. “Because today’s students will experience a work world significantly different from that of even a decade ago, liberal arts colleges must strive to imagine tomorrow,” he said. Among the institutions that will be represented at the conference are the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program, Babson College, Bentley University, Bryn Mawr College, Bucknell University, Carleton College, College of the Holy Cross, Colorado College, Connecticut College, DePauw University, Gettysburg College, Lawrence University, Mount Holyoke College, New York University’s Stern School of Business, Oberlin College, Prescott College, Swarthmore College, Washington and Lee University and Wesleyan University. A panel of college presidents will open the convening. “It is in addressing this new environment that the classic virtues of liberal arts colleges display their contemporary currency,” Nesteruk said. “Liberal arts colleges have always been integral to strength and cohesion in our flourishing years. In disconcerting times, we may discover their value is even greater.”
- A Q&A with Matthew Thomas ’10, Director of Leadership, Mentorship, and Life Design InitiativesStaff Council is proud to spotlight F&M departments and professional staff in Bell & Tower, a weekly newsletter for the faculty and professional staff of Franklin & Marshall College. We hope these spotlights will reveal some of the tremendous work being done by professional staff across campus, chip away at existing silos, and help you gain an understanding and appreciation of the varied ways in which your colleagues contribute to the mission of the College each day. Do you want your department to be in the spotlight? We invite you to share stories and information about your teams via this form. Tell us about your role and how you support students at F&M. I’m thrilled to be back at my alma mater supporting students in the multiple areas covered by my role: leadership, mentorship, and life design. My position allows me ample room to support F&M students in a variety of ways — from running leadership cohort groups on campus, such as the Harwood Leadership Seminar and the Diplomat Leadership Program, to stewarding some of F&M’s hallmark mentorship initiatives, like our True Blue Mentorship Program. In addition, I have the opportunity to lead a variety of trainings and workshops to support individual groups across campus — from helping club leadership intentionally transition from one year to the next to encouraging students as they build literacy in diverse areas of their lives, from career development and financial management to networking and articulating their own personal and professional stories. I’m excited to offer experiential learning opportunities that support students in being the best version of themselves. Why do you feel leadership, mentorship and life design is important to student success? Success means different things to different people, but no matter the definition, it relies on students having the skills and confidence to chart their own paths in life. Giving students the knowledge that leadership is inclusive, values-based, and collaborative — and the space and guidance to explore what leadership means to them within and beyond these principles — offers them a head start in understanding who they are as leaders, community members, and individuals and how they will achieve their personal goals (or, put another way, design their own lives). Mentorship promotes this growth through individualized connections and support. I’m excited to work with our students as they build their own mentor “board of directors,” a diverse support network that makes it easier to navigate the complexities of our constantly changing world. What exactly does life design mean? Life design is an extension of design thinking, which is a process used by designers and teams in various industries to intentionally create all manner of products and outcomes. In my role, I’m excited to help students connect with the resources they need to explore and chart meaningful, balanced, and fulfilling lives — from courses about financial literacy or etiquette to guidance for choosing an industry that feels personally fulfilling. Life design models can also provide students with tools for making difficult decisions in their lives. Moving from being told “you can do anything” while students are in high school and college, to choosing a defined something in a career or field after college can be a difficult transition. OSPGD and the larger F&M community are here to help students navigate these changes and exciting opportunities. What sort of programs and support can students expect this upcoming year? My career has focused on experiential and leadership education. I’ve taught in a range of settings up and down the East Coast and in the mountains of Colorado, and students will see our programming reflect that background. I’m looking forward to getting students outside and off-campus and connecting with the Lancaster community. We have some exciting plans for students this upcoming year — from community events in Lancaster to a Susquehanna Riverlands tour. I’m so looking forward to working with groups from across our campus and community, and my office door is always open! How do you feel F&M prepares students for success beyond F&M? As an alum, I call upon the skills and critical lens that I developed at F&M on an almost daily basis. In every class I took at the College, I was given the opportunity to develop personal relationships with not only my peers but also my professors — many of whom were the first colleagues I connected with upon returning to campus. It’s wonderful to now be supporting students with programming that compliments this academic power and to be joining a community full of individuals who are part of the same mission — fostering students of intellect, creativity, and character.
- Shout-Out! To Mike WhartonTo Mike Wharton, Groundskeeping/Facilities and Operations, from Donna Pflum: Throughout the year, in all kinds of weather, Mike works tirelessly to keep the grounds and the parking areas around College Square and the ASFC in beautiful, pristine condition. Every day, our community benefits from his hard work and thoughtful care. Job well done, Mike. Thank you!
- Shout-Out! To Kim Bryan and Julia BelserFrom Victoria Waddail to Admission staffers Kim Bryan and Julia Belser: Kim and Julia were the leads in planning our extremely successful Admitted Student Weekend, April 14-15. The events have already resulted in adding members to the Class of 2027, and the atmosphere was fun and upbeat the entire weekend. We have received glowing reviews from many students and parents. So much work goes into this event, so I wanted to acknowledge our lead planners -- and also our entire division and the whole F&M community -- for making this such a success!
- Professor’s Book Examines Government’s ‘Communities of Strangers’For more than two decades, Dean Hammer lectured and wrote about democracies in ancient Rome and Greece, but now he tackles American democracy in comparison to Rome. “I’m really proud of this book,” Franklin & Marshall College’s John W. Wetzel Professor of Government said. “It is my sixth book and serves as a culmination of some different strands of my research program over my career.” Recently published by Cambridge University Press, “Rome and America: Communities of Strangers, Spectacles of Belonging” explores the founding myths in the cultural imagination of the two societies.The range of topics Hammer pulls together for his argument includes American Western movies; bare-knuckle boxing; Native American policy, and the writings of Noah Webster, Charles Eastman, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Du Bois. “Ultimately, American democracy, like the Roman republic, is confronted with a crisis of a government of strangers, in which consensus is shirked and dissensus [widespread dissent] celebrated,” Hammer writes. In three questions, Hammer shared some of his views on republics, democracy and his advice to students who aspire to an academic career. 1) In the final chapter, “The Experience of Politics and the Crises of Two Republics,” you write about how the Roman republic collapsed. Do you see a similar occurrence in the United States? I do. I first wrote about this danger years before it became fashionable. Every time I went back to work on the chapter, I realized that claims I had made that seemed alarmist at the time now seemed downright muted. In particular, I saw some early signs of how violence had seeped into our thinking as an acceptable or necessary aspect of our politics and culture. I’m not talking about fringe groups. I’m talking about how we talk about each other on social media, the increasing threats to government officials and election workers, the rising hate speech directed at each other, the hate-based vandalism and killings, the acts of violence that erupted in the midst of peaceful protests, the acts of overt violence against peaceful protestors, and, of course, the events of Jan. 6. But what is alarming is the frighteningly broad acceptance, and polls bear this out, that violence might be necessary, or that it is OK and can be excused. A democracy cannot survive when citizens see each other as enemies. 2) Is the “community of strangers” in the two republics that you write about the reason that democracy thrives or the reason it dies? The notion of a community of strangers cuts in two ways. The Roman and American shared founding myths are exceptional in imagining a community formed through the continual incorporation of potentially anyone. They are communities that are not premised on any traditional markers of identity such as race, ethnicity, religion, genealogy, or land. That has the possibility of contributing to the openness and vibrancy of a healthy democracy. But there is a lingering question that underlies a community of strangers: If everyone can potentially be us, then who are we? The book explores different attempts to answer this question by turning what we all share—that we began as strangers—into a claim about who really belongs and who remains the threatening stranger. As Rome saw in the final decades of the republic and we are witnessing in our own politics, democracies are imperiled when the community divides into strangers who cannot understand, do not trust, and see as dangerous each other. 3) What book-writing advice would you give students interested in an academic career? Here’s my advice to anyone writing. Write as a practice. I often joke that I am like a farmer plowing a field. I wake up every morning and I write for a certain amount of time. I do not set a particular goal for the day. I rarely end up where I thought I would. I have ups and downs about how I judge my own writing. And the finished product takes shape only after many iterations. I have a second piece of advice. Get a colleague or colleagues who give you honest feedback. It is others who are in a position to help us clarify our own thinking.
- New Purchasing and Business Expense Policies Now in PlaceFollowing recent open comment periods and review by the Committee on College Policy Development (CCPD), two newly approved policies are in place and posted on F&M's website. Please take time to review the Purchasing Policy and the Business Expense Policy. Further communication is coming from Finance & Administration, but feel free to contact fmpolicy@fandm.edu with any questions in the meantime. Please see the College Policies webpage for more information about the policy approval process, and keep a lookout for future policy drafts and announcements in Bell & Tower.