Sholem's Bias: Medicine and Other Curiosities Sholem's Bias: Medicine and Other Curiosities

Award-winning Carnegie Mellon health economist Martin Gaynor and Zackary Sholem Berger chat in Yiddish about competition, the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare), and the US healthcare system -- and why it's so expensive.

װאָלװיש גײנאָר און שלום בערגער שמועסן װעגן געזונט־עקאָנאָמיק, אָבאַמאַקײר, און װי מתקן צו זײַן אַמעריקעס היפּער־טײַערע געזונט־סיסטעם.

Zackary Sholem Berger talks to Alexander Dickow, a poet, translator, and critic working in both French and English, about navigating countries, languages, and esthetics. With cameo appearances by Dr. Seuss, the Babylonian Talmud, and the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Here is the text of the poems read by Alexander Dickow on the podcast.

To a Politician
Your cellophane disguise for a tongue
Furiously unbefits the even knavest
Of these podium fisted Catilines I hate
Whose dim broadcasts encrust
With craven abjectives and slick nouns,
Whose paramount pronouncements’
Weighty grovel fresh veneers each victim eye,
Who gape and crave at limp wealth,
Puppets of their own slanted lip
And their thin speech as cheap
As its callous stakes are ruthless:
Our brittle faith, our breath, the truth.



Galaxy

Measureless and vacant husks
Veneer along the pale gaps
Kissing the smooth-lit kernels
Far across the hesitation
Contours

Where cycles dip
Ebbing forth aromas
Of nectar vicinities
All gleamed among
Their dim stretchings

Remote surroundments
Hint around lucid cusps
And milk-blinkings swerve
Over grooved vastnesses
Whose lofty gazes
Empty to the brim resound

Finespun legions
Of distant stone pivot
Within strange rings
And innocent strains
Swivel endless and lilt
Like hearts wept upon
The rings of far-fetched motes
Tingling their ancient aubades

Galaxie

D’incommensurables écorces
Enduisent selon les faîtes espacés,
Et frémissant le semis d’éclairages,
Floue les ourlets tout loin.

Arômes qu’émane
Un jusant cousus d’oublis,
Luisez vos affleurements sourds
Et vos proches nectars.

Des avant-preuves perlent
En glissant partout les orées lucides
Où des clins de lait dérapent
Pendant des éloignements vastes
Dont les grands regards
Vides à ras bord résonnent.

Des légions respirées
En pierre lointaine pivotent
Dans des cerclages
Et des airs d’innocence
Louvoient des vibrements
Comme des coeurs pleurés
Dessus les anneaux d’improbables noyaux
Frissonnant d’antiques aubades.

Zackary Berger reads Chapter 3 of Making Sense of Medicine at Writers Live, Enoch Pratt Library, Baltimore, September 13, 2016.

Zackary Sholem Berger and the culinary ethnographer, cookbook expert, Yiddish teacher and translator, and vegetarian blogger (&c., &c.) Eve Jochnowitz talk at the 2016 Yiddish Vokh about the pre-war vegetarian restauranteur of Vilna, Fania Lewando; translating cookbooks; and her favorite food memories. In Yiddish.

Maggie Dubris is a writer and composer in New York. She has published and performed widely. On Sholem's Bias, I talked to her about her new book, Brokedown Palace. I'll let her describe it:

"For 24 years, I was a 911 paramedic at St. Clare’s, a small hospital in Hell’s Kitchen. I worked during the dawn of AIDS, the influx of crack, and the most violent years the city has experienced. My hospital had the highest percentage of homeless patients in the city in the 1980s. In 1985 we established the first AIDS unit on the east coast.

Broke-Down Palace is the story of the city as seen through the lens of one poor, unsupervised institution. It begins in 1934 with the founding of the hospital by a penniless Irish nun in the depths of the Great Depression, and follows the course of its existence until 2007, when it was shut down, flipped a few times, and turned into luxury condos.

The book is structured as a series of linked poems; a memory palace. In addition to exploring the story of the hospital, I am interested in what happens to memories. What becomes a part of history, and what doesn't? If I took part in historical events, e.g. the AIDS plague, the attack on the World Trade Center, can I turn the historical narrative into one that actually reflects my experiences?"

Zackary Sholem Berger and Spanish essayist, poet, translator and journalist Mercedes Cebrián talk about choosing words, languages, foods, and politicians.