Unobscured
This is one of Aaron Mahnke’s podcasts. (He is a storyteller extraordinaire of unexplained, spooky things.) In Unobscured, Mahnke takes listeners through a complicated part of American history, Serial-style. Season 2 teases apart the history of American Spiritualism. As one of the consulting historians, stories from A Luminous Brotherhood and excerpts from an interview with me manifest throughout the season. Unobscured is accessible, history podcasting at its finest. Mahnke is a great narrator and his team did fabulous research, especially lead researcher Carl Nellis. It was an absolute pleasure to be a part of Season 2, not least of which because I’ve been a fan of his Lore podcast for years.
City of a Million Dreams: Parading for the Dead in New Orleans
City of a Million Dreams is a forthcoming documentary about jazz funerals in New Orleans. But it’s about so much more. Cycles of death and rebirth are part of New Orleans history and identity. Unfortunately, the New Orleans’ Afro-Creole Spiritualists described in A Luminous Brotherhood and I were cut on the production room floor, but everyone should still see this doc. Coming soon. The film is the work of journalist and local historian Jason Berry. [That’s a shot of me being interviewed. It was June in the New Orleans Botanical Gardens, just days after a tropical storm. So I’m actually surprised that my hair looks that good.]
Podcast interview about A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans
Marginalia Review of Books First Impressions, interview with Dave Krueger
Other media on A Luminous Brotherhood
“NEW HISTORY FINALLY RECOGNIZES AFRO-CREOLE SPIRITUALISTS,” Religion Dispatches, interview with Paul Harvey
Blog interview, The Way of Improvement Leads Home, with John Fea
“150 Years After the Mechanics’ Institute Riot,” UNC Press blog, 29 July 2016
“New Mind, Body, Spirit Books for Fall,” Publishers Weekly, 5 August 2016 (cover image featured in the print edition)
“I Don’t Believe in No Ghosts,” UNC Press blog, 26 September 2016
“As Racial Tensions Dominate Headlines, Books Offer Insights for Change,” Publishers Weekly, 4 November 2016
“Year-End Best Books in Race and Religion in American History,” Religion Dispatches, 26 December 2016