How did the idea for this film come about?

There was no intention of making a film. It was obvious that we needed some kind of video coverage for fundraising, and we sensed there might be some sort of cinematic escapade. We wanted to record the project, but I got tired of all the cameramen and the sound guys so I said, “Okay, I think I’ll stop doing this.” Shortly after this, the director and co-producer, Jeff Orlowski, said, “You know there is a lot of footage, and I think I can make a film from it.”

What was one of the hardest parts of doing the extreme ice survey?

The electronics sometimes didn’t work—and at one point, we had as many as 48 time-lapse cameras running at one time. We’d go out and set up a camera and after extensive testing, all of a sudden it wouldn’t work. It had to do with atmospheric humidity, weirdly enough.

Why are you fascinated by ice?

I was inspired by a book I saw in graduate school that had black and white photos shot by Austin Post, a research scientist for the United States Geological Survey at that time. The guy had an understanding of glaciers that was as sensitive and intimate as people are to their spouses. In my head, I can still see these glittering icy peaks with gigantic glaciers pouring down and big black pieces of ice separating the ice streams in extraordinary shapes—otherworldly places that were far outside of the reality we live in.

Why would people want to see melting ice?

It’s an adventure film that unravels the secrets of the ice. It takes place in these extraordinary wilderness settings and beyond that, the glaciers give you a three-dimensional visual of how climate change reshapes the world. You can see and hear and touch climate change in action when you see the images—a relatively abstract concept is brought to life.

Was there a moment when you went from being a climate change skeptic to a believer?

Once I learned that the core of climate change was not about computer models but about empirical evidence from Iceland and Antarctica. Once I understood that the evidence was tangible. Then I thought, “This is real.”

Do you have one favorite glacier?

No it’s like trying to choose your favorite child.

Was there any ice that grew over time? Did any totally disappear?

No ice grew. Some remained relatively static—a couple in Montana were subtly shrinking. But some in Greenland were dumping huge amounts into the ocean, moving forward and backward. There are others in terminus retreat, such as Mendenhall, which is close to Juneau in Alaska, as well as Columbia Glacier in Alaska, Ilulissat in Greenland, and Sólheimajökull in Iceland.

What has been the most unexpected part of your work with ice?

Literally the first time I was out on the field with scientists—guys who had been in this field for decades—they said that these things just kind of sit here. That they’re relatively static and “blobbian.” The revelation is that there is no such thing as a “glacial pace.” These landforms respond on a weekly, daily, hourly basis to the changing weather conditions around them. They are nearly animate characters.

–By Sasha Ingber

The preeminent documentarian’s latest act, The Dust Bowl, airing November 18 and 19 at 8 p.m. on PBS, is a two-part, four-hour look at “a decade-long natural catastrophe of biblical proportions.” In the 1930s, America’s agricultural overreach—the heedless farming of unsuitable soil, based on bad science and stubborn optimism—plus a decade-long drought affected 100 million acres and ruined hundreds of thousands of lives and livelihoods.

As climate change and weird weather grab headlines today, The Dust Bowl is a timely reminder of our fraught relationship with the environment. Pop Omnivore recently caught up with Burns to talk about truth and denial, the role of government, and his own filmmaking techniques—including the “Ken Burns Effect.” [To see a video interview with Burns and National Geographic's Jeff Hertrick, click here.]

Why did you decide to make a film about the Dust Bowl now?

We were faced with an actuarial reality: Pretty soon we’d have nobody to talk to. And even folks that you see [in my film] in their 80s and 90s were children and teenagers at the time. When they pass there will be no memories of the Dust Bowl that you could access that directly.

And memory is the building block, the DNA, of history. Not something that’s old and dusty and covered with cobwebs but something that’s fresh and accessible. When Floyd and Dale Coen both break down over the death of their little baby sister Rena Marie, who was not even 2 ½ years old [when she died of dust pneumonia]—and whom they hadn’t seen since early 1935—that proves my thinking that the past is present.

In the film you interview about 25 living survivors of the Dust Bowl. What was the casting call like?

We took advantage of PBS. It’s the largest network on Earth. So I filmed appeals [which ran on member stations in the Dust Bowl region] and asked people for their photographs and their home movies and their memories—meaning them. And our producers held Dust Bowl roundtables at old-age homes and assisted-living facilities and county historical societies. So we assembled the people that we actually filmed, besides the four historians and the other historical figures, now dead, whom we had to personify with first-person voices.

The narrator calls the Dust Bowl “the worst manmade ecological disaster in American history.” Do you see parallels today—situations where Mother Nature and human nature are at odds?

Of course. The [current] drought in the Midwest and the dust storms that it’s produced are reminders of the Dust Bowl and how tenuous our hold is on the land, especially when the rains refuse [to fall]. We also have climate change, which is magnifying hurricanes like Sandy and also possibly prolonging or lengthening the drought.

In your film historian Donald Worster says, “People thought, as they think again and again, that we’ve turned the corner on climate.” Someone else, talking about the Great Depression, says, “That’s over there. It can’t happen here.” Has that denialist mentality changed since the 1930s?

Ecclesiastes said it better than I could: “What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.” Which is a poetic way of saying that human nature remains the same.

And that is absolutely true. We always think, “My house value will always increase. The stock market will always go up. If I just make this deal, if I just expand here, everything will work out fine.” And then we have this foolish thinking that “rain follows the plow”—that the act of cultivation actually increases rainfall, or that [the climate] has undergone a permanent change—which is just insane. It’s the same idiotic nonsense that we tell ourselves to convince ourselves that our hopes for the future are actually the reality of the future.

In 1935 the federal government created the Soil Conservation Service, to work with and educate the same people it had encouraged to farm the Dust Bowl. Was it right, or even duty bound, to do so?

There was only one agency that could mitigate the harmful effects, and that was the federal government. The New Deal programs that gave surplus commodities kept people in the Dust Bowl from starving to death. [Works Progress Administration] jobs gave people cash and produced highways and bridges and high schools and landing strips that are still there to this day. The Soil Conservation Service taught farmers really good techniques that are still in practice today—contour plowing, rotating crops intelligently. They bought back land and returned it to grassland. They paid farmers not to plant. And they planted hundreds of millions of trees. All of those are really good things.

Should today’s federal government be doing something similar?

Well, I think that for the last 50 years we’ve had this mentality of just living in the present. It’s the tyranny of the shareholder—judge me quarter to quarter. We have to have a long-range plan that addresses our budgetary questions, but also our environmental and agricultural ones, so that we make decisions that don’t bankrupt us. But we also have to make decisions that don’t pollute our atmosphere—like the big debate we’re having now about hydraulic fracturing—and are sustainable. These are all very important things. As William Faulkner said, “History is not was, but is.”

Like a lot of people, when I think of the Dust Bowl and the Depression era I think of The Grapes of Wrath. Did you make this film to show that the situation was bigger and more complicated than just a clichéd image of poor Joads and Okies?

Yes, but that’s not why you make it. You realize early on that we all have that conventional view of migrant families. As everything is, the real story is much more complicated and much more interesting.

Look, the Joads were from eastern Oklahoma. And they were tenant farmers, not landowners. Plus, most of the novel takes place in California. And while we do make two separate trips to California in the film, we’re mostly interested in the folks who were in no man’s land—western Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, Kansas and Colorado and New Mexico. We wanted to tell a very complicated story about some people who were so tied to the land, both emotionally and because they owned it and didn’t have anywhere to go, that they had to struggle and remain—even for that cataclysmic, apocalyptic decade—“next-year people.”

You use images by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Arthur Rothstein, plus music by Woody Guthrie. Are any photographers or musicians doing that today—giving voice to rural people who are struggling?

What immediately comes to mind is Farm Aid—that amazing conglomeration of people, led by Willie Nelson, who are attempting to help farm families in distress. But we live in such a diverse media culture today that it’s hard for one single person to punch through, as Woody did at that time. He’s got one the great all-time lines when he says, in our film, “I ain’t necessarily a communist, but I’ve been in the red all my life.” That will be funny for an awfully long time.

Speaking of music, how do you choose the scores for your films?

We record our music before we begin editing, which is the exact opposite of how most other filmmakers do it. They usually add it afterwards.

We’re also looking for tunes that are of the period, but also of the vibe. That can be contemporary folk music or it can be classical music, found tunes or the music of Woody Guthrie. We’re very much open to that. Words are good, and pictures are too. But music is hugely central to who we are and how we work.

One technique you’ve pioneered, or at least popularized, involves panning over and zooming in on still photos. In the two-plus decades since your Civil War aired, a lot of documentary filmmakers have used the “Ken Burns Effect.” How do you feel about that?

There’s no copyright on style, so I feel perfectly fine about it. And I’ve got enough problems just working for myself, just trying to do my own job.

But I learn from others. People adapt [my style]. If they’re just copying it, that’s all they’re doing, and it’s pretty evident. If they’re re-employing it, and using it in a way that’s authentic for them, then you learn something from the ways in which they change and alter it. And that can be equally influential for me.

Your subject is history, and your documentaries center on people describing their experiences and remembrances. But when it comes to memoir these days, it seems like “truth” has become a fungible thing. How do you vet or evaluate your subjects so that you know what they’re saying is true?

I tell you what, we’ve made three films on wars. And we had to trust the diaries for the Civil War. But with World War II and the film we’re working on now on the Vietnam War, we ask everybody that we interview who describes combat to sign a release that gives us access to their military records, so that we can verify that they were there when they said they were there. And quite often the citations, or the wounds themselves, speak to what happened to them. So we do classic journalistic triangulation.

Despite that, have there been any examples where a wonderful story someone told turned out to be fabricated or embellished?

I’m knocking on wood right now, but not yet. That’s not to say that we haven’t taken action during the course of a production to limit the scope of someone’s participation because we couldn’t verify aspects of things they said.

But a film is also a kind of polygraph: You can tell when people are lying. We just released a film called The Central Park Five, about the five black and Hispanic boys who were charged with the rape of a jogger in Central Park. And they didn’t do it. And you can spend two hours with them, looking at their faces, and it’s a kind of polygraph that proved to us that they didn’t do it. That’s in addition to exculpatory DNA evidence, which eventually—after they’d served out their full sentences—proved also that they didn’t do it.

You’ve tackled a lot of our country’s iconic objects and endeavors, from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Statue of Liberty, the Civil War to Prohibition, jazz to baseball. Do you feel like you’re running out of distinctly American subjects? And do you think you’ll ever make a film about something non-American?

Well, I can’t imagine that right now. Every time I’ve flirted with an idea that was non-American, I’ve always winded up sort of going, “Nah.”

But listen: If I were given a thousand years to live, I wouldn’t run out of interesting topics in American history. I’m not worried at all. And I’ve got everything planned out through 2019. I’ve got this film, The Dust Bowl. The Central Park Five is having a theatrical release before its 2013 PBS broadcast. In 2014 we have a seven-part, 14-hour history of Theodore Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. We’re now shooting a two-part, four-hour history/biography of Jackie Robinson, and a mammoth series—probably seven episodes—on the history of the war in Vietnam. In fact, I have a crew of producers there right now in Hanoi. We’re beginning the writing of a massive series—also probably 14 hours—on the history of country music. And we’re planning a biography of Ernest Hemingway.

So I know what I’m doing through 2019. And in 2015 we’ll have the next ten-year plan lined up of films we want to do.

There’s something reassuring about that.

There is!

—Jeremy Berlin

Pop Omnivore discovered some interesting facts about iron lungs, thanks to Muhlenberg College history professor Daniel Wilson.

• The first version of the iron lung was designed in 1927 by Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw at Harvard University. Before The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis began mass distribution of tank respirators in 1939, they cost about  $1,500—as much as a house at that time.
• The bed that the patient lay on inside the device was sometimes called a “cookie tray.”
• Most patients eventually grew strong enough to leave the iron lung behind. Recovery began by trying to breathe outside of the respirator for 30 seconds at a time.
• In 1936, only one iron lung was available in all of China. It was given to Fred Snite, the son of a wealthy Chicago financier, who caught polio while vacationing in China with his family. After a few months encased in the iron lung in China, he was nearly fluent in Chinese. Making headlines as “the Boiler Kid,” he spent 21 hours a day in the iron lung for the remaining 18 years of his life, but still got married and fathered three kids.
• Six people in the United States currently rely on iron lungs, compared to 1,200 in 1958.
• The March of Dimes, the original manufacturer, stopped producing spare parts in the 1970s. Patients tend to have a backup iron lung to account for this.
• Power outages caused great panic during the polio epidemic, since iron lungs depended on electricity. In 2009, a Tennessee woman died in her iron lung of this very cause.
• The iron lung could run manually, but was so difficult to operate that several people were needed to take turns pumping it.
• Iron lungs came equipped with a mirror so that the person inside could see more than just the ceiling or the machine—life reflected backwards.

–Sasha Ingber

It is now official: Gangnam Style has penetrated every nook and cranny of the Planet Earth and is probably rocketing out to Neptune and beyond.

“Gangnam Style” is the name of a pop song by the South Korean singer Psy. He sings about “a guy whose heart bursts when the night comes.” The video for the song shows Psy going to a club, dancing like he’s riding a horse, and observing women doing yoga. In rhythm to the catchy beat, the scenes shift from a sauna to a tour bus to a parking garage. The video has received more than 440 million views on Youtube, reached the top of China’s download list, topped the charts in Britain, and has been the number two most popular song on Billboard’s Hot 100 for five weeks in a row. As if that’s not enough, Psy himself visited the U.N. this week and taught one of the song’s dance moves to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Together, they rode invisible horses.

And of course there are versions of the video from SNL, North Korean propagandists and Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei.

As a magazine of geography, we were interested in finding out about Gangnam: Where (and what) is it? Gangnam means “south of the river” in Korean. It’s a ritzy district that lies just below the Han river in South Korea’s capital, Seoul. To gain more insights into Gangam style, we spoke with a few former residents of Seoul.

1.     “Gangnam is Wall Street, Cape Cod, and Beverly Hills all wrapped into one,” says former English teacher Jake Fisher. The chic restaurants and sophisticated shopping leave many Koreans aspiring to live there and, according to Fisher, to have “a certain amount of hatred and envy” for the people who do.

2.     While the neighborhood’s subway stations didn’t make it into the music video, Gangnam Station, with glowing flat screen TVs and departure boards in every direction, was high-tech enough to be featured in The Bourne Legacy.

3.     Want to email someone or take a photo of yourself? Searching for a certain clothing store? Look for one of the many columns with touch screens and webcams along Gangnam’s streets. The stores and restaurants may be expensive but the wired columns are free!

4.     Old buildings are rapidly being replaced by sleek, tall buildings to relieve the real estate crunch. Across from the COEX mall featured in the video sits one of the oldest Buddhist temple complexes in Korea, Bongeunsa Temple, where visitors can meditate, drink tea, and admire lanterns.

5.     Gangnam’s nightlife often unfolds in clubs with nostalgic names—Harlem Night Club, Woodstock Bar, Club Eden. Partiers can stay up all night with the “freedom of a cup of coffee” that Psy raps about, but the joke in South Korea is that the so-called “soybean paste women” will buy soybean paste soup, the cheapest of lunches, so that they can afford expensive indulgences like Starbucks coffee (a size “tall” is $3.55 in South Korea, compared to $1.93 in the United States).

6.     The video shows a stable full of horses, but Gangnam itself isn’t an equestrian center. “Riding is a sport of the rich and privileged in Seoul, so that could be why so many horses were depicted in the music video,” says former high school teacher and tutor Dianne Kim.

7.     Missing from the video: the plastic surgery clinics of Gangnam. According to physician Jean Kim, who visits family in Gangnam, plastic surgery is booming in Seoul. One common procedure involves clipping the skin around the corners of the eyes so that they appear more round.

8.  Beware the “Gangnam Stare.” Former English instructor Benjamin Yannuzzi and his fellow teachers note that pedestrians often walk purposefully but don’t look anybody in the eye—they tend to stare straight ahead as if lost in thought. Does rapper Psy do the stare? You can’t tell from the video—he’s always wearing sunglasses or goggles. Must be Gangnam style.

“Bubble Jetting Emperors,” by Paul Nicklen. The image earned Nicklen the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.

By Glenn Oeland

There are some National Geographic photographers whose work never fails to dazzle even the most jaded eye. One of them is Paul Nicklen.

Maybe it was his childhood among Arctic hunters in the far north of Canada, or perhaps it was his later training in wildlife science. Whatever its source, Paul has an uncommon gift for achieving intimacy with wild creatures—whether his subject is a secretive spirit bear in British Columbia or an aggressive leopard seal in Antarctica.

Paul’s way with wildlife, and his genius with a camera, received international acclaim a few nights ago at London’s Natural History Museum, where Nicklen was named 2012 Wildlife Photographer of the Year. The annual competition draws thousands of entries from photographers around the world.

Paul’s winning image shows an entourage of emperor penguins racing through an icy sea, leaving so many bubbles in their wakes the water column looks carbonated. In Paul’s signature style, the picture puts the viewer in the thick of the action, and leaves one exclaiming to friends: “Only a penguin could have made that shot!”

If memory serves, Paul first pitched the idea of a story on emperor penguins as long ago as 2006. Inspired by the blockbuster feature film March of the Penguins, his idea was to show a side of the birds’ existence moviegoers didn’t see: their secret lives below the surface of the frozen sea. A string of other assignments, plus the daunting challenges of planning an expedition to Antarctica, kept pushing the story off into the future. When at last the coverage came together, Paul braved water barely warmer than ice to bring back images of a magical but dangerous realm few of us will ever be fortunate enough to see in person.

“Paul’s underwater images broke new ground,” says photo editor Sadie Quarrier. “This was the first story I was lucky enough to edit with Paul, but after seeing his previous stories, I knew he would bring back something special. When he emailed me his favorite dozen images as a taster from the field, I was stunned and immediately called Editor Chris Johns. We are all excited to see what Paul will do next. His award is so well deserved.”

Paul was particularly keen to showcase one of the emperors’ most amazing adaptations: the use of bubbles to boost their speed. As reported in the November issue of National Geographic, the emperor’s dense feathers seal out water and trap air in a downy underlayer. When released, the air coats the bird in lubricating bubbles that reduce friction and supercharge its swimming.

While Paul prides himself on getting up close and personal with his wild subjects, the appeal of sharing close quarters with a pack of noisy penguins can wear thin. “The first night in camp, the penguins followed me home,” Paul told Geographic staffer Luna Shyr. “They stood outside and bugled all night. By the third night . . . the romanticism began to wane.”

Frog: It’s what’s for dinner. Frog fallopian tubes, to be exact. On a recent episode of The Amazing Race, contestants jetted off to Shanghai and had to down a Chinese delicacy known as hasma. Described as “frog fallopian tubes,” the meal looked daunting—picture a mound of small, milky-white, jiggling blobs. To kick the challenge up a notch, teams were forbidden to eat with anything other than chopsticks. Mounded into a bright orange papaya half, the dish had a certain visual pop, but its unnerving main ingredient gave it a disagreeable vibe.

We here at National Geographic were intrigued. What does hasma taste like? Why fallopian tubes and not legs, which are the frog part of choice in France?

The first thing we learned is that nailing down a definition for this dish is tough. Some websites describe hasma as frog ovaries, while others refer to it as the fatty tissue around the reproductive system. On The Amazing Race, the definition was fallopian tubes. One thing sources seem to agree on is the species from which hasma is made: the snow frog known as Xueha, which lives in the Changbai mountains of northeast China.

According to Chinese cooking authority Fuchsia Dunlop (whose  book, Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking, is now available in the UK and will reach the US in February), hasma, which is the name of the slightly mysterious frog part, is sold in dried form and has the look and feel of rough amber. “It is prepared by a long soaking in cold water, which causes it to expand dramatically into clouds of translucent, slithery, gelatinous matter,” she explains. Once prepared, hasma tends to be used in soups and stews and is often sweetened with sugar.

If that sounds unappetizing, consider that in China, hasma is regarded as a health food and is believed to offer a range of benefits: increased energy, clearer complexion, even restored strength after childbirth. Hasma is also beloved by the Chinese for the texture it achieves once cooked. “It has a gorgeous, voluptuous, slithery, soft mouth feel,” says Dunlop. What it doesn’t have, she adds, is any taste or odor.

Hasma is relatively expensive so is reserved for special occasions and high-end restaurants, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try whipping up a batch at home. If you can manage to get your hands on this curious edible, try it in this traditional recipe—and unlike the Amazing Race contestants, you can use a spoon. NOTE: This recipe has been translated from a Chinese food blog called Xiaomi, or Little Rice, and offers a rough idea of how to prepare this dish. Due to the unavailability of hasma in our local supermarket, we were not able to test this recipe.

Hasma with Papaya and Milk

Ingredients:

One papaya

Hasma

Milk

Goji berries

Rock Sugar

1)   Soak hasma overnight or four hours, remove dirt, wash and put in boiling water for a few minutes, remove from boiling water, drain well.

2)   Wash the whole papaya well, cut 2/5 from top and use it as a cover. Remove all seeds and flesh from the large half of papaya, then place it in a porcelain baking dish that is fitted with a lid.

3)   Wash goji berries and soak in water, wash hasma clean.

4)   Add rock sugar to some of the milk and boil until sugar has dissolved. Add hasma and boil for 30 minutes, add the rest of the milk, wait until it boils, then pour all ingredients into the papaya, cover the porcelain baking dish and load it into a steamer. Steam for 30 minutes. Serve.

The album, which integrated South African music styles like isicathamiya and mbaqanga with elements of good old American rock and pop, was received with both praise and protest. Critics loved it, but others thought the choice to record the album in apartheid South Africa breached the UN’s cultural boycott on the country.

Still, the music prevailed. The album proved to be an immediate hit, reaching the tops of charts all over the world, selling 14 million copies worldwide, and earning two Grammys, including Album of the Year in 1986 and Record of the Year in 1987, with the title song.

This year, Paul Simon released a 25th anniversary album edition of Graceland in a boxed set that includes Joe Berlinger’s Emmy-nominated documentary, “Under African Skies,” which follows Simon’s 2011 return to South Africa, from which the  original story of Graceland’s making unfolds.

In honor of this special occasion, National Geographic’s Pop Omnivore spoke with Paul Simon about what has changed in the quarter of a century since he first set foot Under those African Skies. And of course, we couldn’t help but ask his opinion on the South Korean horse-dancing rapper.

-by Rena Silverman

You first thought of creating Graceland in your car, after driving around to a cassette of South African music. How did one thing lead to another?

There was a group called the Boyoyo Boys who made an album of accordion music, “Township Jives” and that’s what I was listening to. It was instrumental music with an accordion, electric guitar, bass, and drums. It reminded me of a certain kind of fifties rock ‘n’ roll. It was a couple of months before it dawned on me that this was something I liked so much that I could write to it. I had just been listening to it for fun, but then I become obsessed with it.

You have a history of discovering and collaborating with musicians from different parts of the world. Graceland and The Capeman are only a few examples. How far back does your interest in different cultures go?

It goes back to before Graceland, to the first music I was interested in, which is early rock ‘n’ roll. Without really understanding because I was just 12 or 13 years old, this kind of music that I liked came from a combination of different cultures. It was African American cultures, like doo-wop singing, which comes from gospel singing. It was Louisiana rhythms. I liked the Ethel Waters and that kind of Appalachian, Celtic tradition and Johnny Cash, which also has country roots. And Elvis Presley is both: the combination of Anglo-Saxon and African American. So, I grew up in an environment like that and when I was with Simon & Garfunkel, we recorded “El Cóndor Pasa” [1970], a very famous song from Peru, hundreds of years old. We recorded that song with a group called Los Incas [known currently as Urubamba].

And then I went to Jamaica to record “Mother and Child Reunion” [1972], so I’ve been interested in pursuing music that I like regardless of where it comes from. I learned pretty early on if you want to get the music right you should probably travel to where it’s being played as opposed to asking musicians who are not familiar with it to copy it.

But, once you hear something that you like does it mean you can play it?

When I first realized that I was free to go to any place that I wanted, I didn’t really think about how well I could play and there were times when I didn’t think I played very well. Like, “Gone at Last” [1975], an up-tempo gospel song and I just don’t think I’m good at up-tempo gospel singing. I was better with gospel quartettes, something like “Loves Me Like a Rock” [1973]. So, just because I like something doesn’t mean I’m necessarily going to play it well or even necessarily understand it. I never really had a deep grasp of Latin music and clave [a five-stroke rhythmic pattern used in many famous Afro-Cuban genres, including rumba, mambo, salsa, Latin jazz, and more] and so in The Capeman I had a lot of help from band members and singers like Rubén Blades and Marc Anthony.

When you first got to South Africa, was the music a challenge?

It was difficult to play. No, it was difficult to play well, and to play it as well as South Africans play it. To play that guitar style and to play it well takes a long time. Even though the chords are relatively simple, it’s about how you play those chords. It’s about touch, like Johnny Cash’s music—boom-chick-boom-chick-boom—sounds easy, but only Johnny Cash could make that stuff swing. And everybody else who tries, well they just sound like an imitation of Johnny Cash.

The music in South Africa was not difficult to write [lyrics and melody], but what I was writing was a hybrid and was not purely South African. It was American and South African.

You recorded the tracks then did the writing?

That’s right. I start with the structure.

There was a lot going on in South Africa at the time of your arrival in the mid-eighties, like apartheid. You were accused of breaking the United Nation’s cultural boycott of the country at one point. Did you see that coming given you just wanted to learn about the music? Were you surprised?

They didn’t really say that while I was there or before the record was released. After the record was a hit, then there were some people who were saying that. And I never would have guessed that scenario was going to be our reality when I began recording in the months before the record came out. Other people knew that there were political implications. But, it was sort of kept from me, as you see in the documentary. My producer Koloi [Lebona] didn’t want me to be intimidated by anyone’s objections, so he kept the objections from me.

Once released, Graceland was an international hit, climbing the charts in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and Austria. Are you ever surprised by where your music is received?

I’ll tell you a story that’s good for National Geographic. I was on a trip in the Amazon in the eighties, before Graceland, maybe in the middle eighties. And we stopped in this very small village, really completely away from anything. It was so small it didn’t really have roads in it. And we were walking through the village and a girl was sitting in a hut playing a nylon string guitar. We listened for a while and I said to her, I know a song from Peru. We were that far on the Amazon. I played “El Cóndor Pasa,” and she knew that song and then she said, I know a song from America and she played “The Sound of Silence.” 

Wow. That’s pretty good

Yeah! That is good. So, there are times when I’ve been surprised.

Did you tell her who you were?

No. She had found the song in a book. Somebody had given her a book of mine or a book of a bunch of songs that were popular, probably a bunch of songs that were popular. I mean it was not easy to understand each other. We sort of communicated by picking up the guitar. But, it didn’t matter who I was. The situation just struck me as a really rare coincidence. In the middle of the Amazon, to find that your songs have gotten that far.

Have you heard about Psy, the Korean rapper on YouTube?

Yeah! He’s the guy who dances that kind of horse dance, right? Yes. Now it’s a different story with YouTube and the Internet although I doubt the internet has gotten that far into the Amazon.

We don’t really hear pop music from China.

But, you just saw a Korean rapper. There’s censorship in China, so there’s less that we see, but undoubtedly stuff will come from China that we will see.

Graceland was released well before the Internet. I’m curious about your earlier point about writing a hybrid.  The rhythms in the album are South African, while the melodies, themes, and subjects seem more American, like the name of the title song, which refers to Elvis’ home in Tennessee. What was the impact of merging these very different worlds?

What was unusual about Graceland is that it was on the surface apolitical, but what it represented was the essence of the antiapartheid in that it was a collaboration between blacks and whites to make music that people everywhere enjoyed. It was completely the opposite from what the apartheid regime said, which is that one group of people were inferior. Here, there were no inferiors or superiors, just an acknowledgement of everybody’s work as a musician. It was a powerful statement. We were able to accomplish that symbolically because music is so accessible and people liked it. And the political implications came later than they would have if the songs had been overtly political. And in that way Graceland was a different and slyer kind of political view.

Graceland was also making a relatively new musical music statement, though it wasn’t the first the world music attempt by any means. Graceland was the first to become an example of a hybrid that was mainstream popular . Something like [the Russian feminist punk-rock collective] Pussy Riot is overtly political. Because we’re in an Internet world now, everyone knows about them. And the spotlight is shown on the Russian judicial system. But, it’s not that people are evaluating what they did musically.

Do you see anything happening more like Graceland now, globalization or introduction to cultures from the music itself?

Yes. I think what’s going on around the world with rap in different languages says something. In the Arab world there are rappers who are talking about political subjects. In authoritarian societies, music has long played a role of being a component of the political process. I’m sure there are more, but I don’t know enough about the musicians to tell you what I think.

Have you seen the movie Searching for Sugar Man?

No, but everybody keeps asking me that. Does it have something to do with me, or something I’m interested in?

It’s about a musician, apartheid, South Africa, Detroit, the ‘70s.
I better see it.

Have you discovered more music lately from different parts of the world?

Two years ago, I started to get into a lot of music from Mali [music in Mali has been influenced by several strong musical roots, including the ancient Mande empire, local ethnic rhythms, and Moorish-European form]. And now I wonder what is going on because there is a revolution in Mali. But, I listen to music from everywhere. Electronic music is interesting to me now, or new instruments. I’m just interested in new ways of expanding sound, making sound, finding things that appeal to me in a sound. Music is just sound. When I hear a sound that I like, I incorporate it into the music.

I’ll record a field just to give a track air, you know with birds and things, you can hardly hear it, but I’m always fooling around with sounds and overtones.

The earth always hums.

Yes. And, there’s space, too. NASA has done recordings of sounds in space. That’s very interesting to me, too.

This spring, you released the 25th anniversary edition of Graceland. Once again, it climbed the charts in the UK. You went on tour in honor of the anniversary. How was performing?

That was fun. We played some concerts in Europe. It took a little practice to get back to where we were, but we got there. I liked it a lot. We were able to have all the original musicians. It was nostalgic and it was fun.

Pop Omnivore visited the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Bethesda, Maryland, looking for environmentally minded comics—and the chance to get some books signed by indie-comic luminaries. Both ventures were successful.

The SPX began in 1994 as a reaction to the spandex-and-cape comic industry, which holds gala conventions to display the latest in mainstream superhero comics, movies, and action-figure technology.

SPX gives artists that aren’t publishing for Marvel, DC, or Image their own space in the comic universe. These alternative books feature offbeat superheroes, iconic everymen, and even a comic exclusively about poo. “You can’t find most of this stuff in Barnes & Noble,” executive director Warren Bernard says.

Over the last 18 years, SPX has grown in size, notoriety, and economy. This year’s expo drew 5,000 attendees, 443 exhibitors, and a guest list that included the biggest names in independent comics: Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and the Brothers Hernandez, to name a few. Yet they’re still relatively small.

This mainstream obscurity allows artists to explore avant-garde styles as well as non-traditional business models. Publishing online with on-demand book printing simply isn’t possible for big corporations, but many of the artists at SPX do just that. They save money by marketing only to people they know will buy their comics and save paper by not printing more books than will be sold. For environmentally minded artists, this could be the future of publishing. And that environmental mindset surfaces in their comics as well … although not in typically unpredictable fashion.

Strays N Gates by Jason E. Axtell and Barry Kaufman

Premise: Moxie, a primped and prim lap dog, finds herself homeless and lost. Then she meets stray mutts Charlie and Mr. Buckets, who show her the ropes of life on the other side of the tracks.

Soundbite: Moxie: “Don’t talk to ME like that. I’ll have you know I’m an AKC registered bichipoolabraradoodle. Half Bichon, half Poodle, half Labrador.”

Charlie: “… Not real big on math at the American kennel club, are they?”

Courtesy of the author

Cryptozoology, A Pragmatist’s Guide by Reid Psaltis

Premise: A field guide to spotting and identifying mystery fauna, this fancifully illustrated work illuminates a menagerie of creatures, from the possibly extinct Ivory-Billed Woodpecker to the impossibly ubiquitous Jackalope.

Soundbite: “Cryptozoology can be such a polarizing field of study,” Psaltis says with a wry grin. “This book is more for the interested but unconvinced. I draw no conclusions.”

Courtesy of the author.

Summit of the Gods by Yumemakura Baku and Jiro Taniguchi

Premise: Based on Baku’s 1998 novel of the same name, this Japanese comic traces the perilous journey of an Everest climbing party that may have discovered George Mallory’s camera from the doomed 1924 expedition.

Soundbite: “Habu and Kishi entered the northern alps together in December. On the first day, they got to the start of the ascent … and they climbed a 200 meter slab. The second day … they overcame the largest overhang of the ascent. And so it was there … when he was traversing left across the overhang, that it happened. CHRRUK”

Falling Rock National Park by Josh Shalek

Premise: A young, idealistic park ranger named Dee and a cast of animals—Ernesto, a lizard; Carver, an owl; Melissa, a mountain lion; Pam, a chain-smoking pig and former schoolteacher—inhabit a fictitious national park.

Soundbite: Ernesto: “PAM! What do you, as an educator, think of the comics?”

Pam: “In my many, many years of teaching there were kids I privately thought of as failures. I encouraged these kids to be cartoonists.”

Formerly serialized online with daily updates, this strip is now available in printed special-edition collections. Each copy is made from repurposed chipboard and recycled paper and printed with soy ink. If the content isn’t overtly conservationist, the comic itself certainly is.

Courtesy of the author.

Herman the Manatee by Jason Viola

Premise: The titular character is an existential, self-loathing sea cow, brutally unforgiving and undeniably hilarious. Described by Viola as “the Charlie Brown of the Sea,” Herman’s desire for simple joy—shown in five-panel episodes—is stifled at every turn, usually by a passing motorboat.

Soundbite: Herman: “God? Is it true what the sea turtle says? Is it my destiny to be hit by boats?”

God: “Oh Herman, don’t fret. Getting hit by boats is not your true calling.”

Herman: “It’s not?”

God: “No! Truth is, I have no plans for you at all. I’m at such a loss I almost killed you twice last week.”

Ball Point Botany by Suzanne Baumann

Premise: Six plants with comical names such as Lesser Messberry and Polly-Don’t-Puke are considered in this inch-by-inch-and-a-half “sketchbook mini.” Further fantastical fauna appear in Baumann’s digital sketchbook.

-Nicholas Mott

Busong (Palawan Fate)
Screening: Thursday, September 27, 7 p.m.

The Road Leads to: Palawan, a lush island province in the Philippines where local folklore, rituals, and beliefs—“busong” is the indigenous term for “fate” or “instant karma”—venerate nature and clash with modernity. As a boy bears his sore-covered sister to a healer, he encounters friends and foes on the way. Everyone in this mythopoeic movie is searching for someone or something.

Plot Point: Ethnographers, take note: This is the first feature made in the Palawan language. The director and co-writer, Auraeus Solito, based Busong on stories he learned from his mother, a descendant of shamans and a member of the Palawan tribe.

Cool Moments: A tree crushes a chainsaw-wielding logger. A stonefish stings an imperious Westerner. Message: Don’t mess with Mother Nature!
–Jeremy Berlin

~~~~~

Tomorrow We Will See
Screening: Friday, September 28, 7:30 p.m.

The Road Leads to: Beirut and other parts of Lebanon, where artists share their creative struggles and successes both during and since the 2006 war.

Plot Point: “An artist in Lebanon has to suffer a lot, but eventually he’ll find a way,” painter Chucrallah Fattouh asserts. Indeed, the film showcases artists who found ways to create despite the destruction of war. They did so using all sorts of media—poetry, architecture, sculpture, dance, painting, and music. “As long and people love life, art is not far,” Fattouh explains.

Cool Moment: In Lebanon, political and religious groups have specific colors that emphasize separation, but several artists in Tomorrow We Will See challenge those divisions. “Mixing is much better,” says artist Nadim Karam, talking about the colors in his elephant painting and in society. “I mixed them in such a way that no one can go and say I am of that color or that color. They are so intermingled they are obliged to be of all colors. And that’s how it should be. ”
–Brad Scriber

~~~~~

Bridge the Gap to Pine Ridge
Screening: Saturday, September 29, 4 p.m.

The Road Leads to: South Dakota. While on a quest to “bridge the gap” between cultures around the world, Brooklyn native Chris Bashinelli visits the Oglala Lakota people of Pine Ridge. He goes to a sweat lodge, hunts buffalo, plays basketball, and visits a suicide intervention group while searching for signs of hope in the troubled community.

Plot Point: “When I look into the eyes, and put my arms around these kids and hold them, they give me all the strength I need and they tell me there is hope here,” says community activist Yvonne “Tiny” DeCory. “Yes, it’s bad, and I see all the adversity. But you know what? This is my home. I am proud, I am proud to be Lakota.”

Cool Moment: Seeing the exhausting, bloody, and spiritual work that goes into hunting a buffalo. The gutting is shown in all its gory glory, and as the host takes a bite of the buffalo’s massive liver, an onlooker assures him: “It’s completely sterile!”
–Katia Andreassi

~~~~~

Old Dog
Screening: Saturday, September 29, 7 p.m.

The Road Leads to: Town. The son of a sheep herder journeys there from the far-flung hilltops and outlying areas of rural Tibet to sell his father’s dog, a nomad mastiff breed prized by rich Chinese city dwellers.

Plot Point: The movie touches on themes of urbanization and lost ways of life, of generational differences and the changing roles of women in Tibetan society. It’s a very visual narrative. Long shots slow the pace, evoking the perspective of a person outside the scramble of urban life. Pastoral scenes of valleys of waist-high grass collide with images of the grimy frontier town that continually draws the family back.

Cool Moments: A scene in which the son comes home drunk is shown in almost complete darkness. An overturned motorcycle’s light cast sideways across the ground and the framed lit window of the house impart a strong sense of simmering domestic troubles.
–Rhett Register

~~~~~

Lone Samaritan
Screening: Sunday, September 30, 1 p.m.

The Road Leads to: Mt. Gerizim and other parts of Israel and the West Bank, where the boundaries for 730 Samaritans (“observers” in Hebrew) are clear cut.

Plot Point: “Where do you belong more?” asks the daughter of actress Sophie Tzedaka. After Sophie’s oldest sister abandoned her faith for the man she loved, the Samaritan community lashed out at the family. Sophie’s decision to desert the sect as a response to this injustice has ramifications for everyone. Barak Heymann’s documentary follows the lives of a family whose loyalty to religion and to each other is tested.

Cool Moment: Heated family conversation brings to voice unanswered questions. Sophie asserts that her childhood was marred by punishment, yet her father, who was shunned by the Samaritans after all four daughters left and was arrested for vandalizing a synagogue, refuses to give up his religious beliefs. “The question is who the victim was,” he says, bringing to light the idea that perhaps there is more than one lonely Samaritan.
–Sasha Ingber

~~~~~

Valley of Saints
Screening: Sunday, September 30, 6 p.m.

The Road Leads to: Kashmir, India, next to the polluted Dal Lake. As boyhood friends Gulzar and Afzal attempt to leave the region, violent protests, government curfews and a tender, if unrequited, love story get in the way. In the backdrop is an environmental research project to revive the dying lake.

Plot Point: “Don’t you know what’s really going on?” Afzal tells Gulzar, fed up with Gulzar’s fanciful crush that threatens to unravel their friendship and their plan for a better future in Delhi. “You’re nothing to her. She wouldn’t even take you as a servant!” The eventual shoving match leaves both men pushing each other into the water.

Cool Moment: Convinced that human pollution is killing the lake, Gulzar quickly builds a composting toilet in his home—a tribute to Asifa, the female environmental researcher and the object of his blatant affection. Despite the technical and chemical intricacies of the organic commode, he makes it look extremely simple.
–Daniel Stone

But Pop Omnivore would rather look at the spider than the man. No arachnid, no matter how special or nuclear-infused, will help a person scale walls and spin webs. But what can a real spider bite do to a real human being?

To find out, we asked Dana DeRoche, an arachnid specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, which spider species have the worst—and weirdest—bite.

The Brazilian Wandering Spider
“The Brazilian wandering spider [lives] in large swaths of South America,” says DeRoche. “It’s just about as big as a tarantula, but it’s not as robust and a little less hairy. It’s the color of a mouse, and it’s very aggressive. Usually creatures try to run away from you; this one won’t. It behaves like a scorpion. A lot of poorer folks have a roof and three walls instead of four, so [the spiders] come right in. If you get bitten by one of these and you don’t go to the hospital, you’re dead. It will kill you.”

Black Widow
“Usually not fatal,” says DeRoche, “but small children, the elderly, the sick—they might have a real problem.”
With black widows, it’s usually the female that’s dangerous. They have larger venom glands than males, and more potent venom. Still, black-widow bites rarely kill, especially if medical treatment is found immediately. Typically a bite will result in severe pain, which sets in after about 20 minutes and can last for several days, though the worst of the pain is typically in the first eight to 12 hours. Cramps, dizziness, and nausea may occur. In the worst cases, the bite causes a dangerous rise in blood pressure.

The Brown Recluse
“A bite from a black widow doesn’t give you a huge sore,” says DeRoche. “But a brown recluse’s will. It makes the skin and tissue around the bite die. You usually don’t realize you’ve been bitten because it doesn’t hurt at the time, and then you see the effects. Sometimes people have to get plastic surgery. It’s usually (90 percent) not fatal.”
So even without medical treatment, the recluse’s victims tend to live, albeit with a crater-like indentation radiating from the bite mark.

Honorable Mention

Australian Redback
“It’ll bite you quick,” says DeRoche, “and it’s poisonous.”
Though redback bites haven’t killed in a person in more than 50 years, they can result in excruciating pain and intense swelling around the puncture wound. In exceptional cases—usually when the victims are very young, very old, or very sick—the bites can cause nausea, infection, and even seizures.

Of course, these are all physical changes. Are there any spiders whose bite can change your state of mind or mental capabilities?

“[Spider bites don’t have a] weird effect like if you eat mushrooms or something,” explains DeRoche, “but maybe, if you’re really sick, you might experience [delusions] with some of these. It might also be possible for some of the neurotoxins to give you continuing health problems. It may depend on where you’re bitten, or how long it takes to go to the doctor.” Putting ice on the bite can help while waiting for medical treatment, which could comprise anything from a tetanus shot to anti-venom, depending on the size and type of the spider.

- Kastalia Medrano