Barbed Wire

Episode notes

Alex Schmidt is joined by bestselling author Jason Pargin (new novel “If This Book Exists, You’re In The Wrong Universe”) for a look at why barbed wire is secretly incredibly fascinating.

Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week’s bonus episode.

LINKS FOR THE GUESTS:

• (PRE)ORDER the new novel by Jason Pargin! It’s called If This Book Exists, You’re In The Wrong Universe, and it’s officially out October 18th.
• Audiobook of If This Book Exists, You’re In The Wrong Universe, narrated by Stephen R. Thorne
• Jason’s website
• Jason’s Substack
• Jason Pargin on Twitter

RESOURCES USED TO INFORM THE EPISODE’S LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

• native-land.ca
• U.S. Department Of Arts And Culture
• The True Native New Yorkers Can Never Truly Reclaim Their Homeland (Smithsonian)
• Mapping Manahatta: 10 Lenape sites in New York City (6sqft)
• “Finding Lenapehoking” (YouTube / Hudson River Maritime Museum)

RESEARCH SOURCES:

• The thorny history of barbed wire (Popular Science)
• In Wyoming, fences are coming down to make way for wildlife (National Geographic)
• Stephen H. Long (NebraskaStudies.org)
• Joseph Glidden applies for a patent on his barbed wire design (History.com)
• That Beautiful Barbed Wire: The concertina wire Trump loves at the border has a long, troubling legacy in the West. (Slate)
• Wabash, Indiana: First Electrically Lighted City in the World (RoadsideAmerica.com)
• Unknown Story of WNY: Ganson Street Lit The Way For a Nation (WGRZ Channel 2 Buffalo)
• 99% Invisible: “Devil’s Rope”
• ‘The devil’s rope’: How barbed wire changed America (Tim Harford, excerpted by BBC News)
• Barbed Wire War – How One Farmer’s Innovation Changed The Battlefield (MilitaryHistoryNow.com)
• The Human Footprint: Increased human population often leads to greater influence on the environment and sharper declines in species and ecosystems. (NASA EarthData)

One map estimate of “The Great Plains” in the modern U.S. and Canada:

Photo of NFL player Brian Urlacher and his barbed wire tattoo: