Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is an award-winning American geographer and writer. In his latest book “Names of New York”, he traces the ways in which native Lenape, Dutch settlers, British invaders, and successive waves of immigrants, have left their marks on the city’s map.
In this interview, we talk about how several places in New York got their names: Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bowery, Greenwich Village, Spuyten Duyvil, Lackawanna, Boerum Hill, Gramercy Park, Rockaway, to mention a few. We talk about how place matters to us as human beings and how it shapes our believes about who we are.
We also discuss more complex issue relating to place naming, for example, 70 streets in Brooklyn are named after slave owners. Should these names be erased from the city scape, or should they remain as a historic marker?
Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is a regular contributor to “The New York Review of Books”. He lives in New York and is a scholar in residence at the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU, where he also teaches.
Photographer credit: Mirissa Neff.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.