There's a mostly forgotten story by the mostly forgotten sci-fi writer, R.A. Lafferty. It's called, "What's The Name of That Town." We meet a team of scientists and an amusing sentiant computer examining clues that suggested something existed once upon a time and has now been erased.
It turns out to be the city of Chicago which has been obliterated in an accident so traumatic that the city's existence has been wiped from all records and from peoples actual memories.
It's a brilliant story on a number of levels and one of those levels has to do with the impossibility of suppressing historical records. But, that effort goes on all the time.
Today on the show, we talk about historical deletion, especially the act of erasing one person's name and history from the public consciousness.
GUESTS:
- Eric Varner - Associate Professor in the Departments of Art History and Classics at Emory University
- Marianna Tax Choldin - Mortenson Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; member of the Committee to Visit the Library at the University of Chicago; author of A Fence Around the Empire: Russian Censorship of Western Ideas Under the Tsars and The Red Pencil: Artists, Scholars, and Censors in the USSR
- Michael Pilato - Globally recognized mural artist and owner of Pilato Murals
Lydia Brown and Chion Wolf contributed to this show.
