Can't afford to do much traveling this summer?
That’s okay, we're going to take you to far-flung places around the world: western Africa, Italy, Japan, Cuba and more. And we'll introduce you to a handful of people carrying on traditions passed down in their families for generations, even centuries.
In Italy, you'll meet one of the only women making the world's rarest pasta.
In west Africa, the man who plays one of the oldest instruments in the world.
In Scandinavia, the last nightwatchman. And in Germany, a 500-year-old matchmaking tree and a 100-year-old tradition.
All their stories and more are featured in the book, Custodians of Wonder.
We're talking with the book's author, BBC journalist Eliot Stein on this hour of All Sides.
Guest:
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. Can't afford to do much traveling this summer? That's okay. We're gonna take you to some far-flung places around the world this hour. To West Africa, Cuba, Peru, Scandinavia, and more. You'll meet a handful of fascinating people carrying on traditions handed down in their families for generations, even centuries. Their stories and more are featured in the book, "Custodians of Wonder." By BBC journalist Eliot Stein. And Eliot is our guest for the hour. Welcome to All Sides, Eliot.
Eliot Stein: Thanks so much for having me.
Juravich: So I found this to be fascinating. It's people around the world carrying on traditions that I've never heard of. In your introduction, you credit a woman named Anna with igniting your interest in people that you call the final custodians. So the last one to do something. But you also note that people most often pay attention to those who are the first to do some things. So can you tell me about this woman named Ana and how she set you on this path?
Stein: Absolutely, so I was about 22 years old and I've been wandering aimlessly through the island of Burano, which is located near Venice and I came across this woman who was 90 years old, and we began chatting and After about 15 minutes. She gripped my wrist and she told me that she she wanted to show me something so I quickly realized that this woman was blind and she led me back in through a through a curtain dangling from her doorway and she showed me these intricate designs on the wall and they were unlike anything I'd ever seen before.
And she told me that she was one of the last lace makers on this island who carries on this ancient custom that has been going on in this far-flung island for centuries. And as I would later come to understand, not only was this sort of her pride and the pride of the island, but for hundreds of years, it was one of the most coveted items in the entire Western world.
And so once I learned that she was one of the final people to carry this on and how this tradition shaped the culture and identity of this island, it set me on this path that I still follow two decades later, where I seek out these final custodians around the world and I seek to understand not only the traditions that they maintain, but how they have affected a community and shaped the identity of the people who live there.
Juravich: Wow, a lace maker. See, and that's another one where you think, like, it's something you never think about someone making it, let alone being the last person to do it. So that's amazing. Do you know if anyone carried it on? Because I'm sure that by now, she has passed away, I guess.
Stein: She has passed away, but there are still a couple of young people on the island who maintain it in its traditional form. It's become the sort of thing that there are now knockoffs sold on the Island, but There are still a handful of people who... Will teach outsiders why it matters to the island it can't it carries a certain certain weight and significance that you really appreciate.
Juravich: And your Zoom or my Zoom just broke up a little bit, Eliot. So I'm gonna turn my video off. And if you turn your video off, we're gonna save some bandwidth there and hopefully that won't happen again. So before we delve into the people that you profiled, what was it about the idea of customs and traditions that made you decide at some point this was a book worthy topic? Like how did, you know, when did it occur to you that like there's more than just this lacemaker, there's a whole book in here?
Stein: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, meeting this woman sort of stayed with me years later, and I began as a travel journalist. I lived in Italy for a long time. And I lived at a place called Sardinia, which most people have not heard of, but it's kind of the big island in Italy that's not Sicily. And it is known for carrying on these things that sort of the rest of the world has forgotten. There are 7,000 Bronze Age towers all over the island.
People there speak sardo, which is the closest form of ancient Latin. It's sort of this bastion of old traditions. And while I was there, I began researching a lot of these traditions and writing about them. And I soon realized that there's a big audience out there who craves these old, interesting, sometimes bizarre traditions that we humans carry on.
And so that set me on this path where I've spent much of the last eight years traveling the globe actually, finding these final custodians and these traditions and researching the many reasons why people carry on these things that we believe in and sort of how they represent a community. And I've been writing about them now for close to a decade. And it's something that I find to be a wonderfully humbling teacher And, uh. Interesting way of making sense of the world.
Juravich: The word passion comes to mind because so many of these people, they need to have a passion for it to carry on the tradition. I mean, whether it's beekeeping or grass weaving or anything that you followed, what stood out to you with some of these people in terms of passion, unless you would use a different word, which you can, but that's what I thought of.
Stein: You know, I've never profiled anyone who, any custodian who sort of their identity is, everyone that I've profiled, sort of the custodians and the craftsmanship or their tradition themselves are very much intertwined. There's one gentleman that I profiled in Taiwan who is the world's last film poster painter. He carries on this lovely tradition of, you know, long before digitally printed posters. You'd have an artist who would watch a film and then they would depict it using brushstrokes and hang it on the marquee.
And he still does this. So he does this and he told me that were it not for the theater that employs him, he would not be who he is today. I profiled the world's last night watchman who is a gentleman in Sweden and every night for 500 years has been someone there who has climbed 12 stories to the top of a church bell tower. And they spend all night scanning the rooftops for fires. And if they see a fire, they will blow a horn.
And what he told me that is that were it not for this job, he would not know essentially, he would have an identity, he would know who he is. And so every custodian is really inseparable from the thing that they do. And there's a sense of purpose, a sense community, a sense serving the greater public that I find really dignified and really lovely and selfless that is really drawing me to these people.
You know, we hear so many stories about, about people who, who kind of are entrepreneurs or doing something for themselves, but I find, I find the selflessness of these individuals so refreshing and, and wonderful that it just, just draws me to them.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about traditions from around the world with BBC journalist and author, Eliot Stein, the author of "Custodians of Wonder, Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and The Last People, Keeping Them Alive." Let's start where the book begins, which is in West Africa. Baloo Kiate plays an instrument that I'd never heard of. It's called a balafone, and it's kind of like the precursor to a xylophone. So before you tell me more about him though, I want to hear some of the music from this instrument. So this is from a YouTube video. Bala lives in Massachusetts and is with his children. And first you're going to hear Bala speaking and then the sound of the instrument, first from his son and then he joins in and his daughter is also in there beating a drum-like instrument. So let's listen.
Speaker 3: So this first piece I'm going to play is dedicated to my ancestor, named Kouyaté Fassa. The Kouiyaté, that's my family name. So this is the first piece, my son Sekou Kouiaté, going to start.
Juravich: So, first of all, could you start by describing the balafon for us, you know, what the instrument kind of looks like since we're on the radio?
Stein: Sure, so a balafone looks a little bit like a xylophone. It's made with 20-some carefully cut wooden slats that are fixed atop hollow calabashes. And a calabash is a type of vegetable in West Africa. And you strike it with mallets that are wound with the sap of a rubber tree. And it makes this wonderfully resonant echo-y sound. And Everyone in 27 generations in the Kuyate family has learned how to not just make the balafone, but to master it. And bala is the heir apparent to this 800 year old tradition.
Juravich: And in the video, he starts by speaking of his ancestors. Then he introduces his son, which is the next generation. So how has the traditional, like the tradition of playing this instrument like kind of bound the family member together through the generations? I guess, you know, his son was expected or wanted to, I hope, to learn this instrument. Tell me about the family tradition with this instrument
Stein: Sure, so Bala is what's called a griot, and anyone who's seen the movie "Sinners" might recognize the name griot. A griot is a West African bard, but more so than just a bard, they're these individuals who kind of keep a community together. They're the first person who says a baby's name once they're born, they stay with an individual through their entire life, they're kind of peacemakers, they're ambassadors.
But what makes this tradition so weighty is that at the start of the Mali Empire, which was the greatest empire in West African history, the person who started the empire appointed this gentleman named Bala Faseke Kuyate, who that's the person that you heard Bala just mention, as kind of a living library, a chronicler of the entire history of the empire. And so every generation from this individual has taught their son how to memorize the entire epic of this civilization, how to make the instrument.
And 27 generations later, you have Balaku Yate. But he no longer lives anywhere in West Africa or in Mali. He lives in Medford, Massachusetts. And so his son that you heard in the audio is this very American teenage kid who when I met him was heading off to college to go play soccer. But you have this very interesting situation where he's the heir apparent to this tradition that binds 13 million people. In West Africa together, it's a very big deal. And so you have this sort of tug of war conflict of will he go back to West Africa to maintain the tradition and to carry on the rights that his forefathers have sort of passed down or will he go off and pursue his own career and his own life?
Juravich: We also have a little bit of sound from a piece he arranged in 2025 for a Carnegie Hall performance. So you can hear it with the instrument with an ensemble of young musicians all playing different instruments. Let's listen. How did you find this family to be the custodians of this instrument?
Stein: It's an amazing story, I've got to say. This is sort of my currency, this is what I do. So I was diving into West African traditions and things that have been passed down for a while. So I don't know if any listeners know what the UNESCO World Heritage List is, but UNESCO is the United Nations body of culture and kind of old monuments.
Juravich: Yeah, we happen to have a UNESCO World Heritage site here in central Ohio the the hopeful earthworks newly newly minted
Stein: Oh, that's fantastic. We actually wrote about that at the BBC and it's an amazing monument and obviously history as well. So there's 678 UNESCO World Heritage kind of items and it represents sort of the best of what we do as humanity. It's everything from Chinese calligraphy, Indian yoga, Italian pizza. And of these 678, this tradition that I'm talking about right now with Bala's family, It's the only one of the 678. That have been passed down within a single family.
And so once I learned this, and I went through each of the nearly 700 to determine this, I connected the dots to the heir apparent of this tradition and I, you know, I went from the Mali empire to this 200 person village in Guinea where the traditional instrument is still maintained to this address in Medford, Massachusetts. And I sent this person who I'd never met before a hopeful email explaining what I do, that I hope to meet him, that I maybe one day would love to travel back to the place where his family came from.
And within 30 minutes of sending that email, I received a call from a number I didn't recognize on my cell phone. And the first thing that he said to me, even before introducing himself was, Eliot, I've been waiting for an email like this for more than 20 years. So I went. And I met Bala in Medford. I met his family. And a week later, his two American children and I went all the way back to Bamako, which is the capital of Mali, to meet his extended family.
And we caravanned across the border to Nyagasola, which is a 200-person village with no running water or electricity, where this traditional 800-year-old instrument, the very first Balafone, is kept. And it is kept inside a circular mud hut. With no electricity obviously and no fans and it is literally kept there underneath a sheet and that's where it is. And I became one of the first foreign journalists in history to ever see it.
Juravich: Wow, and and now the tradition is being carried on in Massachusetts of all places. Um, so I I mean Obviously this family seems to want to carry on the tradition carry on. The family business. I I wonder what would happen I mean, did you ever come across? Someone who said no, I don't want to carry it on
Stein: actually many, many families. One of the common themes in this book that I talk about is you have these custodians and then there's a struggle to maintain these things that have been passed down for many generations and in some cases centuries within their own family. And there are a lot of reasons for this. One of most fundamental is this pure economics. We're kind of pricing out cultural heritage as a society and as a globe. I mean, there's just not a lot of money in these. In these customs anymore.
And one example from a place where I used to live in Sardinia is the world's rarest pasta. So for centuries, there is this community of individuals in a mountaintop village that has passed down this astonishingly complex, intricate form of pasta called Su Filindeu, which in Sardo, the language that's spoken there, it means the threads of God. And it's so painstaking to make that only three women on the planet today and know how to make it.
But there's no money in this tradition. And so the struggle to pass it down to their daughters, and it's historically been passed down from mother to daughter or grandmother to granddaughter. You know. Their daughters themselves these days just don't have the time and patience to make it because they're off at work trying to earn a living. And so for me as a journalist, you know, it's not my job to judge this or to say that they should or shouldn't carry it on.
I'm just a mirror kind of highlighting these individuals and trying to show others about these things they might not know about. But it is interesting to note that time and time again, and one of the main struggles is. How do you get a younger generation to carry on these things that have always been important? And, you know, that's not for me to determine, but I think each community has to come to, has to solve that or not solve that on their own.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking with journalist and author, Eliot Stein, author of "Custodians of Wonder, Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and The Last People, Keeping Them Alive." Coming up, we're gonna dive a little deeper into that tradition of making that rare pasta in Italy. We're also gonna talk about a rare food in Japan. That is when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Can't afford to do much traveling, that's okay. Today, we are taking you to far-flung places around the world. West Africa, Italy, Japan, Scandinavia, and more. We're meeting a handful of fascinating people, largely unsung and unheralded, carrying on traditions handed down in families or communities for generations, sometimes even centuries. Their stories and more are featured in the book, "Custodians of Wonder." "Ancient customs, profound traditions, and the last people keeping them alive." The author of the book is BBC journalist, Eliot Stein, who is with us today. Thanks again for being here, Eliot.
Stein: Thanks so much for having me.
Juravich: Given the almost sacred reverence for some of the traditions that you describe in the book, did you come away thinking that perhaps we, in our own culture, need to be more attentive to customs and traditions and our own families? It just doesn't, you know, America's only been around for 250 years. So what did you think about how we individuals need to be more attentive.
Stein: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I think fundamentally that's kind of what leads me to report these stories. When you're a travel journalist, you are kind of traveling around the globe with your ears perked up trying to recognize the distinct things that make a place a place. What is it that makes Seattle different than Sao Paulo or Shanghai? Is it the languages we speak? Is it foods we eat? It's the customs that we adhere to.
And I think the more that you're aware of these things and you recognize these sort of subtle differences, the more a place kind of paints a picture of itself. And so for me, it's really in these customs and these people who embody these customs, they sort of personify a place because when you have someone carrying on a tradition that represents a sort of worldview of a community, to me, that's really interesting.
And so what I'm ultimately drawn to is these individuals who do something that reflects a community's distinct way of seeing the world. And I think just shining a light on those things is worth noting. And so the more that we can do that within our own communities and be aware of what is it that makes my community different than another place and to honor those things, I think there's something valuable in that.
Juravich: So I want to pivot back to a person you featured in the book that you mentioned previously. You take readers to Sardinia and in Italy and a woman named Paola Abraini and she makes the rarest pasta in the world. I want you to listen to a snippet of some audio. It's her demonstrating the process in a video. It accompanied your 2016 BBC travel story about her. But she's speaking in her native tongue here while showing how she makes the pasta. Let's listen.
Paola Abraini: Su filin deo, for us, means son of God. It's a pasta that we know how to make in poker. The best pasta in the world, in my opinion. Because you can't find one that's the same.
Juravich: What she's saying is she's talking about the threads of God and it's a pasta that few of us know how to make. I think it's the rarest pasta in the world because you'll never find one anywhere else like it. And listeners, you really should search up that video because it looks amazing watching her make this pasta. Can you describe the pasta for us and how she makes it by hand?
Stein: The threads of God are made by pulling a piece of dough into 256 impossibly thin strands with the tips of your fingers, and then laying it diagonally across a circular base in an intricate three-layer pattern. In its completed state, it basically becomes so finely interwoven that it resembles stitch lace. But what's really fascinating about this and kind of what I was saying earlier about a community's worldview is it's not just this rare pasta for rare pastas sake.
Traditionally, the only way that you've been able to taste this thing is to embark on a 33 kilometer overnight pilgrimage on foot from the town where Paola lives to this lonely rural sanctuary outside of the village of Lula. And you do that twice a year for the biannual feast of San Francesco. And so this pasta isn't just a pasta, but it kind of represents all of Sardinia. It embodies it.
And so it was created as a way to honor this person who was trying to kick out a foreigner who was tying to take the land of Sardinians. And when you begin to understand the history of Sardenia, which I talk about a lot in this chapter, its entire history, it's not just beaches and the things that travelers note for today, it's thousands of year old history is all about trying to repel foreigners from coming to invade it and impose their way of life on the islanders.
And so this pasta represents that very idea. And the way that it's served, once you complete this 33 kilometer pilgrimage, is you get this kind of spider web looking strands of lace, dumped into a stew filled with Pecorino cheese, with vegetables and with mutton broth, and it's given to you almost like a communion. In fact, the prior of the feast says to you, once you completed, which is what I did, for your devotion, may you be blessed by the threads of God.
And so to me, you have these two things working together, which is. Really every story in this book for me, you have this impossible tradition that somehow still survives, that in many ways doesn't make sense because after all, pasta is pasta. It's germ, wheat, it's water, it' salt. It's not that different than what you would buy at a store or freshly made pasta. But then you have this beautiful significance behind it. And I think these two things together form to create this really moving meaningful story. And begins to explore a little bit about what Sardinia is all about and why people there continue to do these beautiful, irrational things, even though there's an easier way to do them today.
Juravich: Did it, I mean, did it taste unique? What did it tastes like? Or is it, it was more the experience and not the taste of the pasta?
Stein: It did, I mean, the experience itself is unforgettable, but you know, you have this, Pecorino cheese is made almost exclusively in Sardinia. 80% of the world's Pecorinos made there. So you have, this impossibly difficult type of pasta to make, you've tons of Pecorina cheese. It's kind of tastes like Sardina in a bowl. It's rich, it's flavorful, it's more of a stew than a soup.
And it's very filling, actually, but the pasta is so thin, so insanely thin that the only way to really get it on your spoon is to put your spoon directly under it and to slowly, slowly, slow lift up. Otherwise, it's so fine that it'll just kind of slip away. But I do actually have some of this pasta. One of the custodians was kind enough to give me some. And I still keep it in my home, and I don't dare to try to make the thing. I just kind of keep it and look at it to make sure that it hasn't vanished.
Juravich: Just look at it, yeah. Okay, and I also read there's like roughly 700 types of pasta in all of Italy. Like, who knew? There were so many different types of pasta, but what did she say about this tradition? Because you mentioned earlier, it may go extinct. You know, you can't force younger family members to carry it on. What, you know, where are we at now with the tradition?
Stein: She had a beautiful quote to me. She said, you know, ultimately the future of the threads of God is not up to me, and there's so many things in this world that once were that no longer are. And so if the younger generation wants to take it on, I would be very happy. But what's interesting is that there are three women alive today who maintain it. And the way that it's always been passed on is you only teach it to your daughter or niece kind of when they come of age.
But because these young women today are reluctant to learn it, There's a little bit of a tug of war where Paola, the woman that you, you just featured it with her audio, she doesn't want to take it outside of the family because that's not how she learned the tradition herself.
Juravich: Mm-hmm
Stein: But there is one woman in the family who maintains their tradition, who's done something unheard of previously. She has hand-selected people from around the world, these kind of master chefs, and she's now divulging the technique of how you make the world's rarest pasta to them. But she's doing it in a very thoughtful way. And this kind of gets back to what I was saying earlier about how it's kind of up to the individuals and the custodians and the communities themselves to determine how or if they want to maintain these things.
So what she's doing is she is basically making each of these people that she teaches, agree in principle to the idea that, A, you can never make this in a different way than the way that it's traditionally been done. And B, whenever you serve this dish to anyone else, you have to explain the cultural significance behind it. So in her way, she's bringing it outside the family, but she is maintaining this tradition in the way it's always been passed down.
Juravich: Wow. I feel like there's a movie in there, too. I mean, you wrote the book about it, but there's so much in there. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about traditions from around the world with BBC journalist and author Eliot Stein, author of "Custodians of Wonder, Ancient Custon's Profound Traditions and the Last People Keeping Them Alive." I really like the title of your book that I had never thought of, you know, but the Custodeans of Wonder. How did you come up with that phrase?
Stein: Um, you know, I try to think about who these people are and and what they what they do I mean, ultimately they're custodians in the sense that they're serving something and and and each individual in this book is serving their own community So whether you're making a pasta that kind of represents and holds together an island whether you are Making a magic metal mirror that is thought to reveal your truest self in a mangrove forest in southern India Whether you're a film poster painter who is carrying on this legacy of depicting Taiwanese identity on this island that is slowly trying to separate itself from China, you're serving something that's bigger than yourself.
And so I thought custodians did that. And ultimately, just the fact that these things that so many of us never knew existed previously remind me of how deep and rich and diverse and beautiful the world can be evokes a sense of wonder. And so I. I put those two things together and then I have a pretty long subhead which explains what the book is all about and that's how it came about.
Juravich: Yeah, I wanted to talk about another person since we were on a speaking of food kick. We've done pasta, so stay with food. You traveled to Japan and you met a man brewing soy sauce, made the original way using wooden barrels and you titled this chapter, the man trying to save Japanese food. Uh, what exactly is he trying to save?
Stein: Gosh, he's trying to save what is called Washoku cuisine. So Washoku is Japan's traditional cuisine. And it's basically, Japan was essentially closed for many years, right? And so Washoku characterizes everything that is indigenous to Japan that they ate before it opened up to the Western world. And the most important ingredient in traditional Washoku Cuisine is soy sauce. Anyone who's listening, who's ever been to Japan, Chances are you've had soy sauce every single day, whether it's breakfast, lunch, dinner, sometimes all three.
It makes its way into every single traditional Japanese meal. But unless you've been to a traditional Japanese brewer, chances are most people listening have never actually tasted real soy sauce. And the reason for that is because after Japan was decimated by our country in World War II, the US government, which essentially ran Japan for quite a while. Told Japanese people that if you want to modernize your food production, what you need to do is to essentially speed up your traditional fermentation methods, ditch these wooden barrels that you've always used to ferment food, adapt stainless steel tanks, and change your traditional recipes.
And so from that point, every single Japanese production company has essentially ditched 700 year old formula for how to make soy sauce. And all traditional Japanese fermented food and adopted an American way of doing it. And so what that means is that every time that you go to a supermarket or you order Japanese food and you get these little plastic packets in your carryout, you're not really tasting true soy sauce. You're tasting a very thin, cheap, salty imitation of a very nuanced brew. And so, what I say is it's kind of like, you know, Soy sauce in its true form can be as complex as wine, but most of us today have kind of just had a cheap boxed rosé version of it.
Juravich: Did you try the real soy sauce with the wooden barrels? Could you taste a difference?
Stein: It tastes nothing like what I'm used to. It's pure liquid umami. It is nutty. It is rich. It is smoky. It's not thin and salty. But what this individual does is he, when I say he's trying to save all traditional Japanese food, it's not just soy sauce, but the five fermented foods that go into washoku cuisine were all made in these giant cedar barrels.
But today, almost no one alive knows how to make these barrels. So this individual, his name is Yasuo Yamamoto. He's a, I think, fifth generation soy sauce brewer. He has set about to learn this technique for himself, not just for soy sauce brewers, but for people who make mirin, who make sake, who make vinegar, who make all traditional fermented foods. And so what he's trying to do is not just save soy sauce, but all... Washoku cuisine from from going extinct.
Juravich: Tell me a little bit about the logistics of putting this book together and because I have to imagine that, I mean, you're a travel journalist, so you're used to traveling, but this is a different type of travel. You would probably need interpreters. There were lots of places to go. You had to go probably at particular times to see these traditions. What was the logistics like in trying to collect all these stories?
Stein: It was a bit of a puzzle. So there are 10 stories in the book, 10 stories, 10 countries, five continents. And what I ultimately wanted to do was to cast a wide geographical and thematic net to kind of showcase the best of what we do as people. So you have not just Euro-centric stories or North American-centric stores, but all over the world and not just food stories, but all kinds of cultural. And then I took a nine months sabbatical from the BBC.
And you're right, there's some stories that could only happen in a certain time. Every year, for hundreds and hundreds and hundred of years, there is a four communities who come together in the roof of the world in Peru and they weave an Inca bridge out of grass. And that only happens once a year. And so I had to be there for that specific time. You could only be in Sardinia during one of two times a year when this 33 kilometer overnight pilgrimage happens.
So what I essentially tried to do is to time the things that I had to be there at a certain time to do to make that happen. And You know, I also reported this sort of towards the tail end of the pandemic. So there are all kinds of challenges. In Taiwan, Taiwan was the last, essentially the last place on earth that was closed to the outside world. And so I had to go to a COVID hostel and spend four nights in this windowless cell where my temperature was monitored. I did also have a newborn son at the time. And so, I had an incredibly patient wife who allowed all kinds of travel to happen. Thank you.
And it was a lot. So I would go to each place and shadow these individuals for a couple of weeks on end. And then if it made sense geographically to go to a place nearby for another chapter in the book, I would do that. Otherwise I would come back to my home base and write as much as I could in the weeks ahead before going off to the next one.
Juravich: This is All Sides and we are talking today with BBC journalist and author Eliot Stein, author of "Custodians of Wonder, ancient customs, profound traditions and the last people keeping them alive." Coming up, we're going to learn about a democratic process in communist Cuba and we'll travel to Germany and a, the history of a 500 year old tree with matchmaking powers. That is when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. We are talking with BBC journalist and author, Eliot Stein. His book is "Custodians of Wonder, ancient customs, rebound traditions, and the last people keeping them alive." A globetrotting adventure that introduces readers to nearly a dozen individuals carrying on pursuits most of us have never heard of. Thanks again for being with us, Eliot.
Stein: Thanks so much for having me.
Juravich: Do you keep in touch with any of the people you interviewed for the book? Cause you said it's been a few years if you did this a little post pandemic, and now it's 2026. Do you, do you stay in touch?
Stein: I do. I stay in touch with most everyone, actually.
Juravich: So are there any updates or changes or do you need to write a second book yet?
Stein: There have been some updates, some changes. One custodian unfortunately passed away. One custodians retired. But other than that, every other custodial is maintaining these traditions.
Juravich: Well, so given almost the like the sacred reverence for some of the traditions that you describe in the book, did you come away thinking like we need to pay more attention to like in our own families, whenever we're passing something on, did you think about that? Cause you just mentioned you have a young child. So were you thinking about a tradition in your family that you wanna make sure continues? Did you come up with any of those or do you feel like they need to be hundreds of years old?
Stein: They don't at all. I mean, I think there's something confronting might be too strong a word, but I mean ultimately the reason that I set out to write this book is I've spent so many years profiling these individuals whose main wish in life is to pass on these things that have been in their families to the next generation. And you know, I can't, I don't know how to how to make pasta into 256 tiny, tiny strands or to make a magical mirror.
But what I was hoping to do was to leave my son once I learned that I was gonna become a father for the first time. Kind of this idea of realizing how diverse and wondrous the world can be and to kind of notice these things himself, that even when in a sea of bad news, the world could still be a wondrous place. And so that's ultimately the inspiration for the book. And as a father, you really think about what are the things that we don't wanna pass on from our own backgrounds to our children and what are things that you really want to teach them that kind of help them see the world in a certain way. So absolutely. Yeah.
Juravich: We don't have time to talk about every person you profiled in the book, but I did find the story heartwarming, the story in Cuba. The chapter is titled, The Only Democratic Job in Cuba, which is funny to say like that. So it involves a woman who for 30 years has read to workers at a cigar factory. Can you set the scene here? What is it? What is happening? Reading? She and others are reading. Tell me about this.
Stein: Sure. So one of Cuba's most famous cultural exports is obviously cigars. But cigars are made in a very monotonous way. Imagine a giant, giant warehouse that is humid with the windows cracked open. And you have these people at what is essentially kind of 1940s looking school desks rolling these cigars over and over and again for about seven hours a day. And so, one of the least known processes of the cigar making. Work is the job of a reader.
And what a reader does is they literally stand at a podium in the front of this giant warehouse, and they read books, they read the daily news, they read novels. And similar to every other tradition, this book, it's not just this kind of cute thing that happens, but there's a really interesting backstory behind it. So in A couple hundred years ago when Cuba was then part of Spain and not free, you had this tradition begin as a way to educate workers who at that point under the Spanish crown were not legally able to come together and to read themselves as a ways to educate the workers about what is going on in the world.
So they would come up with newspapers, they would draft newspapers themselves as something to read to these people to expand their worldview. You, then this eventually spread into novels and... And all kinds of classics. And so these workers were the first people to kind of unite and demand independence against Spain. And so were it not for Cuban cigar factory workers and specifically the readers themselves who kind of served as these teachers, these moral authorities, you could make a very good case for the fact that Cuba would not have separated and become an independent nation when it did.
And so Jose Marti, who anyone who's listening is kind of the George Washington Thomas Jefferson of Cuba, he gave some of his most electrifying speeches for independence, including the famous Cuba Libre, Cuba Free from the podium of cigar factories. And so today you have this tradition that started as this kind of quaint thing and still exists even though radio exists, podcasts exists, audio books exist. And it's as simple as just a person reading a newspaper and and reading novels.
And what's really interesting to me is that some of the most famous Cuban cigars, which I knew nothing about before researching this, are named after the characters and the books that the cigar workers would vote on to be read to them. So Romeo and Juliet is a very famous Cuban cigar. Monte Cristo, after the Count of Monte Cristo is a famous one. Sancho Panza, the character from Don Quixote is a really famous Cuban Cigar. And these are all things that the Cuban factory workers would vote on to read.
Juravich: Yeah, what a great story. And, you know, it is a tribute to, I mean, I happen to be a little partial to listening to the spoken word, you know, with the job that I have. So, but yes, you're right. You could just play an audio recording of anything, but to have a real-life person standing there reading, that has a little bit of a different meaning, wouldn't you say?
Stein: Absolutely. I mean, there's something very human about it. I think that's true for a lot of a lot of the chapters in this book. You know, you don't practically speaking need a night watchman to climb 12 stories to the top of a church tower in Sweden to let you know that there's no fires, right? We have fire detectors, we have police cameras, we are fire departments, but there's this human element that I think adds a certain humanity to these things and weight and value to them that people appreciate. And I think there's something really refreshing for that in the world of AI and robots and just a touch of humanity that we all crave.
Juravich: Yeah, you've mentioned the night watchman a couple of times. Could you, can you tell us a little bit more about that? Is it still happening that the night Watchman is there?
Stein: It is still happening. Every night, between the hours of 9 p.m. And 2 a.m., a lonely person will climb 12 stories to the top of a church bell tower, and every 15 minutes, like clockwork, they will scan the four windows in a north-south-east-west direction, and if they don't see fires, they will push this four-foot-long kind of heralded trumpet out the window, and they will blow this haunting call across the rooftops. And it essentially lets the people know in Eastad, Sweden that everything is okay.
So every 15 minutes, you have this bellowing horn call saying, there's no fire. And it doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you think about it. You're like, wouldn't that make it hard for them to go to sleep? But I noticed this really beautiful detail when I was there where every night when it would drop below freezing, people would crack open their windows. And I didn't know why that was the case and I started asking around and time and time again, people told me if they can't hear the trumpet call, they have trouble going to sleep.
And so it's essentially this way of a night watchman kind of almost tucking in the 20,000 people who live in this town, and letting them know that things are okay. And I thought that was such a beautiful detail that really spoke to why this tradition matters.
Juravich: So for 500 years, it's helped put people to sleep.
Stein: Or help help keep them away from fires
Juravich: or cute yes at first fires and now cute they help them go to sleep and this same coastal town has another claim to fame it's the setting of a popular bbc show is that right or or novels something like that
Stein: Yeah, there's a very, very famous Nordic noir series called Wallander, and it's about this kind of surly detective who travels through this very sunny town, which is Ystad. And it's, you know, if you ever go there, it's this lovely town with kind of squat cottages painted in Easter egg sort of colors and very, very gorgeous, but it's the scene as well of this kind dark, grisly murders and in this series of books that was written. Written initially in Swedish and has then expanded to become a popular BBC series. But yeah, it's kind of become kind of the fictional murder capital of Scandinavia.
Juravich: Yeah, Wallander's one of my husband's favorites, so I'll have to tell them about the Night Watchmen. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about traditions from around the world with the author of the book "Custodians of Wonder." "Ancient customs, profound traditions, and the last people keeping them alive." You have a sweet story toward the end of the books. The chapter is titled The Most Romantic Job in Europe, and it's the enchanting story of a postal worker and a 500-year-old oak tree in Germany. It involves matchmaking done in an ancient way. Can you tell us about that?
Stein: Absolutely. Six days a week for the past hundred years, a postal worker has crunched through a forest carrying a stack of handwritten love letters from starry-eyed signals. He will then approach a 500-year-old oak tree, climb a 10-foot ladder, and hand-deliver these handwritten letters into the knot of this oak tree. And it's the only tree in the If you are a romantic starry-eyed single yourself, you can climb the ladder. You can read any of the letters that have been written from strangers.
And if there's a letter that speaks to you, if the person who is writing it kind of, you feel like you have a match with them, you're able to take the letter. But if the personally who has written the letter doesn't seem to match with you, you put it back for somebody else to take. And over the years, this tree, this tender, this kind of timber in the forest, which is. Been around long before tender is responsible for more than 100 marriages. Oh, and the reason that it became so popular is a long, long time ago, there were these two forbidden lovers who would leave love letters to each other in the knothole of, of this tree.
And they eventually wed under the branches and somebody snapped a photo of it and it became kind of this viral thing in 1920s Germany. And ever since, people from all over the country have been writing love letters to this tree. And now people from over the world do. And what I did with this story was I profiled its most prolific male carrier, a gentleman who had sworn off love himself and then found love in the tree.
Juravich: How lovely, did, I mean I don't know if you were married at the time, did you read any of the letters or take one out of the tree just to see?
Stein: I did. They were really heartwarming. They would be from Denise from Bavaria who wants to meet an individual who likes walking through the forest themselves, or likes listening to techno music, or wants to find someone to garden with. It really sort of restores your hope in humanity, but similar to every other story in this book, again, it's not just about this cute tradition, but we get into all about how Germans are inherently forest people.
The whole. The founding idea of Germany happened in a forest. You have so many fabled stories about people finding love in forests. You have this wonderful term in German called Vadeinsenkeit, which literally means forest loneliness about people traveling to forests to find something bigger than themself. It's a magical story that could really only happen in Germany and similar to every other chapter in the book, we talk all about why that's the case and how this tradition. Sort of speaks to the broader culture of Germany, which I, as someone who lived in Germany for four years, I found to be very true and very, very whimsical and lovely.
Juravich: I can imagine that whenever you came out with this book and, you know, people saw, because you said you were very particular and careful about what traditions you selected, I have to imagine that people reached out to you and said, write about my tradition, write about my traditions. So do you have 10 more? Are you working on book two?
Stein: There's the world is a is a giant place filled with filled with things worth writing about So I will continue to write stories in this vein. Yes, and you're so right there I can't tell you how many people have reached out to me and you know So you should write about my grandmother's apple pie recipe But what I'm really interested in, you know, again, it's not just sort of these things that that exist within one family But these things embody population.
And when these things fall apart, and I was very careful to sort of profile these things, when these traditions that are in the book kind of fade away, an inherent part of that community vanishes with it. And so that's what I'm really interested in. It's not just kind of final custodians for final custodian's sake, but how these traditions embody a people, embody a population, an identity, a sense of self. And as I say in the books, you know, so often we about the first person to do something, but there's... There's almost never a whisper for the final person to carry these things on. And once they vanish, we realize how important these things that no longer exist are. And that's really what I'm trying to preserve here is kind of a snapshot of a moment in time before it vanishes forever.
Juravich: We've been talking with BBC journalist and author, Eliot Stein, author of "Custodians of Wonder, Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and The Last People Keeping Them Alive." Thank you so much for joining us today.
Stein: Thank you so much for having me, Amy.
Juravich: And you've been listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich.