We’ve read, listened and watched them on screens of all sizes. But what actually makes a myth or a fairy tale?

Today’s guest, Ann Schmiesing, kicks off season five of The Ampersand by delving into mythmaking and the lessons we can glean from fairy tales. She is the best-selling author of The Grimm Brothers biography, which the New Yorker listed as one of its best books of 2025, a professor of Germanic and Slavic languages and the vice chancellor for strategic initiatives at the University of Colorado Boulder. Ann dives deep into the Grimms and disability studies while also exploring CU Boulder’s crafting of mythologies in its 150th Anniversary.

Learn more about Ann's research.

Purchase The Brothers Grimm.

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Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.

Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

Music: Borodin's In The Steppes of Central Asia. Recorded, produced and released to the public by The Musopen Kickstarter Project.

The Ampersand is a production of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

We love to explore the stories we tell about ourselves—paying special attention to the way they change over time, what that shift says about where we are and who we hope to become.

The Ampersand is back for season five! In a year when the University of Colorado Boulder turns 150, we're asking questions that anniversaries make possible: What stories have we told? Which ones still hold up? And what do the myths we carry say about the future toward which we aspire?

This season, we're exploring the space between history and identity, where facts become folklore and where reflection and reclamation on these mythologies drive fresh creativity.

Join us as we walk into these many woods.

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Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.

Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

Music: Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 - IV. In the Hall Of The Mountain King. Recorded, produced and released to the public by The Musopen Kickstarter Project.

The Ampersand is a production of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

I read once that bravery required feeling tangible fear. A Shackleton-style blistering confidence that barrels into harsh landscapes is not, by definition, brave, because it refuses to acknowledge the contextual realities around one's experience. Today's guest, on the other hand, looks with clear eyes at challenging field experiences, the inherent risks of life and severe discomfort, and she goes anyway. Joanna Lambert, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, is a conservation rock star. Known more recently for her research on Colorado's reintroduction of gray wolves, on today's episode she discusses her unexpected journey from commercial art into conservation, her love of the Rolling Stones and the music she finds in tracking wildlife through Yellowstone's extremes.

Joanna's website

Joanna's research

Wolves in Colorado

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Original music composed by Nelson Walker.

Recorded at Interplay Recording and Multimedia.

Written and produced by Erika Randall and Tim Grassley.