Colin Marshall sits down at Fat Dog in West Hollywood with comedian and actor Jordan Morris, co-host of the comedy podcast Jordan, Jesse, Go!, writer on the web series MyMusic, former host of Fuel TV's The Daily Habit, and creator of satirical commercials for "Gamewave" and the "Action Circle." They talk about growing up in Orange County with the solace of ska music; The Simpsons' un-overstatable influence on the current generation of young comedy writers; whether and how "Family-Guyization" is affecting comedic culture; the usefulness of college as "a place to be bad for a while"; how those who move to Los Angeles from other major cities have gone blind to their hometowns' sources of suckiness; the prohibitive cost of a bedazzled T-shirt; what kind of a golden calf Conan O'Brien's show represents for today's comedic minds; "gab podcasts" and the rapidly diminishing viability thereof; the temptation to pander to your audience, whichever audience your medium determines you have; whether working at an "action sports" channel made for a living hell; how and why fifteen-year-olds maintain their alienness to non-fifteen-year-olds; and how best to satirize the troubled relationship some hardcore gamers have with human sexuality.

(Photo: Pat Weir)

Colin Marshall sits down at the La Brea Tar Pits with David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times book critic, editor of the anthologies Writing Los Angeles, Another City, and Cape Cod Noir, and author of The Myth of Solid Ground, The Lost Art of Reading, and the upcoming novella Labyrinth. They talk about his attitude as a young New Yorker moving to Los Angeles; his approach to everything in life through the filter of books; his "graduate education" writing for the mythologized oasis of writerly cool that was the Los Angeles Reader; the importance of competition in print journalism; criticism as the search for the most important questions; how to talk about a city that doesn't know how to talk about itself; how to have a coherent conversation about a city that resists coherent conversation; the "sacred ordinariness" of Los Angeles; how literature of exile became literature of place; ersatz public and protected pseudo-urban space; whether the city will feel the same ten years from now; whether we'll still have what architectural critic Reyner Banham described as an "autopia" ten years from now; how narrative offers our only hope of meaning, yet only offers meaning up to a point; and what happens when our narratives go bad, assuming we notice.

(Photo: Noah Ulin)

Colin Marshall sits down in Hollywood with comedian, actor, and novelist DC Pierson, man behind the one-man show DC Pierson is Bad at Girls, one-third of the Mystery Team of Mystery Team, and the author of The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To. They talk about innate, unchanging age; teenage blogging; Daria; the compulsion to read criticism; moving to Los Angeles from New York; avoiding falling into the standard complaint-driven narratives of young New York writers who move to Los Angeles; whether and how Los Angeles is shinin'; the mysteries surrounding how many Hollywood residents earn their income; building things rather than tearing things down; becoming the butt of your own jokes; blogging one's first hundred days in Los Angeles; and the inherent criminality of existing in one's twenties.

(Photo: Zac Wolf)

A fifth brief preview of Notebook on Cities and Culture, the new in-depth, face-to-face interview show with cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene coming February 2012.

A fourth brief preview of Notebook on Cities and Culture, the new in-depth, face-to-face interview show with cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene coming February 2012 — after a Kickstarter fund drive going on now. For each $250 raised over the funding goal, the first season will have an additional episode produced

A third brief preview of Notebook on Cities and Culture, the new in-depth, face-to-face interview show with cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene coming February 2012 — after a Kickstarter fund drive beginning January 26.

A second brief preview of Notebook on Cities and Culture, the new in-depth, face-to-face interview show with cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene coming February 2012 — after a Kickstarter fund drive beginning January 26.

A brief preview of Notebook on Cities and Culture, the new in-depth, face-to-face interview show with cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene coming February 2012. (With maybe a Kickstarter funding campaign beforehand. I don't know yet.)

Colin Marshall makes an announcement on the end of The Marketplace of the Ideas and the future of cutural conversation of the depth you demand.