Tue, 28 December 2010
Colin Marshall talks to design philosopher, bookmaker, and man of aesthetics Leonard Koren. In addition to publishing WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing in the 1970s and providing consultancy on certain aesthetic matters, he’s created books like Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, How to Rake Leaves, and Undesigning the Bath. He takes on the very meaning of the term “aesthetics” in his latest title, Which “Aesthetics” Do You Mean?: Ten Definitions. |
Sat, 18 December 2010
Colin Marshall talks to conceptual artist and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats. In addition to his well-known projects like selling his thoughts, creating pornography for plants, and genetically engineering god, Keats writes about language for Wired magazine. His new book, Virtual Words: Language from the Edge of Science and Technology, collects his examinations of neologisms both failed and successful from our age, including qubit, crowdsourcing and bacn. |
Sun, 12 December 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Nathan Rabin, head writer at The A.V. Club, the cultural magazine published by The Onion. There, he began a regular feature called My Year of Flops, in which he spent a year writing up movies that performed poorly at the box office and with critics, categorizing each as a “Failure”, “Fiasco”, or “Secret Success”. He continued the feature after a year, and has now collected pieces on Last Action Hero, Ishtar, Battlefield Earth, and more into My Year of Flops: One Man’s Journey Deep into the Heart of Cinematic Failure. |
Sun, 5 December 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Yunte Huang, poet, professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, and author of Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History. In the book, Huang combines a personal narrative of his research into American literature’s most beloved (and loathed) Chinese detective with the stories of E.D. Biggers, the writer who invented Charlie Chan, and Chang Apana, the real-life Chinese detective on the Honolulu Police whose exploits inspired him. |
Tue, 23 November 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Kevin Kelly, co-founder of and “Senior Maverick” at Wired magazine. In addition to his copious online writing on technology and culture, he’s published such books as New Rules for the New Economy and Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, the Economic World. His latest book, What Technology Wants, explores the nature of what he calls the “technium”, that is, technology itself, considered as one big organism which grows, changes, and definitely wants something. |
Wed, 10 November 2010
Colin Marshall talks to literature professor, psychotherapist, and cultural critic Mikita Brottman, author of The Solitary Vice: Against Reading. In the book, Brottman challenges a host of conventional wisdom and received ideas about the value of reading, especially the reading of "high" literature. This mission takes her through examinations of both her own history with reading and the nature of such species of the printed word as the gothic novel, the true-crime paperback, and the celebrity confessional. |
Fri, 29 October 2010
Capturing the image of capturing the sound: documentarian Nicholas Sherman on field recordist Gordon Hempton
Colin Marshall talks to documentary filmmaker Nicholas Sherman, director of Soundtracker: A Portrait of Gordon Hempton. Hempton, one of the world’s best-known field recordists, has dedicated his life to traveling the United States and the world to create “sound portraits” of distinctive places. In Soundtracker, Sherman follows Hempton’s road trip in his 1964 VW bus which becomes a quest to capture the sounds of a train and a songbird together. |
Sun, 24 October 2010
Colin Marshall talks to film critic David Sterritt, chairman of the National Society of Film Critics and former longtime critic at the Christian Science Monitor. Sterritt’s books, from titles on Jean-Luc Godard and Alfred Hitchcock to more recent ones on B-movies and even the television sitcom The Honeymooners, reveal cinematic interests that stretch from the avant-garde to the long and widely beloved to the ostensibly (but perhaps not actually) disposable. |
Fri, 1 October 2010
Colin Marshall talks to John Rabe, longtime public radio personality and host of KPCC’s Off-Ramp, a weekly examination of Southern California and especially Los Angeles. The show’s interviews and field pieces provide, as Rabe puts it, a “pointillist” aural portrait of the city and its surrounding half-state, highlighting some of the most interesting people, places, and things there without attempting the futile task of precisely representing the massive amount and constantly changing composition of Southern California culture. |
Fri, 17 September 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Mark Frauenfelder, editor of Make magazine and co-founder the zine which has become the massively popular blog Boing Boing. His latest book, Made By Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World, is the story of his quest to fully customize his life by building, maintaining, and operating as much as possible with his own hands: hacking his espresso machine, making his own sauerkraut, building cigar-box guitars, brewing his own kombucha, and carving his own spoons, to name only a few of his eclectic set of pursuits. |
Fri, 10 September 2010
Colin Marshall talks to blogger, entrepreneur, and liver of the unconventional life Chris Guillebeau. Having written his blog The Art of Non-Conformity: Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work, and Travel for “a small army of remarkable people” since 2008, he’s now the author of a book which expands on his ideas and experiences, The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World. |
Fri, 3 September 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Jesse Thorn and Adam Lisagor, creators of the new men’s style web series and blog Put This On, which explore all facets of the art of “dressing like a grown-up.” Thorn is also the host of Public Radio International’s The Sound of Young America as well as the comedy podcast Jordan Jesse Go; Lisagor is also a co-host and producer of the comedy podcast You Look Nice Today. |
Fri, 27 August 2010
Colin Marshall talks to novelist Joshua Cohen, author of Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, A Heaven of Others, and now Witz. The new book follows the cross-country (and international, and possibly even interplanetary) journey of Benjamin Israelien, born with a beard and glasses, already nearly a grown man. After a Biblical plague on Christmas Even 1999, Benjamin becomes the last Jew on Earth. He’s first celebrated, then marketed, then turned upon. |
Fri, 20 August 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Tyler Smith and David Bax, hosts of the film podcast Battleship Pretension. For over three years, Smith and Bax have explored on the show all aspects of cinema history, cinema appreciation, cinema technique, and cinema criticism, doing so with the freewheeling, humorous sensibility of the best late-night film school conversations. |
Fri, 13 August 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Jack Hues, lead singer and, alongside Nick Feldman, primary collaborator of the rock group Wang Chung. Throughout the 1980s, Wang Chung released such albums as Points on the Curve, Mosaic, and The Warmer Side of Cool, as well as the soundtrack to William Friedkin’s film To Live and Die in L.A.. Now they’re back recording and touring again, having recently completed one U.S. tour and about to launch another in support of their new double EP, Abducted by the 80s. |
Fri, 6 August 2010
Colin Marshall talks to music journalist, critic, and observer of America Greil Marcus. Though they span countless subjects, Marcus’ past books have been rooted in examinations of icons like Bob Dylan, the Sex Pistols, Elvis Presley, and Bill Clinton. In his latest release, When that Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison, he takes on the Irish singer-songwriter’s vast, varied catalogue, documenting his own responses to Morrison’s music as well as the far-flung cultural and psychological resonances it sets off. |
Fri, 30 July 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Steven Moore, author, critic, former managing editor of Dalkey Archive Press and the Review of Contemporary Fiction. In his latest book, the first volume of The Novel: An Alternative History, Moore traces the development of long, adventurous fiction from its origin to the year 1600, paying special attention to unusual works that make innovative use of language. |
Fri, 23 July 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Suzanne Jill Levine, noted translator of creative, innovative, adventurous Latin American Fiction from authors like Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Severo Sarduy, and Manuel Puig. She’s also a professor at UCSB and the general editor and co-translator of Penguin Classics’ five new volumes of nonfiction and poetry from widely respected Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges: On Writing, On Mysticism, On Argentina, The Sonnets, and Poems of the Night. Her own book The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction has been recently reissued by Dalkey Archive. |
Fri, 16 July 2010
Colin Marshall talks to David Lipsky, contributing editor at Rolling Stone and author of Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace. Crafted out of transcripts of a five day-long conversation between Lipsky and Wallace on the tail end of the publicity tour for Wallace’s breakthrough novel Infinite Jest, the book reveals facets of the beloved author that have never before been seen publicly. |
Tue, 29 June 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Tan Lin, professor of English and creative writing at New Jersey City University and author of the books Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe, BlipSoak01 and Heath (Plagiarism/Outsource). His latest book, Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking, uses its form to escape the notions, conventions and structures of the traditional reading experience.
Tan Lin’s Tumblr Tan Lin’s books: Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe (New American Poetry), Blipsoak01, Heath (Plagiarism/Outsource), Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking: [AIRPORT NOVEL MUSICAL POEM PAINTING FILM PHOTO HALLUCINATION LANDSCAPE] (Wesleyan Poetry) Technology/business/culture writer Nicholas Carr (1959 - ) Architect Rem Koolhaas (1944 - ) Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker’s Joy of Cooking Tan Lin’s BOMB Magazine interview 7 Controlled Vocabularies, Lulu edition Writer David Shields (1956 - ) and Reality Hunger: A Manifesto David Shields on The Marketplace of Ideas Jonathan Beller’s The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle (Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture) |
Mon, 21 June 2010
David Toop is a composer of sound, writer about sound, curator of sound and research fellow at the London College of Communication. His works in text include Ocean of Sound, Exotica, Haunted Weather and the Rap Attack books. His latest is Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener, which explores the sound of silent art.
David Toop’s web site David Toop’s books, Rap Attack, No. 3: African Rap to Global Hip Hop, Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds, Exotica, Haunted Weather: Music, Silence and Memory (Five Star Fiction S.) and Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) English writer Charles Dickens (1812-1870) Oren Peli’s film Paranormal Activity (2009) Dutch painter Nicholaes Maes and his Eavesdropper paintings Irish painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) English novelist Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) Scottish novelist John Buchan (1875-1940) English writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) Irish writer James Joyce and his novel Ulysses (1882-1941) Irish writer Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) German electronic band Kratfwerk |
Thu, 10 June 2010
Colin Marshall talks to novelist Todd Shimoda, author of 365 Views of Mt. Fuji, The Fourth Treasure and now Oh!: A Mystery of Mono No Aware.
Shimoda calls his stories “somewhat experimental, post-modernish,
dealing with Asian or Asian-American themes to some degree, but also
broad questions of existence,” or “philosophical mysteries.” His latest novel documents an embodies a search for the elusive Japanese literary concept of mono no aware.
Persons/places/works/sites referenced in this interview, in the order mentioned Todd and L.J.C. Shimoda's web site, Shimodaworks Todd Shimoda's novels: 365 Views of Mt. Fuji: Algorithms of the Floating World, The Fourth Treasure and Oh!: A mystery of 'mono no aware' The literary concept of mono no aware Novelist Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) Novelist Kobo Abe (1924-1993) Novelist Albert Camus (1913-1960) Albert Camus' The Stranger (Everyman's Library) The Japanese concept of ikigai, or the worth of living Chin Music Press Kobo Abe's The Ruined Map: A Novel An excerpt of Todd Shimoda's Ruined Map sequel-in-progess, Why Ghosts Appear |
Thu, 3 June 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Sharpham College for Buddhist Studies founder Stephen Batchelor, author on, scholar of and educator about Buddhist topics. His latest book, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist,
recounts his journey from young spiritual seeker to devoted monk to
questioning student to holder of the complex hybrid of principles and
practices he has achieved today. This personal narrative builds upon
and provides a background to his famously controversial Buddhism Without Beliefs.
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Thu, 27 May 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Andrew Bujalski, the young director of the films Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation and Beeswax,
which is newly available on DVD. Though Bujalski’s funny, realistic
movies are often considered by critics to be of a similar genius to
other independently-produced pictures of the 2000s focusing on the
personal relationships of twentysomethings, they possess an intellect
and an aesthetic all their own.
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Thu, 20 May 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Lee Gutkind, founder and editor of Creative Nonfiction, the premiere journal of the eponymous genre of writing that combines the literary techniques of fiction with the reality of life itself. With its spring 2010 issue, it’s undergone a radical revision in look, feel and sensibility, shifting from academic journal to wider-interest magazine. He’s also the author of many books that fall under the creative nonfiction heading, exploring subjects like baseball, transplant surgeries and robotics. His latest, the father-son memoir Truckin’ with Sam: A Father and Son, The Mick and The Dyl, Rockin’ and Rollin’, On the Road, comes out this summer. |
Thu, 6 May 2010
Colin Marshall talks to David Shields, professor of English at the University of Washington and author of fiction, nonfiction and various hybrids thereof about sports, autobiography, celebrity and death. His new book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, uses collage writing to challenge preconceived ideas about form and genre in art, especially as they pertain to literature. Shields advocates disregarding these hardened constraints, a move which will allow art to use more of and become more like life itself. |
Thu, 22 April 2010
Colin Marshall talks to musicologist, writer, microtonal composer and educator Kyle Gann, author of No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4′33″. The former new music critic at the Village Voice, Gann turns his eye and ear in the book to Cage’s most well-known composition, four minutes and 33 seconds in which no notes are played. Famous and infamous in equal measure, 4′33″ has been variously considered a work of genius, a game-changing musical revelation and a charlatan’s publicity stunt. |
Thu, 15 April 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Peter Brunette, Reynolds Professor of Film Studies and director of the Film Studies program at Wake Forest University. The author of books on such beloved filmmakers as Michelangelo Antonioni, Wong Kar-Wai and Roberto Rossellini, Brunette has now written a book on Austrian cinematic provocateur Michael Haneke. The latest published entry in the University of Illinois Press’ “Contemporary Film Directors” series, Michael Haneke examines in depth the art of and the ideas behind the auteur’s theatrical releases, from late-1980s and early-1990s works such as The Seventh Continent and Benny’s Video through his newest and best-known pictures Caché and The White Ribbon. |
Thu, 1 April 2010
Colin Marshall talks to speaker, writer, blogger and entrepreneur Seth Godin. Having already built a large body of published work on the nature of ideas, how they’re conceived, how they’re spread and how they’re executed, Godin has expanded his intellectual purview with his new book Linchpin. Extending the thoughts and observations he applied to marketing in books like Purple Cow and All Marketers are Liars, his latest work examines how individual human beings, not corporations or organizations, can most fruitfully practice their art in the transforming information economy. |
Thu, 25 March 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Chris Bohn, editor of London-based monthly music magazine The Wire. Subtitled “Adventures in Modern Music”, the magazine has covered the alternative, the underground, the experimental, the avant-garde and the generally non-mainstream since 1982, featuring a span of artists from Ornette Coleman to Björk to David Sylvian to Jim O’Rourke to field recordists like Lee Patterson to emerging Chinese sounds artists like Yun Jun. The magazine is also well known as a rarity in its industry for both its profitability and its loyal, growing readership. |
Thu, 18 March 2010
Colin Marshall talks to James Donelan, lecturer and Program Coordinator in the English department and College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He's also the author of Poetry and the Romantic Musical Aesthetic a study of composer Ludwig van Beethoven, poet William Wordsworth, philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and poet/philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin and what their work reveals about the development of the idea of the autonomous mind and its interaction with the external world, especially its works of art. |
Thu, 25 February 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Sean Carroll, theoretical cosmologist specializing in dark energy and special relativity at the California Institute of Technology and blogger at Cosmic Variance. In his new book, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, Carroll explores possible answers to the question, “Why does time always move forward, never backward?” Addressing the issue necessitates drawing from various domains of physics, going all the way back to the origin of the universe. |
Thu, 18 February 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Brian Reynolds Myers, contributing editor to the Atlantic and professor of international studies at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea. In his new book, The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters, Myers examines North Korean propaganda meant for both internal and external consumption and through it constructs the closed country’s view of itself, its relationship to other countries and the Kim dynasty that has controlled it for 60 years. This approach reveals not a Stalinist ideology but one closer to Nazi Germany’s in its prioritization of the military and fixation on racial purity and a threatening outside world. |
Thu, 11 February 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Nick Currie, better known as Momus. Since the mid-1980s he has led parallel careers in music (with 21 albums out so far), prose, art and journalism, exploring the nexuses between them while traveling the world and examining his favorite cultures. He has most recently turned toward traditional ink-and-paper publishing with two volumes, The Book of Jokes and The Book of Scotlands. Since 2004, he has written the blog Click Opera on his life, work and art adventures, which he closed on February 10, the eve of his 50th birthday. |
Sun, 7 February 2010
Colin Marshall talks to cinematic journalist and curator Livia Bloom, editor of Errol Morris: Interviews, a compilation of conversations with the nonfiction filmmaker behind such movies as Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War. The book, which includes two interviews conducted by Bloom herself as well as other notable film writers like Paul Cronin and Roger Ebert, reveals a directorial mind filled with curiosity, love of truth and real or imagined misanthropy. |
Thu, 28 January 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Robin Hanson, professor of economics at George Mason University, research associate at Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and chief scientist at Consensus Point. He’s also the thinker behind Overcoming Bias, a popular blog about issues of honesty, signaling, disagreement, forecasting and the far future, around which a large rationality-centric community has developed on the internet. “Flicking through Robin’s thoughts,” says the Observer, “you start to feel the ground shifting beneath you.” |
Mon, 11 January 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Rob Walker, observer of advertising and marketing in all their forms. Author of the New York Times‘ “Consumed” column and the book Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are,
Walker is also the co-creator of the “Significant Objects” project, an
experiment wherein various authors and media personalities craft
fictional stories to accompany everyday objects found at thrift stores.
The objects are then auctioned off, revealing the value-adding effects
of narrative.
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Mon, 4 January 2010
Colin Marshall talks to Steven E. Landsburg, professor of economics at the University of Rochester, Slate's "Everyday Economics" columnist and author of The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics and Physics. A pioneer in the popular-economics genre with his 1993 book The Armchair Economist, Landsburg now focuses his quantitative mind on issues of epistemology, ontology, morality and otherwise that have heretofore remained mostly untouched by such analysis.
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