Notebook on Cities and Culture
(Formerly The Marketplace of Ideas.) Colin Marshall sits down for in-depth conversations with cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene all around Los Angeles and beyond.
Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll on time's arrow

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.

Direct download: MOI_Sean_Carroll.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 7:17am UTC

On the North Korean worldview with B.R. Myers

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.

Direct download: MOI_BR_Myers.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 8:42pm UTC

Musician, artist, journalist and ex-blogger Nick Currie, a.k.a Momus

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.

Direct download: MOI_Nick_Currie.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 7:48am UTC

On the cinema of Errol Morris with journalist and curator Livia Bloom

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.

Direct download: MOI_Livia_Bloom.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 7:11pm UTC