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.

Colin Marshall sits down in Nørrebro with Classic Copenhagen blogger and photographer Sandra Høj. They discuss the city's current enthusiasm for tree-cutting; the small things in Copenhagen that draw her eye, from pieces of street art to weird details on houses; how she started blogging in the wake of the Muhammad caricature crisis with an interest in disputing the global perception of Danes as living obliviously in a land of pastries and fairy tales; her mission to describe "the good, the bread, and the ugly" of Copenhagen; the Danish tendency to nag about problems; what time spent in "cozy" Amsterdam taught her about her "sexy" home city; what time spend in Paris taught her about how Copenhagen could better respect itself; the bewildering array of political parties putting signs up all over the city, and how rarely their actions match their words; her desire for children to grow up in the same Copenhagen she did; the evolution of Amager, also known as "the Shit Island", and what gentrification looks like elsewhere in the city; the scourge of Joe and the Juice; and her continuing search outward for more "traces of life" in Copenhagen.

Direct download: NCC_S4E14_Sandra_Hoj.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 6:56pm UTC

Colin Marshall sits down in Copenhagen's Nørrebro with Lars AP, author of the book Fucking Flink and founder of the movement of the same name, which aims to make the Danish not just the "happiest" people, but the friendliest as well. They discuss just what it feels like to bear the label of "happiest" and whether "most content" might not suit the country better; the difference in impact of the word "fucking," especially in a book title, between Denmark and the States; the seemingly inward-turned people foreigners feel as if they encounter when they first visit Denmark; his TEDx Copenhagen talk about his realization that he acted less friendly when speaking Danish than he did when speaking English; "negative politeness" versus "positive politeness"; the importance of internalizing a culture in order to speak its language; how the Danish once had to meet few non-Danes, and how they can still feel the effects of that in American questions like "How you doin'?"; the process and impact of "baking a little meaning" into each social encounter; his tendency to act, when in the Danish countryside, in a way that makes his wife call him "homo jovialis"; how compliments and other acts of friendliness require not just honesty but creativity and surprise for maximum effectiveness; the origins of the Fucking Flink movement, and the stunts he has pulled off with it, such as giving out positive parking tickets; the similar misery of commenting on the internet, driving in traffic on the highway, and staying too embedded in your own culture; the Avatar handshake, and what we can learn from the accompanying greeting of "I see you"; how best to address the needs we have when we get to the top of the Maslow Pyramid; the need to use not just what's between our ears, but what's between us; and how this all relates to the 4,000 years' worth of city building coming very soon.

Direct download: NCC_S4E13_Lars_AP.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 8:41pm UTC

Colin Marshall sits down before a live audience at the New Urbanism Film Festival at Los Angeles' ACME Theater with Tim Halbur, Director of Communications at the Congress for the New Urbanism, former Managing Editor at Planetizen, creator of the two-disc DVD set The Story of Sprawl, and author of the children's urban planning book Where Things Are from Near to Far. They discuss the anti-Los Angeles indoctrination he received in San Francisco, and what that indoctrination might have had right; the two "nodes" of Hollywood and the beach that outsiders tend to recognize in Los Angeles, and why people claim to live here even when they live thirty miles away; why cities actually build for the car aren't as often derided as "built for the car"; the hard-to-place unease we grew up with in the suburbs; his past producing museum audio tours, and how he would produce an audio tour of Los Angeles that navigates by subcultures; whether Los Angeles is too big, and what it means that we continually try to define and connect it all; what the Congress for the New Urbanism does, and how it addresses the way we once "carved out" our cities for parking lots and freeways; the Jetsonian vision of the future that carried us away after the Second World War; what Disneyland gets right about urbanism; the constant change that defines a living city, and San Francisco's unhappy experience trying to halt it; the Beverly Hills 90210 model of denser-than-suburbia living he found in Los Angeles; his weekly commute to the CNU in Chicago, and what he learns from living in these two quite different cities at once; how he'd like to see Los Angeles change in the next ten years; how Eric Brightwell's neighborhood maps surprise people, and what that means for neighborhood awareness; and the importance of "theming" urban places.

Direct download: NCC_S4E12_Tim_Halbur.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:11pm UTC

Colin Marshall sits down in Silver Lake with showman, "histo-tainer" and "Ambassador of Americana" Charles Phoenix, curator of vintage midcentury slides and author of books like Southern CalifornialandAmericana the Beautiful, and Southern California in the 50s. They discuss the postwar period's appealing mix of the highest and lowest American sophistication; how the country's new middle class became "buying machines" and "cultural monsters"; the "time travel in a box" he experienced when he found his first set of old slides in a thrift shop; the "luxurious" nature of Kodachrome; what makes any given slide a keeper, and how he can tell, say, a 1960 from a 1961; the layers of history visible in a photo, which he looks through as if through a window; the meaning of the first freeway-side mall with fallout shelter-equipped hidden delivery tunnels; the many midcentury innovations Southern California didn't invent, but perfected; his Disneyland tours of Down Los Angeles, and Disneyland as both a comparison to and metaphor for much in the human experience; how we gave up the joy of cars and let driving become a chore; the 1950s' love of speed in contrast to our modern tendency to " get it over with"; how he finds the good in every era, the seventies included; our hard-wiring to reject the past and buy new; his more recent interest in processed foodcraft, including work with Cheez Whiz and Jell-O molds; his Los Angeles architecture show, with which he intends to reveal the structures not yet properly acknowledged; how social media empowers the sharing of our aesthetic fetishes; whether modern designs like that of the iPhone express the optimism he sees in midcentury Americana; and the importance, often neglected today, of creating anticipation.

Direct download: NCC_S4E11_Charles_Phoenix.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 5:54pm UTC