The Virtual Memories Show podcast

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Lagt til seven år siden

Innhold levert av Gil Roth. Alt podcastinnhold, inkludert episoder, grafikk og podcastbeskrivelser, lastes opp og leveres direkte av Gil Roth eller deres podcastplattformpartner. Hvis du tror at noen bruker det opphavsrettsbeskyttede verket ditt uten din tillatelse, kan du følge prosessen skissert her https://no.player.fm/legal.

We Have The Receipts

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Battle Camp S1: Reality Rivalries with Dana Moon & QT 1:00:36

for 7 dager siden1:00:36

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1:00:36

Do you have fond childhood memories of summer camp? For a chance at $250,000, campers must compete in a series of summer camp-themed challenges to prove that they are unbeatable, unhateable, and unbreakable. Host Chris Burns is joined by the multi-talented comedian Dana Moon to recap the first five episodes of season one of Battle Camp . Plus, Quori-Tyler (aka QT) joins the podcast to dish on the camp gossip, team dynamics, and the Watson to her Sherlock Holmes. Leave us a voice message at www.speakpipe.com/WeHaveTheReceipts Text us at (929) 487-3621 DM Chris @FatCarrieBradshaw on Instagram Follow We Have The Receipts wherever you listen, so you never miss an episode. Listen to more from Netflix Podcasts.…

The Virtual Memories Show

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A weekly conversation about books and life, not necessarily in that order.

706 episoder

#Storytelling #Books and Writing #Arts #Comics #Culture #Essays #Fiction #Literature #Music #Publishing #Gil Roth #Books #Critics #Library

The Virtual Memories Show

29 subscribers

updated for 4 dager siden

Del

Serier hjem•Feed

A weekly conversation about books and life, not necessarily in that order.

706 episoder

#Storytelling #Books and Writing #Arts #Comics #Culture #Essays #Fiction #Literature #Music #Publishing #Gil Roth #Books #Critics #Library

Alle episoder

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 636 - Craig Thompson 1:25:10

for 4 dager siden1:25:10

1:25:10

Artist Craig Thompson joins the show at long last to celebrate his new book, GINSENG ROOTS: A Memoir (Pantheon). We talk about how he spent ten summers of his childhood helping farm ginseng, how that herb connects rural Wisconsin with China and South Korea, how he balanced history, journalism, economics, and memoir in the pages of his book, and why he chose to make Ginseng Roots as a serial comic rather than a standalone book and how that affected his creative process. We get into how the book serves as a sort of midlife revision of his breakthrough book, Blankets , how the last chapter of the book had to happen in near-real-time, how a degenerative condition in his hands became a unifying theme to the book while almost derailing it, how he found the design language of the book and obsessed over a two-color process (to amazing results), and whether this is his swansong for comics (spoiler: it's not!). We also discuss what home means to him, 8 months into being on the road, what it was like discovering that he had a global audience, his ongoing relationship with his evangelical Christian upbringing, his editor's concerns that Ginseng Roots could open him up to accusations of cultural insensitivity (and how he got over it), all while geeking out over our fave cartoonists from the '90s indy period (go, Dylan Horrocks !), and more. Follow Craig on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 635 - Ari Richter 1:31:18

for 13 dager siden1:31:18

1:31:18

Artist, professor and now like-it-or-not cartoonist Ari Richter joins the show to talk about his fantastic book, Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz: A Graphic Family Memoir of Trauma & Inheritance (Fantagraphics). We talk about how he he began this project in the wake of the Tree of Life massacre in 2018, how it helped him exorcise the demons of his imagination after a lifetime of hearing his family's stories about the Holocaust, and how the book centered around intergenerational trauma and collaboration. We get into how he incorporated his grandfathers' holocaust memoirs into the book, why he found different styles for each section of the book, what he had to learn about comics storytelling after a career in fine arts, the revelation of reading Miriam Katin 's memoirs and why he avoided rereading MAUS during the 5 years he worked on this book. We also discuss how drawing comics has changed his brain, why he was stunned by the commercialism of Auschwitz, why he's glad he got a German passport, why comics folks seem friendlier than fine arts people, the insanity of composing his comics pages in Photoshop (and what happens when he forgets to label his layers ), and a lot more. Follow Ari on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 634 - Dan Nadel 2:03:40

for 19 dager siden2:03:40

2:03:40

Author and curator Dan Nadel joins the show to celebrate the publication of his amazing new biography, CRUMB: A Cartoonist's Life (Scribner). We get into Robert Crumb's significance in American art, comics, and culture, Dan's first experience with a Crumb comic (it was an ish of American Splendor ), the challenge of capturing the underground comics scene of the '60s & '70s, and what it took for him to get over the "R. Crumb" persona and realize how integrated Robert's personality is. We talk about Crumb's role as nexus in the history of comics, the book's focus on Crumb's drawing and how different tools opened him up artistically, what it means to see Crumb as part of tradition and not just a conceptual outlier, how his Crumb differs from the Crumb of Terry Zwigoff's documentary , and the one detail he's still dying to find out about Zap Comix. We also discuss Dan's comics and art upbringing, how he found his place as a publisher then gallery & museum curator , how he was affected by the death of Crumb's wife Aline in 2022, how his museum experience prepared him for writing about the racist and sexist aspects of Crumb's comics, the only cartoonist biography he could tackle after Crumb, whether Crumb's Book of Genesis succeeds as comics, and a lot more. Follow Dan on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 633 - See Hear Speak 21:35

for 23 dager siden21:35

21:35

No guest? No problem! It's time for another impromptu monologue episode: this time, Gil sorts through family legacies of the genetic and Larkinesque variety, as occasioned by taking his dad for cataract surgery and getting a call from an old & previously deceased friend ! Follow Gil on Bluesky and Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 632 - Peter Trachtenberg 1:29:19

for 5 weeks siden1:29:19

1:29:19

With his amazing new book The Twilight of Bohemia: Westbeth and the Last Artists in New York (Black Sparrow Press), Peter Trachtenberg explores the 50+ years of history for Westbeth Artists Housing in the far West Village, the role of the arts in New York City, and the ways we build & sustain community. We get into his long -term history with Westbeth, how this book's was born from an essay about the suicide of his friend and Westbeth resident Gay Milius , how Westbeth managed to survive a series of financial crises over the decades before finding a sustainable model, and how architect Richard Meier repurposed the Bell Labs complex into affordable artists' housing in the 1960s. We talk about Westbeth's requirement that residents be professional artists and what that came to mean over the years (esp. when some residents' productivity diminished), what it's like to raise families in Westbeth, and how the community handled generational change. We also discuss how Westbeth reflects New York back on itself, how Vin Diesel's vandalism as a kid growing up in Westbeth led to his acting career, how the Village's Halloween parade originated there, how I stumbled across Westbeth in 2017 during — what else? — a podcast , how we build artistic communities when we don't have geographic proximity, whether there's a secret radioactive room left over from the Bell Labs years (!), and more. Follow Peter on Instagram , and subscribe to his newsletter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 631 - David Shields 1:37:02

for 6 weeks siden1:37:02

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Author David Shields returns to the show for a conversation about his new documentary, HOW WE GOT HERE , and the companion book, HOW WE GOT HERE: Melville plus Nietzsche divided by the square root of Allan Bloom times Žižek squared = Bannon (Sublation Media). We get into how the world moved from the death of God to the death of essence to the death of truth, and how deconstruction, once the province of left-wing academia, was weaponized by right-wing authoritarians for political aims. We talk about how much blame he bears for all this with his 2010 book Reality Hunger , how it feels to be a radical with deep skepticism of radicals' language, his affinity for Werner Herzog's notion of the ecstatic truth in documentary films, what he learned from interviewing nonfiction writers about the nature of truth, and how he feels about going to his first WWE event. We also discuss nonlinear warfare and the endless deconstruction of reality, how writing can "build a bridge across the abyss of human loneliness" (per DFW), what he's learned from the collaboration of making documentaries, his fixation on hamartia (the tragic flaw), Walter Benjamin's notion of pursuing the truth even if we'll never reach it, bringing the public, social and personal worlds together in his writing, and a lot more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 630 - Meeting Across The River 17:56

for 7 weeks siden17:56

17:56

Uh-oh! Gil doesn't have a guest this week, so he recorded a monologue from a hotel room in Weehawken, NJ during a business conference for his day job! He talks mental health, oblique mythology, Charles Crumb, comics and pharma friends, the St. Patrick's Day Parade, and more! Follow Gil on Bluesky and Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 629 - Elon Green 1:03:02

for 8 weeks siden1:03:02

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With THE MAN NOBODY KILLED: Life, Death, and Art In Michael Stewart's New York (Celadon Books), author Elon Green brings us an investigation into a terrible episode of police brutality and its aftermath in mid-'80s NYC. We talk about what drew him to the story of Michael Stewart , a 25-year-old black artist-model-DJ who died at the hands of transit police in 1983, his amazement that no one else had written this book, and how his early assumptions about a coverup gave way to a different coverup. We get into how he so wonderfully evokes the gritty NYC of that era, spreading out a canvas that takes in the arts scene — think Haring, Basquiat, Madonna — and the awful crimes and police behavior — think Bumpurs, Goetz — of that era. We discuss the art of interviewing people 40+ years after an event without reopening old wounds, the judge on the case who talked with him for 3 hours and shared how his conclusions on the verdict changed, what he sees in Stewart's art, how he tries to build the entire environment of the world he's writing about in his books, why he considers himself a history writer (& despises the "true crime" label & genre), why being a good journalist means having a sense of decency, bringing his first book to life as an HBO series , and more. Follow Elon on Bluesky and Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 628 - Vanda Krefft 1:21:17

for 9 weeks siden1:21:17

1:21:17

Biographer Vanda Krefft returns to the show to celebrate her wonderful & illuminating new book: EXPECT GREAT THINGS!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women (Algonquin Books). We talk about the turn of the (20th) century origins of Katharine Gibbs & her school, the legacy of her executive secretarial course for generations of women, "Gibbs Girls'" descendants' desire to honor their family members, the incredible quality of faculty Gibbs was able to recruit, the risks women had to take to enter the professional workforce, and the Trojan Horse campaign of teaching women to learn how businesses work until they're able to run them themselves. We get into Vanda's desire to write about people who were overlooked in history, how this book veered away from her initial idea, how it required a different mode than her biography of William Fox , the challenges of century-old research into women's lives, what she had to learn about the history of women in America, the myth that the 1920s were liberating for women, and her interest in mid-century America. We also discuss how the Gibbs school declined when the family finally sold it in the late '60s, what she'd like her next book to be about, her experience living in Santa Monica during the LA fires, a lengthy aside about publishing and the changes I've seen, getting inspired by Howard Fishman 's book on Connie Converse , and a lot more. Follow Vanda on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 627 - Seth Lorinczi 1:23:11

for 10 weeks siden1:23:11

1:23:11

With DEATH TRIP: A Post-Holocaust Psychedelic Memoir (Spiral Path Collective Press), Seth Lorinczi explores how trauma can be transmitted over generations, and how an ancient (& new) form of treatment can help overcome it. We talk about finding his family's story of the Holocaust, trying to understand why so much of it stayed hidden, how badly it warped his life, and how he & his wife found answers in psychedelic medicine (MDMA, ayahuasca, toad (!)). We get into the long-term damage of unmetabolized trauma and untouched grief, how psychedelics allowed him to recognize patterns in his life, family history, and the universe, the challenges of researching his family's Holocaust experience in Hungary, how his experiences led to a memoir (& a saved marriage), why Death Trip is a series of surrenders, how his close and distant relatives responded to the book, and why he thinks I should leapfrog therapy and try psychedelics first. We also discuss growing up in the punk scene of Washington, DC (and writing his next book about that), how coincidence becomes important after psychedelic experiences, how some married couples take up salsa dancing but he & his wife took up ayahuasca, how his daughter responded to all this, whether a person can change, how once you get the message you should put down the phone, and a lot more. Follow Seth on Instagram and subscribe to his Dispatches From The Fringe newsletter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 626 - Martin Mittelmeier 1:11:28

for 11 weeks siden1:11:28

1:11:28

With NAPLES 1925: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Summer That Made Critical Theory (Yale University Press, tr. Shelley Frisch), Martin Mittelmeier traces the roots of the Frankfurt School in southern Italy. We talk about the epiphany on the lip of a volcano in Lanzerote that brought this book to life, the years he spent poring over Theodor Adorno's writing (and the temptation to mimic Adorno's style), how Walter Benjamin's principle of porosity arose from both the tuff stone & the way of living of Naples, and the challenge of evoking the Naples of a century ago and how it led to a theory of society. We get into Critical Theory's attempts at understanding populism and oligarchic takeovers and why Adorno is having A Moment in Germany, the fun of speculating about meetings among great thinkers — yeah, I get into George Orwell, Henry Miller, and Inside the Whale —, the utopian aspect of local life in Naples and Capri, the complexities of reputation and destiny, and whether Critical Theory can hold up during the hyper-internet era. We also discuss the difficulties of translation with critical theory's associative language, why I need to read Hernán Diaz' Trust , his new work about Thomas Mann working with Adorno on Doctor Faustus in Pacific Palisades (a.k.a. Weimar Under The Palm Trees), how he's changed in the decade-plus since writing the book, and more. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 625 - Jonathan Ames 1:24:14

for 12 weeks siden1:24:14

1:24:14

Can LA private detective Happy Doll live up to the Four Noble Truths and escape the cycle of Samsara? Jonathan Ames returns to the show to help answer that question and celebrate his new novel, KARMA DOLL (Mulholland Books)! We talk about the joy of reading (& writing) page-turners, how his lead character Happy Doll has evolved over three novels (so far!), what it's like bringing Buddhism into a detective novel, and how his (& Happy's) LA has changed since he began this series. We get into how he managed to avoid writing about the worst days of the pandemic while keeping Karma Doll contemporary, how writing the Doll novels has affected his understanding of Buddhism, and how he's living up to the lesson he always gave students: write what you love . We also discuss TV writing and how it took him away from prose-writing for a decade or so, the need to make art and the transitoriness of bliss, how the LA fires left him driving all over the place like he was in a Lew Archer novel, his fave reads & TV shows, how we both played with dolls as kids in the woods of northern NJ, and a lot more. Follow Jonathan on Bluesky • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 624 - Witold Rybczynski 1:42:20

for 13 weeks siden1:42:20

1:42:20

With his latest book, THE DRIVING MACHINE: A Design History of the Car (Norton), architect and architecture & design writer Witold Rybczynski explores how cars evolved from their earliest days through the befuddling styles of today's EVs. We get into the design language of cars and how it had no true precedent, why European styles were so different and varied than America's, his favorite era for car design, and the differences between writing about cars and writing about buildings. We talk about the cars in his life and how he integrated them into The Driving Machine 's narrative (including the Mercedes that lasted him 25 years), the lives of the engineers & car-company founders he explored for the book, what he learned by drawing the book's car-illustrations himself, and how drawing all those cars brought him back to his youth. We also discuss the new book he's writing about his dissatisfaction with contemporary architecture, how it resulted from a Chat-GPT 'hallucination,' the cycles of architecture & the death of architecture criticism, the (sorta) imaginary house he designed for himself, and more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 623 - Matt Madden 1:21:41

for 14 weeks siden1:21:41

1:21:41

Cartoonist Matt Madden rejoins the show to celebrate his new collection, SIX TREASURES OF THE SPIRAL: Comics Formed Under Pressure (Uncivilized Books). We talk about the liberation to be found in formal constraints, his history with OULIPO and its OUBAPO offshoot, how structure can inspire story, and the formal and thematic challenges in sequencing the stories in the collection. We get into how he tried to make the most of a multi-year residency at La Maison des Auteurs in Angouleme, the unwitting influence of Hergé on one of his favorite stories, the changes in his art & storytelling since publishing Ex Libris in 2021, and the "director's commentary" he added as back matter for Six Treasures. We also discuss Lewis Trondheim's challenge to him to make a comic without a formal rule or constraint, his Substack -goal of sharing OUBAPO rules, the balance of comics-making with child-rearing, the fun of making foldy-comics, why it's important not to let the formal constraints overwhelm the heart of the stories, and more. Follow Matt on Instagram and YouTube and subscribe to his Substsack • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

The Virtual Memories Show

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Episode 622 - Fred Kaplan 1:03:37

for 15 weeks siden1:03:37

1:03:37

After 4+ decades as a reporter and with a half-dozen nonfiction books under his belt, Fred Kaplan rejoins the show to celebrate his first foray into fiction, A CAPITAL CALAMITY (Miniver Press)! We talk about how lockdown got him to start A Capital Calamity , how his history in national security and the defense sector informs the novel (& its accidental march torward WWIII), how his protagonist is & isn't a Fred-Not-Traveled, and what it was like to make things up after a career spent reporting the facts. We get into the moral quandaries of being an insider in Washington, his experience working for Les Aspin in the '70s, the early morning storytelling revelations that opened up the novel to him, and why he set a major scene of the book above The Comedy Cellar in NYC. We also get into whether we're slow-walking into WWIII, the lessons learned from the 2017-2021 era and how they may affect his coverage of the new administration, his jazz recommendations, the fun of dissecting Washington cocktail party culture, the pros & cons of a multipolar world, and more. Follow Fred on Bluesky , Facebook and Twitter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe , Patreon , or Paypal , and subscribe to our e-newsletter…

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