Colin Marshall talks to The Philadelphia Lawyer, author of both the web site of the same name and the book The Happy Hour is For Amateurs: A Lost Decade in the World’s Worst Profession , which is now out in paperback. Combining Kafka-like tales of the gamesmanship and pedantry of the legal profession with vivid accounts of the intense debauchery required to counterbalance all that wasted time in the office, The Philadelphia Lawyer’s web presence has attracted a large, devoted audience of disaffe...
Oct 22, 2009•57 min
Colin Marshall talks to Laurie Brown and Andy Sheppard, host and producer, respectively, of The Signal on CBC Radio 2. Since debuting in March of 2007, the program has evolved to provide a highly distinctive listening experience that offers two skillfully-curated hours of late-night contemporary music to listeners across Canada — and, via the internet, the world — that’s neither predictable nor easily genrefiable. Brown accompanies Sheppard’s unusual sonic selections with commentary that’s long ...
Oct 15, 2009•46 min
Colin Marshall talks to Peter Bagge, the comic artist behind the beloved series Hate as well as Apocalypse Nerd , Neat Stuff and Sweatshop . His new book, Everybody is Stupid Except for Me and Other Astute Observations , collects his stories originally written for the libertarian magazine Reason , works of comic journalism on such subjects as the Iraq war, gun control, the “War on Drugs” and Amtrak.
Oct 09, 2009•55 min
Colin Marshall talks to So Yong Kim , director of In Between Days , winner of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize for Independent Vision, and more recently Treeless Mountain , which is now available on DVD. The story of two very young sisters in Seoul left with their distant aunt while their mother searches for their absent father, the film belongs solidly to the realist tradition while evoking the scale, perspective and feel of childhood. The New York Times ‘ A.O. Scott calls T...
Oct 02, 2009•53 min
Colin Marshall talks to Ken Freedman, general manager of Jersey City’s WFMU, the longest-running freeform radio station in the United States. Since the mid-1980s, Freedman and his staff have made WFMU’s name a byword for the modern freeform sensibility with a combination of, among other factors, early adoption of new distribution technology, avoidance of identity politics and pure, unadulterated unpredictability.
Sep 24, 2009•57 min
Colin Marshall talks to longtime Slate wine columnist Michael Steinberger, author of Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine and the End of France. An ardent culinary Francophile in earlier decades, Steinberger has, along with much of the rest of the food world, come to realize that a malaise has fallen upon the cuisine that once led the world in taste, artistry, experience and sophistication. Steinberger’s book chronicles the history of French food, the recent developments that have forced it to face...
Sep 20, 2009•55 min
Colin Marshall talks to three music writers who have written books on English singer-songwriter Nick Drake, whose debut album Five Leaves Left originally shipped on September 1, 1969. Joining the conversation to celebrate the record’s fortieth anniversary are Trevor Dann, former head of BBC Music Entertainment and author of Darker Than the Deepest Sea: The Search for Nick Drake ; Patrick Humphries, noted biographer of musicians and author of Nick Drake: The Biography , the very first book on the...
Sep 03, 2009•1 hr 3 min
A conversation about religion and falsity with Joel Grus , humorist, atheist and author of Your Religion is False.
Aug 20, 2009•56 min
A conversation with Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University and founding blogger of Marginal Revolution . Cowen's new book is Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World.
Aug 06, 2009•50 min
A conversation with Greg Milner, who's written music and technology journalism for Spin, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Slate, Salon and Wired. His new book, Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music, tracing the evolution of music's capture from Edison cylinders to vinyl albums to waveform synthesis.
Jul 30, 2009•55 min
A conversation about the early works of filmmaker Shohei Imamura, who brought an entirely new irreverent aesthetic and sociological sensibility to the 1960s Japanese film scene, with Kim Hendrickson, executive producer at The Criterion Collection and producer of their new box set Pigs, Pimps and Prostitutes: Three Films by Shohei Imamura.
Jul 23, 2009•31 min
A conversation about bringing intelligent video to the internet with Brian Gruber, founder and executive chairman of FORA.tv , the web's largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates from the world's top universities, think tanks and conferences.
Jul 23, 2009•32 min
A conversation with novelist, journalist, memoirist and traveler Lawrence Osborne , author, most recently, of Bangkok Days.
Jul 16, 2009•59 min
A conversation about rock music's foremost intellectual "non-musician." producer and cultural theorist with David Sheppard, author of On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno.
Jul 09, 2009•59 min
A conversation about the dissolution of the friendship between two very different philosophers with John T. Scott, professor of political science at the University of California, Davis and co-author with Robert Zaretsky of The Philosophers' Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume and the Limits of Human Understanding.
Jul 02, 2009•58 min
A conversation with Alain de Botton , author of fiction, nonfiction, journalism and various hybrids thereof. Following treatises on Proust, philosophy, travel and architecture, de Botton's newest book of "philosophical journalism" is The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.
Jun 25, 2009•56 min
A conversation about the rise, fall and rise of the long-playing album format both technologically and artistically with journalist Travis Elborough, author of The Vinyl Countdown: The Album from LP to iPod and Back Again.
Jun 18, 2009•1 hr 6 min
A conversation with writer, speaker, blogger and student of the creative mind Merlin Mann . In 2004, Mann founded 43Folders , a blog and community focused on tips, tricks, tools and techniques designed to improve one's productivity, and in late 2008, he took the site in a new direction, toward the habits and thoughts of humanity's best creators and what can be learned from examining them.
Jun 12, 2009•58 min
Part three of our ongoing series of conversations about the future of books and reading, this time with publishing consultant Richard Eoin Nash . Nash ran the widely-acclaimed Soft Skull Press between 2001 and March of this year.
Jun 04, 2009•52 min
A conversation with Jon Raymond, editor at Plazm magazine and author of the novel The Half-Life and the new short story collection Livability. With filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, Raymond co-adapted two of Livability's short stories into the critically-acclaimed feature films Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy.
May 28, 2009•55 min
A conversation with Edward Champion, critic, host and producer of the cultural interview podcast The Bat Segundo Show , blogger behind Reluctant Habits and all-around "intellectual shock jock".
May 22, 2009•1 hr 1 min
A conversation with filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, director of Man Push Cart, Chop Shop and the new Goodbye Solo. Roger Ebert calls Bahrani "the new great American director."
May 14, 2009•58 min
A conversation about using old technology to craft modern sounds with electro-acoustic musician Ethan Rose, whose newest album Oaks was recorded with a vintage 1920s Wurlitzer organ found in the skating rink at Portland's Oaks Park. Two tracks from the record are included in this broadcast.
May 07, 2009•59 min
A conversation about creating radio fiction and humorously raising consciousness with Thomas Lopez, founder and president of the ZBS Foundation . This broadcast contains excerpts from the ZBS productions Dreams of the Amazon, Ruby and Two Minute Film Noir.
Apr 30, 2009•1 hr
A conversation about iterative creative processes, building music in layers and the history of loud sound with electronic musician Tim Hecker , whose latest album is An Imaginary Country, from which two tracks are featured in this broadcast.
Apr 23, 2009•53 min
A conversation about aesthetics and evolutionary biology with Denis Dutton , professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury, founding editor of Arts & Letters Daily and author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution.
Apr 16, 2009•57 min
A conversation with novelist, journalist, documentarian and Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College Ian Buruma. His latest book is The China Lover, a historical novel examining the life and career of Manchurian-born Japanese actress Yoshiko Yamaguchi through the eyes of three different narrators.
Apr 09, 2009•41 min
A conversation about appreciating the seasons, collecting international field recordings and turning others on to sound art with composer, multimedia artist, critic and ROOM40 label head Lawrence English . Two tracks from English's latest record, A Colour for Autumn, are included in this broadcast.
Apr 02, 2009•1 hr 4 min
A conversation about reading, writing and radio with Michael Silverblatt, who has hosted KCRW's Bookworm, the beloved forum for the discussion of fiction and poetry on public radio, for twenty years. [ Marketplace of Ideas home]
Mar 19, 2009•1 hr 2 min
A conversation about the craft of interviewing and the state of public radio today with Jesse Thorn, host and producer of Public Radio International's The Sound of Young America as well as the principal of podcasting empire Maximumfun.org .
Mar 06, 2009•59 min
