Podcast – Slow Learner
, her intern/protege relationships with Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman, and the art of shinkendo swordplay and what George R.R. Martin gets wrong about swords. Also, we learn what happens when Lovecraftian pastiche goes wrong, how Maria realized that even geniuses have to write drafts, how her parents took syncretism to new heights, how Mr. Wicker made its way from short story to screenplay to first novel, how she deals with severe carpal tunnel syndrome, and what her love of swords has taught her about editing her work! 
Podcast – I Was A Teenage Structuralist!
Virtual Memories Show:
Richard Gehr – I Was A Teenage Structuralist!
“I’ve read enough Roland Barthes and Foucault to know it’s all fiction, man.”
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Richard Gehr’s new book, I Only Read It for the Cartoons: The New Yorker’s Most Brilliantly Twisted Artists
“I love New Yorker cartoons, but they might be the whitest form of art ever conceived.”
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About our Guest
Richard Gehr has been writing about music, culture, and travel for quite a while. He has been an editor for the Los Angeles Reader, Spin, and Sonicnet/MTV Interactive. He currently writes for Rolling Stone, Spin, The Village Voice, Relix, AARP: The Magazine, and other publications. He was a senior writer for the book Alt. Culture: An A-To-Z Guide to the ’90S – Underground, Online, and Over-The-Counter
Credits: This episode’s music is Homesickness by Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou (because I’m on the road for a week). The conversation was recorded at Mr. Gehr’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Podcast – Look Day
Virtual Memories Show:
Sam Gross – Look Day
“One thing I tell young cartoonists: a magazine is like going out on a date, and a book is like getting married. If you’re going out on a date, you don’t need a lawyer. If you’re doing a book, you get a lawyer.”
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Sam Gross’ gag panels warped me at a young age, so it was an honor to get him on mic to talk about his nearly six-decade cartooning career. We sat down in his studio to discuss the serious business of gags, how he went from drawing a Saul Steinberg nose to drawing a Sam Gross one, how he continues in his 80s to come up with a week’s worth of new gags for Look Day, how he once got a Vanishing New York tour from Charles Addams, how he revels in the “humor of the handicapped”, and the magazine he misses the most. Give it a listen!
“I don’t know where I’m gonna go next. I’m not a finished product.”
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About our Guest
Sam Gross has been publishing cartoons since the 1950s. His cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker since 1969. He served as the cartoon editor of National Lampoon and Parents magazines, and was president of the Cartoonists Guild. He has published numerous collections, including I Am Blind and My Dog is Dead
Credits: This episode’s music is Funny Little Frog by Belle & Sebastian. The conversation was recorded at Mr. Gross’ studio on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Podcast – Much Abides
Virtual Memories Show:
Ashton Applewhite – Much Abides
“Knowing that things are finite gives life meaning. Avoiding mortality means you’re avoiding living, not avoiding dying. Aging is living.”
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Ashton Applewhite is on a crusade against ageism (lack of gray hair notwithstanding). She joins the show to discuss the myths and roots of ageism and her talk series, This Chair Rocks. We also discuss her Yo Is This Ageist site, why she scoffs at the Life Extension crew, how her critique of ageism intertwines with her critique of capitalism, what it’s like to suffer from analexophobia, why we should all consider ourselves old people in training, and how she launched the Truly Tasteless Jokes
And if you’re in NYC, you can go hear Ashton’s This Chair Rocks talk on October 27! Details here!
Bonus: my yearbook picture from 1989!
“It drives me crazy when I get the AARP bulletin and the only gray-haired person in it is Bill Clinton.”
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About our Guest
The voice of This Chair Rocks and Yo Is This Ageist, Ashton Applewhite is a Knight Fellow, a New York Times Fellow, and a Columbia Journalism School Age Boom Fellow. She is the author of Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well
Credits: This episode’s music is Golden Years by David Bowie (it was either that or Never Get Old). The conversation was recorded at Ms. Applewhite’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Podcast – 35 Cents & a Stamp
Virtual Memories Show: John Porcellino –
35 Cents & A Stamp
“I managed to go 43 issues before I hit the paralyzing grip of self-doubt and self-consciousness [from realizing that I had an audience]. I feel lucky that I had all those years to write comics in essentially a vacuum. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be 20 years old and trying to write comics in this world with the internet’s immediate response.”
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John Porcellino has been publishing his King-Cat Comics & Stories mini-comics for 25 years, but I managed not to check them out until last month. BIG mistake on my part! Turns out the critics were right; John P.’s one of the best autobio cartoonists out there, as well as “a master at miniature poignance” (Entertainment Weekly). We sat down at SPX 2014 to talk about publishing his new work, The Hospital Suite
“If things didn’t get better, I was going to be the guy wandering down an alley in my underwear with tinfoil wrapped around my arms.”
Bonus: Roger Langridge gives us a few minutes at SPX to talk about his new book, Jim Henson’s The Musical Monsters of Turkey Hollow
“To me, the best cartooning is the kind that has in place what needs to be there: nothing more and nothing less.”
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About our Guest
John Porcellino was born in Chicago in 1968, and began drawing and writing at an early age, compiling his work into handmade booklets. His acclaimed self-published zine, King-Cat Comics and Stories, begun in 1989, has found a devoted worldwide audience and is one of the most influential comics of the past 25 years. His newest book is The Hospital Suite
Credits: This episode’s music is Theater is the Life of You by The Minutement (John’s a fan). The conversation was recorded at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Podcast – A Sense of Someplace To Go
Podcast – May God Remember
Virtual Memories Show: Daniel Goldhagen –
May God Remember
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“The phenomenon of antisemitism in areas where no Jews are present has no parallel, and it shows this is an extremely deeply seated and broad cultural construct, first in Christianity and then in Islam. . . . These notions have and continue to spread antisemitism around the world.”
During the middle of the High Holidays, two Jews sit down in Manhattan to talk about antisemitism! Daniel Goldhagen joins the show to talk about his newest book, The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism
“People in Germany don’t look at Jews anymore and see devils in human form. That’s progress.”
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Along the way, we also talk about the Goldhagen family business, Daniel’s writing routine (which fills me with shame), what it’s like to be the first topic that comes up when you search “genocide” on YouTube, and what the man behind The Goldhagen Debate thinks about the adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
The episode also includes my tribute to DG Myers, who died the previous weekend. Go visit his site to learn more about his life, death, and donations you can make in his honor.
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About our Guest
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, a former professor at Harvard University, is the author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
Credits: This episode’s music is First We Take Manhattan by Jennifer Warnes (in tribute to DG Myers). The conversation was recorded at Mr. Goldhagen’s rather echo-y home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
What profit is there from my death?
The professor, scholar, literary historian, husband and father D.G. Myers died yesterday, after a long bout with prostate cancer. Last March, we recorded what may be my favorite episode of the podcast. You can listen to it here:
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I just wrote this for a tribute festschrift being collected by Patrick Kurp. My condolences to his wife and family and everyone else whose life he touched.
* * *
I’d enjoyed D.G. Myers’ writing on books, culture and religion for years, and when I learned that he was suffering from terminal cancer, I sheepishly asked him if he’d be interested in recording a conversation with me for my podcast. I was surprised when he assented, thinking, “If I knew I only had a year or so to live, the last thing thing I’d want to do is waste a few hours talking to someone like me.”
I flew to Columbus, OH last March and we sat down in his home on a Sunday afternoon to record what turned out to be one of the best conversations I’ve ever had (on- or off-mic). We recorded for 90 minutes, then kept going for the next two hours, before his fatigue overcame him. He quickly allayed my worries about taking up his precious time; having a good conversation was more valuable to him than brooding over his health.
I didn’t know what to expect when I walked in the door, but I certainly wasn’t prepared for David’s hospitality, his gregariousness, the vivacity that he mustered in the midst of his suffering. That afternoon, we joyously talked books, religion, work, family, his childhood, criticism, creative writing, and more, all within the shadow of his dying. He told me his biggest regret was never getting to visit Israel. His literary bucket list included Anna Karenina.
As is my practice, I snapped a picture of him sitting at the table during the podcast. He’s weathered and gaunt, his shoulders slanted. A gray fedora covers the head rendered bald by chemotherapy. A copy of his book, The Elephants Teach, is on the table in front of him. In the background, on the wall, is a collection of photos of his family. He was so taken by that picture that he made it his Twitter avatar. I can’t reconcile the man in that photo with earlier ones I’ve seen of him, but that’s who he is to me.
During our talk, he said, “Every Shabbos I thank Hashem for my cancer, because it has focused me on what’s good and enabled me to ignore what’s not.”
I haven’t looked at life the same way since we spoke. I’ll treasure that afternoon for the rest of my days.
Podcast – Time’s Bomb
Virtual Memories Show: Nina Bunjevac –
Time’s Bomb
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“Fatherland is really about who my father was, getting to understand him, and also an attempt to explain how politics can tear a family apart, just like they tore apart the people of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.”
Nina Bunjevac‘s new book, Fatherland
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“When I got to Canada when I was 16, I saw an issue of Raw, and that pretty much did it.”
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About our Guest
Nina Bunjevac started her art training in Yugoslavia, at the Djordje Krstic School for Applied Arts; in 1990 she moved to Toronto, Canada, where she continued her studies in art at the Art Centre of Central Technical School; in 1997 she graduated from OCAD in the Drawing and Painting department. Formerly a painter, a sculptor and an art teacher, Nina found her calling in sequential arts, a form that seemed to naturally evolve out of the narrative component in her sculpture installation work. Pen and ink became her medium of choice.
Nina’s comics have appeared in a number of local and international publications: Komikaze (Croatia), Black (Italy), GIUDA (Italy), Stripburger (Slovenia), Zone 5300 (Netherlands), Stripolis (Serbia), ArtReview (UK), Asiatroma/Le Dernier Cri (France), Broken Pencil, Exile, Taddle Creek (Canada) and Mineshaft (USA). Her debut collection of comics, Heartless
Fatherland: A Family History
Photo of Nina Bunjevac by David Hawe.
Credits: This episode’s music is Bomba by King Africa (I make no apologies). The conversation was recorded at the Marriott Bloor in Toronto on a Zoom H2n