Virtual Memories Show
COVID Check-In: Peter Kuper
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“The line of demarcation was that Oval Office speech; the day before that was one thing, the day after it was another.”
A few days ago, political cartoonist Peter Kuper returned from Oaxaca, Mexico to the Upper West Side of New York City. He joins the show to talk about why he & his wife made the decision to come back at a time that New York’s COVID-19 cases are blowing through the roof. We talk about the communal nature of life in Mexico, whether the situation here matches up with his decades of dystopian visions in World War III Illustrated, the good omen of raising monarch butterflies in his Oaxaca garden, the bad omen of giant scorpions in said garden, his unfortunate choice of reading material just before the pandemic started to spread, and more. Give it a listen! And go check out his work at peterkuper.com!
“My wife & I looked at this beautiful scenario in Oaxaca, and then we looked past it. It’s very hard to stare at that when you’re in a beautiful environment.”
Listen to the conversation! Then check out the archives for more conversations from The Before Times, including my most recent episode with Peter, from the end of 2019.
Other COVID Check-In episodes:
- 3/25/20 – Kate Lacour
- 3/27/20 – Jim Ottaviani
There are plenty of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show: iTunes, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TuneIn, Tumblr, and RSS
About our Guest
Peter Kuper’s work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The Nation, and Mad, where he has written and illustrated “Spy vs. Spy” every issue since 1997. He is the co-founder of World War 3 Illustrated, a political comix magazine now in its 40th year of publication. He has produced more than two dozen books, including Sticks and Stones
Peter has lectured extensively throughout the world and has taught comics and illustration courses at Parsons, The School of Visual Arts, and Harvard University’s first class dedicated to graphic novels. A frequent guest at literary festivals, Peter enjoys traveling the world, but will always call New York City his home.
He is on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Credits: The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone
