Episode 171 – Jim Ottaviani

jim-ottovianni-03-750Virtual Memories Show #171: Jim Ottaviani

“My willingness to pick and choose and throw out stuff that doesn’t work for the story may be part of my engineering background.”

Jim Ottaviani51Fl8DiRoyL._SX355_BO1,204,203,200_ joins the show to talk about his new graphic biography, The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded, drawn by Leland Purvis (Abrams ComicArts). We get into how Jim went from nuclear engineering to writing comics about scientists, the amazing life of Alan Turing, why emotional truth plus factual truth must be greater than 100%, the challenge of conveying hard concepts and theories to lay-readers, the difference between ordinary geniuses and extraordinary geniuses, how his engineering background feeds his storytelling mode, and more! Give it a listen! And buy The Imitation Game (Abrams ComicArts)!

“I work pretty hard to understand things so that I can convey the ‘Eureka!’ moment.”

We also talk about how he learned not to over-write his scripts and trust his artists, his method for keeping up with hard science news, his progression from short stories to 200-page books, the perils of writing about people smarter than himself, his own “Eureka!” moment, and whether Alan Turing was the most tragic figure in science in the 20th century (I stump for Nikolai Vavilov).

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:

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About our Guest

26454556594_c0015a3f73_mJim Ottaviani has worked in news agencies and golf courses in the Chicago area, nuclear reactors in the U.S. and Japan, and libraries in Michigan. He still works as a librarian by day, but stays up late writing comics about scientists. When he’s not doing these things, he’s spraining his ankles and flattening his feet by running on trails. Or he’s reading. He reads a lot. Elsewhere on the web you can find him at www.gt-labs.com. He’s the writer of a number of comics about science and scientists, including Two-Fisted Science, Dignifying Science: Stories About Women Scientists, the New York Times bestseller Feynman, and the recently published The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded, from Abrams ComicArts.

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission of the artist. The conversation was recorded at the Toronto Marriott Bloor Yorkville Hotel on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on the same setup. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. B/w photo of Jim by me. I can’t find a credit for the top picture, but it ran in Concentrate Ann Arbor.

Episode 169 – David Mikics

Virtual Memories Show #169:
David Mikics

“These days, we tend to think of identity as something chosen; we put on certain masks or we identify as this or that, culturally, ethnically or politically. Bellow is interested in something much more basic: who we really are.”

David Mikics joins the show to talk about his wonderful new book, Bellow’s People: How Saul Bellow Made Life Into Art (Norton). We get into Bellow’s legacy, his fall from academic favor, his transmutations of life into art, David’s humorously accidental introduction to his work, what Jewishness meant to Bellow, whether Philip Roth was right when he told Bruce Jay Friedman, “Saul Bellow am de daddy of us all,” and more! Give it a listen! And go read Bellow’s People: How Saul Bellow Made Life Into Art.

“Bellow once said that the reason writers had such messy personal lives is because they didn’t know what to do with the afternoon.”

We also talk about David’s experience as a professor, why writing is harder for today’s students, what it’s like to teach course called, “Is Life Worth Living?” and “The Human Situation”, which science fiction novels warped him as a youth, why we need Slow Reading in a Hurried Age, what contemporary books look like they’ll last, and why he eventually came around on Faulkner.  Go listen!

“Canonicity is not where you find it, but where you make it.”

There’s a BIG list of books we talked about, but it’s only available to supporters of The Virtual Memories Show, so go to Patreon or Paypal and make your contribution to this podcast!

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:

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About our Guest

David Mikics grew up in Carteret, New Jersey and Atlanta. He went to college at NYU and earned a Ph.D. at Yale. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Victoria and son Ariel, and teaches every year at the University of Houston, where he is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of English. He is the author of six books, including Slow Reading in a Hurried Age (Belknap/Harvard) and Bellow’s People: How Saul Bellow Made Life Into Art (Norton), and is a columnist at Tablet magazine.

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at David’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. Intro was recorded on the same setup. Photo of Mr. Mikics by me.

Episode 168 – Harry Katz

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Virtual Memories Show #168:
Harry Katz

“What connected Levine and Herblock was the fire in the belly, the outrage against people try to impose their power over the powerless, who try to disenfranchise people, who try to manipulate the laws for personal gain or prestige.”

61wTtsWb5aL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_Harry L. Katz, former head curator of prints and photographs for the Library of Congress, joins the show to talk about his new project on David Levine, his love for Herblock, how his work on the Civil War and baseball differs from Ken Burns’ work on same, what it was like to assemble the LoC’s archive of 9/11 photography and pictures, the process of learning how to see images critically, the tragic story of Arthur Szyk, and more! Give it a listen!

“Baseball was a way for people to avoid talking about religion.”

book-image-noshadowWe also talk about growing up Jewish in New England, why the 1840s and 1850s are (currently) his favorite era in American history, the Boston Atheneum’s post-Civil War project to collect Confederate material, the terrifying experience of seeing Feiffer’s “Munro” cartoon as a little kid, and why the famous and powerful enjoyed being caricatured! Go listen!

“People always see what they expect to see. I first look at face value, then I draw back to start fresh. What is it? What does it portray? What is it made of? If you do that, you’ve got an understanding that’s far richer.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:

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About our Guest

Author and curator Harry L. Katz was born in Lexington, MA and educated at Middlebury College and Tufts University, where he earned a M.A. in Art History. Between 1983 and 1991, he served as Assistant Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Boston Athenaeum. Between 1991 and 2004, Harry served as Head Curator within the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress (1991-2004). A specialist in American and European works on paper, he curated two dozen exhibitions at the Library of Congress and led the Library’s unparalleled initiative to collect pictorial works representing the events and aftermath of 9/11. Now an independent curator, he is the author of numerous books examining American art and culture including: Mark Twain’s America: A Celebration in Words and Images (Little, Brown and Library of Congress, 2014), Civil War Sketch Book: Drawings from the Battlefront (W.W. Norton, 2012), Herblock: The Life and Works of the Great Political Cartoonist (W.W. Norton and LC, 2009), Baseball Americana (HarperCollins and LC, 2009), Cartoon America: Comic Art in the Library of Congress (Abrams and LC, 2006), Life of the People: Realist Prints and Drawings from the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Collection, 1912-1948 (Library of Congress, 1999), and Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States (Knopf and LC, 1997). His work has been featured in such magazines as American Heritage, National Geographic, Civilization and Smithsonian.

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. Intro was recorded on the same setup. Photo of Mr. Katz by me.

Episode 165 – Fred Kaplan w/#NJPoet’s Corner

Virtual Memories Show #165:
Fred Kaplan (& #NJPoet’s Corner)

“I asked someone who had worked at Tailored Access Operations [the NSA’s black bag division], ‘I’m in your cubicle at work; what am I seeing?’ and he said, ‘I’m sitting at a monitor, and I’m typing code. And behind me is a supervisor, and behind him is a lawyer, and they’re taking down all of my keystrokes.'”

dtcoverFred Kaplan rejoins the show to talk about his new book, Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War (Simon & Schuster). (We last talked in 2013). We get into the tangled, wild-west story of how cyber warfare is waged, where it might go in future, and why it’s the ultimate asymmetric warfare. Fred also tells us about the role of cyber in the success of the Iraq surge, the story of Stuxnet, the problem with not having rules of engagement for cyber war, how he came to respect the NSA, the statist/libertarian divide at the core of encryption battles, and what he thinks of Edward Snowden. Give it a listen! And go buy Fred’s book, Dark Territory!

“In the US, privacy has become a quaint notion.”

Then Charles Bivona joins us for his monthly installment of #NJPoet’s Corner, where we focus on his dream course: Batman Studies. Go listen! And buy #NJPoet, Chuck’s newly-published poetry collection!

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:

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About our Guest

FredKaplan-byCarolDronsfieldFred Kaplan is the national-security columnist for Slate and the author of Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, as well as of four other books, including The Wizards of Armageddon, 1959: The Year Everything Changed, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power, and, most recently The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, which was a New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist. A former Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for The Boston Globe, he graduated from Oberlin College, earned a PhD from MIT, and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Brooke Gladstone.

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission of the artist. The conversation was recorded at Mr. Kaplan’s home in Brooklyn on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. The conversation with Charles Bivona was recorded on the same setup, at his homeI recorded the intro and outro on the same setup. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. Photo of Mr. Kaplan by Carol Dronsfield.

Episode 164 – Kliph Nesteroff (& Liz Hand)

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Virtual Memories Show #164:
Kliph Nesteroff (& Liz Hand)

“I was a Henry Morgan authority at the age of 24.”

26451704925_5cd9679b02_zKliph Nesteroff joins the show to talk about his new book, The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy (Grove Press). We discuss the evolution of comedy over the century (from vaudeville to comedy podcasters) and how he got started chronicling it, American comedy’s twin themes of struggle and influence, the connect-the-dots game of comedic lineage, the stories that didn’t make it into the book, comedy’s role in the civil rights struggle, Kliph’s autodidactic background and how it shapes his pursuit of history, the story of how he got kicked out of high school, and more! Give it a listen! And go buy Kliph’s book, The Comedians! (NOTE: Kliph’s section starts at 17:15, if you wanna skip right to that)

“I’m just as deeply immersed in the history of film, the history of music, of TV, of pop culture. . . . But Leonard Maltin already exists; he’s got it cornered. Jerry Beck is the world’s foremost animation historian; he’s got that market covered. There’s a million people who write about music; I don’t need to be one of those guys. But there’s no other comedy historian. I’m happy to pick up that mantle.”

9781250030382Plus, I give Liz Hand a call on the occasion of the publication of her new book, Hard Light: A Cass Neary Crime Novel! We explore how her nihilistic, burned-out, drug-addicted post-punk-scene photographer-protagonist has grown over the course of three books of increasing mayhem and murder. (Hint: she doesn’t decide to become a nurturing mom and validate herself with a rich husband.) Go listen! And buy Hard Light! (NOTE: Liz’s section starts around 3:30)

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:

Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Kliph Nesteroff is a former stand-up comic turned writer. A longtime contributor to WFMU, writing about the history of comedy, Nesteroff’s latest project is hosting the Classic Showbiz Talk Show, a live series in Los Angeles that has welcomed comedy luminaries like Mel Brooks, Fred Willard and Laugh-In creator George Schlatter.

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission of the artist. The conversation was recorded at an undisclosed location in Manhattan on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on the same setup. The conversation with Liz Hand was recorded using Call Recorder on Face Time Audio; I was using a Blue Yeti USB mic. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. Photo of Kliph by me.

Episode 148 – The Guest List 2015

Virtual Memories Show: The Guest List 2015

It’s time for our year-end Virtual Memories tradition: The Guest List! I reached out to 2015’s podcast guests and asked them about the favorite book(s) they read in the past year, as well as the books or authors they’re hoping to read in 2016! More than 30 responded with a dizzying array of books. (I participated, too!) So now that you’ve got your Hanukkah and/or Christmas gelt, the Virtual Memories Show offers up a huge list of books that you’re going to want to read! Get ready to update your wish lists!

This year’s Guest List episode features selections from nearly 3 dozen of our recent guests! So go give it a listen, and then visit our special Guest List page where you can find links to the books and the guests who responded.

(Also, check out the 2013 and 2014 editions of The Guest List for more great book ideas!)

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Your illustrious podcast-host, as drawn by Roger Langridge

Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guests

The guests who participated in this year’s Guest List are Derf Backderf, Anthea Bell, John Clute, Michael Dirda, Matt Farber, Jonathan Galassi, Brad Gooch, Langdon Hammer, Liz Hand, Jennifer Hayden, Ron Hogan, Dylan Horrocks, David Jaher, Kathe Koja, Jonathan Kranz, Peter Kuper, Lorenzo Mattotti, JD McClatchy, Scott McCloud, Michael Meyer, Dan Perkins (a.k.a. Tom Tomorrow), Summer Pierre, Witold Rybczynski, Dmitry Samarov, Elizabeth Samet, Liesl Schillinger, Posy Simmonds, Levi Stahl, Rupert Thomson, Irvine Welsh, Warren Woodfin, Jim Woodring, Claudia Young, and me, Gil Roth! Check out their episodes at our archives!

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission from the artist. Most of the episode was recorded at Virtual Memories Manor on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. A few segments were recorded by the guests and e-mailed in (which is to say: don’t blame me!). Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro.

Episode 134 – Angel, Lion, Ox, Eagle

Virtual Memories Show #134:
Warren Woodfin – Angel, Lion, Ox, Eagle

“From my youth, I knew I wanted to be a medievalist of some sort or another. Byzantium was always lurking off to the side, and I thought, ‘There has to be something there.'”

BenakiMuseumWarren Woodfin joins the show to talk about guest curating Liturgical Textiles of the Post-Byzantine World installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (running through Nov. 1 2015). We talk about how he became a medieval art historian, the great tragedy of his high school years (it involves a Byzantine fresco at the Menil Collection artwork in Houston), what it’s like working on a Ukrainian burial mound and dealing with Soviet methods of archeological excavation, the secret fear of every Ph.D. candidate, and more! Give it a listen!

“It was the beauty of Byzantine art that got me first, and then wanting to understand where this beauty came from.”

We also talk about why art history gets a bum rap from the STEM proponents, the problem with centuries-old textile samples turning terminally brown, why Queens is the most Hellenic of the five boroughs, how new technologies have affected his work, the schisms that exist in the field, how he used to lay out “improved” versions of medieval monuments as a kid, and what the benefits of an art history education really are.

“I’m afraid that we’re embracing the view that those who can afford to pay for a quality education can major in liberal arts, while those whose educations are supported by the public should be limited to studying things we deem to be for the good of society.”

 

We mention a few books in this episode. Here’s they are:

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:

Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Dr. Warren Woodfin‘s research focuses on the art and archaeology of Byzantium and its cultural sphere in the 11th through 15th centuries. Since 2006, he has been collaborating with a research team of U.S.- and Ukraine-based scholars to study a medieval burial complex in the Black Sea steppe. The site, called the Chungul Kurgan, yielded a trove of medieval textiles, precious metalwork, and other artifacts interred with a nomadic leader of the thirteenth century. His recent article on the textiles from the burial (co-authored with Renata Holod and Yuriy Rassamakin) appeared in Ars Orientalis 38 (2010); a further article on a silver cup from the burial will appear in The Art Bulletin in 2016.

Warren has also published articles in the journals Gesta and Dumbarton Oaks Papers, and has contributed essays to various edited volumes. He is also the co-editor (with Mateusz Kapustka) of Clothing the Sacred: Medieval Textiles as Fabric, Form and Metaphor (Berlin: Edition Imorde, 2015). His book on Byzantine textiles and their role in ritual and hierarchy, The Embodied Icon: Liturgical Vestments and Sacramental Power in Byzantium, was published by Oxford University Press in 2012.

Prior to joining the faculty at Queens College as Kallinikeion Assistant Professor of Byzantine Studies, Warren held teaching and research posts at Duke, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, the Metropolitan Museum, and, most recently, a European Research Council-sponsored fellowship at the University of Zurich. In the spring semester of 2016, he will be a resident Fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem.

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, which seems to have become our unofficial theme song. The conversation was recorded at Prof. Woodfin’s apartment on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. Upper pic: Stephanos Tzangarolas (Greek, active 1688–1710). Lateral sanctuary door with Saint James the Brother of the Lord, 1688. From the Church of the Holy Trinity on Corfu. 2.03 x .81 m. Benaki Museum, Athens. Photo of Prof. Woodfin by me.