Shows
Notebook on Cities and CultureKorea Tour: Gangbuk Style with Daniel TudorIn Seoul's Hongdae district, Colin Marshall talks with Daniel Tudor, former Economist correspondent in Korea, co-founder of craft beer pizza pub chain The Booth, author of the books Korea: The Impossible Country, A Geek in Korea, and (with James Pearson) North Korea Confidential. They discuss the difference between Gangnam and Gangbuk style; the recently emerging trend toward Korean nostalgia, and what happens when you pull out an two-year-old mobile phone; what he discovered in Korea during the time of the 2002 World Cup; his time among the "studying machines" that constitute Korean youth, and why so few want to break from th...
2015-02-251h 08Notebook on Cities and CultureKorea Tour: One Long Bike Party with Coby ZeifmanIn Changwon, "Environmental Capital of South Korea," Colin Marshall talks with Coby Zeifman, former outreach coordinator for Nubija, the city's bike share system. They discuss what makes Changwon a cool town; why a feature like Nubija, despite its impressiveness, needed the kind of outreach he has tried his utmost to provide; Changwon's history as a manufacturing town for the conglomerate LG; what makes it a "Young City," including its plan modeled after Canberra; how the city expanded, and how Nubija expanded along with it; how he got to Korea in the first place, on nothing more than the advice of...
2015-02-221h 03Notebook on Cities and CultureKorea Tour: Cowboys and Yangban with Charles MontgomeryIn Seoul's Haebangchon district, Colin Marshall talks with Charles Montgomery, professor in the English Interpretation and Translation Division of Dongguk University, editor of the site KTlit.com, and global ambassador of Korean literature in translation. They discuss the first Korean books that excited him; the mistakes he made in choosing his first works of Korean literature to read; the significance of bestseller authors Kim Young-ha and Shin Kyoung-sook; the impossibility of getting around the literary prize system, and how that suppresses genre; how the substantial literature of the Korean War compares to what literature America has of its own Civil...
2015-01-141h 04Notebook on Cities and CultureKorea Tour: Sonic Bibimbap with Bernie ChoIn Seoul's Garosu-gil, Colin Marshall talks with Korean music industry expert Bernie Cho, president of DFSB Kollective, a creative agency that provides digital media, marketing, and distribution services to Korean pop music artists. They discuss why the world now knows what K-pop is; how Korean youth culture, pop culture, and digit culture have become one in the same; Psy as outlier and representative of K-pop, "the bad boy who became the golden boy," who put a dent in the industry's pursuit of perfection; how "made in Korea" can work, internationally, as a label; whether the concept of "crazy Korea," lik...
2014-11-161h 00Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E67: Extremely Permanent with Doug PrayBeneath the rock of Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Colin Marshall talks with documentarian Doug Pray, maker of such films as Hype! on the Seattle 1990s grunge scene, Infamy on graffiti artists, Surfwise on Doc Paskowitz's traveling family, and Art & Copy on the advertising industry. His new Levitated Mass examines the complicated movement of the rock all the way from Riverside to its site at LACMA. They discuss how often he's stood under the rock since making the movie, and what he hears when he does; how his projects all look at misunderstood s...
2014-11-071h 01Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E66: Who Am I? with Craig DavidsonIn a pub in Toronto's Swansea, Colin Marshall talks with novelist Craig Davidson, author of Rust and Bone, The Fighter, Sarah Court, and most recently The Fighter, all under his on name, and author of horror fiction under the pseudonyms Nick Cutter and Patrick Lestewka. They discuss Toronto's distance, geographical and in sensibility, from Niagara falls; his potential attraction to desperate settings; modern man's longing for "the test" to be put to; how he came to write books containing no pursuit more genteel than factory labor; Niagara Falls' national bisection, with the black-and-white divide on one side and red-and-white on the...
2014-11-051h 02Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E65: Unerotic City with Mark KingwellAt the University of Toronto, Colin Marshall talks with Mark Kingwell, professor of philosophy and author of such books as A Civil Tongue: Justice, Dialogue, and the Politics of Pluralism, The World We Want: Restoring Citizenship in a Fractured Age, Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City, and most recently the collection Unruly Voices: Essays on Democracy, Civility and the Human Imagination. They discuss how the "ongoing argument" that is Canada manifests in Toronto; the University of Toronto's thorough integration into the city itself; why outsiders think of Toronto as a kind of idea of the city made concrete; the many p...
2014-11-011h 03Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E64: The Greatest Point of Relevance with Alex BozikovicIn Toronto's Christie Pits neighborhood, Colin Marshall talks with Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic, who also writes for such publications as Dwell, Wallpaper, Toronto Life, and Spacing. They discuss whether Honest Ed's has any architectural significance to go with its social significance, and what its imminent disappearance says about the urbanism of Toronto's future; its Los Angeles-like interest in becoming a "more walkable, more urban, more interesting" city; how it nevertheless went high-rise early on, even in its suburbs; the cognitive dissonance of Canada, an urban country that insists upon its rurality; whether the critics of downtown condos...
2014-10-291h 02Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E63: Mementos Mori with Keith McNallyOut with the raccoons on the closed second-floor balcony of a Toronto bar, Colin Marshall talks with Keith McNally, the podcast auteur behind the shows XO, I Have a Ham Radio, and The Vinyl Countdown. They discuss the function and imminent disappearance of Honest Ed's; podcasting as a 21st-century means of hanging out with "friends" and having man-to-man conversations; why he felt such elation at leaving New York, and how a combination of Keith and the Girl and Ayn Rand drove him there in the first place; how he felt/feels that, in Canada, "we're just not driven"; what forms a...
2014-10-261h 08Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E62: Nothing to Declare with Amy Lavender HarrisIn Toronto's Junction, Colin Marshall talks to Amy Lavender Harris, geographer at York University and author of Imagining Toronto, a study of the city as depicted in its literature. They discuss the psychedelically-illustrated, Toronto-centric poetry of Dennis Lee with which so many Torontonians grew up; how it took her thirty years from her Lee-reading days to come to understand the full scope of Toronto literature; In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje's much-named, little-read novel of city-building; how she first went about creating a university course on Toronto literature; her "personal fetish," the narrative of place; multiculturalism as To...
2014-10-231h 02Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E61: Publishing Crushing with Alana WilcoxNear the University of Toronto, Colin Marshall talks to Alana Wilcox, Editorial Director of Coach House Books and author of the novel A Grammar of Endings. They discuss the past twenty years' boom in Toronto writing; what factors, including an embarrassing mayor in the nineties, made "mythologizing our own city" possible; why Coach House prints right there on premises, "giving cultural producers access to the means of production"; the technological palimpsest of Coach House's offices; the origin of their uTOpia series, which envision the Toronto of the future and which began when "you simply didn't publish about Toronto"; the...
2014-10-2058 minNotebook on Cities and CultureS4E60: Having the City for Dinner with Corey MintzIn Toronto's Kensington Market, Colin Marshall talks to Corey Mintz, author of the Toronto Star column "Fed" and the book How to Host a Dinner Party. They discuss what makes a dinner party a Torontonian dinner party; the city's "uptight" reputation; how he bottomed out in his initial cooking career, winding up working the kitchen at a dinner theater; how he converted to writing and also found a way to take a friend's advice that he "should host dinner parties for a living"; the time he made lunch for Ruth Reichl, and what his editor appreciated more about the blog...
2014-10-1759 minNotebook on Cities and CultureS4E59: Walk, Don't Brunch with Shawn MicallefIn Toronto's Church-Wellesley Village, Colin Marshall talks to Shawn Micallef, editor and co-owner of Spacing magazine, Toronto Star columnist, and author of such books as Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto and The Trouble with Brunch. They discuss his first "long, deliberate" walk in Toronto, which happened by accident; what, exactly, caused this trouble with brunch; his youth in Windsor and his discovery of the middle class in Toronto, which brunches routinely; the death threats his anti-brunch stance has drawn; the difficulty of knowing what class you fit into in the 21st century; choosing flights over children; how Oz-like Toronto...
2014-10-141h 09Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E58: Things Truly Torontonian with Denise BalkissoonAt Toronto's Queen and Logan, Colin Marshall talks with Denise Balkissoon, co-founder of The Ethnic Aisle and writer on a variety of Torontonian subjects from multiculturalism to real estate for publications like Toronto Life, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and The Grid. They discuss her reputation as an astute observer of the multiculture; what happens at the intersection of multiculturalism and real estate; the wealth flowing into downtown, and the resulting push of "racialized communities" toward the periphery; the formerly working class neighborhood around Queen and Logan and its current, rapid gentrification; the appeal of "tiny little backyards...
2014-10-1132 minNotebook on Cities and CultureS4E57: The Magnet with Russell SmithIn Toronto's Bloordale, Colin Marshall talks with Russell Smith, author of such novels as How Insensitive, Noise, Muriella Pent, and Girl Crazy, as well as style and culture columns in The Globe and Mail, the book Men's Style: The Thinking Man's Guide to Dress, and the e-book Blindsided: How Twenty Years of Writing About Booze, Drugs and Sex Ended in the Blink of an Eye. They discuss whether characteristically Torontonian style choices exist apart from women with business clothes and incongruous running shoes on the way home from work; what got him writing about his cases of retinal detachment...
2014-10-081h 03Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E56: All In with Dylan ReidNear Toronto's Danforth, Colin Marshall talks to Dylan Reid, senior editor at Spacing magazine, former co-chair of the Toronto Pedestrian Committee, and co-founder of Walk Toronto. They discuss whether the term "pedestrianism" has become as unappealing as the term "classical music"; the nature of the Danforth and its Greek roots; spatial ways to think about one's walks; the quintessentially Torontonian things he's noticed only while walking; the controversial practice of "façadism" and what it offers the city; the slow process by which Toronto offers up its joys, none of which seem apparent across the rest of Canada; what someone...
2014-10-041h 05Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E55: The Rules of the Game with Jaime WooAbove Toronto's Glad Day Bookshop, Colin Marshall talks to Jaime Woo, writer, game designer, co-founder of the Toronto video game festival Gamercamp (the next edition of which happens this month), and author of Meet Grindr: How One App Changed the Way We Connect. They discuss taking the measure of a city by firing up Grindr and examining its men; things people have figured out how to use the app for other than hooking up and sending "a slew of dick pics"; how such apps have illustrated the decreased yet increase importance of living in particular places; the changing signifiers of q...
2014-10-011h 05Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E54: The Freedom to Be Foolish with Mark FrauenfelderColin Marshall sits down in Studio City with Mark Frauenfelder, founder of the popular zine-turned-blog Boing Boing, founding co-editor of Make magazine, and author of Maker Dad: Lunch Box Guitars, Antigravity Jars, and 22 Other Incredibly Cool Father-Daughter DIY Projects. They discuss whether he still thinks about Los Angeles dingbat apartments, and the extent to which their owners have customized them today; all barriers falling for the modern maker except for the one asking who's interested; how his daughters' fascination with card tricks preceded their interest in making things; what kind of project kids can complete under their own steam; Los Ang...
2014-09-161h 01Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E53: A Certain Inertia with James SteeleColin Marshall sits down at the University of Southern California with School of Architecture professor James Steele, author of many books on architecture and architects, including, just over twenty years ago, Los Angeles Architecture: The Contemporary Condition. They discuss the how the city's conflict with "autopia" has gone since then; the obsolescence of not just the freeways, but the city itself; whether Los Angeles has gone from too architecturally crazy to not architecturally crazy enough; the evidence for downtown's non-revival, and what a fatal inertia and incrementalism may have to do with it; the Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Any...
2014-09-091h 04Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E52: The Big Pond with Pete MitchellColin Marshall sits down in Pasadena with Pete Mitchell, visual artist, game designer, zombie enthusiast, and lead singer and co-founder of the band No More Kings, whose latest album III came out this year. They discuss now as an opportune time to be into zombies; how his mom got him into not just zombie movies but Dungeons & Dragons; the "love letter to the 1980s" he wrote with the first No More Kings album; his early forays into game design, typing in code line-by-line and saving it on a tape drive, later struggling against the limitations of software like Game-Maker; Gam...
2014-08-291h 17Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E51: "Just" Mexican Food with Javier CabralColin Marshall sits down in Highland Park with Javier Cabral, the "food, booze, and punk rock" writer formerly known as The Teenage Glutster, and currently known as The Glutster. They discuss his mission to change the official punk rock food of Los Angeles from the Oki-dog to the taco; the reasons for the taco's current surge of general popularity; the reputation Mexican food has, even among the otherwise culinarily aware, as "just Mexican food"; the humbling his Mexican-food expertise received at the hands of his girlfriend; the singular form of "tamales"; what the bean-and-cheese burrito stands for in Los A...
2014-08-2256 minNotebook on Cities and CultureS4E50: Something Like a Bohemia with William E. JonesColin Marshall sits down in Los Feliz with artist, filmmaker, and writer William E. Jones. They discuss what one learns by viewing a city through the prism of its gay porn; how Los Angeles gives away the least of itself in that form as in others; home he introduced Fred Halsted's "gay porn masterpiece" L.A. Plays Itself to Los Angeles Plays Itself maker Thom Andersen, and how the movie helped fund Chantal Akerman's first projects; Selma Avenue, once the "hustler central" of Los Angeles; the city as he came to know it in the movies before he came to kno...
2014-08-081h 07Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E49: The Micro and the Macro with Noé MontesColin Marshall sits down in Koreatown with Noé Montes, photographer and publisher of El Aleph Books. They discuss what MacArthur Park, that place "beyond any laws or organization," means to him; what difference the much-discussed light of Los Angeles makes for a photographer; the city's sunsets, beaches, palm trees, and the ultimate fact of its being "kind of ugly"; the New Yorker who told him he "just doesn't get" Los Angeles; the pleasures of living in a city that doesn't need defending; the impossible task he once considered upon photographing each and every block; the "synoptic vision" he gained up...
2014-07-311h 03Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E43: Baby with an iPad with Jason BoogColin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with Jason Boog, former publishing editor a Mediabistro and author of Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age. They discuss what freaks us out about the idea of a baby with an iPad; his project's venerable predecessor The Read-Aloud Handbook; the importance of the very act of reading aloud, and especially what he calls "interactive reading"; the fallacy equating amount of books read with intelligence or even knowledge that plagues children and adults alike; how reading became a proxy for well-being; his new appreciation of Los Angeles libraries developed while taking...
2014-07-301h 00Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E48: No One Place to Eat with Matthew KangColin Marshall sits down in Culver City with Matthew Kang, food writer, editor of Eater LA, author of the blog Mattatouille, and proprietor of the Scoops Westside ice cream shop. They discuss the difference between eating on Los Angeles' west side and elsewhere in the city; how he manages to sell that health-conscious region on ice cream; the willingness of eaters, nowadays, to get back to the occasional bit of unhealthiness; how he prides himself on introducing unusual flavors to the public through the friendly medium of ice cream, even when kids' parents insist they "just get the chocolate"; how h...
2014-07-261h 01Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E47: Waking Up in the Unknown with Jim BenningColin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with Jim Benning, travel writer and co-founder of World Hum, home of "The Best Travel Stories on the Internet." They discuss why Mexican food on other continents sucks so bad; the nature of a "weather lifestyle" site he previously edited; the old question of travel versus tourism; his relationship to the label of "travel writing"; whether hatred or love for a place can produce anything but uninteresting writing; our need for "hidden gems"; how Los Angeles offers the world within it, yet rewards travel outside of it; that feeling you get upon fi...
2014-07-211h 03Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E46: Mar Incognita with Geoff NicholsonColin Marshall sits down in the Hollywood Hills with Geoff Nicholson, author of such nonfiction books as The Lost Art of Walking and its more recent follow-up Walking in Ruins as well as novels like Bleeding London, Gravity's Volkswagen, and the new The City Under the Skin. They discuss which cities contributed to his concept of "the city"; the resonances between the novel's fictional Telstar Hotel and the LAX Theme Building, as well as the significance of their restaurants, revolving or otherwise; the failure of our intention to "build our way out of any problem"; when he first saw the "fa...
2014-07-151h 04Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E45: A State Apart with Jon ChristensenColin Marshall sits down at UCLA with Jon Christensen, editor of Boom: A Journal of California, the recently re-launched magazine from the University of California Press. They discuss the meaning, if any, of the phrase "he lives in California" in an author bio; whether California's east-west divide bleaches out its much discussed north-south one; why we think so little about water, and whether Los Angeles actually has a problem with the stuff; how to see the world not just in this city, but in the whole of California; Boom's "What's the Matter with San Francisco?" issue; when a city's inse...
2014-07-091h 05Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E44: Fertile Dystopia with Matt NovakColin Marshall sits down in Culver City with Matt Novak, author of Paleofuture, a blog that looks into the future that never was. They discuss what goes through is mind when he sees LAX's Theme Building; why 1960s visions of jetpacks and flying cars have kept their hold on the American imagination; whether we only remember the wrong predictions of the future, or whether all predictions got the future wrong; why you always have to hedge about who predicted or invented what; how a society's visions of the future reveal that society's vulnerabilities; the problematic notion of "invention" itself; wh...
2014-07-031h 10Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E42: The New Guy with Eric NakamuraColin Marshall sits down in Sawtelle (also known as Los Angeles' "Little Osaka") with Eric Nakamura, founder of Asian-American aesthetic culture and lifestyle brand Giant Robot. They discuss the differences between the Sawtelle he grew up in and the Sawtelle he finds himself in today; how and where he got his doses of Japanese pop culture growing up; Los Angeles as a "gateway to Asia" then and now; the days when Giant Robot began as a photocopied zine, and what zinemaking means in 2014; Giant Robot's various manifestations, from shops to galleries even to a restaurant; the local titles applied to h...
2014-06-191h 07Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E41: Born Worn Down with Geoff DyerColin Marshall sits down in Venice with Geoff Dyer, author of books all across the spectrum between fiction and non-fiction on such subjects as jazz, photography, travel, World War I, and Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker. His newest book Another Great Day at Sea follows his two weeks aboard the aircraft carrier the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush, and his first two novels The Color of Memory and The Search have just received their very first American editions. They discuss why America needs to land planes on boats; the call he received from Alain de Botton asking what instituti...
2014-06-121h 03Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E40: Eyes on the Streets with Damien NewtonColin Marshall sits down in Mar Vista with Streetsblog Los Angeles founder Damien Newton (and his young daughter). They discuss what Los Angeles transportation culture looked like from a distance before he came here (nonexistent); how he found himself covering the city's "turning point"; the advantages to getting around from just where chose to make his home, and the disadvantages that include having to take "the bus to the bus to the train to the train to the train" to Pasadena; the Expo Line's approach to his neighborhood, and what it has made him think about the ways communities ca...
2014-06-081h 03Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E39: The LAleph with Edward SojaColin Marshall sits down in Mar Vista with Edward Soja, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at UCLA and author of such books as Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places, and now the new My Los Angeles: From Urban Restructuring to Regional Urbanization. They discuss downtown's Bonaventure Hotel back when he sat for a BBC documentary on it and now; how all of us may only ever talk about "my Los Angeles" when we talk about the city; why it surprises people to find Los Angeles has becom...
2014-06-021h 10Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E38: East- and West-Coastification with Madeleine BrandColin Marshall sits down under the cafeteria at Santa Monica College with beloved Los Angeles radio personality Madeleine Brand, now host of Press Play on KCRW, formerly of NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Day to Day, KPCC's The Madeleine Brand Show, and KCET's SoCal Connected. They discuss how much easier she has it waking up for noon radio nowadays instead of morning radio; what to call her format, a popular one in Los Angeles, where one host talks to a series of people, each with their own thing going on in the news; the distinctive difficulty of finding...
2014-05-2452 minNotebook on Cities and CultureS4E37: Closed Worlds with Mark Edward HarrisColin Marshall sits down in Los Angeles' Miracle Mile district with photographer Mark Edward Harris, author of such books as Inside North Korea, Inside Iran, The Art of the Japanese Bath, and Faces of the Twentieth Century. They discuss filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami's introduction to his Iran book, and his rule about always excluding people from his own photographs; the importance of children in images of Iran and countries like it; how Bruce Lee may or may not have started his interest in Asia back in his San Francisco childhood; how his job on The Merv Griffin Show came to an end...
2014-05-191h 15Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E36: Los Angeles by Rail with Ethan ElkindColin Marshall sits down at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law with Ethan Elkind, an attorney who researches and writes on environmental law and the author of Railtown: The Fight for the Los Angeles Metro Rail System and the Future of the City. They discuss the reason visitors and even some Angelenos express surprise at the very existence of the city's subway; the roots of the assumption that Los Angeles would always have a 1950s-style "car culture"; why something as essential as a rail system has required a "fight"; the persistent Roger Rabbit conspiracy theory about the d...
2014-05-141h 07Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E35: Path and Place with Doug SuismanColin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with architect and urban designer Doug Suisman, author of Los Angeles Boulevard: Eight X-Rays of the Body Public, soon out in a new 25th anniversary edition. They discuss the difference in cycling to his office on Wilshire Boulevard versus Venice Boulevard; the conceptual importance of "path" and "place" in any urbanism-related discussion he gets into; his arrival in Los Angeles in 1983, after years spent in Paris and New York, and the mixture of disappointment and fascination he first felt on the boulevards here; what it meant that he sensed movement as well as...
2014-05-091h 06Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E34: The Tangible and the Intangible with Andrew TuckColin Marshall sits down at Monocle magazine's offices in Marylebone, London with Andrew Tuck, editor of the magazine, host of its podcast The Urbanist, and editor of its book The Monocle Guide to Better Living. They discuss how the London experience for a Monocle reader differs from that of others; how the magazine came to view the world through the framework of cities, and what they look for in a good city experience; the importance of aesthetics in all things, when aesthetics means stripped-down, timeless vitality rather than whatever more and more money can buy; the importance of slowness...
2014-05-0545 minNotebook on Cities and CultureS4E33: Avoiding Disposability with Jacques TestardColin Marshall sits down in Knightsbridge, London with Jacques Testard, founding editor of the quarterly arts journal The White Review. They discuss the re-issue of Nairn's Towns featuring past guest Owen Hatherley; London's surprisingly small literary culture and what, before founding The White Review, he didn't see getting published; the "deeply stereotypical Williamsburg existence" he once lived in New York (in an apartment called "Magicland", no less); his path from his hometown of Paris to London, and what those cities throw into contrast about each other; the conversations he's had with his also-bilingual brother about the differences between reading and s...
2014-04-291h 02Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E32: Culture Over Class with Melvyn BraggColin Marshall sits down in London's West End with Melvyn Bragg, Lord Bragg of Wigton, host of Sky Arts 1's The South Bank Show and BBC Radio 4's In Our Time as well as the writer of many works of fiction and nonfiction including, most recently, The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible and his latest novel Grace and Mary. They discuss when he began seeing culture as a whole, unstratified entity; what he learned in his working-class northern upbringing; his brief days with his own pop group; his first getting an arts program on BB2 "almos...
2014-04-2545 minNotebook on Cities and CultureS4E31: Is This London? with Iain SinclairColin Marshall sits down in Hackney, London with Iain Sinclair, author of numerous books, all rooted in London and all operating across the spectrum of fiction to nonfiction, including Downriver, Lights Out for the Territory, London Orbital, and most recently American Smoke: Journeys to the End of the Light. They discuss the momentarily impossible-to-define issue of Hackney's identity; the need to walk the neighborhood to know it — but to then do it your whole life; the re-making of the landscape in Hackney as elsewhere in London; the surprisingly functional London Overground's only partial integration into the city's transport consciousness; the way co...
2014-04-191h 09Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E30: Masters of the City with PD SmithColin Marshall sits down in Winchester, England with PD Smith, author of books on science, literature, superweapons, and, most recently, City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age. They discuss whether London has all the elements of the archetypally ideal city; the essential quality of "a place where you meet strangers"; the need to avoid writing only about buildings; the recent moment when half the world's population found itself living in cities; the factors that have made city life more possible today than ever before; what on Earth Prince Charles talks about when he talks about architecture and urbanism; the en...
2014-04-141h 05Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E29: This Used to Be the Future with Owen HatherleyColin Marshall sits down for bangers and mash in Woolwich, London, England, with writer on political aesthetics Owen Hatherley, author of the books Militant Modernism, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, A New Kind of Bleak, and Uncommon, on the pop group Pulp. They discuss the relevance of the combined sentiments of the Pet Shop Boys and the Human League to his critical mission; his sickness of "where's my jetpack"-type complaint; the new limits of the possible; whether one more easily sees politics expressed in architecture in England that elsewhere; the coincidental rises of the welfare...
2014-04-061h 05Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E28: Partially Inside, Partially Outside with Jack HuesColin Marshall sits down in Canterbury, England with Jack Hues, founding member of the rock band Wang Chung and jazz band The Quartet. Wang Chung's latest album Tazer Up came out in 2012, and The Quartet's next album Collaborations Volumes 1 & 2 comes out this fall. They discuss what makes the "Canterbury sound"; the differences between Wang Chung's "English" and "American" albums; what recording in another city or country, and drawing in its "vibe," gives a project; music as a language, and how different styles of music feed into each other as do different languages; the "librarian mentality" that has many of his stu...
2014-03-311h 10Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E27: London Rambling with John RogersColin Marshall walks through Stratford, London with John Rogers, author of the blog Lost Byway book This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City. They discuss how one should approach one's first London shopping mall, a built phenomenon that has changed dramatically over the decades; his memories of playing soccer with rotten fruit in the older of Stratford's indoor shopping centers; whether knowing the "other" London requires you to first know the standard London; how "ramble books" got him writing about unwritten-about places; the importance of feeling proud of wherever you live; the unshrinking "London Book" industry, whose robustness po...
2014-03-201h 07Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E26: New Meant Better with Jonathan MeadesColin Marshall sits down in Marseille, France, specifically in the Le Corbusier-designed Unité d'Habitation, with Jonathan Meades, writer and broadcaster on architecture, culture, food, and a variety of other subjects to do with place. In his latest film, Bunkers, Brutalism, and Bloodymindness, he looks at architectural styles once- and currently maligned. They discuss how much his residence in Marseilles has to do with his residence in the Unité d'Habitation, to which "caprice" brought him not long ago; unapologetic building versus pusillanimous building; the lack of centralized planning that afflicts France, and what kind of built environment it has brought about...
2014-03-081h 09Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E25: Legitimate Media with Neil DennyColin Marshall sits down for a pint at Nelson's Retreat, a pub on London's Old Street, with Neil Denny, host of Little Atoms, a show about ideas and culture on Resonance FM. They discuss whether beer improves or degrades the quality of ideas discussed; how the show's concept has changed over time, differently involving notions of science, culture, atheism, the Enlightenment, and the left; how he began podcasting, and then had to stand out from the sudden morass of skepticism-themed podcast; the different role of religion in the United States and the United Kingdom, and the difficulty of making a...
2014-03-021h 04Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E24: The Widening Landscape with Robin Rimbaud, a.k.a. ScannerColin Marshall sits down in London's Tower Hamlets with composer and artist Robin Rimbaud, better known as Scanner. They discuss the usefulness of a new place's disorientation; the fun of grasping that new place's systems and making its connections; other skills in the set gained from a lifetime of travel; the "great change" he has observed living in east London for fourteen years, where he arrived in search of "light and high ceilings"; the value of his work's taking him to places he doesn't choose; what he learned long ago when his visiting American friend's girlfriend reflexively called every d...
2014-02-231h 07Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E23: The Gentrifier's Dilemma with Euan MillsColin Marshall stands around Hackney, London's "Tech City" with urban designer Euan Mills. They discuss how to tip in a London bar and how to cross a London street; when he realized he has become an urban designer, and what that entails; the hugeness and non-understandability of the spread-out, car-dependent, crime-fearing São Paulo, where he grew up hating cities; the development of his interest in people, not buildings, and cities as networks of people; how he came to London, a city of paradoxes that still gives him the sense that anything exciting that happens will happen there; what, exa...
2014-02-1655 minNotebook on Cities and CultureS4E22: Los Angeles Music with Dan KuramotoColin Marshall sits down in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo with Dan Kuramoto, founding member of the band Hiroshima who have now played for 40 years and recently released their 19th album, J-Town Beat. They discuss what he sees around him in the Little Tokyo in transition today as opposed to the one he grew up in 40 years ago; what it means to play "Los Angeles music" in this multi-ethnic city; how the band's koto player June Kuramoto learned her classical instrument while growing up in a Los Angeles black ghetto; the question of whether you can build a modern, western ban...
2014-02-081h 19Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E21: This Is Home Now with Melanie HaynesColin Marshall sits down in Copenhagen's Frederiksberg with Melanie Haynes, author of the blog Dejlige Days. They discuss the Danish national virtue of hygge (and the also important quality of dejlige); how she came to leave her native England for Denmark; the Copenhagen system of smiley-face food sanitation ratings; the Danish habit of both asking "Why are you here in my country?" and personally receiving her praise for the country; why she writes about festivals, eating, design, and "the relaxed life"; how the British operate in fifth gear at all times, and the Danish in third; her popular post on...
2014-01-281h 01Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E20: A Man Alive with Per ŠmidlColin Marshall sits down in Copenhagen's Vesterbro with Per Šmidl, author of the bestseller Chop Suey, the essay Victim of Welfare, and the new novel Wagon 537 Christiania. They discuss the surprise foreigners, and especially Americans, feel upon discovering that a self-governing commune like Christiana has existed for over forty years in the middle of Copenhagen; how Christiana began as "a spiritual venture" and became "the last and greatest attempt Western man made to rid himself of the shackles of capitalism"; the criticism Danish society allows, but the price you must pay if you make it; how his speaking out resul...
2014-01-211h 08Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E19: On the Wallpaper with Louise SandColin Marshall sits down in Copenhagen's Nørrebro with Louise Sand (and her baby daughter Alice), who teaches the Danish language on the Copenhagencast. They discuss why the Danes speak English so well, yet still feel shy about speaking it; her experience teaching Danish to classrooms of foreigners; her original studies to become a Spanish teacher; her inspirational friendship with Japanese-teaching podcaster Hitomi Griswold of Japancast.net; how she learns one language after another, like a musician addicted to learning one instrument after another; the importance, and difficulty, of giving up goals like perfect fluency; how podcasting lets her appr...
2014-01-1158 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E18: Where Your Nails Are with Thomas E. KennedyColin Marshall sits down in one of Copenhagen's many storied serving houses with Thomas E. Kennedy, author of the "Copenhagen Quartet" of novels In the Company of Angels, Kerrigan in Copenhagen: A Love Story, Falling Sideways, and the forthcoming Beneath the Neon Egg. They discuss whether one can truly know Copenhagen without knowing its serving houses; the drinking guide from which Kerrigan in Copenhagen takes its "experimental" form; his mission not just to know all of the city's serving houses, but to incorporate as much of its culture as possible into his books and to capture the "light of the fou...
2014-01-051h 02Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E17: Off Cinema on Rådhusstræde with Jack StevensonColin Marshall sits down at Copenhagen's Husets Biograf with Jack Stevenson, programmer of the theater and author of books on both Scandinavian and American film. They discuss Lars von Trier as the world's representative of Danish cinema; the difficulty of creating scandal within unshockable Denmark; revival theaters across the world as a nation of their own; the film education he drew from haunting the revival houses of Boston; his plan to serve ten White Russians during a screening of The Big Lebowski; Copenhagen as Scandinavia's most "real urban environment" in which to show films; the slow emergence of the str...
2013-12-241h 03Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E16: Baby Steps Begone with Mikael Colville-AndersenColin Marshall sits down in Vesterbro with Mikael Colville-Andersen, urban mobility expert and CEO of Copenhagenize. They discuss where Los Angeles, with its "pockets of goodness," ranks on the global scale of Copenhagenization; what it takes for a city's population to become "intermodal"; his experience growing up in an English-Danish-Canadian household, biking all the time before the onset of the "culture of fear"; the qualities of a mainstream bicycle culture, including a lack of specialized cycling clothes of the type worn by the sport cyclists who have "hijacked" the practice; learning how not to promote cycling from environmentalism, the g...
2013-12-151h 10Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E15: We Form Cities, They Form Us with Jan GehlColin Marshall sits down in the Copenhagen offices of Gehl Architects with founding partner Jan Gehl, architect, Professor Emeritus of Urban Design at the School of Architecture in Copenhagen, and author of books including Life Between Buildings, Cities for People, and How to Study Public Life. They discuss what important change occurred in Copenhagen in 1962, and what led to it; the midcentury "car invasion" in Europe and the first modern shopping mall's construction in Kansas City; the re-emergence of the notion that "maybe pedestrians should walk"; the connectedness of walking in Copenhagen, which ultimately forms a "walking system"; the dullne...
2013-12-071h 06Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E14: The Good, the Bread, and the Ugly with Sandra HøjColin Marshall sits down in Nørrebro with Classic Copenhagen blogger and photographer Sandra Høj. They discuss the city's current enthusiasm for tree-cutting; the small things in Copenhagen that draw her eye, from pieces of street art to weird details on houses; how she started blogging in the wake of the Muhammad caricature crisis with an interest in disputing the global perception of Danes as living obliviously in a land of pastries and fairy tales; her mission to describe "the good, the bread, and the ugly" of Copenhagen; the Danish tendency to nag about problems; what time spent in "co...
2013-11-281h 05Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E13: Homo Jovialis with Lars APColin Marshall sits down in Copenhagen's Nørrebro with Lars AP, author of the book Fucking Flink and founder of the movement of the same name, which aims to make the Danish not just the "happiest" people, but the friendliest as well. They discuss just what it feels like to bear the label of "happiest" and whether "most content" might not suit the country better; the difference in impact of the word "fucking," especially in a book title, between Denmark and the States; the seemingly inward-turned people foreigners feel as if they encounter when they first visit Denmark; his TEDx C...
2013-11-211h 04Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E12: Put a Little Salt on It with Tim HalburColin Marshall sits down before a live audience at the New Urbanism Film Festival at Los Angeles' ACME Theater with Tim Halbur, Director of Communications at the Congress for the New Urbanism, former Managing Editor at Planetizen, creator of the two-disc DVD set The Story of Sprawl, and author of the children's urban planning book Where Things Are from Near to Far. They discuss the anti-Los Angeles indoctrination he received in San Francisco, and what that indoctrination might have had right; the two "nodes" of Hollywood and the beach that outsiders tend to recognize in Los Angeles, and why peo...
2013-11-1557 minNotebook on Cities and CultureS4E11: Style Guide with Charles PhoenixColin Marshall sits down in Silver Lake with showman, "histo-tainer" and "Ambassador of Americana" Charles Phoenix, curator of vintage midcentury slides and author of books like Southern Californialand, Americana the Beautiful, and Southern California in the 50s. They discuss the postwar period's appealing mix of the highest and lowest American sophistication; how the country's new middle class became "buying machines" and "cultural monsters"; the "time travel in a box" he experienced when he found his first set of old slides in a thrift shop; the "luxurious" nature of Kodachrome; what makes any given slide a keeper, and how he can...
2013-11-081h 09Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E10: Everybody's a Foreigner with Jordan HarbingerColin Marshall sits down in Hollywood with lawyer turned social dynamics expert Jordan Harbinger, co-host of the Pickup Podcast and co-founder of confidence education program The Art of Charm. They discuss how much time he spends explaining that he isn't Tom Cruise from Magnolia; how he conceives of The Art of Charm's mission to teach confidence, which involves teaching emotional intelligence; whether and how our generation of men have come out especially socially inept; the still-strong number of pickup artist types wandering around Hollywood, and the equally strong number of low-self-esteem women with whom they match; the importance of asking...
2013-10-311h 10Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E9: Unriotous Forms with Stephen GeeColin Marshall sits down above downtown Los Angeles in the U.S. Bank tower with Stephen Gee, senior producer at ITV Studios and author of Iconic Vision: John Parkinson, Architect of Los Angeles, the first book on the man who designed such landmark structures in the city as Union Station, the Memorial Coliseum, Bullock's Wilshire, and City Hall. They discuss how such a visionary could have gone unknown so long; Los Angeles' relationship to its public buildings; Parkinson's notion, during a time when Los Angeles set about defining itself, of putting up a built environment that would leave people i...
2013-10-261h 02Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E8: MNL-LAX with Carren JaoColin Marshall sits down in North Hollywood with Carren Jao, Manila- and Los Angeles-based writer on architecture, art, and design. They discuss what rain does to the aesthetic of Los Angeles; the role of the river here as the connection people don't realize they have; the difference between the floods Los Angeles used to routinely endure and the ones Manila routinely endures now; how, growing up in the Philippines, she got interested in the shape and form of cities; Manila's "improvisational" nature not centered around always having functioning systems; the Filipino inclination to make guests' lives easier in any w...
2013-10-1757 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E7: The Impossible Overarching Narrative with Nathan MastersColin Marshall sits down in the Los Angeles Central Library's Maguire Gardens with Nathan Masters, writer interested in all things Los Angeles, especially the history of the city, about which he writes as a representative of Los Angeles as Subject for KCET and Los Angeles Magazine. They discuss how he regarded the distant downtown Los Angeles skyline while growing up in the Orange County town of Anaheim; the changing ways the county of his youth has regarded itself relative to Los Angeles; how far back you can go into the history of southern California and still have it bolster your u...
2013-10-071h 08Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E6: Badge of Convenience with Caleb BaconColin Marshall sits down at the intersection of Los Feliz, Thai Town, and Little Armenia with Caleb Bacon, writer on the TBS sitcom Sullivan and Son and host of the podcast Man School (as well as the podcast Sullivan and Son: Behind the Bar). They discuss his feeling in his own guest seat; his move to Los Angeles from Albany purely in search of "good times and good weather"; the deliberately old-school-sitcom nature of Sullivan and Son, and the opportunity its Philadelphia setting provides for racist jokes; how it feels to work simultaneously in "old" and "new" media; how he fell...
2013-09-231h 06
Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E5: The Great Wrong Place with Richard RaynerColin Marshall sits down at the University of Southern California with Richard Rayner, author of the novels Los Angeles Without a Map, The Elephant, Murder Room, The Cloud Sketcher, and The Devil's Wind as well as the non-fiction books The Blue Suits, Drake's Fortune, The Associates, and A Bright and Guilty Place. They discuss the three or four Los Angeleses in which he's lived since arriving in the city from England in the early eighties; the "up-for-it-ness" of the Los Angeles he first discovered; the reporting he later did from the 1992 riots, and the "geographical apartheid" he saw; his lack of a...
2013-09-031h 06
Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E4: What Do People Really Eat? with Besha RodellColin Marshall sits down in Silver Lake with Besha Rodell, who has written about food in New York and Atlanta, and last year came to Los Angeles to become the Weekly's restaurant critic. They discuss the secret appeal and non-Australian origins of the Outback Steakhouse's Bloomin' Onion; her Australian youth, and the friends who insisted she join them at Koala Blue after she came to the States; what counts as authentic Australian cuisine, and the tortured question of "authenticity" in Los Angeles; her concerns with what people really eat; her predecessor Jonathan Gold's influence on the city's food culture; the...
2013-08-251h 05
Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E3: Constellation of Villages with Lynn GarrettColin Marshall sits down at the top of the Hotel Wilshire with Lynn Garrett, proprietor of popular online community Hidden Los Angeles and fifth-generation Angeleno. They discuss how best to prepare Germans for their Los Angeles vacation, since their guidebooks have failed; which human needs the many persistent myths about this city fulfill; how here, you are your own salvation; the revitalization of the Los Angeles River, as against the notion that "all it is is dead bodies and gang members"; Los Angeles as reflector of the observer's own particular hatreds; getting to know the city not as a ci...
2013-08-1358 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E2: Prada and Fallas-Paredes with Brigham YenColin Marshall walks through downtown Los Angeles with Brigham Yen, Realtor and author of the urban renaissance blog DTLA Rising. They discuss the sort of neighborhood that can rise from nothing, and whether Los Angeles' downtown has come back from a deeper state of nothingness than other downtowns; the "bones" of a city's center, and how Los Angeles' have remained sound through all its problems; the late introduction of public space here; his car-centric youth in the San Gabriel Valley suburbs, and how going to San Francisco for school changed everything; the enduring "obesity" of Los Angeles' streets, even...
2013-08-071h 00
Notebook on Cities and CultureS4E1: An American Rediscovery with City WalkColin Marshall sits down at the Old Pasadena offices of Rigler Creative with Thomas Rigler, Steve Reich, and Caitlin Starowicz, creators of City Walk, a new television and web series from KCET and Link TV on the transformation of American cities and our ability to walk in them. They discuss the walkability of Old Pasadena right beneath them; City Walk's origin as a project purely about the health benefits of walking, and how it expanded; their own discovery of the new walkability of American cities as they shot and researched the show, how they found they'd already been documenting that...
2013-08-0259 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E31: Heightened Rootlessness with Timothy TaylorColin Marshall sits down above Gastown, Vancouver, British Columbia with novelist Timothy Taylor, author of Stanley Park, Story House, and The Blue Light Project, as well as the short story collection Silent Cruise. They discuss what, exactly, Vancouver is; what, exactly, CanLit is; his being born into a nomadic lifestyle; his inadvertent prediction of the modern locavore movement; whether one can live in Vancouver without developing an interest in architecture; his fascination with creative and toxic "dyadic relationships," as well as the place of emulation and envy in human affairs; how he discovered René Girard's ideas about "mimetic desire" an...
2013-06-1759 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E30: A Little Bit Wet with Dave ShumkaColin Marshall sits down in Mount Pleasant, Vancouver, British Columbia with comedian and podcaster Dave Shumka, co-host with Graham Clark of Stop Podcasting Yourself. They discuss what everyone in Vancouver is, a little bit; the city's much-touted "livability"; becoming that icon of fun that is a comedian in "No Funcouver"; the origin of Stop Podcasting Yourself; the newly classic Vancouver lifestyle up in downtown condos versus the classic classic Vancouver lifestyle in his hundred-year-old house; waking up in adulthood to find himself in a reasonably cool city; the pull, for comedians and media people, of both Toronto and the Un...
2013-06-131h 02
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E29: That's Livin' with Gordon PriceColin Marshall sits above Hastings Street in Vancouver, British Columbia with Gordon Price, Director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, former Councillor for the City of Vancouver, and creator of the electronic magazine Price Tags. They discuss his personal definition of "Vancouverism"; his city as a mid-20th-century version of 19th-century city-building; the balance of trying to maintain the place's Edenic qualities while shipping out its natural resources; the D-word of density, and whether Vancouver's West End ever really had the highest density in North America; how built environments age in place, passing from horror to heritage; how...
2013-06-051h 05
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E28: Aesthetic Moments with JJ LeeColin Marshall sits down in Vancouver's Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden with JJ Lee, menswear writer, broadcaster, and author of The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit. They discuss where to buy pocket squares in Vancouver (and whether to just have your kids make some); what to wear during the city's "false start summer"; his own uses of color, and his gradual approach toward "weird clothes"; our coming age of wide-open, postmodern suit-wearing, a recovery from men getting stupid about dressing in the sixties and seventies; his own early dislike of...
2013-05-281h 00
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E27: No Mo' Po-Mo with Paul DelanyColin Marshall sits down in Yaletown, Vancouver, British Columbia with Paul Delany, professor of English at Simon Fraser University, editor of the reader Vancouver: Representing the Postmodern City, and author of the article "Vancouver: Graveyard of Ambition?" They discuss whether it makes sense to talk about a "postmodern" city in 2013; the influence of Douglas Coupland, William Gibson, and Jeff Wall; Vancouver's future-oriented open-endedness; his path to Vancouver from England via the United States and specifically a crumbling New York; the state of Vancouver in 1970, when he arrived; how the West End became dense in the fifties, and how Yaletown evo...
2013-05-241h 01
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E26: Fifth-Generation "Japanese" with Leslie HelmColin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with Leslie Helm, former Tokyo correspondent for Business Week and the Los Angeles Times, editor of Seattle Business, and author of Yokohama Yankee: My Family's Five Generations as Outsiders in Japan. They discuss the Asia connections of Los Angeles and Seattle; Japan's changing place in the zeitgeist since when he covered their economic bubble; how he observed the West's acceptance of Japan from his vantage as a quarter-Japanese yet Japanese-born "outsider"; how much of his family drama turns on the issue of how Japanese each member looks; the point of foreigner's entry Yokoham...
2013-05-1659 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E25: A Fine and Private Place with Joseph MailanderColin Marshall sits down in Los Feliz, Los Angeles with Joseph Mailander, who since 1981 has written fiction and poetry as well as political and cultural analysis in the city. His new collection is Days Change at Night: Notes from Los Angeles' Decade of Decline, 2003-2013. They discuss his long relationship with Argonaut Street; the unique changelessness of Playa del Rey; how Los Angeles became the first recognizably great city built on a mechanical scale; the pronunciation of "Playa del Rey", "Los Feliz", and even "Los Angeles", and his impatience with our sanctimoniousness in our rectitude and insistence on our erro...
2013-05-091h 06
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E24: Aftershave Smile with Jeff WeissColin Marshall sits down in Los Angeles' Franklin Hills with Jeff Weiss, music writer for the LA Weekly and many other publications, editor of The Passion of the Weiss, co-host of the podcast Shots Fired, and co-author of the book 2pac vs. Biggie. They discuss the total time of his life spent waiting for rappers to show up to interviews; Tyler the Creator and Odd Future as today's representatives of Los Angeles, and what the collective has to do with West Coast experimentalism and the city as a magnet for eccentrics; how he fights his personal war against cliché; kids to...
2013-05-041h 04
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E23: Cut-Rate Crematorium with Patt MorrisonColin Marshall sits down in Pasadena with journalist Patt Morrison, best known for her "Patt Morrison Asks" column in the Los Angeles Times, her years hosting Life and Times and Bookshow with Patt Morrison on public television as well as Patt Morrison on KPCC, and her book Rio L.A.: Tales from the Los Angeles River. They discuss her childhood in an Ohio town of 2,000 people, where the nearest cool place was a book; how and why her family decided to pull up stakes and stay on the move before suddenly deciding to settle in Tuscon, Arizona, a bustling...
2013-04-231h 00
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E22: Battle Damage with Chris GoreColin Marshall sits down in Glassell Park with comedian and man of cinema Chris Gore, who has talked movies on such television shows as The X Show, The New Movie Show with Chris Gore, and Attack of the Show; has written books including The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide, The Complete DVD Book, and The Fifty Greatest Movies Never Made; hosts the podcast PodCRASH with That Chris Gore; and has a new comedy album and picture book coming up called Celebrities Poop. They discuss how he takes his work seriously, but not himself; his "war" on the top five podcasts...
2013-04-161h 06
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E21: High-Functioning Freak (HFF) with Tyson CornellColin Marshall sits down above Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles with Tyson Cornell, proprietor of Rare Bird Books and Rare Bird Lit, former longtime Director of Marketing & Publicity at Book Soup on the Sunset Strip, punk rocker, and co-editor of the forthcoming essay collection Yes Is the Answer: And Other Prog Rock Tales. They discuss the seeming contradiction between Los Angeles' image as an "unreaderly" place and its rank as the largest book market in America; this city's tendency not, unlike other cities, to tell you straight-up what it is; how his study of the American newsstand brought him t...
2013-04-121h 04
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E20: Traitor to Genre with Gabriela JaureguiColin Marshall sits down in Mexico City's Colonia Condesa with Gabriela Jauregui, writer, poet, and co-founder of the publishing collective sur+. They discuss her childhood in Coyoacán and at what point during it she realized she lived in a place with a rich literary history; her coming up reading and speaking Spanish, English, and French; the real beginning of Latin American small presses, and what it means for the excitement of Spanish-language literature; why Mexican books get shrinkwrapped, anyway; how she mastered English while studying in Los Angeles, and the pleasure she finds in writing in a language not...
2013-04-0859 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E19: Nothing Works, Everything Moves with Juan Carlos Cano and Paloma VeraColin Marshall sits down in Mexico City's Colonia Condesa with Juan Carlos Cano and Paloma Vera, founders of the architecture and urbanism practice CANO | VERA. They discuss how everything in Mexico City's built environment exists "behind," being interesting in irregular ways; all the untrue superlatives you hear growing up about how Mexico City is the biggest in the world, and what an abstract concept "the biggest city" turns out to be anyway; the miracle of Mexico City's continued improvisational operation, especially as regards garbage collection; the amount of architect-less building going on in Mexico City, and what they're doing...
2013-04-011h 02
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E18: First-Rate "Second World" Eating with Nicholas GilmanColin Marshall sits down in Mexico City's Colonia Roma with Nicholas Gilman, author of the book and blog Good Food in Mexico City: Fondas, Food Stalls, and Fine Dining. They discuss the culinary importance of places like Mercado Medellín; how Mexico City's art, not its food, first brought him here (make a beeline though he did to the handmade tortillas when he first arrived at 18); all the warnings about "what you shouldn't do" in Mexico City — or, for that matter, the New York City of the seventies and eighties in which he grew up; the strides Mexico City has ma...
2013-03-2656 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E17: Youth Is Overrated with Brenda LozanoColin Marshall sits down in Mexico City's Colonia Roma with novelist and essayist Brenda Lozano, author of the Todo Nada and contributor to Letras Libres. They discuss the space Spain's troubles have opened for Latin American literature; the passion for Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde she learned from one particular teacher; how she began seriously reading in English, and only later in her native Spanish; the difference in enjoyment of Spanish versus English literature, and how the languages ultimately behave like two different animals; the importance of the pleasure of reading, as well as the acknowledgment thereof; poetry as pure suga...
2013-03-2152 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E16: Autobiology with Kurt HollanderColin Marshall sits down in Mexico City's Colonia Condesa with Kurt Hollander, photographer, filmmaker, magazine editor, and author of Several Ways to Die in Mexico City: An Autobiography. They discuss his microbiologically informed view of life; the presence of death in Mexico, especially since people there now die developed-world deaths and, to an extent, developing-world deaths; his first enjoyment of Mexico's working-class culture, and his perspective, as an American, on American cultural encroachment; his earlier life on New York's Lower East Side, a barrio which prepared him for the one-huge-barrio that is Mexico City; the importance of "doing New...
2013-03-1859 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E15: The Mexican Reality with Diego RabasaColin Marshall sits down in Mexico City's Colonia Roma with Diego Rabasa, co-founder of Sexto Piso press. They discuss why this might make for the most exciting moment in Mexican, or even Spanish-language, literature; Mexico's past era of invincible intellectual giants, from whose shadow writers now emerge; these writers' response to their country's "total social meltdown"; how Mexico City got more secure as Mexico itself got less secure, a process that has by now made Mexico City the safest place in the country; his dull but well-off childhood in a PRI family, his university studies of engineering, and his...
2013-03-1156 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E14: New York, Tokyo, and Back Again with Roland KeltsColin Marshall sits down in Echo Park, Los Angeles with Roland Kelts, lecturer at the University of Tokyo, co-editor of the literary journal A Public Space, and author of the book Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. They discuss whether Japan has yet really figured out how to sell its pop culture abroad; the success of CrunchyRoll.com; his time growing up as a partial outsider in the white northeastern United States, and how anime and manga's focus on the outsider thus resonated with him; the commission he received from the Coppolas to write a...
2013-03-061h 06
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E13: Negative Appeal with Vincent BrookColin Marshall sits down in Silver Lake, Los Angeles with Vincent Brook, teacher at UCLA, USC, Cal State Los Angeles, and Pierce College, and author of books on Jewish émigré directors and the Jewish sitcom as well as the new Land of Smoke and Mirrors: A Cultural History of Los Angeles. They discuss the difference between Los Angeles obsession and Los Angeles chauvinism; his time in Berkeley, when Los Angeles became the enemy; the Christopher Dorner incident and the old racial wounds it has re-opened; Gangster Squad and the cinematic abuse of Los Angeles history; the city's tendency to re...
2013-03-011h 01
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E12: Freaks and Outcasts with Kevin SmoklerColin Marshall sits down in Westwood, Los Angeles with Kevin Smokler, author of Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven't Touched Since High School. They discuss what makes him think of Holden Caulfield as a Bing user; why we study novels in high school at all, and what it might have to do with Renaissance classics scholarship; how we got turned off to these books the first time around, and the radical notion that we now have time to properly absorb them; his hymn to his obnoxious teenage self, when he felt he possessed many abilities, yet none...
2013-02-221h 01
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E11: Sad Characters with Clive PiercyColin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with Clive Piercy, founder and principal of design studio air-conditioned and author of the photo book Pretty Vacant, an appreciation of Los Angeles "dingbat" apartments. They discuss Reyner Banham's enduring definition of the dingbat; his time growing up in England enamored with American culture, and his surprise to find Los Angeles existed in color; the glory of freeways and the guilt of driving them, and the sense of failed utopia they share with dingbat buildings; how dingbats crept into his Los Angeles photography jaunts, shaped by his love of Ed Ruscha's paintings...
2013-02-181h 01
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E10: Trouble Sparks Creativity with Christopher Stephens Colin Marshall sits down in Nishinomiya, Japan with translator, writer, and former Kansai Time Out editor Christopher Stephens. They discuss whether higher Japanese skills get a foreigner more suspicion; the nearby presence and touristic effects of novelist Haruki Murakami's elementary school; the older writers, like Yasunari Kawabata, Junichiro Tanizaki, and Yukio Mishima, who stoked his interest in Japan; the experimental music to be found in Japan, such as the work of Keiji Haino and the Boredoms, and specifically in the Kansai noise scene; the Osaka duality between money-making hard workers and underground weirdness; the local pride taken in relative rou...
2013-02-131h 03
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E9: The Poet's Peak with Stephen GillColin Marshall sits down overlooking greater Kyoto on Mt. Ogura with Stephen Gill, poet, BBC radio scriptwriter, and executive director of People Together for Mt. Ogura. They discuss the mountain's place in a traditional Japanese poetry card game; how, after scores of Japanese noticed in it an opportunity for free trash disposal, the mountain generated the headline "Ogurayama, gomi no yama" (Mt. Ogura, Mountain of Trash); the compilation of a collection about Mt. Ogura featuring verse by one hundred different poets; the onset of sightseeing season, which mostly brings visitors to the neighboring Mt. Arashiyama; the rich literary heritage...
2013-02-0946 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E8: Pyongyang Style with Rob MontzColin Marshall sits down in Los Angeles' Koreatown with filmmaker Rob Montz, director of Juche Strong, a short documentary about North Korea and its propaganda. They discuss reaching the same age as Kim Jong-un without a hermit kingdom to rule; the question of why North Koreans continue to believe in their state, despite having good reason not to; his early fascination with North Korea's World Cup showing, and how pursuing that fascination led him from standard opinions on the country to newer, more interesting ones; his realization that North Korean ideology comes built upon the same basic structures of p...
2013-02-0452 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E7: The Accidental Japanophile with Christopher OlsonColin Marshall sits down near Nara, Japan's Tōdai-ji temple with artist, critic, and teacher Christopher Olson. They discuss his thoughts, as a Winnipegger born and raised, on Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg; the displacement, discombobulation, and respectable bullshitting of Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, a copy of which he keeps at all times on his phone; high-risk art, and the stuff that requires more time spent absorbing than creating; the still-exciting art school idea of limitations and restrictions as the engines of creation; whether or not Japan is "a land of images"; why you can't resist photographing your food in Japa...
2013-01-311h 06
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E6: Form Over Function with John DougillColin Marshall sits down seven stories above Kawaramachi, Kyoto, Japan with John Dougill, professor of British culture at Ryukoku University, blogger at Green Shinto, and author of books including Kyoto: A Cultural History, In Search of Japan's Hidden Christians, and Oxford in English Literature. They discuss the commonalities between the Kyoto geisha and the English gentleman, who practice their respective cultures' ritual, regulation, and repression; form's dominance over function in Japan, as exemplified by one young fellow in a Union Jack t-shirt; how he got a handle on Japan by writing a book on Kyoto, and how in the proc...
2013-01-2453 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E5: A Decent Banger with Josh ParkinColin Marshall sits down in Nakatsu, Osaka, Japan with guitarmaker Josh Parkin proprietor of Josh Parkin Guitars. They discuss how the intensity of Japanese enthusiasm extends to guitar-playing; how Japanese friends in London urged him not to set up shop in Tokyo, but in Osaka; his early life in Yorkshire, "the English Kansai," where he made his first attempts to build and modify guitars; the importance of finding the best handmade pickups and of learning to see the difference between .2 and .3 millimeters; the excellence of Japanese manufacturing, and its somewhat less impressive mastery of anthropometrics; his working life on...
2013-01-2053 min
Notebook on Cities and CultureS3E4: Ashukurafuto with Brian AshcraftColin Marshall sits down in Osaka, Japan's Senri-Chūō with Brian Ashcraft, Senior Contributing Editor for video game site Kotaku, contributor at Wired, and author of the books Arcade Mania! and Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential. They discuss the kind of arcade gaming best (and now only) seen in Japan; the Expo 70-developed north of Osaka versus the city's "real" south; Osaka's reputation across Japan for brash un-gentility; where best to do one's gaming in Osaka, the the overall continuing robustness of Japanese arcades; the tradition of North American arcade gaming growing up around alcohol, and the tradition of Asian arcade gaming growing u...
2013-01-151h 03
Notebook on Cities and CultureS2E19: Small Town Cop with Matt HaugheyColin Marshall sits down in Portland's Slabtown with Matt Haughey, founder of MetaFilter, the most civilized community on the internet, co-founder of Fuelly, and creator of several other sites as well. They discuss his escape from San Francisco's "goofball startup culture"; what it means for MetaFilter to be "civilized"; his desire not simply to create "a safe place for people to yell past each other"; the importance of keeping personal identity out of debates; the strange backend provided by MetaFilter's question-and-answer service Ask MetaFilter; the second-most popular Ask MetaFilter thread of all time, Colin's own "What in life did it take...
2012-11-1658 min