Virtual Memories Show 688: Phillip Lopate “The whole history of American prose passed through Irving, then went somewhere else.” Five-Timer Club Alert! Essayist Phillip Lopate rejoins the show as we celebrate his wonderful new book, A WASHINGTON IRVING SKETCH BOOK (Princeton)! We talk about the origins of the biography, incl. how he wound up with a 12-volume set of Washington Irving’s complete works, his choice to write the bio in the form of sketches, how Irving as America’s first professional writer is a precursor/trailblazer for Phillip’s career, and how well Irving understood the ficklenes
Virtual Memories Show 687: Ida Kao “I can point to a dozen different problems that all meaningfully contributed to why Hampshire is closing now. How all those things accumulated is pretty tragic.” “There are ways to downsize a college, but with Hampshire it felt more like a hollowing-out.” Our latest installment of The Hampshire Tapes features a conversation with Ida Kao (F18) about having a ringside seat for Hampshire College’s decline. We talk about how she’s trying to preserve the school’s spirit by co-curating the Post-Hampshire project, what it was like trying to pursue an education in th
Virtual Memories Show 686: Halstead York “The core Hampshire experience was figuring out how to do things for myself and figuring out how to excite other people about what I wanted to do.” It’s time for the first installment of The Hampshire Tapes! Halstead York (F88) joins the show to talk about his experience at Hampshire College, how the spirit of the school and its grand experiment of student-driven education has stuck with him all these years, how the school’s structure taught him how to pitch projects, how the cover of an unstructured “hippie-trippy” college (my words) masked intense com
Virtual Memories Show 685: Sarah Minor “The panorama is a metaphor for the type of looking or the type of dizziness that early audiences felt. . . . It was like people in the 19th century were experiencing virtual reality for the first time.” With her amazing new book, CAROUSEL: An Essay On Seeing (Yale University Press), Sarah Minor offers a multi-threaded exploration — lecture, memoir, and art criticism — of how we see and are seen, how our language changes with our vantage points, how all these screens are changing human consciousness (and physiology). We talk about the history of the panor
Virtual Memories Show 684: Ali Trotta “I think mythology and fairy tales provide a good baseline, because almost everyone has read a subset of those stories, and the symbolism is something most people can reach for and relate to.” With her debut poetry collection, OFFERINGS FOR ORDINARY GODS (Clash Books), Ali Trotta brings myth, magick, tarot, and ritual to bear on the eternal & primal struggle of women. We talk about those roots and how tarot and ancient myth inspired her work, where tarot began for her — ’90s, The Craft — and how past guest Katelan Foisy resparked her interest and showed he
Virtual Memories Show 683: R Sikoryak “By contrasting the Declaration with the Emancipation Proclamation, I was showing some of the evolution that also happens in the Constitution.” Let’s celebrate (or commemorate) America’s independence with an amazing new double book, DECLARATION ILLUSTRATED / EMANCIPATION ILLUSTRATED (Drawn & Quarterly). R. Sikoryak rejoins the show to talk about adapting foundational American documents (verbatim!) with a mind-blowing array of comic art parodies, ranging from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers to Jump Start to Check, Please! to Thanos! We talk about how this
Virtual Memories Show 682: Katie Skelly “I was on twitter and saw someone say, ‘The Weeknd makes music for haunted strip clubs,’ and that idea is something my brain kept coming back to.” After a 12-year Virtual Memories gap, Katie Skelly is back to celebrate her fantastic new graphic novel, HEAVEN (Fantagraphics)! But that’s not all: she’s also got the Bad Girl Tarot II (Kickstarter closing July 16, 2026), her horror comics anthology, Viscere, and the Thick Lines podcast! We talk about how she restructured her life and creativity post-lockdown, how she wound up marrying Jaime Hernandez, moving
Virtual Memories Show 681: Colin Asher “The creation of culture is what marks us as human beings, and the fact that everybody has that desire connects us to each other.” With his amazing new book, THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL: The Secret Prison History of American Music (WW Norton), author Colin Asher explores how the criminal justice system changed the course of twentieth century music. We talk about how Elmo Hope’s Sounds from Rikers Island album inspired the book, how he chose the five artists to focus on — Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White, and Tupac Shakur —, the hi
Virtual Memories Show 680: Kate Maruyama and Me BLARDY BLARDY BLARDY During my recent LA weekend, I asked author, pal, and past guest Kate Maruyama if she’d be interested in interviewing me, and for some crazy reason, she said yes! So this time around you get me doing my best not to ask the questions, and just letting it fly, as we talk about the history of the podcast, my dream list of pod-guests, my semi-fake erudition, why we should practice arts we’re no good at, my thoughts on mortality and progeny, the gentle change of years, the legend of the fire defenses of the Beinecke Library at Yal
Virtual Memories Show 679: Heather Cass White “This was the most fun I ever had making a book. I got to sit on the attic floor, going though Harold’s papers and books, and there were a lot of surprises.” “A letter is a joy of Earth — It is denied the Gods —,” sez Emily Dickinson (#1672), and THE MAN WHO READ EVERYTHING: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom (Yale University Press) proves it! Heather Cass White rejoins the show to talk about editing Harold Bloom‘s letters for the book, her history with him and what she learned about him over the course of the project, and how the letters reveale
