Notebook on Cities and Culture
363 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 9 years ago - ★★★★★ - 124 ratings(Formerly The Marketplace of Ideas.) A world-traveling interview show where Colin Marshall sits down for in-depth conversations with cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene about the work they do and the world cities they do it in, from Los Angeles to Osaka to Mexico City to London to Seoul and beyond.
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Episodes
A Year in Seattle Preview: The Young Cynic with Peter Bagge
April 07, 2015 23:42 - 1 hour - 20.6 MBIn downtown Seattle, Colin talks with comic artist Peter Bagge, creator of the legendary alternative comic series Hate, contributing editor and cartoonist at Reason magazine, and author of such graphic novels as Apocalypse Nerd, Other Lives, Reset, and Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story. They discuss whether Seattle is still the place to be for the Buddy Bradleys of the world; the cheap "place to invent yourself" he first found there; the ever-increasing importance of place in his work, ...
Notebook on Culture's year in Seattle Kickstarts now (for five days only)!
April 06, 2015 17:42 - 1 minute - 554 KBThe Kickstarter drive for Notebook on Cities and Culture's sixth season launches now. If we raise its budget, we'll spend an entire year in Seattle: the city of grunge, Microsoft, Amazon, the Space Needle, Buddy Bradley, Archie McPhee, sleeplessness, Starbucks, and much more we'll discover through at least 52 in-depth conversations with its novelists, journalists, comic artists, filmmakers, broadcasters, explorers, academics, architects, planners, cultural creators, internationalists, observ...
Korea Tour: Opting for Korea with Brother Anthony
March 17, 2015 21:14 - 1 hour - 25 MBIn an officetel in Seoul, Colin talks with Brother Anthony of Taizé, one of the most renowned translators of Korean poetry, president of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch, and naturalized citizen of South Korea. They discuss the frequency with which he's heard "Why Korea?" in the 35 years since he first arrived as a member of Taizé; the Korean lack of belief that anybody would actually opt for Korea rather than their own homelands; what fills Korean taxi drivers with strong opinions; Ko...
Korea Tour: The Style of the Time with Matt VanVolkenburg
March 13, 2015 14:40 - 1 hour - 22 MBIn Seoul's Sinchon district, Colin talks with Matt VanVolkenburg, author of Gusts of Popular Feeling, a blog on "Korean society, history, urban space, cyberspace, film, and current events, among other things." They discuss what it feels like to live in Seoul, of all places, without a smartphone; why navigating the city poses so much of a challenge to the newcomer; how he sees the relationship of the Korean media to foreign English teachers, "the new incarnation of the GIs"; what made it poss...
Korea Tour: Concrete Utopia with Minsuk Cho
March 09, 2015 14:29 - 1 hour - 21.6 MBIn Seoul's Itaewon district, Colin talks with architect Minsuk Cho, principal at Mass Studies, designer of the Golden Lion-winning Korean pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2014. They discuss whether he talks about the use of space differently in English than in Korean; how copying, and especially while misinterpreting across cultural boundaries, counts as a way of creating; his earliest memories of Seoul's "building explosion" that grew the city tenfold over fifty years; the diffe...
Korea Tour: It Takes a Lifetime with Michael Elliott
March 04, 2015 15:35 - 1 hour - 25.6 MBIn Seoul's Sinchon district, Colin talks with Michael Elliott, creator of the English-learning site for Koreans English in Korean and the Korean-learning site for English-speakers Korean Champ. They discuss why Koreans insist on the difficulty of their own language; whether and why he considers Korean difficult; what it means that "there are so many different ways to say the same thing" in Korean; the perennial issue of saying "you" in Korean; the "native speaker's privilege" to go a little ...
Korea Tour: Ruled by the Heart with Andrew Salmon
March 01, 2015 19:41 - 1 hour - 23.3 MBIn Seoul's Susong-dong, Colin talks with Andrew Salmon, author of To the Last Round: The Epic British Stand on the Imjin River, Korea 1951; Scorched Earth, Black Snow: Britain and Australia in the Korean War, 1950; and All That Matters: Modern Korea. They discuss how Korean culture has influenced the names of his cats; the dullness of London by comparison to Seoul, especially in drinking term; the provocative positions he has taken, such as finding the Koreans "a little unfair toward the Jap...
Korea Tour: Gangbuk Style with Daniel Tudor
February 25, 2015 17:35 - 1 hour - 23.6 MBIn 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...
Korea Tour: One Long Bike Party with Coby Zeifman
February 22, 2015 19:13 - 1 hour - 21.9 MBIn 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 ...
Korea Tour: ¿Por Qué Corea? with Sofía Ferrero Cárrega
February 18, 2015 18:08 - 1 hour - 22.3 MBAt a coffee house somewhere in Busan, Colin talks with Sofía Ferrero Cárrega, film critic and enthusiast of Korean cinema. They discuss whether she'd recommend other movie-lovers move to Busan; how the Busan International Film Festival attracted her to the city (and the importance of its parties); why, in Busan, "everybody says yes"; the state of Korean film criticism in Spanish; how she first encountered Korean cinema, and how its auteurs got her to know Korea; the bad first impression Kore...
Korea Tour: The Biggest Small Town with Jeff Liebsch
February 15, 2015 20:54 - 1 hour - 22.3 MBNear Busan's Kyungsung University, Colin talks with Jeff Liebsch, managing editor and partner at the magazine Busan Haps. They discuss what makes Korean baseball games more fun than baseball games in the West; the Toronto-Detroit sports divide in his hometown of Windsor; why a disproportionate number of the Westerners in Korea seem to have come from Canada; the difficulty of understanding Busan, and of leaving it; the traces of "country people" Busan's population has retained, even as it has...
Korea Tour: Midnight Riding with Chad Kirton
February 11, 2015 08:16 - 1 hour - 22.3 MBColin sits down at Busan's eFM with broadcaster, teacher, rapper, and television star Chad Kirton, also known as Fusion. They discuss whether the setting gets him into Korean or English mode; how he came up with his show segment "Don't Trust the Dictionary"; what a "bunnyhug" is; how the Korean desire for perfection affects their acquisition of foreign languages; the danger of agreeing in Korean when you have no idea what people are saying; what he seeks out in Busan when he goes on televisi...
Korea Tour: Sexy Concepts with James Turnbull
February 08, 2015 20:20 - 1 hour - 23.2 MBIn Busan's Daeyeon-dong, Colin talks with James Turnbull, author of The Grand Narrative, a blog on Korean feminism, sexuality, and popular culture. They discuss what Westerners find so unappealing about Korean plastic surgery; the associations of the "double eyelids" so often surgically created; why he used to believe that Koreans "want to look white"; the meaning of such mystifying terms as "V-line," "S-line," and "small face"; the uncommon seriousness about the Western-invented concept of ...
Korea Tour: Outsider Status with B.R. Myers
February 05, 2015 15:24 - 1 hour - 20.7 MBAt Busan's Dongseo University, Colin talks with North Korea analyst Brian Reynolds Myers, author of such books as A Reader's Manifesto and The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters. They discuss why South Koreans don't care about the Sword of Damocles that is North Korea; how Korea's capital-centricity looks from relatively far-flung Busan; why Koreans from outside Seoul seem to lack "local patriotism"; why Busan feels, to him, more like an "aggregation of apartm...
Korea Tour: Taking the Stage with Bruce Fulton
February 03, 2015 07:53 - 1 hour - 20.9 MBNear the University of Seoul, Colin talks with Bruce Fulton, Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation in the Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia and, with his wife Ju-chan Fulton, half of an acclaimed Korean literary translation team. They discuss when Korean writers get too good at reflecting their own society; his first experience with Korea in the Peace Corps in 1978; his window past the military culture onto the rest of the culture; what h...
Korea Tour: Telling the Grayness with Krys Lee
January 27, 2015 23:48 - 1 hour - 21.8 MBIn Seoul's Seodaemun-gu, Colin talks with Krys Lee, author of the story collection Drifting House. They discuss the impression of Korean life as a living hell; the way she prefers to mix the light and the dark; the "obsession with violence" that led her to write about a woman who longs to be beaten; "Koreanness" as Drifting House's accidental unifier; what brought her to identify with "the outsider"; her suspicions of "socialization in general"; why she thinks about what it would be like if ...
Korea Tour: Cool Koreania with Barry Welsh
January 23, 2015 18:16 - 1 hour - 22.3 MBIn Seoul's Yangjae station, Colin talks with Barry Welsh, host of the Seoul Book & Culture Club and Seoul Film Society as well as professor at Sookmyung Women’s University. They discuss what Koreans know about the Isle of Man, the last place he lived; how he founded his now well-known book club; his literary encounters with the concept of han; how Kim Young-ha's I Have the Right to Destroy Myself introduced him to the real Seoul; how little time people have to waste in Korea versus how much ...
Korea Tour: Eating It All Together with Daniel Gray
January 20, 2015 17:22 - 1 hour - 21 MBRight across the street from Seoul's Insadong district, Colin talks with Daniel Gray, creator of the site Seoul Eats, proprietor of craft beer restaurants Brew 3.14π and Brew 3.15π, and for four years a partner at O'ngo Food Communications. They discuss his weariness of the term "Seoul food"; what part of Korean culture happens around the table; what goes into "Daniel Gray's Ultimate Food Tour"; the pre-existing perceptions food tourists bring about Korean cuisine; the two senses in which Ko...
Korea Tour: Korean Dreams with Alex Jensen
January 17, 2015 16:20 - 1 hour - 22.7 MBIn Seoul's Itaewon district, Colin talks with Alex Jensen, host of weekday news show This Morning on TBS eFM. They discuss whether he envisions who he's talking to when he's talking on-air; what first strikes him about the Tube whenever he goes back to London; when he very first took to the airwaves; how much he knew about the existence of English broadcasting in Korean when he headed there in pursuit of the probable love of his life; how he developed his professional broadcasting life in Ko...
Korea Tour: Cowboys and Yangban with Charles Montgomery
January 14, 2015 07:33 - 1 hour - 22 MBIn 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 arou...
Korea Tour: Dive Right In with Steve Miller
January 11, 2015 17:51 - 1 hour - 22.3 MBIn Anyang, Colin talks with Steve Miller, creator of the Asia News Weekly podcast, and the vlogger formerly known as QiRanger. They discuss whether he notices what goes on on around him has he records himself on video on the streets of various countries; the suburbs of Seoul versus the suburbs of Phoenix; the possible pronunciations of "QiRanger"; why he lives in Asia, and in this moment Korea; whether he researched Korea beforehand or just plunged in; when and why he made his first video ev...
Korea Tour: Humans of Seoul with Keith Kim
January 06, 2015 18:46 - 1 hour - 21.5 MBIn Seoul's Hongdae district, Colin talks with Keith Kim, creator of the travel and culture site Seoulistic. They discuss how Birkenstocks became the dominant Korean trend in the summer of 2014; what a gyopo is, and what it means to live in Korea as one; his ability to present himself as both a Korean and a foreigner; the Korean expectations to which he can least adhere; how little the old and the young understand one another in Korea; how the tattoo and smoking situation has changed in socie...
Korea Tour: Doing Korea with Chance Dorland
January 03, 2015 16:15 - 1 hour - 25.6 MBIn Seoul's Hongdae district, Colin talks with Chance Dorland, radio- and podcast-hosting expat in countries like Germany, Colombia, and now South Korea, currently of Groove magazine's Groovecast, TBS eFM's "Chance Encounters" segment, and Chance and Dan Do Korea. They discuss the one thing that unites Americans; the origins of his Korean podcasting career; whether people knew what the Peace Corps was after he got out of the Peace Corps; why he rejected both Los Angeles and New York; how he m...
Korea Tour: Why Is This Here? with Nikola Medimorec
December 31, 2014 18:33 - 1 hour - 20.6 MBOn the Seoul Floating Islands, Colin talks with Nikola Medimorec, co-author of Kojects, an English-language blog on transport, urban planning, and development projects around Korea. They discuss the first Korean city he ever experienced, and what introduction it gave him to both the country's festival culture and its development culture; what makes the transit different in Asia than in elsewhere; the installation he witnessed of glass panels on the subway platforms, and how that not just pre...
Korea Tour: Forbidden Places with Jon Dunbar
December 28, 2014 18:43 - 1 hour - 21.1 MBAt a bar by the train tracks near Yongsan, Colin talks with Jon Dunbar, urban explorer, editor of long-running Korean punk zine Broke in Korea, and author of Daehanmindecline. They discuss the difference between a Korean abandoned place and a Canadian abandoned place; how Seoul got re-inhabited after the war; the development of poor "moon villages" on the hillsides; how he defines "urban exploring," and why he dislikes that name; the urban renewal process that causes the abandonment of neigh...
Korea Tour: Shapeshifter with Stephane Mot
December 24, 2014 21:34 - 58 minutes - 20.1 MBIn Seoul's Sinchon district, Colin talks with Stephane Mot, "conceptor," writer of fiction, nonfiction, "nonsense," and author of the blog Seoul Village as well as the collection Dragedies. They discuss Paris as a "recurring hero" of literature and Seoul as a "shapeshifter" glimpsed from different angles in different stories; how he got involved in the early days of internet gaming, surviving three startups in three years; the French embassy job that brought him to Seoul in 1991; why he pref...
Korea Tour: The Jokes Come Last with Darcy Paquet
December 21, 2014 17:29 - 1 hour - 23.3 MBIn Seoul's Garosu-gil, Colin talks with Darcy Paquet, critic of Korean film, founder of koreanfilm.org and the Wildflower Film Awards, author of New Korean Cinema: Breaking the Waves, teacher, and occasional actor. They discuss why movies have a hard time capturing Seoul; the unusual way the Park brothers' Bitter, Sweet, Seoul captures the city; how Cold Eyes relocated a Hong Kong story into Seoul; how, after arriving in Korea in 1997, he got to know the city in step with getting to know the...
Korea Tour: Stickers, Starcraft, Success with Danny Crichton
December 18, 2014 05:00 - 1 hour - 23 MBIn Seoul's Sinchon district, Colin talks with Danny Crichton, researcher and writer on regional innovation hubs and a contributing writer for TechCrunch. They discuss the hardest thing about being a Korean entrepreneur; what the concentration of Seoul has facilitated about Korean innovation; how he got from an interest in China "because it's China" to a more fully developed interest in Korea; what happened to Sony, and thus Japan; how he responds to the current Korean of question, "Is this r...
Korea Tour: Wormholing with Charlie Usher
December 15, 2014 21:00 - 59 minutes - 20.5 MBNot far from Seoul's Anam station, Colin talks to Charlie Usher, author of the blog Seoul Sub→urban and the book 찰리와 리즈의 서울 지하철 여행기 (Charlie and Liz's Seoul Subway Travelogue). They discuss the first subway stations his life in Korea revolved around; the identity of Liz, the photographer in Charlie and Liz; what makes the Seoul subway system the best framework in which to get to know the city; the impressive integration of the subway with the city itself, meaning that city life doesn't stop ...
Korea Tour: Literary Aejeong with Gregory Limpens
December 12, 2014 16:49 - 1 hour - 21.7 MBAbove Seoul's Itaewon district, Colin talks with Open Books acquiring editor Gregory Limpens. They discuss what kind of foreign literature Koreans like to read, and their loyalty to authors they've already enjoyed; how the mission of Open Books fits into shaping that taste; how he got from growing up in Belgium to bringing foreign literature in Korea (and practicing trademark law somewhere in the middle); what about his first, traveling impressions of Seoul stoked his desire to live there; h...
Korea Tour: Itaewon Freedom with Stephen Revere
December 09, 2014 16:12 - 58 minutes - 19.9 MBIn Seoul's Itaewon District, Colin talks with Stephen Revere, CEO of 10 Media (producer of Chip's Maps), co-founder and managing editor of 10 Magazine, author of two Survival Korean books, and for three years the teacher on Arirang television's Let's Speak Korean. The Seoul in which he arrived, and which amazed him, in 1995; how quickly he decided to master the Korean language, and the dearth of tools he had back in those days, such as the Korean Through English books; where the Defense Lang...
Korea Tour: Watch the Man, Not the Light with Michael Breen
December 06, 2014 15:47 - 1 hour - 29.5 MBIn Seoul's Insadong district, Colin talks with Michael Breen, author of The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies as well as other books on Kim Jong-il and Sun Myung Moon as well as founder and CEO of Insight Communications Consultants. They discuss what you can infer about Korean society from the way Koreans drive versus now versus when he first wrote wrote The Koreans; the difference in the role of the law where it has traditionally oppressed people, as in Korea, a...
Korea Tour: Plenty to Offer with Adrien Lee
December 03, 2014 08:49 - 1 hour - 21.4 MBIn Seoul's Arirang building, Colin talks with Adrien Lee, host of Arirang TV's Showbiz Korea and Arirang radio's Catch the Wave. They discuss how he first reacted to the sight of all the branches of Paris Baguette, Tout les Jours, and Ciel de France in Seoul; how he got from industrial engineering studies in France to television and radio in Korea (and why he isn't looking back); what Korean culture he could get exposure to growing up in France; how few complications his background introduce...
Korea Tour: Men, Women, and Society Behaving Badly with Marc Raymond
November 30, 2014 10:35 - 1 hour - 21.5 MBOn a rainy day in Seoul's Garosu-gil, Colin talks with Marc Raymond, film scholar, teacher at Kangwoon University, and author of Hollywood's New Yorker: The Making of Martin Scorsese. They discuss how much you can learn about Korean life from Hong Sangsoo movies; what Hong has in common with Martin Scorsese; how the two directors relate differently to their "outsider" status; the international code Hong seems to have cracked, and why the rest of Korea covets that; Hong's probable place in th...
Korea Tour: Out of Excuses with Mipa Lee
November 27, 2014 06:30 - 1 hour - 21.6 MBIn Seoul's Gangnam district, Colin speaks with Mipa Lee, proprietor of Itaewon's vegan cafe and bake shop and café PLANT and author of the blog Alien's Day Out. They discuss the unlikely country in which she became vegan; her journey from Korea to England to Africa to the United States and back to Korea again; her constant expectation of a move that had kept her from putting down roots or buying furniture; how her parents became early international Koreans; how her boarding school gave her b...
Korea Tour: De-Terriblization with Mark Russell
November 23, 2014 01:20 - 1 hour - 21.2 MBIn Seoul's Hongdae district, Colin talks with Mark Russell, author of the books Pop Goes Korea, K-Pop Now!, and the coming novel Young-hee and the Pullocho. They discuss what unites Korean pop culture other than having made by Korean people; the tendency toward mixture that characterizes so much of the country culture; his early experience with Korean culture practicing tae kwon do in high school; where the "if this doesn't work, I can go teach English in Korea" took him, how he envisioned t...
Korea Tour: Assume the Impossibility with Laurence Pritchard
November 19, 2014 02:17 - 1 hour - 25.7 MBIn Seoul's Gangnam district, Colin talks with Laurence Pritchard, writer, teacher, and enthusiast of Korean literature. They discuss the Korean phenomenon of the "English gentleman" and the presence of English culture in the country; the idea that westerners "are all incredibly promiscous"; the expectations of an Englishman; the constant hurry of Seoul; his experience in France versus the Korean France of the imagination; the importance of swirling with the biggest wine glass you can get; th...
Korea Tour: Sonic Bibimbap with Bernie Cho
November 16, 2014 02:36 - 1 hour - 20.8 MBIn 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...
Korea Tour: Everything I Learned Was Wrong with Hyunwoo Sun
November 11, 2014 20:18 - 1 hour - 21.2 MBIn Seoul's Mapo-gu, Colin talks with Hyunwoo Sun, founder of the Korean language-learning site Talk to Me in Korean. They discuss whether a space alien with no knowledge of any human language should first study English or Korean; how he got into teaching his native language; how the strangeness of seeing foreigners speaking Korean has disappeared for him; the state of Korean English education, and how he managed not to get permanently put off language study by it despite the fact that "every...
S4E67: Extremely Permanent with Doug Pray
November 07, 2014 18:46 - 1 hour - 21.1 MBBeneath 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 sin...
S4E66: Who Am I? with Craig Davidson
November 05, 2014 01:21 - 1 hour - 21.3 MBIn 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 ...
S4E65: Unerotic City with Mark Kingwell
November 01, 2014 16:26 - 1 hour - 21.9 MBAt 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...
S4E64: The Greatest Point of Relevance with Alex Bozikovic
October 29, 2014 16:39 - 1 hour - 21.5 MBIn 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 neve...
S4E63: Mementos Mori with Keith McNally
October 26, 2014 17:53 - 1 hour - 23.4 MBOut 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 th...
S4E62: Nothing to Declare with Amy Lavender Harris
October 23, 2014 14:41 - 1 hour - 21.5 MBIn 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 ...
S4E61: Publishing Crushing with Alana Wilcox
October 20, 2014 20:02 - 58 minutes - 20 MBNear 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 or...
S4E60: Having the City for Dinner with Corey Mintz
October 17, 2014 15:40 - 59 minutes - 20.5 MBIn 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 ...
S4E59: Walk, Don't Brunch with Shawn Micallef
October 14, 2014 15:43 - 1 hour - 23.8 MBIn 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 thr...
S4E58: Things Truly Torontonian with Denise Balkissoon
October 11, 2014 19:01 - 32 minutes - 11.2 MBAt 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 comm...
S4E57: The Magnet with Russell Smith
October 08, 2014 19:14 - 1 hour - 21.9 MBIn 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 incongr...