Episode 684 - Ali Trotta
The Virtual Memories Show
With her debut poetry collection, (Clash Books), 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 resparked her interest and showed her new depths in the cards, and her focus on revising ancient myths to retell the stories of wronged women like Persephone, Medusa, and Dido. We get into how she feels at seeing her work collected and how to look at her development as a poet without cringing at her younger...
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Episode 683 - R Sikoryak
The Virtual Memories Show
Let's celebrate/commemorate America's independence with an amazing new double book, (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 project spun out of his in 2020, why he decided to include the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address alongside the Declaration of Independence, how he gave himself some pretty strict rules about which artists and...
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Episode 682 - Katie Skelly
The Virtual Memories Show
After a 12-year Virtual Memoriesgap, is back to celebrate her fantastic new graphic novel, (Fantagraphics)! But that's not all: she's also got the (Kickstarter closing July 16, 2026), her horror comics anthology, , and the podcast! We talk about how she restructured her life and creativity post-lockdown, how she wound up marrying , moving to LA, abandoning the Mets, and finding a community of cartoonists (spoiler: community is the thread that runs through Katie's art and life), the funny tweet about The Weeknd that inspired HEAVEN, why she designed this new tarot deck to be like a prop for...
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Episode 681 - Colin Asher
The Virtual Memories Show
With his amazing new book, (WW Norton), author explores how the criminal justice system changed the course of twentieth century music. We talk about how Elmo Hope's 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 history of the carceral state, criminality and the popular images of Black and white "outlaw" artists, and how many artists' careers were shaped, derailed, inspired by prisons. We get into the tightrope act of using Johnny Cash as a counterpoint to the racial dynamics...
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Episode 680 - Kate Maruyama and Me
The Virtual Memories Show
During my recent LA weekend, I asked author, pal, and past guest 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 Yale, and a ton of stories. Follow Kate on and , and subscribe to • More...
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Episode 679 - Heather Cass White
The Virtual Memories Show
“A letter is a joy of Earth — It is denied the Gods —,” sez Emily Dickinson (#1672), and (Yale University Press) proves it! rejoins the show to talk about editing '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 revealed a less determined Bloom and how she empathized with the struggles he went through in his career. We get into the people whose correspondence she included — Alvin Feinman, Northrop Frye, AR Ammons, John Hollander, John Ashbery, James Merrill, , and Ursula K Le Guin — and all the...
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Episode 678 - Paul Gravett
The Virtual Memories Show
Happy Pride! Let's get Queer As Comics! Writer, critic, curator, publisher and broadcaster rejoins the show to talk about curating a fabulous new exhibition, , to help launch the ! We talk about what makes comics queer (it's not just an issue of sexuality), the artists and comics he wishes he could have included in the show, the challenges of exhibiting comics as opposed to paintings, and why Queer As Comics' survey of 65 artists covering 80 years of history "starts with the Finnish" (as in and ). We also get into the endlessness of Tove Jansson's life & creativity (and why Paul's...
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Episode 677 - Luis Mendo
The Virtual Memories Show
Welcome to Mundo Mendo! I visited artist and writer in Karuizawa, Japan for a wide-ranging conversation about art, creativity, community and more. We talk about how he left design and embraced drawing and illustration, why he created the platform so fans/members can support his art and stories (and get an annual print edition of his work), the limits of money and the joy of making art, and how artists can escape "working for Mr. Zuckerberg" and stop chasing likes on Instagram. We get into how internal change has to be accompanied by an external change, the challenge of not having a client,...
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Episode 676 - Benoit Denizet-Lewis
The Virtual Memories Show
Can people change? How continuous is identity? With (William Morrow), explores the concepts of personal change and change-in-the-world, the ways we find identities and community, and the peril of changing into our parents (haha). We talk about how we define change and transformation, what happens when we think we've changed but the people in our lives don't notice any difference, how his husband feared that he would change too much in the writing of the book, and how the American narrative of change equals "overcoming one's problems." We get into how he made his own story of change and...
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Episode 675 - Clare Carlisle
The Virtual Memories Show
Philosopher and biographer converses & communes with me over her new book, (NYRB). We talk about her existential moment of being invited to give the on natural theology and how it led her wonder what she could say about the knowledge of God, how writing biographies raised philosophical questions on the nature of a life in its entirety, how flexible the notion of transcendence is (and why it doesn't have to be "rising above" the world so much as "spreading out" into it), how the lecture mode and how it offered her an opportunity for a different writing voice, and how she adapted those...
info_outlineWho were the men who built the Empire State Building? Glenn Kurtz returns to the show to tell their story with MEN AT WORK: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen who Built It (Seven Stories Press). We talk about how he accidentally fell into this project, how "turn every page" led him to a key discovery about Lewis Hine's photos of the Empire State construction, how his experience researching and writing THREE MINUTES IN POLAND helped him with this book, his childhood connection with the Empire State, and how identifying their subjects affects the mythic aura of Hine's photographs. We get into the corporate perspective of the building and how it dehumanizes the workers who built it, and similarly how that heroic collectivist notion of The Worker devalues workers as people, whether craftsmanship and artisanship survived the transition into mass production during the skyscraper era, Hine's authorial fallacy and the genius of his portraits, and what the Empire State says about the immigration-dynamics of the workforce and the role of unions, We also discuss the question of context and how the question, "What are we looking at?" can reveal the world, the resonance of Hine's Icarus/Sky Boy pic, the messiness of history, the joy of Virginia Woolf's diaries, why Glenn just wants to write a novel without it inspiring a nonfiction project, and more. Follow Glenn on Instagram and Facebook • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter