Episode 687 - Ida Kao
The Virtual Memories Show
"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 . We talk about how how she's trying to preserve the school's spirit by co-curating the , what it was like trying to pursue an education in the face of Hampshire's financial crisis and COVID, the ups and downs of editing during those times, her exploration of The Omen's archives how it led to a nostalgia for the Hampshire before her time, and how she recognized pretty early on...
info_outline
Episode 686 - Halstead York
The Virtual Memories Show
"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! (F88) joins the show to talk about his experience at , 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 competitiveness and the need to be a self-starter, how reflecting on...
info_outline
Episode 685 - Sarah Minor
The Virtual Memories Show
With her amazing new book, (Yale University Press), 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 and how it presages today's phone-panopticon, the COVID-era constraints that sparked the book (and the other constraints she needs for writing), and how she struggled with a conventional literary nonfiction structure for Carousel after years of crafting visual essays, then found...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outlineAfter a 12-year Virtual Memoriesgap, 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 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 a movie you'd want to live in, and why she didn't learn from my example and avoid making her own podcast. We get into how writing Ed Piskor's obituary broke her, and the episode in Ed's life that she takes as a cautionary note, the festival that drew her into the comics world, how she measures herself against her yearly Nabokov read, why she's pretty much done with social media, the flight delay that led to her next comics project, and more! PLUS, Katie reads my tarot as we talk about what it'll take for me to finish my book! Follow Katie on Instagram, and subscribe to her Substack and the Thick Lines podcast (co-hosted by Sally Madden) • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter