The Virtual Memories Show

Walter Kirn joins the show to talk about his latest book, Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade , all about his relationship to fraudster/murderer Clark Rockefeller. And then it gets complicated.

Renowned literary translator Anthea Bell joins the show to talk about getting her start in foreign languages, the schisms in the world of literary translation, the most challenging authors she's worked on, the one language she'd love to learn, and translating everything from Asterix to Zweig!

Playwright and author Yasmina Reza  joins the show to talk about her new book, Happy are the Happy (Other Press). We also discuss the confluence and divergence of love and happiness, her surprise when her play Art was produced in Iran and Afghanistan, the appeal of Sarkozy as a literary character, her love of The Wire , and why she let James Gandolfini transpose The God of Carnage from Paris to Br...

Educator Matt Farber joins the show to talk about his new book, Gamify Your Classroom: A Field Guide to Game-Based Learning (Peter Lang Academic). We talk about edutainment's bad rep, developing good games for students, getting getting buy-in from faculty, administration and -- most importantly -- students, the subjects that benefit most from game-based learning, why Pandemic is the best game he's...

Artist Mimi Gross  joins the show to talk about her art, her life, and the joys of collaboration. How did she carve out an identity separate from "daughter of sculptor Chaim Gross" and "wife of artist Red Grooms"? Listen to the conversation to find out!

Editor, book-blogger and podcaster  Ron Hogan  joins the show to talk about his 20-year history with the literary intenet, launching Beatrice.com , taking the wrong lessons from the work of Harlan Ellison, defending Hudson Hawk , retaining his inner fanboy, discovering romance fiction, overcoming gender/race imbalances in publishing (and podcasting), and generally trying to overthrow the hegemony....

The great cartoonist Jim Woodring joins the show to talk about comics, surrealism, Vedanta, the principle of fluorescence, and why he may be the reincarnation of Herbert E. Crowley! While he was in town for his first solo gallery show , Jim and I met up to talk about his conception of the universe, how his FRANK comics have and haven't evolved in 20+ years, how art can convey the existence of some...

Bon vivant Claudia Young joins The Virtual Memories Show to talk about fine dining, songwriting, the Flora-Bama, getting around Vietnam in a wheelchair, and making the most of the time we have.

Let's kick off 2015 wtih a conversation with Levi Stahl , editor of The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany !

Let's celebrate the 100th episode of The Virtual Memories Show with the most boring guest ever: your host, Gil Roth! (with questions from dozens of past and upcoming guests!)

More than 30 of this year's podcast guests tell us about the favorite books they read in 2014! Guests include Maria Alexander, Ashton Applewhite, David Baerwald, Nina Bunjevac, Roz Chast, Sarah Deming, Michael Dirda, Jules Feiffer, Mark Feltskog, Mary Fleener, Nathan Fox, Josh Alan Friedman, Richard Gehr, Paul Gravett, Sam Gross, Rachel Hadas, Kaz, Daniel Levine, Sara Lippmann, Merrill Markoe, Bre...

From Rahway to Hollywood, by way of Underworld! Kaz  joins the show to talk about his career(s) as a cartoonist, animator and artist. We talk about how he fell in love with the collaborative aspect of animation (and how the Spongebob Squarepants sausage gets made), how the world caught up to the outrageous depravity of his Underworld comic strip, how Art Spiegelman taught him to be an artistic mag...

Artist Wayne White joins the show to talk about how his life and art have changed since he starred in the documentary Beauty is Embarrassing (which, if you haven't seen it, go do so now now NOW !). We talk about the allure and absurdity of hubris, how much of the movie-Wayne maps onto the real version, how LA influenced his word-paintings, how he balances art and commerce, what happens to the gian...

Mucho Cubismo! Mary Fleener  joins the show to talk about her career in cartooning, her love/hate relationship with LA (mostly hate now, but there was a little love in the early days), the Zora Neale Hurston story that made a cartoonist out of her, the tale of how Matt Groening accidentally derailed her career, the roots of her Cubismo drawing style, the joys of simplifying her life, the new book...

The legendary Jules Feiffer joins the show to talk about his new comic noir, Kill My Mother , as well as the preceding 60+ years of his career as a cartoonist, satirist, Obie Award-winning playwright, screenwriter, children's book author, and memoirist.

Maria Alexander joins the Virtual Memories Show to talk about her debut novel, Mr. Wicker , her intern/protege relationships with Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman, and the art of shinkendo swordplay. Also: what happens when Lovecraftian pastiche goes wrong • how she realized that even geniuses have to write drafts • how Mr. Wicker made its way from short story to screenplay to first novel • how she de...

Richard Gehr 's new book, I Only Read It for the Cartoons: The New Yorker's Most Brilliantly Twisted Artists , profiles a dozen of the great cartoonists at The New Yorker . We talk about his lifelong love for the magazine, making a career out of his weird enthusiasms, being in the Boy Scouts with Matt Groening, discovering Bob Mankoff's Database of Humor and the evil experiment of The Caption Cont...

Sam Gross' gag panels warped me at a young age, so it was an honor to get him on mic to talk about his nearly six-decade cartooning career. We sat down in his studio to discuss the serious business of gags, how he went from drawing a Saul Steinberg nose to drawing a Sam Gross one, how he continues in his 80s to come up with a week's worth of new gags for Look Day, how he once got a Vanishing New Y...

Ashton Applewhite  is on a crusade against ageism. She joins the show to discuss the myths and roots of ageism and her talk series, This Chair Rocks . We also discuss her Yo Is This Ageist  site, why she scoffs at the Life Extension crew, how her critique of ageism intertwines with her critique of capitalism, what it’s like to suffer from analexophobia, why we should all consider ourselves old peo...

John Porcellino  has been publishing his King-Cat Comics & Stories mini-comics for 25 years, but I managed not to check them out until last month. BIG mistake on my part! Turns out the critics were right; John P.'s one of the best autobio cartoonists out there, as well as "a master at miniature poignance" (Entertainment Weekly). We sat down at SPX 2014  to talk about publishing his new work, The H...

This podcast often hangs out at the intersection of art and commerce, so I was happy when Dmitry Samarov drove up in a cab with his sketchbook!* Dmitry recently published Where To?: A Hack Memoir (Curbside Splendor Press), his second book of essays and art about his experiences behind the wheel of a taxi in Chicago and Boston. We talk about the job's intersection with his fine arts background, his...

During the middle of the High Holidays, two Jews sit down in Manhattan to talk about antisemitism! Daniel Goldhagen joins the show to talk about his newest book, The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism . We discuss the public expression of antisemitism and why it's permitted in so many regions (and why it's not in America), how it's progressed through medieval, modern...

" Fatherland is really about who my father was, getting to understand him, and also an attempt to explain how politics can tear a family apart, just like they tore apart the people of Yugoslavia in the 1990s." Nina Bunjevac 's new book, Fatherland , explores her family's fractured history against the backdrop of 20th century Yugoslavia. We talk about how she left her country in 1990 only to find t...

Come for the Friedman, stay for the Lippmann! Or vice versa! This week's podcast features two great conversations: first I talk with Drew Friedman  at Small Press Expo '14 about his great new book of portraits, Heroes Of The Comics: Portraits Of The Pioneering Legends Of Comic Books (Fantagraphics), then Sara Lippmann  and I solve the gender imbalance issue in literature, and the MFA vs. NYC issue...

The great Roz Chast talks about cartooning, The New Yorker , Disco the Talking Parakeet, and her fantastic new book, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir .