MEMORA8ILIA

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podcast

Here’s a definite addition to your weekend listening plans: in this week’s Spotlight On podcast, host Lawrence Peryer chats with the very amiable and engaging Nick Mason, a founding + still current member of some band that I think will be going places called Pink Floyd. The conversation includes Nick’s thoughts on revisiting Pink Floyd’s earliest catalog, what people might be listening to in another 50 years, and he entertains the vinyl vs. digital debate. This is a special one, so set your podcast app controls for the heart of the sun:

Nick Mason

* It was a joy to edit and do post-production on this episode! If you’d like to talk about how I can help your podcast, reach out here → yourpodcastfriend.com

https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/10/28/nick-mason/

Today I’m recommending the first episode of the Public Books podcast, featuring a conversation with the always illuminating Ta-Nehisi Coates. It’s an instructive listen, even if, like me, you know nothing about the historian Tony Judt, who is the main topic of discussion.

❝ Eyal Press: “Truer today than ever“ as you say in the preface [to the new edition of Ill Fares the Land]. But it’s also a book about how the market has stunted our imaginations and language. And [Tony Judt] says very early on, “why do we experience so much difficulty even imagining a different sort of society? Our disability is discursive. We simply do not know how to talk about these things anymore.”

I wonder if you agree with that, and if you think about the role of language in imagining a better world? We’ve talked a lot about not being naive about that, but just there, he’s getting at something different, I think.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: He really is. Somebody says, “I’m going to make government run like a business,” and because of preexisting ideas in the American imagination, you associate that with something good. Why? Why don’t you think about the bailouts? Why don’t you think about the banks circa 2008, 2007? Like why? That’s because dialogue and the imagination have been constricted. ❞ *

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Tony Judt

https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/05/15/ta-nehisi-coates-on-tony-judt/

How science fiction can shape our reality

❝ You cast a story into the future and you have thereby displayed your theory of history. How does change happen? What do we do now to make a better future? That reveals your worldview, your ideology, your political stance, your theory of history. Science fiction is always just laying that right out on a table as long as you decode the story. And one of the joys of reading science fiction is, of course, you’re always decoding. Like, what is he saying about right now that this story is representing by its future cast? It’s a game that we play that teaches us interesting things for the real world. ❞

https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/04/02/how-science-fiction-can-shape-our-reality/

Longform Podcast #481: Hanif Abdurraqib · Longform

This podcast interview with Hanif Abdurraqib is one of the more inspiring things I’ve heard on the craft of writing — from a writer — in quite a while. Highly recommended.

❝ I learn from hearing my elders tell stories. There’s an inherent knowing of yourself as a vessel for narration who also has to—is required to—hold the attention of others at all costs. And that’s essentially what I’m trying to do. The broader project of my writing is almost a constant pleading of: Don’t leave yet. Stay here with me for just a little bit longer. ❞ *

Related: Hanif’s Lost Notes: 1980 podcast series for KCRW was excellent.

https://memora8ilia.com/index.php/2022/04/01/longform-podcast-481-hanif-abdurraqib-longform/