On Margins

• W. David Marx — Website | Newsletter: Culture: An Owner's Manual | Twitter/X
• Blank Space: A Cultural History of the 21st Century — Penguin Random House | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
• Status and Culture (David's previous book) — Hachette Book Group

• Jordan Peterson — Wikipedia
• Boots Riley — Director of Sorry to Bother You, member of The Coup
• David Solomon (DJ D-Sol) — CEO of Goldman Sachs and EDM DJ
  • NME: Goldman Sachs CEO to DJ at Lollapalooza
  • Fox Business: Solomon Gives Up DJ Gigs
• Joseph Kony / Kony 2012 — Wikipedia | Invisible Children Official Page | Slate: What We Learned from Kony 2012 | PBS NewsHour Analysis | Ethan Zuckerman: Unpacking Kony 2012

• The Coup - Party Music album cover controversy — Wikipedia: Party Music | Snopes Fact Check | CNN Coverage (2001)
• 9/11 and cultural shifts — Discussion throughout the transcript about post-9/11 cultural changes
• K-pop and Korean Wave (Hallyu) — Discussion in transcript about Korean cultural strategy
• White Lotus Season 3 — HBO series (benzodiazepines reference)

• "The Long Twentieth Century" — Giovanni Arrighi's book on historical periodization
• Post-practice culture — The 21st century ideology that practice/expertise is unnecessary (central theme of Blank Space)
• The Perpetual Present — The sense that nothing begins or ends in digital culture

Guest: W. David Marx

Book: Blank Space: A Cultural History of the 21st Century

W. David Marx and I discuss his book Blank Space.

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W. David Marx and I talk about his book Ametora, Japanese culture, and books in translation.

Full transcript is available online:

https://craigmod.com/onmargins/s02e03/

Noted:

• Ametora: How Japan Saved American Fashion
• AMETORA(アメトラ) 日本がアメリカンスタイルを救った物語
• Néojaponisme
• @wdavidmarx on Twitter
• A Bathing Ape Takes a Final Bath
• Brift H shoe shine master
• David's recent writing about obscurity in the Internet Age
• Scarcity Makes the Heart Grow Fonder - early nytimes piece on BAPE, David quoted
• American Truck Simulator

Guest: W. David Marx

Book: Ametora: How Japan Saved American Fashion

W. David Marx and I talk about his book Ametora, Japanese culture, and books in translation.

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Sam Anderson is back, 10 months later, discussing his 2020 pandemic writing life. We cover his Weird Al essay, his NBA bubble excursion, how closely observing something makes for a wonderful writing exercise, and! we reveal our extremely obvious One Wild Trick to getting everything done in life.

Show notes:

• Sam Anderson on Twitter
• Boom Town, Sam Anderson
• Descript, visual podcast editing
• "The Weirdly Enduring Appeal of Weird Al Yankovic", Sam Anderson
• "What I Learned Inside the N.B.A. Bubble", Sam Anderson
• The Last Two Northern White Rhinos On Earth, Sam Anderson
• "Watch This Snowball Fight From 1897 for a Jolt of Pure Joy", Sam Anderson
• "I Recommend Eating Chips", Sam Anderson
• Ursula K. Le Guin (Author)
• A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
• Ursula K. Le Guin illustrated by t-shirt
• Audrey Lorde, "Anger is loaded with information and energy."

As always, a full transcript is available at: https://craigmod.com/onmargins/s02e02/

Guest: Sam Anderson

Book: Boomtown

Part two of our interview with award winning New York Times Magazine writer, Sam Anderson.

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Sam Anderson is a New York Times Magazine staff writer and the author of Boom Town, a book about the "great minor city of America" — Oklahoma City. This is part one of a two part interview. We recorded this conversation in March, 2020, just as the first lockdown of the pandemic had gone into effect.

• Sam Anderson on Twitter
• Boom Town, Sam Anderson
• New Sentences
• Annie Dillard (Author)
• The Writing Life, Annie Dillard
• The Abundance, Annie Dillard
• John McPhee (Author)
• "The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami"

Full transcript online at: https://craigmod.com/onmargins/s02e01/

Guest: Sam Anderson

Book: Boomtown

An interview with award winning New York Times Magazine writer, Sam Anderson.

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An extended interview with Jon Gray, aka Gray318, the award winning, London based, book designer. Gray318 has designed covers for William Gibson, Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, David Foster Wallace, Robin Sloan, and perhaps most famously, for Jonathan Safran Foer.

Show links:

• Gray318
• Gray318 Instagram
• Corrie Baldauf's Gravity's Rainbow Project
• Gravity's Rainbow
• Sally Mann documentary
• Jonathan Safran Foer
• Tree of Codes
• The Yellow World
• Zadie Smith
• Karl Lagerfeld
• Rodrigo Corral
• MCD Books
• Infinite Jest
• A Death by Stephen King
• America is Not the Heart
• House of Leaves
• Only Revolutions
• Art Space Tokyo

Full transcript online at: https://craigmod.com/onmargins/010

Guest: Gray318

Book:

An interview with award winning book cover designer, Gray318 (Jon Gray).

Listen to the full episode