Presenting: a conversation with director, game designer, and photographer Liam Wong on his two sublime books of photography, TO:KY:OO and the just-released AFTER DARK.

In which: we discuss the creative spark of side projects turned obsessions; the nature of seeing; inspirations – including MIRROR'S EDGE, COLLATERAL, and HEAT – and the evolving nature of our realtionships to them; zines; taking creative risks; and letting your work be a creative spark for others in need.

***

About Liam

Liam Wong -リアム・ウォン - is a director. game designer and photographer, best known for defining, designing and directing visual identities and was listed as one of forbes magazine’s influential 30 under 30.

Born and raised in Scotland - within two years of graduating, Wong moved to Canada - becoming the youngest director at Ubisoft, the video game company behind Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed. In parallel with his blossoming career in video games, Wong was teaching himself photography.

In December 2015 he purchased his first DSLR (a Canon 5D III) and his debut photo series: 'Tokyo Nights (TO:KY:OO)’ - capturing the beauty of night through moments after midnight - inspired by sci-fi, neon-noir, cyberpunk and Japanese animation - gained over a million views worldwide, accumulating a following online and kickstarting his journey into photography. Wong has since collaborated with many high profile companies, artists, musicians and directors. His work has been recognized by media outlets such as BBC, Forbes, Business Insider, Saatchi and Adobe. Full press list available here.

In 2019 ‘TO:KY:OO’ became the largest crowdfunded book in the UK and has remained a best-selling book since launch. It is available for purchase at: ‘TO:KY:OO’. Includes words by game creator Hideo Kojima and visual futurist Syd Mead.

In 2021, his second book ‘AFTER DARK’ raised $280k in pledges, surpassing the funding outcome of his first book. ‘AFTER DARK’ releases October 2022 and is now available.

***

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

01:21- “I just felt this release of creativity that I hadn’t felt before…” 

06:50 - “I’m at a point in my (photography) where people don’t know that I work in video games…”

12:28 -  “If it’s a rainy night in Seoul and I know it’s going to be empty, there’s nowhere I’m going to be other than this Zaha Hadid building…” 

17:45 - “When I think of rain, I think of music…”

24:12 -  “I think back to the people that inspired me… It felt like the right thing to encourage people…” 

35:54 - “With (AFTER DARK) I wanted to make sure the content was solid and the color grading was secondary…” 

47:00 -  “It gave me that second wind where I didn’t have it before…”

51:45 - What medium or media other than your own would you like to play with?

53:20 - What’s your greatest fear with your work? 

55:10- Conclusion

***

View his work and order his books (and more) via his website, liamwong.com.

Find him around the web via his linktree page

An interview with Liam via UNSEEN, the new games studio founded by Ikumi Nakamura, where he serves as Visual Director.

***

Theme music, INTERSECTIONS, by Uziel Colon; all rights reserved.

Keep up with my latest conversations via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast delivery system. If you enjoy my efforts at being conversant and social, saying so at Apple Podcasts would be most appreciated.

Presenting: a conversation with Maud Newton, writer, critic, and now author of ANCESTOR TROUBLE: A RECKONING AND A RECONCILIATION.

In which: we discuss the ins and the outs of writing ANCESTOR TROUBLE; of “making the line well”; of Aristotle at two in the morning; of freedom from and fealty to form in books and in blogs; of creative evolution; of taking the time to get to the truth; and of freeing oneself from the creative and personal boulders we push up the hills in before us.

***

About Maud:

Maud Newton is a writer, critic, and occasional speaker. Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation (Random House), her first book, has been called “a literary feat” by the New York Times Book Review and a “brilliant mix of personal memoir and cultural observation” by the Boston Globe, praised by Oprah Daily, NPR, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vulture, the Los Angeles Times, Wired, and many others, and named one of Esquire’s best books of 2022. Excerpts from the book have appeared in Esquire, Time, and the Wall Street Journal.

Her essay on “America’s Ancestry Craze,” a seed of the book, was a Harper’s cover story. Both the book and the essay are outgrowths of old weekend ancestry posts on her blog.

Newton was born in Dallas, grew up in Miami, and graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in English and law. Eventually she moved to Brooklyn, and for the past six years she’s lived on Lenape land in Queens. She started blogging in May 2002 with the aim of finding others who were passionate about books, culture, and politics, and to establish an informal place to write about her life and family. Within a few years, her site had been praised, criticized, and quoted in the New York Times Book Review, Forbes, New York Magazine, the Washington Post, the UK Times, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, Poets & Writers Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New Yorker, Book Magazine, the Evening Standard, the Scotsman, Slate, the Denver Post, and Canada’s National Post.

Newton has blogged less frequently in recent years but sends her Ancestor Trouble newsletter every month (or so). You can also follow her on Twitter, Instagram, and Medium. She maintains a Facebook page.

***

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

03:00 - "My guiding principle in all this was to get at truth – in all its complexity."

05:44 - "I wanted to re-create the exact emotional dynamic for the reader... there was a didactic impulse there."

10:04 - "I realized that being stuck in the (memoir) form... is sort of a false way of looking at it..."

15:08 - "We need to do the work... to be able to sit with out feelings, accept those histories, and then talk about it with other people who are resistant...''

21:20 - On ancestor veneration and "making the line well."

31:42 - "My sense is that what we're looking for often is not limited to fact..."

37:35 - "If you're claiming to make the historical records available, they should ALL be available..."

43:40 - "There was a time when I was reading Aristotle at two in the morning... and I remember thinking, 'Am I writing a book or is this actually crazy?'"

51:56 - "That was one of the reasons I was so drawn to the blog form..."

55:46 - "... I don't think that I gave myself the opportunity to approach fiction as an opportunity to truly make things up..."

57:15 - Where to connect / Twitter / Newsletter / Etc

58:03 - Conclusions

***

Linkage

Find all of ANCESTOR TROUBLE’s considerable accolades (and order a copy) via the main ANCESTOR TROUBLE page at maudnewton.com

You can connect with Maud via Twitter, Instagram, and Medium; her ANCESTOR TROUBLE newsletter is an essential read and always a joy to receive.

Maud's latest article, My father’s family kept slaves – and he defended it. Acknowledging it matters, at The Guardian.

And, in the interest of blatant self-promotion (but only because we talked about it), my seven-year-paragraph.

***

Theme music, INTERSECTIONS, by Uziel Colon; all rights reserved.

Keep up with my latest conversations via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast delivery system. If you enjoy my efforts at being conversant and social, saying so at Apple Podcasts would be most appreciated.

Presenting: a conversation with maker of things and writer of film, MJ Slide.

In which: we discuss their now year-old monthly zine, Prismatic Slant, and the juxtapositions, situations, lives, tools, and process behind each issue. Along the way, we manage – speaking of juxtapositions – to work in dirt, homemade jam and saunas, canning, typefaces, the Twitter of yore, Detroit, the freedom of fan fiction, and more.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

01:00 - "I've found it to be... the most cyberpunk city in the United States."

05:43 - "I realized that I needed to find a medium to express the things I was feeling... without nuancing it to death."

11:39 - "I'm not going to write these 3700 word essays and put them on Medium..."

17:53 - "It's just me goofing around... angrily muttering to myself in my bedroom."

23:55 - Tools: InDesign, Lightroom, Grammerly, NY Public Library public domain archive / We Are Legion.

27:49 - "I know what it's like to think everything's going to be ok then get hit with something at the end of the month that you're not expecting – that shouldn't stop you from having things that bring you joy."

33:28 - "We are so interconnected: why do we feel so lonely?"

40:00 - What's a medium you'd most like to play with that you haven't?

42:10 - "I try to limit the places people can get ahold of me... I want to be able to give people the time they deserve."

44:00 - Thanks and jealousy and inspiration and conclusion.

Linkage

If you're interested in joining the Prismatic Slant list, send MJ an email: MJ(at)junkinkfilms(dot)com

The Noun Project, home of very, very cool icons and design inspiration.

//

Theme music, INTERSECTIONS, by Uziel Colon; all rights reserved.

Keep up with my latest conversations via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast delivery system. If you enjoy my efforts at being conversant and social, saying so at Apple Podcasts would be most appreciated.

SPOILERS AHEAD: Throughout this episode, Wallace and I discuss numerous topics, any and all of which should be considered SPOILERS for not only ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, but all of Leone's works as well as for Wallace's third Crissa Stone novel, SHOOT THE WOMAN FIRST. As such, I recommend/request/demand that you bookmark this page and then go watch, read, and devour them before returning here to listen to Wallace and I chat about same. You may consider yourself duly warned and advised.

Presenting: a return conversation with Wallace Stroby about Sergio Leone's masterpiece, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.

In which: we discuss all things surrounding Leone's masterpiece – history, beginnings, endings, duels, landscapes, influences, restraint (and the lack thereof) characters – and Leone himself as well as a broad look at spaghetti westerns (and their successors), the music of Ennio Morricone, the impact of the film on Wallace's writing – as well as his own designs on tackling (or not tackling) the western genre – and more.

About Wallace:

Wallace Stroby is an award-winning journalist and the author of nine novels, four of which feature Crissa Stone, the professional thief labeled “crime fiction’s best bad girl ever.” His new novel, HEAVEN'S A LIE, was called "a pure hit of adrenaline" by author Harlan Coben on NBC's TODAY SHOW. Stroby’s first novel, THE BARBED-WIRE KISS, was a Barry Award finalist for best debut novel. For 13 years, he was an editor at the Newark Star-Ledger, Tony Soprano's hometown paper. A native of Long Branch, N.J., he’s a lifelong resident of the Jersey Shore.

Chapters

0:00: Introduction / SPOILER WARNINGS

01:25: "Roger Ebert said... 'Leone didn't know when to quit.'"

05:00: "No titles... you don't know who these people are... the dialogue that's there is GREAT."

09:45: "The writing on this film is an odd mixture of names..."

11:30: "It's hard to imagine the movie witout her..."

14:10: "The final duel is the final duel..."

16:40: "A lot of times when directors wait a long time to make the movie (ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA) they want to make, it doesn't work out that well..."

23:05: "Leone was not above hammering a point home... once you accept that, it's great..."

27:35: "If you go back and watch A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, you really wouldn't think the guy that made that was capable of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST..."

31:50: "If youre looking for the best spaghetti western films, you run through that list pretty quickly..."

37:50: "The thing about Morricone... "

43:00: Crissa Stone + OUATITW: "At the end of the book, I didn't know how it was going to end... "

47:36: "Again, restraint is not a word you would use too much with Leone."

49:50: "Italy was a very grim place after WWII – and you only have to watch BICYCLE THEIVES to see that."

51:55: "I'm daunted by the amount of research that would have to be done – and that research won't get you everything you need..."

57:10: Outro

Linkage

You can connect with Wallace at his website, wallace stroby.com, and on Twitter, @wallacestroby.

HEAVEN'S A LIE at Mulholland Books.

You can check out our first conversation, about HEAVEN’S A LIE and more, here.

Author photo by Patrick Millikin.

Theme music, INTERSECTIONS, by Uziel Colon; all rights reserved.

Presenting: a conversation with the creator and resident plate-spinning human behind Buttondown, Justin Duke.

In which: we discuss the past, present and future of Buttondown and, along the way, tackle tools v. ecosystems, longevity in the digital age, the art of spinning plates, breathing space, Super Mario Bros., and the reasons that I started my own newsletter.

Justin’s Bio:

Justin Duke is the creator and maintainer of Buttondown, a tool for building and growing newsletters. He spends his waking hours working at the payments company Stripe as an engineering manager; he spends his precious free time spoiling his corgi rotten, watching basketball, mixing cocktails for his fiancee, and playing video games.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction

01:45 - "It's a relationship between a reader and an author..."

04:05 - "I had the worst thought a engineer or developer could have: 'I'll bet I could build a better version of that myself in a weekend...''

07:20 - "Building software can be the equivalent of having a hobby shop in your backyard..."

09:48 - "When you build a Substack, you are building a Substack... it's a bit of a faustian bargain..."

13:30 - "The philosophy I like... is actually from (Super Mario Bros)..."

19:15 - "What made YOU start a newsletter?"

26:27 - "Longevity is so chronically under-discussed when it comes to software..." / a 15-year mystery solved

32:22 - "The web that I fell in love with... was this thing that felt Wild Western in a wildly constructive way..."

37:32 - "I started building Buttondown in a completely different phase of my life – I didn't have all the accoutrements and beautiful burdens that I have today..."

43:30 - "I always end up defaulting to playing my Switch..."

48:58 - Connect / "I love getting emails from strangers..."

49:08 - Outro / Why I started my own newsletter, take two / making porkchops

Linkage

You can connect with Justin via his website, arcana.computer, on Twitter, and via email: me(AT)jmduke(DOT)com; here is his cool dog.

If you are considering starting your own newsletter, Justin's creation, Buttondown has – for what it's worth – my full endorsement.

He also works with aspiring technologists who have been marginalized by conviction via Unloop.

Theme music, "Intersections," by Uziel Colón. All rights reserved.

Keep up with my latest conversations (with others) via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast delivery system; earlier episodes live here.

SPOILERS AHEAD: Throughout this episode, Christina and I discuss numerous topics (some in... descriptive... medical detail), any and all of which should be considered SPOILERS for THE GODFATHER trilogy and Puzo's original novel and, as such, I recommend/request/demand that you bookmark this page, go watch and read one of the – if not the – greatest crime sagas ever made, devour them, and then come back here to listen to Christina and I chat about it. You have been duly warned.

+++

Presenting: a return conversation with author and archivist Christina Rice – writer of history, Hollywood, and horses (the little ones) – on our mutual obsession with THE GODFATHER.

In which: we discuss all things surrounding Coppola's masterwork adaptation of Puzo's original novel, including the start of our obsessions, the overrated, the underrated, the greatest retail sick day of all time ever, James Caan, Carlo's pasta sauces, my crush on Andy Garcia and non-dislike of PART III (probably not related to my crush on Andy Garcia), Grogu shrines, Ferengi underground railroads, Puzo's original novel and all the... descriptive aspects contained therein, the lines that made us break, and more.

CHRISTINA'S BIO:

Christina Rice is a writer, librarian, and archivist. She began collecting memorabilia relating to actress Ann Dvorak in the late 1990s which eventually lead her to document Dvorak's life and launch www.anndvorak.com. While working on ANN DVORAK: HOLLYWOOD’S FORGOTTEN REBEL (University Press of Kentucky), she obtained an MLIS from San Jose State University and now oversees the photo collection at the Los Angeles Public Library. She has also written numerous issues of the MY LITTLE PONY (IDW Publishing). She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, writer Joshua Hale Fialkov, their daughter, and two adorable dogs.

CHAPTERS

NOTE: Everything is a spoiler here. Go watch the movie and read the book first.

00:00 - Introduction & SPOILERS

02:05 - CR: "This was the first time I'd watched it as a parent..."

05:03 - A public service announcement re: Puzo's penchant for medical detail.

08:38 - CR: "There's so many subtle things that they leave in... "

10:12 - THE GODFATHER SAGA and the greatest sick day of all time ever.

12:13 - Our respective introductions to clan Corleone and resultant obsessions + Grogu shrine.

15:08 - TWW: "It's easy to fall for Andy Garcia... / ...George Hamilton still sucks..."

19:00 - CR: "I shouldn't love Santino that much, but... these characters resonate as strongly for me as when I was in my twenties..."

25:52 - TWW: "This may just be me having a pissing match at the screen... I felt he had more to work with in the second half."

28:45 - CR: "I hope people appreciated Duval... every peformance is just so mesmerizing" / TWW: "In order for someone to bring the Corleones to their knees... they have to be real bastards..."

34:53: "He is just so goddamn charming": CR on the brilliance of James Caan.

40:25: LITTLE MISS MOVIES + THE SIMPSONS + "Heck yeah she has to watch PART TWO!"

42:08: CR: "The guy who played Carlo started a line of pasta sauces..."

43:17: CR on her upcoming STAR TREK comic with Andy Price; three words: Ferengi Underground Railroad.

45:18: Conclusion

LINKAGE

You can connect with Christina via christinaricewrites.com and on Twitter, @christinarice – and be sure to check out her treasure troves of Ann Dvorak and Jane Russell material at anndvorak.com and janerussellbiography.com.

Christina and Josh’s LITTLE MISS MOVIES podcast on THE GODFATHER; you can subscribe to their show via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast app.

Feast your eyes upon Andy Price's stellar cover to Christina's upcoming issue of STAR TREK.

Part one of our chat, on her JANE and ANN books and MY LITTLE PONY, lives here.

+++

Theme music, "Intersections," by Uziel Colón. All rights reserved.

Keep up with my conversations (with others) via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast app; earlier episodes live here.

Presenting: a return – devoid of need to reenact via one-man traveling show and possessed of requisite contributions from parrots and dogchildren – to socialization with New York Times best-selling author (as Karen Abbott) of SIN IN THE SECOND CITY, AMERICAN ROSE, LIAR TEMPTRESS SOLDIER SPY, and THE GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK, Abbott Kahler.

In which: we discuss her first (professional) foray into fiction with WHERE YOU END, working titles, the process of forming a blueprint via 200+-page outlines (for the upcoming THEN CAME THE DEVIL) to harness the proliferation of weird across the page, living vicariously through characters you'd better find fascinating for four+ years, milk, cookies, ferociousness, convention-defying, and knowing upon whose blood you're stepping.

ABBOTT'S BIO:

Abbott Kahler is, as Karen Abbott, the New York Time-bestselling author of SIN IN THE SECOND CITY, AMERICAN ROSE, LIAR TEMPTRESS SOLDIER SPY, and THE GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK. She has written for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications, and has appeared on the History Channel, CBS Sunday Morning, AMC's "Making of the Mob," the Travel Channel's "Monumental Mysteries," and the Discovery Channel. Both her next work of narrative non-fiction, THEN CAME THE DEVIL, and her debut novel, WHERE YOU END, will be her first books published as Abbott Kahler.

CHapters

00:00 - Introduction

01:40 - "When I was a kid... I would write fanciful stories about murderous witches and various nefarious characters... "

04:41 - "Am I going to be paralyzed by all this freedom or am I going to be liberated by all this freedom? I think it was a little bit of both."

10:10 - "It's very telling when people have a bit of mystery around them"

12:27 - "I was actually the last journalist to speak with June before she passed away... I'm speaking of her in the present tense because I feel like she's still here."

15:27 - "This is the first time I’m doing something this extensive... when the weirdness comes up, I really want the weirdness to hit...

17:42 - "I did outline the novel because I don't know any better... (but) I like the idea of starting with a character and seeing where she might take me."

19:57 - "I contemplate keeping (Karen Abbott) for nonfiction... I can’t have my nonfiction on two different shelves... the changing of the name was a personal choice that would eventually spill over into my professional life..."

22:50 - "What you choose, how you choose to tell these stories... I think that nonfiction can say just about an author as fiction does."

24:50 - "All the characters I've written about... are women whose lives I wish I had lived."

27:30 - "You need to like to communicate with your characters – whether they're figments of your imagination or whether they're dead people you're trying to bring back to some kind of life on the page – you don't have to like them, but you have to find them interesting."

30:15 - "I fought to have this accepted for seven years...”

33:30 - "The way that we're taught history... is the completely wrong approach: there were people, there was blood, there was sweat, there were tears... History is a soap opera."

35:33 - Where can people connect with you?

36:26 - Conclusion

Linkage

Abbott’s website – and story of the name change.

The weird starts on page one: THEN CAME THE DEVIL prologue.

Though we didn't get a chance to talk about it, Abbott's stunning essay, HOW SARAH GRUEN LOST HER LIFE about her friend, the author Sarah Gruen and Gruen’s all-consuming efforts to free a wrongly-convicted man from prison, is a must read.

You should also peruse Abbott's Wicked History blog for more of her insights into the soap opera that is history.

You can reach her via email, abbottauthor(AT)gmail(DOT)com.

+++

Theme music, INTERSECTIONS, by Uziel Colon; all rights reserved.

You can keep up with my latest socializations via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast app; earlier episodes live here.

(Episode duration) 37'41"

Presenting: a conversation with comics horror maestro Steve Niles (30 DAYS OF NIGHT, CRIMINAL MACABRE, SIMON DARK, FRANKENSTEIN ALIVE ALIVE, and so many more).

In which: we geek out over our shared love of and obsession with the Universal Monsters films and, along the way, discuss writing, comics, Bernie Wrightson, marriage turning points, horror, comedy, the challenge of werewolves, typical workdays, and, most importantly, Gil.

"Steve Niles is a writer, best known for works such as 30 Days of Night, Criminal Macabre, Simon Dark, Mystery Society, Frankenstein Alive Alive, Monster & Madman and Batman: Gotham County Line. He is credited among other contemporary writers as bringing horror comics back to prominence. Steve got his start back in Washington DC through his own Arcane Comix, writing and publishing comics and anthologies since the mid-80's....

... Steve was raised in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, developing his interests in music, writing, and making amateur films. He worked in several comic book stores and played in the bands Gray Matter and Three during the heyday of the Washington harDCore punk scene, both of which released records on Dischord Records label.Steve resides outside of Los Angeles with his wife, Monica, two dogs, four cats and Rico and Gil the tortoise."

• 00:00 Intro

• 01:38: "Gil's doing fine..." + Pet discussion

• 03:57: "This interview has contributed to turning point in my marriage..."

• 06:37: "Claude Rains is so good..."

• 07:38: "My family would get so mad at me because I'd go through the entire thing with a highlighter..."

• 09:11: "Most importantly, that's where I first saw NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD..."

• 10:15: "... so Dracula throws a flower pot at him..."

• 11:49: On Lugosi and DRACULA

• 13:03: "I've always viewed it (CRIMINAL MACABRE) as almost majority comedy..."

• 14:07: "Trying to sell comics, it's pretty tough these days..."

• 15:00: "One of the reasons I was so drawn to the DC punk scene was because it was these kids who did everything themselves..."

• 16:55: "It all started when I met Bernie Wrightson..."

• 20:50: "I have riffed on FRANKENSTEIN so many times... but with Bernie, you can find stuff from the 60s – this is something he worked for his entire life..."

• 22:17: "We became so close that I followed him to Austin..."

• 23:52: On Monster Forge: "We decided to just together and get some stuff made..."

• 25:50: "Do you remember a series I did for DC called SIMON DARK?"

• 26:42: "When I was a little kid, I reached up... I was reading stuff I wasn't supposed to..."

• 28:07: "When she gets bitten and changed, his reaction isn't like Claude Rains and he's going beat his son to death with a cane..."

• 31:13: "... but the rest of the movie is so great..."

• 32:22: "Now everything I write, I focus on one thing at a time, and I write the whole series..."

• 33:41: "... and then I get the hell offline..."

• 34:23: "A lot of hysterical conversation between us would result in stories..."

• 35:19: Outro

• You can connect with Steve at his website, steveniles.net, via Twitter – @steveniles, Instagram – @steve.niles.9, and on Facebook.

• And you can be blown away by the work of Bernie Wrightson here.

Theme music, "Intersections," by Uziel Colón. All rights reserved.

Keep up with my latest socializations via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast app; earlier episodes live here.

Presenting: a (second, fully recorded, and sans garbled mess) conversation with Fran Dominguez – AKA Forest Robots – whose latest album, HORST AND GRABEN, is now available from Elm Records.

In which: we discuss Fran's 29-hour birthday weekend adventure in the wilderness, the perils of final-approach sand, the utility of data to ameleoriate misery, swiss army knees, surprising a couple from the Pacific Northwest as he emerges from the wilds following said 29-hour birthday hike, and, oh, yes, music.

Fran's bio / The Story of Forest Robots:

"The idea for Forest Robots evolved over a period of several years. Its conception began vaguely during my travels to the legendary mountain range of the Sierra Nevada. As I began to compile picture after picture of beautiful mountain landscapes, narratives of my adventures began to attach themselves to each collection. However, it wasn't until my daughter was born that these narratives began to weave into a cohesive story and the opportunity presented itself to use these pictures and stories to teach her about the wonders of nature, the importance of spending time in the outdoors and how vital it is to help in the conservation of public lands. Soon after, the visual narratives also began to inspire music as well and at last the concept of Forest Robots was fully formed. What does it all of this have to do with this site, though? I'm sharing this project with the world in the hopes that others also become inspired to spend time in the outdoors and perhaps even become an advocate for the personal benefits of the outdoors and the importance of preserving our public lands as well."

Chapters:

00:00: Intro & Notes

02:00: "Cool with an 'E'" / Happy belated birthday / Rooftop hammering

03:13: "I believe it was about 29 hours straight... "

08:19: "Having data... makes it less miserable..."

21:01: "I had run out of water..."

23:43: "Now it was all mental; it was a mental game..."

25:20: "There's a sense that everything shifts at night... "

26:44: "I started hiking in earnest again at around 10PM..."

29:05: "I literarlly forget everything going on outside of where I am... I reach this profound sense of mindfulness of the present when I'm there."

31:50: "Pandemics favor the reclusive."

33:13: "And then I had to drive almost four hours home... "

36:18: "I go by this edict... 'There are bold mountaineers and there are old mountaineers, but there are no bold, old mountaineers.''"

37:27: Music Interlude: "This World is Held Together by the Beauty of Humble Places," from HORST & GRABEN, by Forest Robots.

41:15: "We're all part of the same landscape..."

45:12: "We're the most advanced ecosystem on earth but we're the least effective... We wreak havoc on nature."

49:30: "It's my hope... to use them as conversation starters..."

53:03: "There's a sense of nostalgia there..."

58:54: "That's what propels me to make an album in the first place..."

1:02:00: "It's always a process..."

1:03:30: "Where can people connect with you?"

1:06:00: Outro

Linkage:

You can connect with Fran at his website, forestrobots.com, and on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @forestrobots.

Buy, follow, and support Fran's music at Bandcamp.

Sites and things mentioned: Conny Plank: The Potential of Noise documentary ... summitpost.org ...peakbagger.com... Elm Records on Bandcamp… and David George Haskell’s THE SONG OF TREES.

Theme music, "Intersections," by Uziel Colón. All rights reserved.

You can keep up with my latest socializations via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast app; earlier episodes live here.

Presenting: a conversation with UNFLATTENING creator Nick Sousanis on his process, his work, drawing badly well, Bertrand Russell, Batman, and the joys and pains of drawing 500 babies.

In which: we not only codify the truth that comics are essential but discuss the capacity of children to teach us how to be more aware... his progress and process on the follow-up to UNFLATTENING, NOSTOS... the "extended cognition" drawing grants us when we fall into the trap of thinking too much like a writer (raises hand)... getting over one's fear of drawing badly through Grids and Gestures... and the upcoming Adapting Comics for Blind and Low Vision Readers symposium.

Nick's bio:

> Nick Sousanis is an Eisner-winning comics author and an associate professor of Comics Studies, Humanities, & Liberal Studies at San Francisco State University. He received his doctorate in education at Teachers College, Columbia University in 2014, where he wrote and drew his dissertation entirely in comic book form. Titled UNFLATTENING, it argues for the importance of visual thinking in teaching and learning, and was published by Harvard University Press in 2015. Unflattening received the 2016 American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) in Humanities, the Lynd Ward Prize for best Graphic Novel of 2015, and was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Scholarly/Academic work...

> Recent comics include “Against the Flow” and “Upwards” in The Boston Globe, “The Fragile Framework” for Nature in conjunction with the 2015 Paris Climate Accord co-authored with Rich Monastersky, and “A Life in Comics” for Columbia University Magazine – for which he received an Eisner Award for Best Short Story in 2018.

Chapters:

- Intro and technical babystep preamble (00:00)

- "Every page I have to learn new things..." (02:13)

- "I could keep coming back to that word..."(05:00)

- "Batman is my first word..." (13:18)

- "You're dancing between those two modes..." (17:13)

- On Grids and Gestures (24:07)

- "They change how they think by drawing..." (28:34)

- "It's helpful to me because I can see everything... the drawing becomes this sort of extended cognition..." (32:09)

- "So much of the new book is about conversations I had around the first one..."(37:38)

- "My kid learns through moving..." (39:33)

- "You want them to be ... more thoughtful... more aware..."(45:04)

- On the Adapting Comics for Blind & Low Vision Readers Symposium (50:23)

- "The accident of bad drawing can teach you to go places you don't expect..." (58:55)

- Outro (1:05:19)

Linkage:

- You can connect with Nick and explore his work via his website, spinweaveandcut.com, and on Twitter, @nsousanis.

- The Adapting Comics for Blind & Low Vision Symposium takes place from 9AM-4PM PT on Thursday, 12 August 2021. More info here.

Me, in 2018, on UNFLATTENING (which still stands):

> At once a profound work of philosophy and of comics mastery, Nick Sousanis’s UNFLATTENING is an illumination of the seen and the unseen world rooted in the limitless potential of the comics medium, an exciting remix of centuries worth of thought that breaks free of the boundaries of the panel and the page and guides us through the flatlands of our prepackaged assumptions and hardwired, habitual beliefs into new, combinatorial realms of possibility.

> Great works invite – no, demand – revisitation so that their innumerable secrets and layers might be fully explored and discovered. UNFLATTENING is no exception: in this love letter to both a medium and to our capacity for expansive thought, Sousanis has created something truly special: a journey into the furthest reaches of our awareness and understanding that asks us only for the best of ourselves, a journey that begs to be revisted time and again.

> A must-read.

Theme music, "Intersections," by Uziel Colón. All rights reserved.

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