The Virtual Memories Show

It's legendary science fiction author Samuel R. Delany's birthday! Chip checks in from Philadelphia, where he's found himself working on a new piece of fiction. We talk about comparisons with his AIDS-era experiences, his partner Dennis's willingness to share him with Rachel Maddow, his recent binge of Tiger King on Netflix and his disappointment in Da Vinci's Demons, his new website, samueldelany.com, the advantages of turning into his grandmother, his virtual birthday plans, and more. • Follow Chip on Facebook and on his new site • More info at our site • Listen to our full-length podcast from 2017 • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Direct download: COVID_Check-In_with_Samuel_R._Delany.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:17pm EDT

Horror fiction editor Ellen Datlow checks in from the West Village of NYC. She talks about the low-grade anxiety of day-to-day life, getting by when USPS services drops to 1-2x/week, turning down an assignment to recommend pandemic-novels for quarantined readers, how her Fantastic Fiction reading series is going virtual, and more. • Follow Ellen on Twitter and sign up for the livestream of her next Fantastic Fiction session • Listen to our full-length podcast from • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Direct download: COVID_Check-In_with_Ellen_Datlow.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:12am EDT

On March 30, Eva Hagberg got the news that she tested positive for COVID-19. We talked that evening about her condition, her previous life-threatening health issues (chronicled in her memoir How To Be Loved) and how they shape her response to this, the impact of self-isolation on sobriety (she's doing fine with that, but worries about others), and more. • Follow Eva on Twitter and Instagram • Listen to our full-length podcast from 2019 • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Direct download: COVID_Check-In_with_Eva_Hagberg.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:09am EDT

On Sunday, March 29, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow (a.k.a. Dan Perkins) checked in to let us know how he's getting by in New York City during the pandemic. We talk about schlocky movies, the current challenge of being political satirist but the benefit of being a science fiction fan, the further collapse of alt-weeklies (and the need to support This Modern World via subscription!), and the last thing he left his apartment for. • More info at our site • Follow Tom Tomorrow on Twitter and Instagram • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Direct download: COVID_Check-In_with_Tom_Tomorrow.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:58pm EDT

A few days ago, cartoonist Peter Kuper returned from Oaxaca, Mexico to the Upper West Side of New York City. He joins the show to talk about why he & his wife made the decision to come back at a time that New York's COVID-19 cases are blowing through the roof. We talk about the communal nature of life in Mexico, whether the situation here matches up with his decades of dystopian visions in World War III Illustrated, the good omen of raising monarch butterflies in his Oaxaca garden, the bad omen of giant scorpions in said garden, his unfortunate choice of reading material just before the pandemic started to spread, and more. (Our most recent podcast was at the end of 2019) • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Direct download: COVID_Check-In_with_Peter_Kuper.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:38pm EDT

Jim Ottaviani, award-winning & best-selling author of graphic novels about scientists (think Hawking, Feynman, Fossey, Turing), checks in from Ann Arbor, MI. We talk about how he's balancing his day job and comics writing with the compulsion to read the news and graph out infection rates. We also get into whether his science background has helped his perspective on the pandemic, how the university model might change when we're past this, and what new books he has coming (fingers crossed). You also get a story from me about the limits of risk mitigation plans. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Direct download: COVID_Check-In_with_Jim_Ottaviani.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:02pm EDT

In our first Covid-Check-In podcast, artist Kate Lacour (Vivisectionary, Fantagraphics) calls in from New Orleans while her kids are asleep. We talk about how she's coping — taking care of her kids & her garden, reading Cixin Liu, making diary comics, helping neighbors — and how she's planning to celebrate her birthday tonight. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Direct download: COVID_Check-In_with_Kate_Lacour.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:37pm EDT

It's the end of the world as we know it, and we feel fine! A few weeks before the COVID-19 lockdowns began, pop culture writer and REM maniac Whitney Matheson joined the show to talk about how she managed to blaze her own journalistic trail by writing about the music, movies, TV and books that she loved. We get into how pop culture writing and blogging have changed since she launched Pop Candy at USA Today in 1999, why she left NYC and why she had to come back, the importance of having great content on her Patreon, what it's like being defined by work in her early 20s, how a post about a KFC sandwich remains her most-read piece, and how she has to do triage to figure out what to keep up with. We also get into her upcoming kid's book about the Loch Ness monster, her most recent celebrity freakout, how she taught interviewing skills to students who are unused to talking on the phone, the importance of having a career plan (and trying to stick to it), and how parenthood introduced her to a different world of pop. Oh, and because she's all about lists, we find out her top three American rock bands (including REM, of course). • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Direct download: Episode_367_-_Whitney_Matheson.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:25pm EDT

The phenomenal new book, Feast of Ashes: The Life and Art of David Ohannessian (SUP/Redwood Press), traces the history of an Armenian family from the mountainous woods of Anatolia to suburban NJ. Author Sato Moughalian joins the show to talk about her inspiration to write the life of her grandfather, ceramic tile artist David Ohannessian, the chronicle her family's exodus through the Armenian Genocide, and how she had to prepare herself to visit Turkey as part of her research. We get into the multi-generational process of coping with trauma, the horrors of the Armenian Genocide and its ongoing denial, how her grandfather wound up helping retile the Dome of the Rock (while bringing Ottoman tile art to Jerusalem), and the way oral storytelling can capture styles that differ from family to family. We also talk through he music background (Sato's an accomplished flutist), the creative community of NYC, her seven-year period of introspection and grief-work, and whether she's considering another book, now that she's got her first volume under her belt. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Direct download: Episode_366_-_Sato_Moughalian.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:34pm EDT

Your host Gil Roth talks about how COVID-19 is impacting his work, his life, and this podcast, in a special bonus episode of The Virtual Memories Show.

Direct download: Covid-19_Bonus_Mini-Episode.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:35pm EDT

The great cartoonist Ben Katchor rejoins the show to talk about his brand-new book, The Dairy Restaurant (Schocken), a 500-page illustrated history of, um, dairy restaurants! We get into what drew him to the milekhdike personality, the remnants of Eastern European Jewish culture that call to him, why this book had to be prose-with-pictures rather than comics, the decades of research and interviews he conducted, and why these restaurants came to represent the history of how Jews moved away from their parents' professions. We also discuss just what went wrong with the world, why his favorite books are old Chicago Yellow Pages directories, why just studying Jewish history can constitute a sort of Judaism, his fascination with interwar Warsaw, his plea for a controlled economy, and why The Dairy Restaurant had to begin in the Garden of Eden. • More info at our site (And check out our past conversations from 2013 and 2016!) • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Direct download: Episode_365_-_Ben_Katchor.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:11pm EDT

Writer, actress and adult performer & producer Stoya joins the show to talk about her upcoming NYC theater appearance in Dean Haspiel's new play, The War of Woo. We get into how she's grown as an actress, why porn is like sketch comedy, her joy in the surprises of live theater, publishing her first book, and the mental benefit of moving the decimal. We discuss her vision for her online erotic magazine, ZeroSpaces, the history of labor exploitation in adult entertainment, running a monthly Sex Lit book club, what she's learned as the sex & relationship advice columnist at Slate, her interest in higher education and the next stage of her career, the learning curve of identifying and interacting with different segments of her audience, the unexpected obstacles to intimacy with people outside the adult industry, and why reading a novel is her favorite escape. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Direct download: Episode_364_-_Stoya.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:11pm EDT

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