The Virtual Memories Show

With his new book, LIKE SWIMMERS (New York Review Comics), Dash Shaw brings us a supernatural murder mystery set in COVID-era Richmond, VA. We talk about how he uses that story to explore memory, identity, art, marriage, and the social breakdown in America, how a murder mystery helped him reflect on the losses of COVID, LIKE SWIMMERS' pamphlet comic-feel and how that pay tribute to a lost friend who liked very different comics than what Dash usually makes, and how writing this story in the middle of COVID helped him capture details he'd never have recalled after the fact. We get into how we uncover different versions or aspects of the people we've lost, why he eschews three-act structures to find new shapes of storytelling, his use of Richmond as a character (and the very bizarre Kroeger that he couldn't fit into the book), and what it was like to go jogging in 2020 when there were snipers on rooftops. We also talk about his peripatetic project management style, what he thinks about Roy Lichtenstein's art and what it means to love cliches, getting inspiration from an unfinished Winsor McCay cartoon, working with New York Review Comics for several books, how coloring his comics is almost as tough as writing them, and more. Follow Dash on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Five-Timer Club Alert! Essayist Phillip Lopate rejoins the show as we celebrate his wonderful new book, A WASHINGTON IRVING SKETCH BOOK (Princeton)! We talk about the origins of the biography, incl. how he wound up with a 12-volume set of Washington Irving's complete works, his choice to write the bio in the form of sketches, how Irving as America's first professional writer is a precursor/trailblazer for Phillip's career, and how well Irving understood the fickleness of literary fame. We get into 19th Century American lit and its tensions with Europe, Irving's fixation on Spain, why he wrote under pseudonyms even late in his career, and how Phillip's affection for Irving deepened over the course of the book, We also discuss why personal essayists tend not to write autobiographies and how Phillip's complicated relationship with his brother, Leonard Lopate, how Leonards's death spurred him to write a memoir, his passion for visiting writers' homes (including Irving's Sunnyside and Montaigne's tower), his career-long goal of passing along the writing that's worth keeping (whether through teaching, editing essay anthologies, or appearing multiple times on some guy's podcast), our shared exhilaration over the Knicks' championship (and how we can't get excited about baseball this season), and a lot more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

"There are ways to downsize a college, but with Hampshire it felt more like a hollowing-out." Our latest installment of The Hampshire Tapes features a conversation with Ida Kao (F18) about having a ringside seat for Hampshire College's decline. We talk about how how she's trying to preserve the school's spirit by co-curating the Post-Hampshire project, what it was like trying to pursue an education in the face of Hampshire's financial crisis and COVID, the ups and downs of editing The Omen during those times, her exploration of The Omen's archives how it led to a nostalgia for the Hampshire before her time, and how she recognized pretty early on that some of Hampshire's troubles weren't fixable (at least not by sit-ins). We also get into Hampshire's stabs at student government (see her Div III), the institutions that came and went before her arrival (more Div III)and what that said about ahistoricism on campus, whether she felt short-changed by her time there, and more. Follow Ida on Bluesky and learn more about the Post-Hampshire project • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

"The core Hampshire experience was figuring out how to do things for myself and figuring out how to excite other people about what I wanted to do." It's time for the first installment of The Hampshire Tapes! Halstead York (F88) joins the show to talk about his experience at Hampshire College, how the spirit of the school and its grand experiment of student-driven education has stuck with him all these years, how the school's structure taught him how to pitch projects, how the cover of an unstructured "hippie-trippy" college (my words) masked intense competitiveness and the need to be a self-starter, how reflecting on his time there has helped him maintain his techno-utopianism, and plenty more. Follow Halstead on Letterboxd, Bluesky and Instagram, and subscribe to The Inflection Cut podcast • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

With her amazing new book, CAROUSEL: An Essay On Seeing (Yale University Press), Sarah Minor offers a multi-threaded exploration — lecture, memoir, and art criticism — of how we see and are seen, how our language changes with our vantage points, how all these screens are changing human consciousness (and physiology). We talk about the history of the panorama painting and how it presages today's phone-panopticon, the COVID-era constraints that sparked the book (and the other constraints she needs for writing), and how she struggled with a conventional literary nonfiction structure for Carousel after years of crafting visual essays, then found its shape and voice after a live reading. We get into the comfort of white space, the humor of the Bayeux Tapestry (not a tapestry), the benefits of having a mother who was a late-breaking medievalist, and what happened when a student heard her read from Carousel and asked, "How do you balance historical context with reader fatigue?" We talk about how (some) students prefer lectures over discussion and how she almost made it through college without reading a contemporary writer, her shadow-performance collaboration and why it's important to have artistic offshoots, and more. Follow Sarah on Bluesky and Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

With her debut poetry collection, OFFERINGS FOR ORDINARY GODS (Clash Books), Ali Trotta brings myth, magick, tarot, and ritual to bear on the eternal & primal struggle of women. We talk about those roots and how tarot and ancient myth inspired her work, where tarot began for her — '90s, The Craft — and how past guest Katelan Foisy resparked her interest and showed her new depths in the cards, and her focus on revising ancient myths to retell the stories of wronged women like Persephone, Medusa, and Dido. We get into how she feels at seeing her work collected and how to look at her development as a poet without cringing at her younger selves, how everything is fair game and poetry can serve as exorcism, and how confession can be deeply coded in a poem. We also discuss the teacher who gave her the tools to read poetry deeply, her Very Online-ness and how she's built relationships and writer communities online (and how it's good to be part of the Group-Chat), her online #tinypoem flurries and how rockstar she felt when someone got a tattoo of one on their arm, the project(s) she'd love to write, and more. PLUS: She reads a few of her poems and gives me my second tarot reading of the summer! Follow Ali on Bluesky, Instagram and Tumblr, and subscribe to her newsletter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Let's celebrate/commemorate America's independence with an amazing new double book, DECLARATION ILLUSTRATED / EMANCIPATION ILLUSTRATED (Drawn & Quarterly). R. Sikoryak rejoins the show to talk about adapting foundational American documents (verbatim!) with a mind-blowing array of comic art parodies, ranging from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers to Jump Start to Check, Please! to Thanos! We talk about how this project spun out of his CONSTITUTION ILLUSTRATED in 2020, why he decided to include the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address alongside the Declaration of Independence, how he gave himself some pretty strict rules about which artists and characters he could and couldn't use, including not re-using artists he used in his Constitution (which meant employing 200 different artists' styles over the course of these books), and his goal of trying to bring the whole history of American comics into these books. We get into what it's all taught him about America, the ways these documents show how America changed, why he doesn't take offense at being a called a rip-off artist, and why he conceives of these books like a quilt. We also discuss whether he's more sensitive about parodying art by living artists or dead ones, why he wants to get back to comics-parody adaptations of classic books and plays, the ways that access to comprehensive digital comics archives is both good and bad for his work, the artists he wishes could have included in these books, why he brought in many African-American artists and characters in the Emancipation portion of the book, but still found room for Barney Google & Snuffy Smith, the page that almost broke him (okay, it was his Emil Ferris parody), his series of 8-page comics stories for Tom Hanks' first novel (!), and a lot more. Follow Bob on Instagram and Bluesky • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

After a 12-year Virtual Memoriesgap, Katie Skelly is back to celebrate her fantastic new graphic novel, HEAVEN (Fantagraphics)! But that's not all: she's also got the Bad Girl Tarot II (Kickstarter closing July 16, 2026), her horror comics anthology, Viscere, and the Thick Lines podcast! We talk about how she restructured her life and creativity post-lockdown, how she wound up marrying Jaime Hernandez, moving to LA, abandoning the Mets, and finding a community of cartoonists (spoiler: community is the thread that runs through Katie's art and life), the funny tweet about The Weeknd that inspired HEAVEN, why she designed this new tarot deck to be like a prop for a movie you'd want to live in, and why she didn't learn from my example and avoid making her own podcast. We get into how writing Ed Piskor's obituary broke her, and the episode in Ed's life that she takes as a cautionary note, the festival that drew her into the comics world, how she measures herself against her yearly Nabokov read, why she's pretty much done with social media, the flight delay that led to her next comics project, and more! PLUS, Katie reads my tarot as we talk about what it'll take for me to finish my book! Follow Katie on Instagram, and subscribe to her Substack and the Thick Lines podcast (co-hosted by Sally Madden) • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

With his amazing new book, THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL: The Secret Prison History of American Music (WW Norton), author Colin Asher explores how the criminal justice system changed the course of twentieth century music. We talk about how Elmo Hope's Sounds from Rikers Island album inspired the book, how he chose the five artists to focus on — Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White, and Tupac Shakur —, the history of the carceral state, criminality and the popular images of Black and white "outlaw" artists, and how many artists' careers were shaped, derailed, inspired by prisons. We get into the tightrope act of using Johnny Cash as a counterpoint to the racial dynamics of the book (as well as the work Cash did for prison reform), why he had to close the book with the story of Tupac and his mother, Afeni Shakur, and how hip-hop developed in response to America's mass incarceration movement, how the philosophy of incarceration shifted from rehabilitation to punishment, Musicambia's work to bring music education into prisons, and what it means to pursue the arts for personal growth, even when you're on death row. We also discuss how some arts writing can suck the joy out of the arts, why he prefers discussing art in relation to society rather than in relation to other works of art, why he made playlists for The Midnight Special, how playing vinyl records makes music a choice instead of wallpaper, the "burn the world down and replace it with an utopia" phase of his youth, the secret origins of his writing career, his dream projects (incl. the novel he's noodling on), and more. Follow Colin on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

During my recent LA weekend, I asked author, pal, and past guest Kate Maruyama if she'd be interested in interviewing me, and for some crazy reason, she said yes! So this time around you get me doing my best not to ask the questions, and just letting it fly, as we talk about the history of the podcast, my dream list of pod-guests, my semi-fake erudition, why we should practice arts we're no good at, my thoughts on mortality and progeny, the gentle change of years, the legend of the fire defenses of the Beinecke Library at Yale, and a ton of stories. Follow Kate on Bluesky and Instagram, and subscribe to her newsletter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

"A letter is a joy of Earth — It is denied the Gods —," sez Emily Dickinson (#1672), and THE MAN WHO READ EVERYTHING: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom (Yale University Press) proves it! Heather Cass White rejoins the show to talk about editing Harold Bloom's letters for the book, her history with him and what she learned about him over the course of the project, and how the letters revealed a less determined Bloom and how she empathized with the struggles he went through in his career. We get into the people whose correspondence she included — Alvin Feinman, Northrop Frye, AR Ammons, John Hollander, John Ashbery, James Merrill, Henri Cole, and Ursula K Le Guin — and all the writers and critics she wishes she could have included, the books and projects Bloom proposed but never completed (or started) over the years, the fun she had writing the footnotes, the one person Bloom was intimidated to meet, Bloom's role in the Canon Wars 30-40 years ago (and my practice of checking off books from The List at the end of The Western Canon), where he fell on Ashbery vs. Ammons, and whether marriage is the true subject of literature. We also discuss how her next book on the correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore is the opposite of this one, her go-to books to teach American fiction, why she dropped out of Knausgaard before the finish line, how students have & haven't changed over a quarter century of teaching, her late arrival to Surfjan Stevens' music, how I solved her long-standing question about a moment from Bloom's memorial, and a lot more. Follow Heather on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Happy Pride! Let's get Queer As Comics! Writer, critic, curator, publisher and broadcaster Paul Gravett rejoins the show to talk about curating a fabulous new exhibition, Queer As Comics, to help launch the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration! We talk about what makes comics queer (it's not just an issue of sexuality), the artists and comics he wishes he could have included in the show, the challenges of exhibiting comics as opposed to paintings, and why Queer As Comics' survey of 65 artists covering 80 years of history "starts with the Finnish" (as in Tom of Finland and Tove Jansson). We also get into the endlessness of Tove Jansson's life & creativity (and why Paul's committed to writing a big book about her anyway), his first exposure to queer comics (and again, why all comics are queer), how it feels to see the Quentin Blake Centre come to life and to see Quentin still making art in his 90s, and more. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Welcome to Mundo Mendo! I visited artist and writer Luis Mendo in Karuizawa, Japan for a wide-ranging conversation about art, creativity, community and more. We talk about how he left design and embraced drawing and illustration, why he created the Mundo Mendo platform so fans/members can support his art and stories (and get an annual print edition of his work), the limits of money and the joy of making art, and how artists can escape "working for Mr. Zuckerberg" and stop chasing likes on Instagram. We get into how internal change has to be accompanied by an external change, the challenge of not having a client, his critique of AI "art", and the tension between world of numbers & metrics and the world of serendipity. We also discuss the creative residency he & his wife ran, Almost Perfect, his love of old movies, how the creative life can be a chain of projects, what brought him to Japan and what keeps him there (even if he feels like a foreigner wherever he is), his newsletter that highlights other illustrators and artists, why I should be a male model in Japan, and a lot more. (Plus, after the conversation I share a story about my Japan business trip and some Kafkaesque flop-sweat moments.) Follow Luis on Instagram and Bluesky, and support MUNDO MENDO and subscribe to The Illustrated • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Can people change? How continuous is identity? With YOU'VE CHANGED: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation (William Morrow), Benoit Denizet-Lewis explores the concepts of personal change and change-in-the-world, the ways we find identities and community, and the peril of changing into our parents (haha). We talk about how we define change and transformation, what happens when we think we've changed but the people in our lives don't notice any difference, how his husband feared that he would change too much in the writing of the book, and how the American narrative of change equals "overcoming one's problems." We get into how he made his own story of change and addiction part of the book (while guarding his privacy), whether change involves finding a core self or something new, whether redemption is possible for people who committed heinous crimes, what happened the time he got scientifically tested about his sexual preferences, and the chapter he wishes he could've included in the book. We also discuss who he's reading, whether the therapy that works for him now would have helped when he was younger, how one can prioritize one's own happiness while the world is (let's say) ending, his hallucinations in Esalen, and a lot more. Follow Benoit on Instagram and Bluesky • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Philosopher and biographer Clare Carlisle converses & communes with me over her new book, TRANSCENDENCE FOR BEGINNERS: LIFE WRITING AND PHILOSOPHY (NYRB). We talk about her existential moment of being invited to give the Gifford Lectures on natural theology and how it led her wonder what she could say about the knowledge of God, how writing biographies raised philosophical questions on the nature of a life in its entirety, how flexible the notion of transcendence is (and why it doesn't have to be "rising above" the world so much as "spreading out" into it), how the lecture mode and how it offered her an opportunity for a different writing voice, and how she adapted those pieces into this book. We get into the possibility of communion and transmission, the tension between biography and philosophy, the harmfulness of the notion of attainment and what that implies of the seeking of wisdom, and what happens if you're like Kierkegaard and you hear The Call but don't know what it's calling you to do. We also discuss her philosophical love affair with Spinoza and his philosophy of interconnectedness, the bridge she discovered between Spinoza and Indian traditions, the influence of past guest Celia Paul on the lectures, and more. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Essayist Sven Birkerts, one of my favorite past pod-guests, welcomes me back to the mic for a conversation about writing, art, mortality, resistance, technology, and selling rare books! We talk about what he's learned about writing from his Substack essay-experiment, how he rediscovered his bookselling persona with his daughter, what he gets from audiobooks, the pros and cons of knowing your audience, and more. Plus, I talk about my book-in-progress, what I've learned from stepping back from the weekly podcast routine, why I'd like to see Dylan play one more time before one or the other of us is gone, and where this podcast might be going, among other stuff. Follow Sven on Instagram, subscribe to his Substack, and check out his and his daughter's rare bookstore, Birkbooks, at eBay and Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Professor and author Shachar Pinsker checks in from Ann Arbor after a month-long walloping by COVID-19. We get into how his recent book, A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture (NYU Press), informed his understanding of the pandemic's effect on people, how social isolation may affect the exchange of ideas, the post-COVID energy and inspiration he's feeling for new writing projects like pieces on the nature & future of conviviality and the history of the feuilleton, how his family in Israel is coping, and whether he can taste coffee again. We also talk about how he had to learn online teaching on the fly, what it takes to develop a good asynchronous course, and why teaching during this experience helped him as much as it did his students. Follow Shachar on Twitter and Instagram • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal