Notebook on Cities and Culture‘s Korea Tour, which will bring you at least 30-40 interviews from around the most fascinating country in Asia today, begins its Kickstarter fund drive this Monday, April 7. We need only raise its $5,000 budget — quite a bit less than season four’s! — within a week after that […]
Colin Marshall sits down in Canterbury, England with Jack Hues, founding member of the rock band Wang Chung and jazz band The Quartet. Wang Chung’s latest album Tazer Up came out in 2012, and The Quartet’s next album Collaborations Volumes 1 & 2 comes out this fall. They discuss what makes the “Canterbury sound”; the differences between Wang Chung’s “English” […]
This summer, we have the chance to take Notebook on Cities and Culture to South Korea, for my money easily the most fascinating country going in Asia right now. You may already have encountered and enjoyed its rich cultural output in the form of its food, its music (yes, the roots go deeper than “Gangnam Style”; I […]
Colin Marshall walks through Stratford, London with John Rogers, author of the blog The Lost Byway and the book This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City. They discuss how one should approach one’s first London shopping mall, a built phenomenon that has changed dramatically over the decades; his memories of playing soccer with rotten fruit in Stratford’s […]
Colin Marshall sits down in Marseille, France, specifically in the Le Corbusier-designed Unité d’Habitation, with Jonathan Meades, writer and broadcaster on architecture, culture, food, and a variety of other subjects to do with place. In his latest film, Bunkers, Brutalism, and Bloodymindness, he looks at architectural styles once- and currently maligned. They discuss how much his […]
Colin Marshall sits down for a pint at Nelson’s Retreat, a pub on London’s Old Street, with Neil Denny, host of Little Atoms, a show about ideas and culture on Resonance FM. They discuss whether beer improves or degrades the quality of ideas discussed; how the show’s concept has changed over time, differently involving notions […]
Colin Marshall sits down in London’s Tower Hamlets with composer and artist Robin Rimbaud, better known as Scanner. They discuss the usefulness of a new place’s disorientation; the fun of grasping that new place’s systems and making its connections; other skills in the set gained from a lifetime of travel; the “great change” he has […]
Colin Marshall stands around Hackney, London’s “Tech City” with urban designer Euan Mills. They discuss how to tip in a London bar and how to cross a London street; when he realized he has become an urban designer, and what that entails; the hugeness and non-understandability of the spread-out, car-dependent, crime-fearing São Paulo, where he grew […]
Colin Marshall sits down in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo with Dan Kuramoto, founding member of the band Hiroshima who have now played for 40 years and recently released their 19th album, J-Town Beat. They discuss what he sees around him in the Little Tokyo in transition today as opposed to the one he grew up […]
Colin Marshall sits down in Copenhagen’s Frederiksberg with Melanie Haynes, author of the blog Dejlige Days. They discuss the Danish national virtue of hygge (and the also important quality of dejlige); how she came to leave her native England for Denmark; the Copenhagen system of smiley-face food sanitation ratings; the Danish habit of both asking “Why […]