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Category Archives: Notebook on Cities and Culture

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E37: Closed Worlds with Mark Edward Harris

Colin Marshall sits down in Los Angeles’ Miracle Mile district with photographer Mark Edward Harris, author of such books as Inside North Korea, Inside Iran, The Art of the Japanese Bath, and Faces of the Twentieth Century. They discuss filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s introduction to his Iran book, and his rule about always excluding people from his own photographs; the importance […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E36: Through Los Angeles by Rail with Ethan Elkind

Colin Marshall sits down at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law with Ethan Elkind, an attorney who researches and writes on environmental law and the author of Railtown: The Fight for the Los Angeles Metro Rail System and the Future of the City. They discuss the reason visitors and even some Angelenos express surprise […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E35: Path and Place with Doug Suisman

Colin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with architect and urban designer Doug Suisman, author of Los Angeles Boulevard: Eight X-Rays of the Body Public, soon out in a new 25th anniversary edition. They discuss the difference in cycling to his office on Wilshire Boulevard versus Venice Boulevard; the conceptual importance of “path” and “place” in […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E34: The Tangible and the Intangible with Andrew Tuck

Colin Marshall sits down at Monocle magazine’s offices in Marylebone, London with Andrew Tuck, editor of the magazine, host of its podcast The Urbanist, and editor of its book The Monocle Guide to Better Living. They discuss how the London experience for a Monocle reader differs from that of others; how the magazine came to view the world through the […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E33: Avoiding Disposability with Jacques Testard

Colin Marshall sits down in Knightsbridge, London with Jacques Testard, founding editor of the quarterly arts journal The White Review. They discuss the re-issue of Nairn’s Towns featuring past guest Owen Hatherley; London’s surprisingly small literary culture and what, before founding The White Review, he didn’t see getting published; the “deeply stereotypical Williamsburg existence” he once lived in […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E32: Culture Over Class with Melvyn Bragg

Colin Marshall sits down in London’s West End with Melvyn Bragg, Lord Bragg of Wigton, host of Sky Arts 1’s The South Bank Show and BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time as well as the writer of many works of fiction and nonfiction including, most recently, The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible and his latest […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E31: Is This London? with Iain Sinclair

Colin Marshall sits down in Hackney, London with Iain Sinclair, author of numerous books, all rooted in London and all operating across the spectrum of fiction to nonfiction, including Downriver, Lights Out for the Territory, London Orbital, and most recently American Smoke: Journeys to the End of the Light. They discuss the momentarily impossible-to-define issue of Hackney’s identity; the need […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E30: Masters of the City with PD Smith

Colin Marshall sits down in Winchester, England with PD Smith, author of books on science, literature, superweapons, and, most recently, City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age. They discuss whether London has all the elements of the archetypally ideal city; the essential quality of “a place where you meet strangers”; the need to avoid writing […]

The Korea Tour Kickstarts now — 한국에 갑시다!

지금은 Kickstarter Drive가 시작됐어요! The Kickstarter drive for Notebook on Cities and Culture‘s Korea Tour, that is, a whole season of in-depth interviews with cultural creators, internationalists, and observers of the urban scene all across South Korea, the most fascinating country in Asia today. We need only raise its $5,000 budget in a week, and it […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E29: This Used to Be the Future with Owen Hatherley

Colin Marshall sits down for bangers and mash in Woolwich, London, England, with writer on political aesthetics Owen Hatherley, author of the books Militant Modernism, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, A New Kind of Bleak, and Uncommon, on the pop group Pulp. They discuss the relevance of the combined sentiments of […]