Episodes

  • Episode 56: Evelyn McDonnell on Joan Didion

    Episode 56: Evelyn McDonnell on Joan Didion
    Jun 19 2024
    In Evelyn McDonnell’s The World According to Joan Didion, readers will find an intimate exploration of the life, craft, and legacy of the revered and influential writer Joan Didion. As a groundbreaking journalist, essayist, novelist, and screenwriter, Didion was a writer’s writer—a keen observer of life’s telling little details. Her insights continue to influence creatives and admirers, encouraging a close observation of the world by unsentimental critics and meticulous stylists. McDonnell is an acclaimed journalist, essayist, and critic herself. A native Californian, feminist, and university professor, she regularly teaches Didion’s work and thus is well able to interpret her legacy for readers today. Inspired by Didion’s own words—from both published and unpublished works—and informed by the people who knew Didion and whose lives she helped shape, The World According to Joan Didion traces the path she carved from Sacramento, Portuguese Bend, Los Angeles, and Malibu to Manhattan, Miami, and Hawaii. McDonnell reveals the world as seen through Didion’s eyes and explores her work in chapters keyed to the singular physical motifs of her writing: Snake. Typewriter. Hotel. Notebook. Girl. Etc. Hat & Beard editor and fellow traveler Vivien Goldman introduced me to McDonnell’s work a decade ago. Being a big Didion head myself, I couldn’t wait to talk to McDonnell about this smart, elegant, and undeniably readable biography—the first published since Joan’s death in December of 2021.
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    41 mins
  • Episode 55: Adaptation with Cord Jefferson & Percival Everett

    Episode 55: Adaptation with Cord Jefferson & Percival Everett
    May 2 2024
    We have a special edition of The Big Table Podcast on today’s episode. Presenting Adaptation, the inaugural event of a new literary salon series and collaboration between USC’s Dornsife Experimental Humanities Lab and Soho House. Adaptation will feature conversations between writers and screenwriters discussing the art of adapting books into TV and film. Up first, the Oscar-winning writer-director Cord Jefferson and the USC distinguished professor and novelist Percival Everett. Jefferson adapted Everett’s novel Erasure into the Oscar-nominated film, American Fiction, which opened in December 2023. Jefferson went on to win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay a few days after this conversation was recorded. On the episode, Jefferson and Everett discuss the process of taking an experimental and innovative text like Erasure and turning it into something that honors the new form while staying true to the spirit of the original work. This is an initiative of Danzy Senna in collaboration with curator Margot Ross. We thank them both for including us in this incredible new series and for the opportunity to preserve these valuable conversations for posterity. It was a magical night in an intimate room and so we are very glad to be able to share it with a wider audience. MUSIC “I Didn't Know About You” by Thelonious Monk Composed by Bob Russell & Duke Ellington Performed by Thelonious Monk, Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, Ben Riley
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    51 mins
  • Episode 54: Prudence Peiffer

    Episode 54: Prudence Peiffer
    Mar 8 2024
    Prudence Peiffer’s first book, The Slip, is the never-before-told story of an obscure little street at the lower tip of Manhattan and the remarkable artists who got their start there. For just over a decade, from 1956 to 1967, a cluster of dilapidated former sail-making warehouses became the quiet epicenter of the art world. Coenties Slip, a dead-end street near the water, was home to a circle of wildly talented artists that included Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Lenore Tawney, Delphine Seyrig, and Jack Youngerman. As friends and inspirations to one another, they created a unique community of unbridled creative expression and experimentation, and the works they made at the Slip would go on to change the course of American art. Peiffer pays homage to these artists and the impact their work had on the direction of late 20th-century art and film. This remarkable biography questions the very concept of a “group” or “movement,” as it spotlights the Slip’s eclectic mix of gender and sexual orientation, abstraction and Pop, experimental film, painting, and sculpture, assemblage and textile works. Despite Coenties Slip’s obscurity, the entire history of Manhattan was inscribed into its cobblestones—it was one of the first streets and central markets of the new colony, built by enslaved people, with revolutionary meetings at the tavern just down Pearl Street; named by Herman Melville in Moby Dick and site of the boom and bust of the city’s maritime industry; and, in the artists’ own time, a development battleground for people like Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. I caught up with Peiffer, in the Fall of 2023 where she unpacked this group portrait, one of my favorite books of the year. Listen to hear Prudence Peiffer discuss the history of Coenties Slip.
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    37 mins
  • Episode 53: Two Poets in Conversation

    Episode 53: Two Poets in Conversation
    Aug 31 2023
    As we prime our book club model for post-COVID growth, we are programming a couple of longer late-summer episodes about our own books via Hat & Beard Press. To support Big Table or Hat & Beard, join our book clubs. You can find out more about them at hatandbeard.com. Your support fuels our books, podcasts, exhibitions, and events, and we thank you. On today’s episode of Big Table, we've recorded a long-form conversation between our own Mandy Kahn and Dana Gioia, both accomplished poets. Masters of traditional lyrical forms and natives of Los Angeles, they are both also currently out with new books: Holy Doors, Mandy’s third collection, is one of the first titles on our Hat & Beard Editions imprint. Meanwhile, Mr. Gioia has published, collected, or translated dozens of books throughout his storied career, which includes a stint as the director of the NEA and poet laureate of California. His most recent collection is Meet Me at the Lighthouse (Graywolf Press, 2023). Both are available now. This episode is more free form, with both poets reading from their work in dialogue with one another as they discuss their craft. Please enjoy Mandy Kahn in conversation with Dana Gioia discussing their new books and a whole lot more.
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    34 mins
  • Episode 52: A Chapter about Slime

    Episode 52: A Chapter about Slime
    Jul 20 2023
    File Under: Slime by Christopher Michlig — a cultural history of Slime — was recently published by Hat & Beard Editions. What is slime? We are well acquainted with its qualities in conjunction with certain things from which we tend to recoil but to which we are also at times attracted. Despite being everywhere, slime is a surprisingly unexamined cultural phenomenon. File Under: Slime collates a cultural history of “slime” and “sliminess,” with particular emphasis on precedents in pop-culture, contemporary art, ecology, science fiction, literature, critical theory, and cinema. Artist and professor Christopher Michlig’s research characterizes slime as a pervasive, oozing, cultural phenomenon, documenting instances of its evolving representations. The appearance of slime in such films as The Blob, Ghostbusters, and Poltergeist are diligently and humorously analyzed, commercial and graphic design precedents are incorporated, and the work of such artists as Lynda Benglis, Cindy Sherman, Robert Smithson, Sterling Ruby, and Jason Rhoades are discussed. Alongside a multitude of visual references, File Under: Slime is supplemented with literary and theoretical references from such writers as Jean Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Mike Kelley, Rosalind Krauss, Laura Mulvey, and others. +++ SLIME: A NATURAL HISTORY by SUSANNE WEDLICH — a different but like-minded cultural history of slime — was also recently published by Melville House in New York. This groundbreaking, witty, and eloquent exploration of slime will leave you appreciating the nebulous and neglected sticky stuff that covers our world, inside and out. Slime exists at the interfaces of all things: between the organs and layers in our bodies, and between the earth, water, and air in the world, and is often produced in the fatal encounter between predator and prey. In this fascinating, ground-breaking book, Wedlich leads us on a scientific journey through the 3-billion-year history of slime—from the part it played in the evolution of life on this planet to the way it might feature in the post-human future. She also explores the cultural and emotional significance of slime, from its starring role in the horror genre to its subtle influence on Art Nouveau. +++ Susanne Wedlich studied biology and political science in Munich and has worked as a writer in Boston and Singapore. She is currently a freelance science journalist for Der Spiegel and National Geographic. She lives in Munich. Christopher Michlig, meanwhile, makes work in a wide range of media, including collage, printmaking, sculpture, and film. His work has been reviewed and featured in The Los Angeles Times, Mousse Magazine, Saatchi Online, Flavorpill, and New City and exhibited nationally and internationally.  Michlig received an MFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California and he is currently Associate Professor and area Coordinator of Core Studio at the University of Oregon, Eugene. The authors caught up this spring to discuss their books and mutual fascination with slime.
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    36 mins
  • Episode 51: Lost Objects: 50 Stories About the Things We Miss & Why They Matter

    Episode 51: Lost Objects: 50 Stories About the Things We Miss & Why They Matter
    Jun 22 2023
    For Big Table episode 51, editors Joshua Glenn & Rob Walker discuss their latest book, Lost Objects: 50 Stories About the Things We Miss and Why They Matter.  Is there a “Rosebud” object in your past? A long-vanished thing that lingers in your memory—whether you want it to or not? As much as we may treasure the stuff we own, perhaps just as significant are the objects we have, in one way or another, lost. What is it about these bygone objects? Why do they continue to haunt us long after they’ve vanished from our lives? In Lost Objects, editors Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker have gathered answers to those questions in the form of 50 true stories from a dazzling roster of writers, artists, thinkers, and storytellers, including Lucy Sante, Ben Katchor, Lydia Millet, Neil LaBute, Laura Lippman, Geoff Manaugh, Paola Antonelli, and Margaret Wertheim to name just a few. Each spins a unique narrative that tells a personal tale, and dives into the meaning of objects that remain present to us emotionally, even after they have physically disappeared. While we may never recover this Rosebud, Lost Objects will teach us something new about why it mattered in the first place—and matters still. For the readings this episode, two authors read their essays from the book: First up, Lucy Sante discusses her long lost club chair; and Mandy Keifez recounts her lost Orgone Accumulator. Music by Languis
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    29 mins
  • Episode 50: dublab: Live from NeueHouse

    Episode 50: dublab: Live from NeueHouse
    May 4 2023

    We are on episode 50! Thank you all for listening along over the last couple of years. This one is special as it features a book published by Hat & Beard Press, one of Big Table’s main partners in cultural pursuits.

    dublab: Future Roots Radio is the long-awaited book telling the story of the pioneering online radio station through interviews, photos, art, and more.

    The dublab universe springs to life from these pages, unveiling the ethos that has guided the storied station since 1999.

    We celebrated the release of the book with a live event at Neuehouse in downtown Los Angeles this past winter. The evening featured a panel moderated by DJ Mamabear with dublab DJs Rachel Day, Hoseh, Frosty, and Langosta.

    dublab: Future Roots Radio, out now on Hat & Beard Press, is an ode to the boundless power of creative music and community building in Los Angeles and beyond.

    Here’s an excerpt from the conversation recorded at NeueHouse earlier this year.

     

    Music by Pharaohs
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    47 mins
  • Episode 49: Tim Carpenter

    Episode 49: Tim Carpenter
    Mar 27 2023

    To Photograph Is To Learn How To Die: An Essay with Digressions by Tim Carpenter is a book-length essay about photography’s unique ability to ease the ache of human mortality. It’s also a book about photography theory, literary criticism, art history, and philosophy. 

    Drawing on writings and poems by Wallace Stevens, Marilynne Robinson, Vladimir Nabokov, Paul Valery, Virginia Wolff, and other artists, musicians, and thinkers, Brooklyn-based photographer Tim Carpenter argues passionately―in one main essay and a series of lively digressions―that photography is unique among the arts in its capacity for easing the fundamental ache of our mortality; for managing the breach that separates the self from all that is not the self; for enriching one’s sense of freedom and personhood; and for cultivating meaning in an otherwise meaningless reality. 

    Printed in three colors that reflect the various “voices” of the book, the text design, provided by publisher and editor Mike Slack, follows several channels of thought, inviting various approaches to reading. 

    To Photograph Is To Learn How To Die is a unique and instructive contribution to the literature on photography, and is as enthralling as other genre-melding photography books, The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer, Robert Bresson’s Notes on Cinematography, and more recently, Stephen Shore’s book Modern Instances: The Craft of Photography, among others.

    Carpenter’s research offers both a timely polemic and a timeless resource for those who use a camera.

    Tim and JC caught up recently to discuss this fascinating book, now in its second printing. 

    Reading by Tim Carpenter

    Music by Talk Talk
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    31 mins