The Bat Segundo Show was a long-running cultural radio program devoted to quirky and very thorough long-form interviews with contemporary authors, idiosyncratic thinkers, and other assorted artists. Guests included David Lynch, Octavia Butler, John Waters, John Updike, Stephen Fry, Marilynne Robinson, Karen Russell, Weird Al Yankovic, Robert A. Caro, and more than 500 others. There was also a program called Follow Your Ears, which was a thematic investigative counterpart, in which I pursued a specific subject through several angles. The entire archive of what I did from 2005 to 2014 is included here.
Rebecca Solnit is most recently the author of A Paradise Built in Hell. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Finding hostility within legitimate clarification. Author: Rebecca Solnit Subjects Discussed: William James’s second treatise on pragmatism, the alternative notion which means the same as a preexisting notion, General Funston’s martial response to the 1906 earthquake vs. Pauline Jacobson’s […]
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MoreMarjorie Rosen is most recently the author of Boom Town: How Wal-Mart Transformed an All-American Town Into an International Community. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Kicked out of bed. Author: Marjorie Rosen Subjects Discussed: The white and non-Hispanic white majority in Bentonville, Arkansas, numerous houses of worship, multiculturalism, the largest population of Marshall Island immigrants in […]
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MoreLawrence Block is most recently the author of Step by Step. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Ruminating upon a life of exquisite indolence. Author: Lawrence Block Subjects Discussed: Step by Step as an anti-memoir, exploring childhood experience in print, randomness and finding connections, writing with a greater degree of freedom, Random Walk, concerns about a limited […]
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MoreMichael Muhammad Knight is most recently the author of Impossible Man and Osama Van Halen. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Expressing forceful words about his distinct identity. Author: Michael Muhammad Knight Subjects Discussed: Knight’s powers of prescience, Muslim punk, fictional suicide as a form of personal critique, the fictional character Mike Knight vs. the real Mike […]
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MorePhilip Alcabes is most recently the author of Dread. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Attempting to understand the certainty of certain dread, and the dread of dreadful certainty. Author: Philip Alcabes Subjects Discussed: Overstating the three Ps (pandemic, pestilence, and plague), contending with a hypothetical situation involving a Norway rat eating your sandwich for lunch, the […]
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MoreLizzie Skurnick is most recently the author of Shelf Discovery. She previously appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #13. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Sacrificing his manhood to fight the patriarchal overlords. Author: Lizzie Skurnick Subjects Discussed: Bridge to Terabithia and class distinctions, the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary, issues surrounding mothers working, reader perceptions vs. […]
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MoreDouglas Rushkoff is the author of Life, Inc. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Surprised to discover someone more contentious than he is. Author: Douglas Rushkoff Subjects Discussed: The wage labor system established in Portugal in 1253, Daily Life in Portugal in the Late Middle Ages, whether the day laborer can stand up, children and branding, people […]
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MoreEllen Ruppel Shell is most recently the author of Cheap. On the main text-based site, the book was also featured in an in-depth five-part discussion with several thoughtful people, which you can investigate here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, and Part Five. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Bargain hunting for alcohol. Author: Ellen […]
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MoreSarah Wendell and Candy Tan appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #296. Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan are most recently the authors of Beyond Heaving Bosoms. They are also the proprietors of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Subjects Discussed; Kathleen Woodwiss’s The Flame and the Flower, the beginnings of original paperback romance, genre respectability, romance’s profitability, […]
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MoreHal Niedzviecki is most recently the author of The Peep Diaries. He previously appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #47. [PROGRAM NOTE: At the 24:03 mark, a woman with a laptop demanded that Our Correspondent talk with less vivacity, suggesting that Our Correspondent was talking in a “disturbing” manner. Never mind that people sitting closer […]
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MoreMark Kurlansky is most recently the translator of Emile Zola’s The Belly of Paris and the editor of The Food of a Younger Land. He previously appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #220. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Pushing past the patois of a forgotten linguistic formation. Author: Mark Kurlansky Subjects Discussed: Wanting to be Zola […]
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MoreKathleen Collins is most recently the author of Watching What We Eat. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Contending with traumatic cooking show associations. Author: Kathleen Collins Subjects Discussed: Understandable fears of Rachael Ray, shifting from the extremes of quiet 1940s home economists to Food Network bombast, Graham Kerr and The Galloping Gourmet, Julia Child’s charisma, the […]
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