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.
Daniel Okrent is most recently the author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Bombarded by too much bathtub gin and too many over-the-top movie trailers. Author: Daniel Okrent Subjects Discussed: [List forthcoming] EXCERPT FROM SHOW: Correspondent: I wanted to ask you about Walgreen’s. You point out that it […]
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MoreNell Irvin Painter is most recently the author of The History of White People. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Drowning in David Coverdale’s noxious imperialism. Author: Nell Irvin Painter Subjects Discussed: Dred Scott, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Buck vs. Bell, Plessy vs. Ferguson, William Z. Ripley, racist intellectuals vs. racist legal decisions, Irish poverty and Emerson’s […]
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MoreNeal Stephenson is most recently the author of Anathem. It is not known whether or not he “likes cake a lot.” Condition of Mr. Segundo: He likes cake a lot. Author: Neal Stephenson Subjects Discussed: Seven as the ideal number of guests for dinner, William Gibson, the shift from the near future to the past, […]
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MoreDavid Hajdu is most recently the author of The Ten-Cent Plague. Condition of the Show: Dabbling into hidden threats. Author: David Hajdu Subjects Discussed: Hajdu’s approach to journalism, primary sources vs. secondary sources, categories of people to talk with when preparing a book, tracking down people who disappeared, grassroots methods of finding people, changing names, […]
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MoreNicholson Baker is most recently the author of Human Smoke. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Deceased. Author: Nicholson Baker Subjects Discussed: Baker’s antipathy for placing the date at the top of an entry, the blogginess of A Box of Matches and Human Smoke, the discrepancy between what Baker remembered and what Updike wrote in U & […]
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MoreSamantha Hunt is most recently the author of The Invention of Everything Else. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Pining for chambermaids. Author: Samantha Hunt Subjects Discussed: Managing multiple perspectives, working within the limitations of 1943, helpful historical endnotes, Tesla’s tendency to divide things by three, pleasantly misleading metafictional names, using abandoned New York topography in a […]
Listen: Play in new window | Download (Running Time: 51:15 — 46.9MB)
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