Air Mail
New podcast with Peter Kuper, a productive transatlantic flight, new Instax & art, and more
The Virtual Memories Show News
A 2x/week email about a podcast about books & life
Podcastery
This week, I posted Episode 638 of The Virtual Memories Show, with Peter Kuper & his new graphic novel, INSECTOPOLIS: A Natural History (W. W. Norton), which brings us the 400-million-year history of insects in their own words as they take a post-human tour of the New York Public Library. We talk about how INSECTOPOLIS began when he was around 4 years old and saw the 17-year cicada brood, how Peter needed a new mode of comics-making for this book, and how he made the NYPL a key character in the project. We get into mankind’s dependence on insects, the stories of forgotten entomologists (and why they were forgotten), his experience getting a Cullman fellowship at the NYPL during COVID and how he found all the great & secret rooms while the place was near-empty, the INterSECTS exhibition that evolved from the fellowship and how it grew in scale, and his realization that entomologists are like comic fans. We also discuss his wife’s great advice going into this project, the fun of getting experts to vet every chapter of INSECTOPOLIS, the alchemy that happens when people’s passions overlap, how he harnesses the dread of imminent apocalypse to make his art, and more. Give it a listen! And go read INSECTOPOLIS!
(And go listen to our past conversations: 2015, 2019a, 2019b, 2020!)
Last week I posted Episode 637, where tech writer Vauhini Vara celebrated her new book SEARCHES: Selfhood in the Digital Age (Pantheon), and explored how our sense of self has been co-opted, quantified, and exploited by big tech as a way of selling us more stuff or selling us to third parties. We talked about what we talk about when we talk about our Google searches, the interface of exploitation and self-expression, what selfhood means to tech companies vs. what it means to us, and what she learned when she fed chapters of her book into ChatGPT. We got into how the promise of tech so often gets inverted, how ChatGPT tried & failed to express her grief from her sister’s death from cancer, why she brought memoir into SEARCHES, how her husband serves as a low-tech foil in the book, and whether or not we have a say in how the online era plays out. We also discussed how the book’s multiplicity of voices offsets the corporate voice of ChatGPT, what she got out of Bill Gates’ biography, the importance of non-VC-funded technology to help us escape exploitative models, whether an essayist ever really changes over the course of an essay, and more. Give it a listen! And go read SEARCHES!
Recent episodes: Craig Thompson • Ari Richter • Dan Nadel • See Hear Speak • Peter Trachtenberg • David Shields • Meeting Across the River • Elon Green
Air Mail
I don’t know how you’d spend your potential last hours on earth, but I spent mine cleaning up my email inbox.
Sorry to leave you on a cliffhanger on Sunday; my flight into Newark from Amsterdam did arrive safe & sound. We didn’t even bump into another plane while taxiing to the gate. This may have been because Newark was experiencing a ground stop around the time we arrived because of Yet Another Tech Failure, which meant outbound planes weren’t moving.
So, if you got an email from me that day in response to a months-old correspondence, that’s because I decided to take the opportunity of 7+ hours of undistracted daylight travel to buy the in-flight wifi, take out my laptop, and start whittling down my unread emails.
My inbox had piled up of late, by my standards. It was at 382 unread (some I’d read then marked as unread “to get back to sometime”) at the beginning of the flight, and 132 by the time I packed it in for landing. (I hadn’t considered that some of you would write back during the flight, but I replied to those right away and still managed a net cull of 250 emails.)
Honestly, the process was mildly exhilarating, esp. the part where I accepted that I was not, in fact, ‘going to get to’ newsletters I marked as unread 6-8-10 months earlier. Closing out threads, admitting that I’m not going to get back to a publicist about a guest they pitched me in 2024, replying to someone even though we’ve corresponded about other stuff since: it all gave me a sense of reconnecting and/or resolving things, of making decisions, of extending myself in time.
Also, embarrassment at letting some stuff go this long. I’ll try to do better, or schedule more transatlantic flights.
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This email setup runs $29/month, podcast-hosting is $20/month, and the remote recording setup is $20/month, so if you want to help out with these expenses or otherwise Contribute To The Cause, you can support the Virtual Memories Show with a contribution of any size, one-time or recurring.
Instaxery
Here are a couple of Instax I took in Amsterdam. I call them Alphabet’s Delight, Kiefer’s Flowers, and Julie’s Bag.
Artistry
FINE, I started a new daily sketchbook: are you happy?! I picked up a Sakura book & brush-pen at the Van Gogh Museum’s gift shop. Here are a couple I did during the flight on Sunday. Handling a brush-pen on a small page while my contact lenses were in was a little tough, but art doesn’t care about excuses and neither should you. Email me a pose and maybe I’ll sketch you (probably sans face, but hey). You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Postcardery
Let me know if you want to be on my postcard-a-day list. (Financial supporters of the podcast get a hand-drawn or painted postcard as a thank-you.)
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far. I’ll be back on Sunday with links, books, & workout-/meditation-craziness, and on Wednesday with a new episode, and maybe some art and/or an Instax.
For now I need your hidden love. / I'm cold as a new razor blade. / You left when I told you I was curious, / I never said that I was brave,