The Bat Comes Back. Again.

Ed Champion and Bat Segundo have released another quartet of interviews in podcast form on the Bat Segundo show. Here’s the 411:

These shows include a conversation with Charles Burns, the man behind Black Hole, a discussion with writer-director Eran Kolirin about his film The Band’s Visit in which Kolirin discusses the importance of static shots, a talk about topographical narrative with Ellington Boulevard author Adam Langer. We also learn why Charles Bock took eleven years to write his novel, Beautiful Children.

And since Champion seems forever to be pointing out that ownership -- or even stewardship -- of an iPod is not required to enjoy the interviews, it seems worth mentioning it here, as well. “If you go to the main Segundo site,” says Champion, “you can save the MP3 to your lovely machine by clicking on the bat picture or, if you’re the kind of person who prefers swinging a bat over clicking on one, we do have a user-friendly interface with many listening and streaming options below the capsules.”

So there you go. The Bat Segundo Show can be found here and you can click, swing or bat, as required or desired.

David Rakoff and the Bat

With all of our own end of year madness to get through, we took our time about noticing that Bat Segundo had posted not one, but two interviews with essayist, journalist and NPR correspondent David Rakoff, who we interviewed ourselves in this space several years ago.

“I’m very indulged,” Rakoff says to Segundo at one point, “I am allowed to be at least 50 per cent of the story, which is a weird thing to do. And I should learn how to do a little bit less of that. Simply because I think it’s a good set of tools to have. I think all of them are good sets of tools to have. Because of that, because I am allowed to be 50 per cent of the story, I’ve been tremendously careful. From day one, I was tremendously careful about what I revealed and what I didn’t reveal.”

Rakoff’s most recent book is 2006’s engaging, charming and deliciously offensive Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems.

Part one of Rakoff’s Segundo interview is here, part two is there.

Segundo has been busy since the last time we put our heads in. January Magazine alumni, Edward Champion – and Bat Segundo’s keeper – has put the mothership blog, Ed’s Return of the Reluctant, on hold while he rethinks various aspects of the machine he has – perhaps inadvertently – built. Part of this is quite likely due to the fact that Champion’s own career has been quite understandably taking off and recent reviews, essays and articles have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Guardian and Penthouse, to name a disparate few.

Meanwhile, the Segundo interviews continue to appear at a good pace. In addition to Rakoff, Segundo has recently skewered Will Self, Stewart O’Nan, Ken Kalfus and Jess Walter. More as they appear.

Lipton and Pinker and Wolf, Oh My

And even more on the five most recent installments of Ed Champion’s wonderful Bat Segundo Show featuring literary podcast interviews with some really terrific authors:

The latest five installments (Shows #146-150) of The Bat Segundo Show ... are now up. These shows include Inside the Actors Studio’s James Lipton as you haven’t heard him before, talking candidly about his work as one of the leading television interviewers (#150), a heady discussion about thought and language with noted cognitive scientist Steven Pinker (#147), a political conversation with Naomi Wolf about whether we are close to the end of America (#148), a lively and controversial conversation with The Wonder Years’s Danica McKellar about girls and math (#149), and, last but not least, an investigation into the life of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz with biographer David Michaelis (#149).

The main Segundo site can be found here.

Beam Me Up, China

Like a lot of people, I just can’t get enough of China Miéville, so when I heard that The Bat Segundo Show had added a podcast interview with the author, I beamed on over. It was worth the ’Net sweat. From the podcast:

When we say “world-building,” we tend to think of that D&D-esque kind, which is not a diss incidentally. It’s just a description. It’s sort of a consolidation between the geography and the history and the culture and so on before writing the story. At that’s one way of doing it. But then there are others, which are less rigid, less to do with internal coherence, in the same way. So in terms of something like Un Lun Dun or some of the short stories or even King Rat, and the book I’m working on [at] the moment as well, it’s less to do with having a coherent back-narrative and more to do with having a coherent moral and emotional feeling.

Ed Rants and The Bat Segundo Show have also just published podcast interviews with Ellen Klages, Arlene Goldbard and Ken Alder. You can catch up with all of them -- and more -- here. And if you want even more of Miéville, here’s Andi Shechter’s January Magazine review of Un Lun Dun from back in March.