Radio Hour: Showtime’s “Billions” and “The Imaginary 20th Century”

March 3, 2016

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On this week’s show we discuss the new Showtime series Billions, Jerry Stahl returns to endorse Philip Kerr’s trilogy of Berlin novels, and we’re joined by professors Norman M. Klein and Margo Bistis to talk about their new book and companion multimedia project, The Imaginary 20th Century.

Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin.

DISCUSS

Margo Bistis

A cultural historian and curator. She has published essays on philosophical modernism, caricature and urban culture, and is the author of a forthcoming book, Fanfare for Bergson’s Ideas: Popular Enlightenment Culture in the Age of Mass Literacy. She teaches at Art Center College of Design.

LARB CONTRIBUTOR

Jerry Stahl

Jerry Stahl’s nine books include the novels I, Fatty and Pain Killers, and the memoir Permanent Midnight. His journalism & criticism have appeared in The Believer, BookForum, and The New York Times, among other places. Recent credits include the HBO film Hemingway & Gellhorn, and he is consulting producer and writer on the IFC series Maron. Stahl co-wrote (with director Jeff Feuerzeig) the upcoming Liev Schreiber/Naomi Watts movie, The Bleeder.

LARB CONTRIBUTOR

Norman Klein

Norman Klein is a critic, urban and media historian, and novelist. His books include The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory, Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon, The Vatican to Vegas: The History of Special Effects, Freud in Coney Island and Other Tales, and the database novel Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles, 1920-86. He is currently completing an interactive historical science fiction novel titled The Imaginary Twentieth Century. His essays have appeared in anthologies, museum catalogs, newspapers, scholarly journals, and on the web.

LARB CONTRIBUTOR

Tom Lutz

Tom Lutz is the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books. His latest book is Born Slippy: A Novel.

For more, go to tomlutzwriter.com

LARB CONTRIBUTOR

Seth Greenland

Seth Greenland’s first memoir, A Kingdom of Tender Colors, will be published in 2020 by Europa Editions. He is the author of five novels. His 1997 play Jungle Rot won the Kennedy Center/American Express Fund for New American Plays Award and the American Theater Critics Association Award. He was a writer-producer on the Emmy-nominated HBO series Big Love.

LARB CONTRIBUTOR

Laurie Winer

Laurie Winer is a longtime journalist who has been on staff at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. She is a founding editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

LARB CONTRIBUTOR