Subspace Radio

Hi Everyone!

My friend and colleague Jack Graham of Shabogan Graffiti and Xenomorph’s Paradox recently started his own podcast series The Shabcast (graciously hosted by Kevin and James from Pex Lives, another superb podcast y’all should check out. Jack and I were on this past December), and he was kind enough to invite me on as a guest this month!

Ostensibly, Jack wanted to interview me about this blog, but me being me the conversation inevitably spun off in a number of different directions. Fair warning, this is over two hours, most of which consists of me never, ever shutting up. And this is just part 1. In all seriousness though, we had a delightful conversation I was honoured and privileged to be a part of.

Some of the things we talked about were, naturally, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Dirty Pair and how I fell into all three and came to be writing about them for the Internet. We also talked about my interest in Polynesian wayfinding, my training in cultural anthropology, philosophy and science and technology studies and my conception of reading derived from me reading someone else reading Jacques Lacan. There were also brief mentions of non-Dirty Pair anime and manga and how Japanese media was introduced to Western audiences, such as Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Urusei Yatsura, my other loves Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Project A-ko and my uneasy ambivalence about Sailor Moon.

A few housekeeping notes: This being a completely unscripted and largely directionless conversation, I caught myself after the fact in a few factual slip-ups. I’m not sure how much of this made it into the show, but I figured I should cover my bases either way:

• I believe at one point I called “Masks” from the seventh season of The Next Generation “Brannon Braga at his finest”. That’s a bit misleading-The episode was, of course, written by Joe Menosky, though Braga was, I believe, a producer and staff writer at the time.
• When I’m talking about Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, I’m refering to the Takarazuka Revue.
• Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers was written by David Turnbull. You should all still read it, though.

You can listen to the show here. Thanks again to Jack for the opportunity and to Kevin and James for hosting us! I hope all the listeners get as much a kick out of hearing this as I did recording it!