Notebook on Cities and Culture’s Yearlong Podcast Exploration of Seattle Is Kickstarting Now

Just about as long as I’ve writ­ten here at Open Cul­ture, I’ve also host­ed and pro­duced Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture, a world-trav­el­ing pod­cast ded­i­cat­ed to in-depth con­ver­sa­tions with inter­est­ing peo­ple about the work they do and the world cities they do it in. Over five sea­sons so far, I’ve record­ed each and every inter­view “on loca­tion,” from Los Ange­les to Kyoto to Lon­don to Port­land to Mex­i­co City to Copen­hagen to Van­cou­ver to Seoul. Next comes the show’s sixth and most in-depth sea­son yet: A Year in Seat­tle.

Think of that name, and you think of the city of rain, of grunge, of Microsoft and Ama­zon, of the Space Nee­dle, of Frasi­er Crane, of Bud­dy Bradley, of Archie McPhee, of sleep­less­ness, of Star­bucks. But hav­ing spent my own ado­les­cence hang­ing out there, I know Seat­tle as even more than that, and it’s only grown more inter­est­ing since I’ve grown up. Now to explore the Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture way, through a year of in-depth con­ver­sa­tions with Seattle’s nov­el­ists, jour­nal­ists, com­ic artists, film­mak­ers, broad­cast­ers, explor­ers, gourmets, aca­d­e­mics, archi­tects, plan­ners, cul­tur­al cre­ators, inter­na­tion­al­ists, observers of the urban scene, and more.

As with every sea­son, I’m rais­ing the bud­get for Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture’s Year in Seat­tle on Kick­starter. If feel so inclined, you can have a look at its Kick­starter page and find out how you can help make it a hap­pen, receive post­cards from Seat­tle, or even get your project or mes­sage men­tioned at the top of every show.

And as a spe­cial pre­view, I’ve just post­ed an inter­view with com­ic artist Peter Bagge, cre­ator of the leg­endary alt-com­ic series Hate, author of the graph­ic nov­els Apoc­a­lypse Nerd, Oth­er Lives, Reset, Woman Rebel: The Mar­garet Sanger Sto­ry, and just about as Seat­tle a fig­ure as they come. There are 51 more where that came from — but only if we can suc­cess­ful­ly Kick­start the sea­son by this Sat­ur­day morn­ing at 10:00, Pacif­ic time.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.