Big Table
The BIG TABLE podcast is about books and conversation, an exploration into art and culture, as told through interviews with authors, conducted and curated by writer, editor, historian and publisher J.C. Gabel and a small cast of contributors, all former colleagues and friends.
This podcast is a co-production between Hat & Beard, Dublab, and Gold-diggers in Los Angeles, and is dedicated to the interviewing style and enduring memory of Studs Terkel, the Chicago oral historian, actor, activist, TV pioneer, and long-time radio host and author.
BIG TABLE is the first digital initiative of Invisible Republic, a nonprofit arts organization, working in coordination with Future Roots, Inc.
- Update frequency
- every 16 days
- Average duration
- 30 minutes
- Episodes
- 55
- Years Active
- 2021 - 2024
Episode 16: Lucy Sante
Episode 16: Lucy Sante
THE INTERVIEW
Since her debut book, Lowlife: Lures and Snares of Old New York, Lucy Sante has charted her own path, not only as a writer of distinction, but as a writer who has c…
Episode 14: Brigitte Benkemoun on Dora Maar
The Interview:
Brigitte Benkemoun, an investigative reporter in France, buys a vintage address book online for her partner, and soon discovers that it belonged to artist/photographer Dora Maar, Picas…
Episode 13: Yuval Taylor on Zora Neale Hurston & Langston Hughes
The Interview:
Yuval Taylor’s dual biography Zora & Langston (Norton), documents the lives, times, and work of novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston and poet and writer Langston Hughes, two towe…
Episode 12: Cey Adams & Janette Beckman
THE INTERVIEW
Photographer Janette Beckman and artist/art director Cey Adams (who helmed the art department at the legendary hip-hop label Def Jam Records in its 1980s and '90s heyday) discuss their g…
Big Table Episode 11: Mariella Guzzoni on Vincent Van Gogh
The Interview:
In Vincent’s Books: Van Gogh and the Writers Who Inspired Him (University of Chicago Press), Italian curator Mariella Guzzoni unpacks her year’s long research into the books that Vincen…
Big Table Episode 10: William Deresiewicz
The Interview
William Deresiewicz documents “how creators are struggling to survive in the age of billionaires and big tech,” which is the subtitle of his masterful new book, The Death of the Artist (…
Big Table Episode 9: Geoff Dyer
The Interview:
Geoff Dyer discusses “Broadsword Calling Danny Boy”: Watching ‘Where Eagles Dare’, published by Pantheon, his study of the 1969 action film featuring a young Clint Eastwood in one of h…
Big Table Episode 8: George Orwell
The Interview:
Two distinguished Orwell scholars, John Rodden and D.J. Taylor, unpack the Orwell enigma: fact, fiction, myth and the most enduring legacy of any writer in the English language since Sh…
Big Table Episode 7: Ninth Street Women
THE INTERVIEW
Journalist, author and biographer and Mary Gabriel discusses Ninth Street Women, published by Little, Brown, a five part biography of painters from the Abstract Expressionist era: Lee Kr…
Big Table Episode 6: Nelson Algren
The Interview:
Biographer Colin Asher, discusses the legacy of one of the greatest unknown American writers, Nelson Algren, a pre-Beat Generation realist who also took the Underground Man to new heig…
Big Table Episode 5: Eve Babitz
Lili Anolik, whose Vanity Fair profile of the reclusive writer, re-started the Eve Babitz revival, discusses her Eve biography, Hollywood Eve (published by Scribner) and, as the subtitle suggests, “T…
Big Table Episode 4: Carson McCullers
EPISODE : 4
THE INTERVIEW
Jenn Shapland discusses her National Book
Award-nominated memoir My Autobiography of
Carson McCullers (Tin House), a brilliantly
rendered hybrid which wrestles with identity,
sexu…
Big Table Episode 3: Nick Ebeling
EPISODE : 3
THE INTERVIEW
Along for the Ride director Nick Ebeling unpacks the enigma of Dennis Hopper and his blacklisted years as seen through the eyes of the film’s star, Satya de la Manitou, Hopper…
Big Table Episode 2: Eddie Glaude, Jr
EPISODE: 2
THE INTERVIEW
Professor and critic Eddie Glaude, Jr.
discusses his latest book Begin Again (Crown),
an intellectual look at James Baldwin’s most
potent political writing from The Fire Next
Time …