On this episode, Marc talks with Michael Rancic, author of "A Nation of Tinkerers: A History of Electronic Music in Canada from 1945 to 1985," released in August of 2026. It's a fascinating and detailed look at the way electronic music evolved in Canada after World War II, from the early innovators who created new technology in academic settings, to the way various genres made strides in using electronics, from reggae to hip-hop to disco to novelty music.

As Michael writes, "From wartime labs of the NRC to the basement studios of bedroom producers, this is a story of access and its absence, of play and resistance. It's a reminder that the sounds shaping Canadian music today – from the pop charts to the avant-garde – were built not in isolation, but through a persistent, collective, and very human act of tinkering."

You can buy Michael's book here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-nation-of-tinkerers-a-history-of-electronic-music-in-canada-from-1945-to-1985-michael-rancic/

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Michael Rancic!

On this episode, Marc talks with Josephine Reisman, author of "The Last Temptation of Beck: The Untold Story of a Pop Messiah," released in September of 2026. It's a portrait of Beck during the 90s and early 2000s, the way his music and persona changed over that time,and it goes deep into his ties with Scientology, and how his moving in and out of that culture multiple times might have effected his life as an artist and public figure, as well as the lives of those around him.

As Josephine writes, "When I began this investigation, I thought I was reporting a political story, a work of recent history. What I found instead was a story that was timelier than I could have imagined – albeit not in the ways I expected. The story of Beck in the nineties and early years of this century turned out to be rooted in questions of disinformation, belief, and conspiracy, of who deserves our trust and what it means when our trust is betrayed, questions we grapple with only more today, in our age of malleable facts and unreliable media."

We hope you enjoy Marc's conversation with Josephine Riesman!

On this episode, Marc talks with Steven Hyden, author of "Is This It: The Never Ending Rise and Fall of The Strokes (And Rock ‘n’ Roll)," released in September of 2026. It's a look at the career and impact of this New York band who got huge waves of attention when their first album, Is This It, came out in 2001, and have since had a kind of up and down career both commercially and critically. Hyden's book is as much cultural analysis and criticism as it is biography, delving into the way rock and roll itself has changed over the last 25 years, and tackling some bigger philosophical questions about what all of this means.

As Steven writes, "A quarter century after they were heralded as "the coolest band on the planet" by one especially overexcited British music magazine, the Strokes remain a Rorschach test. The aspirations and the biases of the behloder give shape to their otherwise uneven and amorphous body of work. Did the Strokes peak early and fail to live up to lofty expectations? Or did music culture change in such a profound way at the turn of the century that those expectations were already anachronistic by the time Is This It entered record stores?"

We hope you enjoy Marc's chat with Steven Hyden!