Podcast appearances and mentions of megan prelinger

Today Palm Springs is known for mid-century modern architecture and queer-friendly culture. But a new documentary on PBS's Independent Lens explores the history of racist housing practices in the city that effectively hid a black neigborhood behind a wall of trees. “Racist Trees” covers the fight to remove those trees decades after they were planted, and asks the question: 'Who takes responsibility for the wrongdoing of the past?' Directors Sara Newens and Mina T. Son join Sasha Khokha to talk about the film. Plus we visit San Francisco's Prelinger Library, a treasure trove of ephemera from books of soil samples to zines. In the 1990s, libraries started to become digital and began clearing out their catalogs. A network of like-minded librarians brought the “discards” to Rick and Megan Prelinger's attention. The husband and wife, already collectors of print and text items, opened their library in 2004 and say 'it's available to any and everyone who believes our past can pave a path to a better future.' 

The New York Times has called Rick Prelinger “one of the great, undersung historians of 20th century cinema.” But the Bay Area-based archivist isn't known for books on Chaplin or Bergman. Instead, Rick and partner Megan Prelinger collect the film history of everyday life: home movies, industrial films, studio outtakes and other works that would otherwise be lost or forgotten. The duo may be best known for the free movies they make available through the Internet Archive digital library. And locally, they've gained a following for their “Lost Landscapes” film project, a compilation of historic Bay Area footage from their archives. We'll talk to Rick and Megan about the 18th and latest installment of “Lost Landscapes”, entitled “City and Bay in Motion: Transportation and Communication.” Guests: Rick Prelinger, founder, Prelinger Archives, whose moving image holdings may be found online at archive.org; co-founder, Prelinger Library, a publicly-available collection of historical periodicals, books, print ephemera, maps and government documents Megan Prelinger, co-founder, Prelinger Library; co-director, Prelinger Archives film digitization project. Prelinger is also the author of the books Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957–1962 and Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age

In this episode, we continue our interview with John Charles on a number of MOL topics, including tying up the discussion on MOL artwork from part 1, the declassification of MOL materials, and the legacy of MOL—including some time devoted to paying respects to Robert Lawrence, a so-called “Hidden Figure” from the MOL Air Force pilot corps.Check out John's page with information on MOL, including articles he has written and a section devoted to MOL art: http://www.astrocryptotriviology.com/mol-artJohn also makes mention of author Megan Prelinger… check out her book entitled, “Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962.”This is Part 2 of our Manned Orbiting Laboratory interview.Note: apologies for some noise distortion with Emily Carney's voice; our VOIP system for recording podcasts is, at best, imperfect! We apologize in advance for the quality of portions of the recording.++++++++++++++++John Charles was a long-time NASA life scientist and science manager with a life-long interest in spaceflight history. He retired from NASA on February 22, 2018, after nearly thirty-three years in a career that started as a cardiovascular investigator on Space Shuttle flights, spanned Mir missions and the Shuttle flight of John Glenn, included overseeing the joint US/Russian one-year mission on ISS and the Twins Study, and peaked as the Chief Scientist of NASA's Human Research Program, guiding NASA biomedical research on the International Space Station in preparation for sending astronauts to Mars.John is now the first scientist-in-residence at Space Center Houston, the official visitors center of the Johnson Space Center, and an emeritus employee of the Johnson Space Center mentoring younger scientists. He is an Adjunct Professor of Kinesiology at Texas A&M University. He and his wife Kathy own ACT4space, LLC, a private outreach, education, research, and consulting business.In addition, John is applying his decades of experience in space biomedical research and oversight to understanding the human health and performance aspects of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, a cancelled program by the U.S. Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office to put military astronauts into low Earth orbit to conduct detailed observations of Soviet and Chinese capabilities during the Cold War.

For this special episode of Offworld, Ariel is joined by Adam Savage and space historian Megan Prelinger to review and discuss the new film First Man. They answer some questions asked on social media about the film's historical accuracy, its presentation of the Gemini and Apollo programs, and talk about where the film stands in relation to other space films like The Right Stuff and Apollo 13.

Megan Prelinger‘s beautiful new book brings together the histories of technology and visuality to ask the question, “What cultural history of electronics can be extrapolated from a close look at the associated graphic art?” Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age (W. W. Norton, 2015) treats the commercial and advertising art of the mid-twentieth century as an archive to explore the social and cultural engagement with electronics technologies during a particularly vibrant moment for the American graphic commercial arts. Incorporating text and image as sources to be read, Prelinger’s book moves from the beginnings of FM technology and vacuum tubes, to televisions and quartz crystals, to transistors and circuit boards, to digital computing and into space. Of special interest is the attention Prelinger pays to to the importance of graphic designers and staff artists at major labs and research centers. The book models an innovative and inspiring way to read graphic images as historical documents, and the story is a pleasure to read for specialists and non-experts alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Megan Prelinger‘s beautiful new book brings together the histories of technology and visuality to ask the question, “What cultural history of electronics can be extrapolated from a close look at the associated graphic art?” Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age (W. W. Norton, 2015) treats the commercial and advertising art of the mid-twentieth century as an archive to explore the social and cultural engagement with electronics technologies during a particularly vibrant moment for the American graphic commercial arts. Incorporating text and image as sources to be read, Prelinger’s book moves from the beginnings of FM technology and vacuum tubes, to televisions and quartz crystals, to transistors and circuit boards, to digital computing and into space. Of special interest is the attention Prelinger pays to to the importance of graphic designers and staff artists at major labs and research centers. The book models an innovative and inspiring way to read graphic images as historical documents, and the story is a pleasure to read for specialists and non-experts alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Megan Prelinger‘s beautiful new book brings together the histories of technology and visuality to ask the question, “What cultural history of electronics can be extrapolated from a close look at the associated graphic art?” Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age (W. W. Norton, 2015) treats the commercial and advertising art of the mid-twentieth century as an archive to explore the social and cultural engagement with electronics technologies during a particularly vibrant moment for the American graphic commercial arts. Incorporating text and image as sources to be read, Prelinger’s book moves from the beginnings of FM technology and vacuum tubes, to televisions and quartz crystals, to transistors and circuit boards, to digital computing and into space. Of special interest is the attention Prelinger pays to to the importance of graphic designers and staff artists at major labs and research centers. The book models an innovative and inspiring way to read graphic images as historical documents, and the story is a pleasure to read for specialists and non-experts alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Megan Prelinger‘s beautiful new book brings together the histories of technology and visuality to ask the question, “What cultural history of electronics can be extrapolated from a close look at the associated graphic art?” Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age (W. W. Norton, 2015) treats the commercial and advertising art of the mid-twentieth century as an archive to explore the social and cultural engagement with electronics technologies during a particularly vibrant moment for the American graphic commercial arts. Incorporating text and image as sources to be read, Prelinger’s book moves from the beginnings of FM technology and vacuum tubes, to televisions and quartz crystals, to transistors and circuit boards, to digital computing and into space. Of special interest is the attention Prelinger pays to to the importance of graphic designers and staff artists at major labs and research centers. The book models an innovative and inspiring way to read graphic images as historical documents, and the story is a pleasure to read for specialists and non-experts alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Megan Prelinger‘s beautiful new book brings together the histories of technology and visuality to ask the question, “What cultural history of electronics can be extrapolated from a close look at the associated graphic art?” Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age (W. W. Norton, 2015) treats the commercial and advertising art of the mid-twentieth century as an archive to explore the social and cultural engagement with electronics technologies during a particularly vibrant moment for the American graphic commercial arts. Incorporating text and image as sources to be read, Prelinger’s book moves from the beginnings of FM technology and vacuum tubes, to televisions and quartz crystals, to transistors and circuit boards, to digital computing and into space. Of special interest is the attention Prelinger pays to to the importance of graphic designers and staff artists at major labs and research centers. The book models an innovative and inspiring way to read graphic images as historical documents, and the story is a pleasure to read for specialists and non-experts alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Megan Prelinger tells us about the one of most open physical libraries in the world, right in San Francisco!

Archivist, educator and filmmaker Rick Prelinger has a remarkable eye for the unexpected value of ephemera. A massive collection of educational and industrial films he collected under the auspices of the Prelinger Archives was acquired by the Library of Congress, and with his wife, Megan Prelinger, he co-founded the Prelinger Library in San Francisco, stuffed with printed material you’d be unlikely to find elsewhere. More recently he’s been working with old home movies — thousands of them, donated or otherwise acquired. This is basically material nobody else wanted, not even the descendants of whoever made them. He’s used it to build a remarkable series of films – one is made of footage from San Francisco, another from Detroit. Old home movies are mostly silent, and he adds no narration or even a score. Instead, he stands on stage at screenings, riffs about the clips, and encourages viewers to chime in from their seats. This actually works: the audience at Prelinger’s screenings are surprisingly vocal. Prelinger’s most recent is the more broadly themed No More Road Trips? Writer Rob Walker spoke with Prelinger about the film and his career in finding joy and insight in media most people eventually throw away.   The stills, below are all from No More Road Trips? (2013), courtesy of Rick Prelinger.  .   Produced by Rob Walker with Shelby El Otmani.