Podcast appearances and mentions of michael lista

Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet who lives in Toronto. I've followed his career now for some fifteen years. He's written true crime for the better part of a decade. His story “The Sting” is being adapted by Adam Perlman, Robert Downey Jr., and Team Downey, into a television series for Apple TV+. We talk here about Michael's recent book of true crime stories, The Human Scale; about Truman Capote and the non-fiction novel; about listening and details; being honest when talking with people who've experienced crises, and how tawdry it is to ask for exclusivity; about examining systems, and how tardy the delivery of justice can sometimes be; about how the story resides in the telling, and how Shakespeare stuck his landings; about in extremis and understanding who we really are; fact-checked fairy tales; competing against YouTube and Netflix; and much more.

The Lean Out podcast has covered lots of books in recent years. We have never covered a poetry book. But all it took was one read of a striking new collection of poems for us to know that we had to have its author on the show. The Canadian writer Stephen Marche said it best when he described this collection: “Like supremely eloquent graffiti written on the wall of a magnificent palace, except the palace is the world, and the world is on fire.” Michael Lista is a Canadian essayist, investigative journalist, and poet. His new book is Barfly and Other Poems.You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

On December 1, 2016, police found the body of Dr. Elana Fric in a suitcase by the Humber River. Her husband, Dr. Mohammed Shamji, was arrested the next day. The murder and arrest made immediate headlines with Shamji as the focus, while Elana slipped into the background. But journalist Michael Lista promised to take a very different approach in reporting this story. Watch this episode on CBC Podcasts' YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@cbcpodcasts For early access to Crime Story episodes and to listen ad-free, subscribe to CBC's True Crime channel on our show page in Apple Podcasts. Episode transcript: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/transcript-crime-story-episode-5-1.7013253

Welcome to Season 4, friends! Thank you for coming back. Please make sure you SUBSCRIBE + RATE the show- it will help more burgeoning screenwriters to find out conversations. Thank you in advance! This week on the beat, we have Keisha Zollar! And you may hear her cute little dogs during parts of our conversation. We're a dog friendly show over here- especially in the middle of a pantomime. Keisha Zollar is a writer-actress-comedienne who most recently worked as the showrunner on Fuse's The Read with Kid Fury and Crissle as well as the Co-EP and star of Netflix's sketch show Astronomy Club. Sher recently finished writing on the Apple Team Downey & Adam Perlman drama series based on Michael Lista's Toronto Life article “The Sting” and is currently writing on the HBO Max animated series One Love. Before that, Keisha was the Writing Supervisor at Busy Tonight. As an actor Keisha has been seen on Netflix's Orange is the New Black, Comedy Central, Nightcap, Middle of the Night, The Today Show, College Humor, TV Land, Funny or Die, IAF.tv, Above Average, MSNBC, MTV, and UCB Comedy. Keisha played the role of Sarah in Believe Her, a short about the moments after sexual assault. She has been featured by Glamour magazine, Fast Company, Paste magazine, etc, and has written for Bitch Flicks, FemSplain, and more. We talk about: how her mother's incredible sense of humor influences her writing voice how the Astronomy Club got started how she got an awesome writing job while coming back from a near-death experience (so glad you're ok!) what to do when you have a bad joke the shows that are bringing us joy during the pandemic how she got involved with the TV adaptation of my favorite podcast (after this one!), The Read and more! Thank you so much for listening to the show! Please remember to SUBSCRIBE, RATE, + REVIEW the show- I would really appreciate it. It helps other screenwriters who are interested in this story to find the show a little easier. If you are interested in becoming a guest, sponsoring the show, or have any other inquiries, please send an email to hi@thebeatsheet.co! Need to read more scripts? Join my club- we read scripts together every week! My profile name is @aquilliam and the club is called Beat Sheet Pod.  You can listen to every episode of The Beat Sheet on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, and Stitcher! You can click here to subscribe to the podcast everywhere via this RSS feed! The official hashtag for the podcast is #beatsheetpod Please be sure to follow us on social media as well! You can find the show everywhere: Instagram | @beatsheetpod Twitter | @beatsheetpod Facebook | The Beat Sheet

What is happening with truth and journalism? We are living in the era of "Fake News", and Social Media Platforms are littered with dis-information that shapes and re-shapes public perception. Nowadays, everyone with a smartphone is a reporter that can share their stories in real time - but who is fact checking news? Where does truth lie? Today, we discuss the state of truth, news and media with Michael Lista.

Today we have a true crime story and a yearlong police sting that failed completely. Police used what's called a Mr. Big sting. It is one of the most controversial tactics used by police that it has been banned in many countries. The way it works is one undercover officer befriends the suspect and lures the suspect into committing increasingly serious crimes. At this point the officer introduces the suspect to the Mr. Big character, who acts as boss or drug kingpin and offers protection in exchange for a confession to the worst thing they ever did… the crime police are trying to charge them with. This story is about Alan Dale Smith, a suspect in the murder of Beverly Smith, whose real murderer has never been found and the botched Mr. Big sting run by a small police department in Canada. Michael Lista, Contributing Editor for Toronto Life, joins us for more on this story. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

A respected doctor put women’s health and lives in danger for money and the public almost never heard about it. Michael Lista talks about his precedent-setting Toronto Life story about an OBGYN who committed dangerous procedures without consent for years and the fight to expose him.  This episode is brought to you by theEmerging Digital Artists Award,FreshBooks,Articleand listeners like you. Please considerbecoming a monthly supporter. Support CANADALAND: http://canadalandshow.com/join See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Toronto based investigative journalist, Michael Lista joins to discuss his findings from his recent Toronto Life article.

James Pollock is the author of Sailing to Babylon, which was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award in Poetry, and You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada, a finalist for the ForeWord Review's Book of the Year Award for a collection of essays. He is also the editor of The Essential Daryl Hine, which made The Partisan's list of the best books of 2015. His poems have been published in The Paris Review, AGNI, Poetry Daily, the National Post, and other journals in the U.S. and Canada.  I met with James in his home in Madison, WI to talk about You are Here. Topics discussed include blindness to Canadian poetry, the importance of anthologies, bad poetry, meter, rhyme, Robert Frost, argument, philosophers, poet-critics, autobiography in poetry, myth, Adam Kirsch, authenticity versus technique, rhetoric, poetry in totalitarian regimes, Michael Lista, Carmine Starnino; constructive, honest reviews, Eric Ormsby, and the need for a great anthology of Canadian poetry. 

Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet in Toronto. He has worked as a book columnist for The National Post, and as the poetry editor of The Walrus. He is the author of three books: the poetry volumes Bloom and The Scarborough, and Strike Anywhere, a collection of his writing about literature, television and culture. His essays and investigative stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Toronto Life, The Walrus, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He was the 2017 Margaret Laurence Fellow at Trent University and a finalist for the Allan Slaight Prize for Journalism. I met Michael at his home in Toronto to talk about his essays in Strike Anywhere (Porcupine's Quill, 2016) Canadian Poetry, Rupi Kaur, Al Purdy and Wordsworth, common speech and common sense, Carmine Starnino and The Lover's Quarrel, John Metcalf, Leonard Cohen and schmaltz, John Thompson, Dante, Scott Griffin, the Saudi arms deal, Margaret Atwood, MacBeth, long-form investigative journalism, crime reporting, self-interest, radical truth-telling and men crying.   

With two well-received collections of poems and a fearless collection of essays, Canadian investigative journalist, essayist and poet, Michael Lista, was welcomed to Trent University as the 2017 Margaret Laurence fellow. His talk Outside the Whale: Literature and the Left in the Age of Trump focused primarily on the role the literary left will play in a new political climate of right-winged politics and nationalism. Mr. Lista has worked as a book columnist for The National Post, and as the poetry editor of The Walrus. He is the author of three books: the poetry volumes Bloom and The Scarborough, and Strike Anywhere, a collection of his writing about literature, television and culture. His essays and investigative stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Toronto Life, The Walrus, Canadaland, and elsewhere. From the School of the Study of Canada: He’s been a book columnist and noted poet and during his visit at Trent University, Michael Lista was ready to defend his craft – and the literary left – particularly at a time when the political elite seems on the verge of stepping into the ring at the slightest comment. On February 9, 2017, speaking to a crowd at Traill College’s Bagnani Hall, he shared his own experiences in writing both ahead of, and following the U.S. election. Throughout his address, Mr. Lista painted a picture of struggles facing literary writers who have, by and large, been described as left leaning. Now, he suggests, they are under fire much in the way they held the right to the fire for so long. He says, “It has resulted in a new, drawn-out battle, pitting literary writers against one another. It’s taken the focus, to some extent, off those who would normally be the target of the writers.” This year, Mr. Lista has been named writer-in-residence, filling a fellowship established in 1988 as a tribute to and in memory of Margaret Laurence, Trent University’s fourth chancellor. It is co-administered by Department of English Literature and Canadian Studies Program and brings promising writers who are in the early stages of their careers to Trent University. Mr. Lista has worked as a book columnist for the National Post, and as the poetry editor of The Walrus. He is also the author of three books and his essays and investigative stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Toronto Life, Canadaland, and numerous other publications. Kate Taylor, an English major at Trent, says she was compelled to take in the address after Mr. Lista spoke to her advanced creative writing class earlier in the day. “It’s very interesting to hear a writer read their own work and describe the process and annotations they give to their own work that you don’t get when you read it on a website,” she says.    

Michael Lista is a poet, columnist for the National Post, and the poetry editor at The Walrus. The Montreal Gazette called Michael a "brilliant, erudite new voice on the Canadian poetry scene," and Barry called him, "a great host who got me drunk during our podcast interview." Michael's book The Scarbourough, due out in September, is a collection of poems that takes place during the weekend Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka abducted Kristin French. Michael spoke with us about the agony and ecstasy of the 'burbs, Biggie vs. Tupac, and being called a literary rapist. He also talks about aesthetic theory and what he'd say to the "Ken and Barbie Killers" if given the chance.

I met with Canadian poet/critic Michael Lista several months ago to discuss the state of poetry reviewing in Canada, the need for honesty in criticism, and his take on poet/philosopher Jan Zwicky's essay “The Ethics of the Negative Review,” in which she defends her practice, while review editor in the 1990s of The Fiddlehead literary journal, of not publishing negative reviews. Buckle up and enjoy the ride.  

I first heard about Michael Lista in a workshop conducted by Meeka Walsh, Editor of Border Crossings magazine. She raved about him: "Michael is a remarkably gifted young poet who lives in Montreal. He has a special interest in the points of intersection between science and poetics." These points live dramatically in the person of Louis Slotin, a scientist from Winnipeg involved in the Manhattan project and development of the atomic bomb, and Lista's desire to capture a day in his life. On May 21, 1946, Slotin conducted a dangerous experiment referred to by his fellow scientists as "tickling the dragon's tail." Using a framework of existing poems, in the way that James Joyce used Homer's Odyssey, Lista has borderline plagiarized them in a collection which documents this May day. The book will be entitled Bloom. Anansi will publish it. "Out of admiration for the virtuosity of Slotin's achievements - with the attendant hubris and arrogance necessary to take risks and make anything new - and taking on those qualities in his own work, Lista's poems do glitter, but more lastingly than that word would suggest. Dazzle too has a showiness I don't mean to imply but the wit is so apparent. At the same time the tone is held and is exactly what the subject requires in this poetic construction." Revisiting my Salon des Refuses experience, I am reminded of how rarely one encounters great literary work, in poetry especially. Pablo Neruda, Ted Hughes, Robin Robertson…I knew immediately upon first reading their poems that something extraordinary was happening. Their words rubbed up against my experience and sensibilities in ways that satisfied like few others. I felt something of this while reading the handful of poems Michael sent me in advance of our conversation. We talk here about the suicidal dangers of emulating Joyce's Ulysses, and the book's un-approachability; punning, the multiple meanings of 'bloom'; epiphanies, coincidences, translation, sex and physics, life and death.