From 2014 through the end of 2015 I edited Pop-Up Magazine, a "live magazine" that presents new, true, reported stories from some of the country's top writers, photographers, filmmakers, radio producers and artists, with live original music, in big theaters around the country. The New York Times has called it "a sensation.” Pat produced the show’s first national tour, as well as a variety of other projects.
9.24.15 | Los Angeles, CA
10.7.15 and 10.8.15 | San Francisco, CA
10.20.15 | Portland, OR
10.21.15 | Seattle, WA
10.27.15 | Chicago, IL
10.29.15 | Brooklyn, NY
In Fall 2015, for the first time ever, Pop-Up Magazine went on tour, staging seven shows in six cities. The Magik*Magik Orchestra wrote an original score for the show and traveled with a five-piece band. I commissioned original cinematic shadow puppetry from Manual Cinema, a new magic act from the magician and puzzle maker David Kwong, and five songs inspired by a story from Radiolab's Jad Abumrad, one in each region the show performed. Jeff Bridges did at advertisement on stage at BAM. It was surreal. The line-up, which changed slightly from city to city, included:
Magnum photographer Matt Black on an 18,000-mile road trip to America's most impoverished places
Alex Cohen, host of KPCC's Take Two, with an interview of directors Christopher Miller and Phil Lord (LEGO Movie, 21 Jump Street)
Author Laurel Braitman on a parrot that was admitted to a witness protection program in Louisiana
Tracy Clayton and Heben Nigatu, hosts of the Buzzfeed podcast Another Round, with a satirical take-down of racist advertising
Animator Marty Cooper (aka Hombre McSteez) with a new animation commissioned for each leg of the tour (online now here)
Filmmaker Sam Green on a transcendent visit to the 116-year-old oldest person in the world
WBEZ reporter Linda Lutton on her search for a mysterious doctor on a mission to help kids escape swim class
Photographer Natalie Keyssar on a dancer from Brooklyn's dual identity in underground clubs and ballet halls
Cartoonist Terry Blas on his gay, Mormon, Latino childhood in Salt Lake City and, then one day, suddenly, the Bronx
Radiolab host Jad Abumrad with a story about the forgotten third Apollo 11 astronaut, with original songs inspired by it by:
Angel Derradorian (LA)
Thao Nguyen (SF)
Luz Elena Mendoza (Portland + Seattle)
Homme (Chicago)
And Mirah (Brooklyn)
Magician and New York Times crossword puzzle creator David Kwong on the importance of preparation to great magic
Gimlet podcast host Brittany Luse on one man's obsessive podcast all about Disneyland
Emily Gordon, writer and producer of The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail, on universal relationship advice
Writer Geoff Manaugh on a burglar who became famous for a spree of fast food restaurant break-ins
New York Times Magazine writer Jenna Wortham on a man who replaced his lost memory with his phone, animated by Manual Cinema
Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne on the mysterious and contested origins of an LA landmark
Filmmaker Amy Berg with a preview of a new film about Janis Joplin, with live narration by actress and musician Rain Phoenix
Author Jon Mooallem on his child's class play that morphed into an epic tirade against gentrification in San Francisco
Author and This American Life contributor Davy Rothbart on a company that rents crowds to anybody who needs one
Saturday Night Live cast member Sasheer Zamata on the vast and tiny distance between she and her mother
7.25.15 | San Francisco, CA
In July 2015, Pop-Up piloted a new kind of show called Sidebar. One hour. Five pieces. Drinks at the bar. Staged at the historic Swedish American Hall on Market Street in San Francisco. Here's the line-up:
Radio producer Bianca Giaver and comedian Ele Woods on where some people voted "most likely to succeed" in high school are now
Photographer Kristen Bedford on the 18 surviving members of an interracial cult that in the 1930s had tens of thousands of members
NASA scientist Natalie Batalha in conversation with writer Chris Colin about her discovery of an Earth-like planet that may be home to life
Filmmaker Meg Smaker with a SXSW jury award-winning short documentary on the only female boxer in Cuba
Singer-songwriter Bhi Bhiman with a four-song set to close the night
3.18.15 | Vancouver, BC
4.17.15 and 4.18.15 | San Francisco, CA
4.19.15 | Los Angeles, CA
In March 2015, Pop-Up guest-curated a session of talks at the TED conference in Vancouver, BC. We presented new true stories from writers, photographers, public radio producers, documentary filmmakers and artists, with original live scoring by the Magik*Magik Orchestra. Each story was something of a fusion between a TED talk and a Pop-Up piece. The theme was "Truth & Dare." The line-up included:
Photographer Alec Soth with New York Times Magazine photo editor Stacey Baker on the endurance of love
Fusion editor-in-chief Alexis Madrigal on the human-like lives of Twitter bots
National Geographic photographer Anand Varma on the close-up lives of honeybees (now posted on TED.com)
Academy award-nominated documentary filmmaker Sam Green on Louis Armstrong's sex tape
Bestselling author Suki Kim on teaching undercover in North Korea (now posted on TED.com)
New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear on the tragic story of the artists Margaret Kilgallen, Barry McGee and Clare Rojas
WIRED contributing writer Steve Silberman on the origins of our wrong-headed ideas about autism
Singer-songwriter Dawn Landes on the first woman to row along across the Atlantic Ocean (now posted on TED.com)
Public radio's The Kitchen Sisters on a stock trader inside San Quentin State Prison
Filmmaker Chris Milk on the empathy-inducing powers of virtual reality (now posted on TED.com)
Radiolab producer Latif Nasser on a professional wrestler who revolutionized 20th century medicine
Pop-Up also brought in a dozen VR headsets for people to experience the director Chris Milk's films, and worked with a programmer to create a Twitter bot of our own called @truthdarebot for the participants to play with. And each day of the conference, Pop-Up released a new audio story designed to be listened to on your phone while standing in a particular location. Participants were given a phone number and asked to call it:
On Monday, while standing by the water, to hear about the sea floor from ultra-deep-sea biologist Cindy Van Dover
On Tuesday, while in a crowd, to hear a story about managing a hostile audience from comedian Kurt Braunohler
On Wednesday, while holding a pen and paper in hand, to hear a short art lesson from artist Maira Kalman
On Thursday, while in bed just before sleeping, to hear a bedtime story from actor Jeff Bridges
On Friday, while walking someplace, to hear from explorer Paul Salopek, who is currently circumnavigating the Earth by foot
In April, Pop-Up brought the TED stories back to California, performing them in San Francisco at The Nourse Theater and Davies Symphony Hall, and in Los Angeles at The Theatre at Ace Hotel. Pat also added new stories from photographer Naomi Harris (on Japan's surprisingly diverse range of animal cafes) and comedian Baratunde Thurston (on befriending the guy who hacked his Facebook account).
11.13.14 | San Francisco, CA
11.19.14 | Los Angeles, CA
In November 2014, Pop-Up traveled for the first time to Los Angeles, to perform at the beautiful historic Theatre at Ace Hotel. The show, which premiered the week before at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, featured 19 stories from a wide range of journalists, documentarians and writers, with original live scoring by the Magik*Magik Orchestra. All were from or related to California and the West. They included:
New York Times contributor Bonnie Tsui on the first film of surfing ever made
Author Laurel Braitman on the Silicon Valley Tortoise Club
Photographer Stefan Ruiz on the astonishing creativity of drug smugglers
Novelist Jenny Hollowell on the stories that emerge when you start collecting friends' Facebook status updates
Mother Jones editor Kiera Butler on a girl paying her way through college as a shepherd
Writer Chris Colin on movies for blind people (later published in The California Sunday Magazine)
New York Times Magazine contributing writer Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah on her grandfather's take on the Watts riots
Photographer Naomi Harris on Europeans obsessed with the American West of old
Radio producer Nancy Mullane with an intimate behind-the-scenes look at a conjugal visit (later aired on Life of the Law)
New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean on the delight she felt while burning a book
Radio producer Starlee Kine on America's shortest lived television show ever
Filmmaker Jessica Dimmock on two transgender brothers who made a shocking discovery
Photographer Daniel Traub on African immigrants to China (later published in The California Sunday Magazine)
Bestselling author Jon Ronson on the Twitter shaming of the dongle joke guys (later published in So You've Been Publicly Shamed)
Filmmaker Marah Strauch on Carl Boenish, the inventor of BASE jumping (now screening as Sunshine Superman)
Public radio's The Kitchen Sisters on a deadly war for eggs on an island off the coast of San Francisco
New York Times Magazine contributing writer Jon Mooallem on two guys who've made a career of picking up parolees
KCRW producer Anayansi Diaz-Cortez on a famous black Jesus in South Central LA
KPCC producer Alex Cohen on the surprisingly wide range of reasons TV characters get killed
We also featured, exclusively in SF, a story from documentary filmmaker Amanda Micheli on an online contest to get a free round of IVF therapy.
9.24.14 | Oakland, CA
In September 2014, I teamed up with the brilliant chef Samin Nosrat (formerly of Chez Panisse) to create a Pop-Up show all about food. A six course meal for 120 people with 13 stories woven throughout it. As always, the show featured a mix of writers, photographers, filmmakers, radio producers and artists, along with music selected by another amazing chef, Bryant Terry. The stories included:
Writer and poet Chinaka Hodge on the inseparable connection between elderberry jam and her late grandmother (w/ an elderberry cocktail)
Filmmaker Richard Parks on a failed utopian community (w/ a sweet potato and beet appetizer)
Writer Rachel Levin on how one man accidentally became famous for his oyster sauce (w/ oyster's and Anastacio's sauce)
Four Barrel Coffee owner Tal Mor on his discovery of a secret rare kind of honey in the rainforest (w/ a bit of the honey)
Artist Wendy MacNaughton transformed each water glass into a visual representation of a dried up CA reservoir (w/ a bit of water)
Artist Tucker Nichols created an original print on the napkins with provocative suggestions of things to talk w/ your table about
Ceramicist Travis McFlynn on the strange relationship between his clay and oil drilling (w/ original plates made from oil-well clay)
Radio producer Casey Miner and writer Nathanael Johnson on the deliciousness of weeds (w/ quinoa and pigweed salad)
Singer-songwriter Thao Nguyen on hunger and family and love (w/ a song about those things, too)
Writer and jammer Kevin West on a man obsessed with preserving the world's rarest stone fruits (w/ various rare stone fruit tarts)
Public radio's The Kitchen Sisters on how Salman Rushdie got his first break as an ad man for a chocolate company (w/ Aero chocolates)
At the end, Leah Rosenberg gave each guest a box of 12 crackers, each of which was flavored to represent a different moment from the dinner.
In May 2015, Pop-Up hosted the West Coast premiere of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sam Green's feature, The Measure of All Things, a poignant meditation on the Guinness Book of World Records. The film was Sam's second "live documentary," in which he narrates the film on stage while a group of musician's scores it live beside him. Pop-Up produced a set of new live stories to precede the screening. They included:
Writer Caroline Paul on her attempt as a teenager to break the world record for crawling
Writer Josh Davis on employing his school-aged daughter to help him report on an international jewel thief
Public radio's The Kitchen Sisters on the Soviet-era practice of secretly recording Western music on x-ray records
Artist Jenny Odell and writer Farhad Manjoo on the economic and ecological connections between coffee and the Internet
Playwright Aaron Loeb on a two Somali prisoners who exchanged the entirety of a novel through a wall by knocking in Morse code
Writer Jon Mooallem on a lightbulb that has been burning continuously for more than a century, longer than any other bulb