BROADCASTS.com

Writer Malcolm Harris has a new book out called Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. It\u2019s as sweeping as the title suggests: a lively biography of the author\u2019s hometown that covers nearly two centuries. In the book, Harris traces the connections between the settling of California and the advent of the railroad, the establishment of Stanford University, the technological boom of the long 20th century, and own data-driven present.\xa0\n\nWhat you may not expect is that the book is also, in many ways, a history of the cinema: as Malcolm details, Eadweard Muybridge developed his pioneering equine motion studies under the patronage of railroad baron Leland Stanford, who wanted to figure out how to raise better race horses. So on today\u2019s episode, Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute invited Malcolm to join them for a conversation about his new book and California\u2019s decades-spanning nexus of technology, capital, and the moving image. From Muybridge, they moved to several other movies that Malcolm cites in the book, including Justin Lin\u2019s Better Luck Tomorrow, Wayne Wang\u2019s Chan Is Missing, the dot-com era thriller Antitrust, and more.