Studio 360
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Alan Cumming & David Kwong
This week in Studio 360, sleight of hand and other complicated tricks. Alan Cumming plays nearly every role in Macbeth. Magician David Kwong explains how he schooled Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson in magic for a new film, and plays a trick that leaves Kurt dumbfounded. Artist Sarah Sze takes over a building with her weird sci-fi structures. And we ask Alex Ross (The Rest Is Noise) if it will ever be safe to love Richard Wagner.
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Here Lies Love & Deaf Theater
This week, two unique theater events. Kurt Andersen talks with Alex Timbers, director of a new musical about Imelda Marcos — part history lesson, part disco dance party, but no shoe jokes. A Deaf actor performing in a signed version of a Harold Pinter play explains why on stage, actors’ voices are just a distraction from actual performance. Brazilian cellist Dom La Nena performs live. And Kurt makes small talk at the deathbed of network TV.
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Rossellini’s Mammas & the Search for Dark Matter
This week in Studio 360, two takes on motherhood. In Isabella Rossellini’s new series of web videos, she acts out unusual childrearing strategies — abandonment, cannibalism — in the animal kingdom. And a listener explains how Mary Karr taught her what she needed to know about having a teenage boy. Plus, a physicist finds beauty in the race to find dark matter, and musician Marques Toliver finds the common ground between Quincy Jones and J.S. Bach.
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Mel Brooks & Big Band Brooklyn
How did a poor kid from Brooklyn escape life as a shipping clerk and instead become Mel Brooks? Even Mel Brooks isn’t too sure, but “If you’ve got your mother’s love,” he tells Kurt Andersen, “you can’t go wrong.” Meanwhile, jazz composer Darcy James Argue conjures another, imaginary Brooklyn in an epic work for big band that’s a “total sensory overload.” And we’ll see how architects have tried to heal the memory of trauma at buildings like Sandy Hook Elementary School.
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So You Think You're Creative?
We're always talking about creativity, but what do we mean? Can we find creativity, can we measure it, can we encourage it? Kurt talks with professor and author Gary Marcus (Guitar Zero) about what science tells us about creativity. A researcher shoves jazz musicians into an fMRI machine and has them improvise; an intrepid reporter gets her creativity tested and scored; and a little girl introduces us to her imaginary friends (all of them). (Originally aired: November 23, 2012)
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Fiona Shaw & Migrant Mother
This week in Studio 360, mothers in hard times. Fiona Shaw plays a Mary furious over the death of Jesus in The Testament of Mary on Broadway, while our American Icons series explores “Migrant Mother,” Dorothea Lange’s classic Depression portrait — both the desperate subject and the famous photographer came to rue the day it was shot. Plus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist finds the black humor in the tyrannical regime of North Korea. And singer Jessie Ware, a rising star from the UK (and a...
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Jeremy Irons & Ancient Roman Hairdos
Jeremy Irons, the nemesis of a generation of movie heroes, explains the secret to playing bad believably. Kurt Andersen asks English folk-punk Billy Bragg if he’ll miss the late Margaret Thatcher, the nemesis of a generation of musicians, novelists, and artists in Great Britain. Novelist Meg Wolitzer expresses sympathy for teenagers (nemeses to countless generations of adults) in her new book The Interestings. And a Baltimore hairdresser shakes up classical scholarship by recreating...
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Tom Hanks & Remixing Spring Winners
This week, Kurt Andersen talks with Tom Hanks, who loves to cut dialogue from his scripts — he’d be a silent movie star if he could. A legal reporter explains why the copyright law needs a digital overhaul. We meet Raul and Mexia, sons of a legendary norteño musician, who have come out of the shadow of their father’s accordion. And we call the winner of our Remixing Spring Challenge.
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American Icons: The Great Gatsby
Episodes of false identity, living large, and murder in the suburbs add up to the great American novel. Studio 360 explores F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and finds out how this compact novel became the great American story of our age. Novelist Jonathan Franzen tells Kurt Andersen why he still reads it every year or two, and writer Patricia Hampl explains why its lightness is deceptive. We’ll drive around the tony Long Island suburbs where Gatsby was set, and we’ll hear from Andrew...
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Virtual Choirs & Marriage in the Movies
This week in Studio 360, we meet Eric Whitacre, the rock star of contemporary choral music, who has a secret to his success: forming choirs online. We look for marital advice from the movies, but film historian Jeanine Basinger raises a cautionary note: a marriage isn’t good drama, or funny, unless it’s in trouble. And we go for a walk with sound recordist Chris Watson as he captures the birds and reeds and church bells that inspired composer Benjamin Britten.
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Edie Falco & Charles Krafft Responds
This week in Studio 360, Kurt Andersen speaks with Edie Falco, who has taken on the toughest roles of any leading lady in this “golden age” of cable television. A Mexican artist gets creative with a hoard of confiscated guns, turning them into an orchestra of playable musical instruments. And a strange and disturbing conversation with Charles Krafft, a respected artist who has gone public as a Holocaust denier. Krafft insists that his earlier work using swastikas was ironic, not a form of...
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Going Viral
An epidemiologist explains how life is like World of Warcraft when a deadly plague breaks out online. Rabies experts connect the dots between The Illiad, Twilight, and Louis Pasteur; plus, an apocalyptic world where children should be seen and not heard — the sound they make can be deadly.
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Nazi-Sympathizing Art & Isaac Newton's Eye
The art world is reeling at the news that Charles Krafft, a sculptor noted (and respected) for making ironic Nazi kitsch, has come out as a Holocaust denier and white supremacist. Isaac Newton sticks a needle in his eye in a new play. Sandra Bernhard falls hard for Carol Channing, and we give you a new assignment in honor of spring: a bird song remix.
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Oscar’s Youngest Nominee & Macklemore’s Thrift Shop
Benh Zeitlin, the director of Beasts of the Southern Wild, tells Kurt Andersen about his Oscar-nominated debut film, an apocalyptic fairytale set in Louisiana with a six-year-old hero. We visit indie rocker Thao Nguyen in her mother's laundromat. Plus, the rapper Macklemore says homophobia in hip-hop is so over. (Segments in this week’s show were broadcast previously.)
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Dwight Yoakam & Jamaica Kincaid
This week in Studio 360, Kurt Andersen talks with Jamaica Kincaid, whose new novel resembles her life in almost every particular — but please, it’s not all about her. And in China, an architectural gem rises while a bootleg copy, copied from the plans, rises 1000 miles away. And Dwight Yoakam, who traveled a couple of thousand miles from Appalachia to Los Angeles but never forgot his roots, plays a live set. Yoakam’s first album of new songs in seven years is called 3 Pears.
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Whitewashing in Hollywood & The xx
A Latino film producer cries foul on Argo, in which WASPy Ben Affleck plays Mexican-American Tony Mendez. Lawrence Wright (Going Clear) explains how L. Ron Hubbard turned from pulp fiction to Scientology, and an artist imagines a Gattaca-like future where every stray hair you leave can be used against you. Amanda Palmer talks back to Kickstarter, and the UK’s shyest pop stars, The xx, learn to weather success.
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Emily Dickinson & The Outsiders
This week in Studio 360, the class struggle comes home. In The Outsiders, tough kids from the wrong side of the tracks go toe to toe with entitled jerks wearing Madras shirts. A railroad worker martyrs himself to save his job in “The Ballad of John Henry.” We’ll hear about Emily Dickinson’s death obsession, and one listener’s ambitious bid to write a short story every month of 2013. (No literary martyrdom, please.)
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Sue Grafton & Comedy Podcasts
Thirty years ago, Sue Grafton started a series of novels named for the alphabet (most recently, V is for Vengeance). She’s working on W, with three to go — then, “a long nap.” Netflix ushered in a new era of TV binge viewing, and now it’s producing an ambitious new political series, 13 episodes long, that it will release all at once. And these days, every comedian has a podcast, but are they making comedy less funny?
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Studio 360 Live: Stories of Neuroscience & Memory
This week, we talk about telling stories in science through words and pictures. The new book The Where, the Why, and the How pairs explanations of scientific mysteries with playful, intriguing illustrations by 75 artists. Kurt Andersen speaks with one of the book’s editors, and gives our listeners a new challenge. And in two true stories from a live Studio 360 event, a mother loses her memories, a father protects his, and their children spend their lives trying to understand what memory is...
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Zero Dark Thirty & A New Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Kurt Andersen talks with the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and actor Tracy Letts, who stars as half of American theater’s most notoriously bitter couple in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And who’s afraid of Zero Dark Thirty, the Osama bin Laden manhunt movie? Some senators. Plus Kurt talks with George Saunders, maybe America’s most important writer of short stories, who miraculously does dark and funny and poignant all at once.
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Lois Lowry & Romare Bearden
Kurt Andersen talks with Lois Lowry, author of the dystopian children’s book The Giver, which has been widely celebrated and widely banned. Her new book Son is the final chapter in The Giver series. The celebrated collage artist Romare Bearden is remembered by two friends who were with him in his last days. And a kindergarten teacher learns to let go from Finding Nemo.
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Culture Shock 1913
What a year was 1913! In an exhibition in a New York Armory, American viewers confronted Cubism and abstraction for the first time. In Vienna, the audience at a concert of atonal music by Schoenberg and others broke out into a near-riot. And in Paris, Stravinsky and Nijinsky’s new ballet The Rite of Spring burst on stage with inflammatory results. Culture Shock 1913 tells the stories behind these and other groundbreaking events that year, and goes back to consider what led to this mad,...
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Beck's Play-It-Yourself Album & Photo Remix Winners
Kurt Andersen talks with the musician Beck, whose new project is a collection of 20 songs released as sheet music. If you want to hear the songs, you have to play them yourself, and we did. Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” defines the sound of dance music we’re still grooving to today. And EEG hits the mass market, as toy makers develop electrode headsets that read your mind.
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David Chase & A Charlie Brown Christmas
Kurt Andersen talks with the creator of The Sopranos, David Chase, who returns to New Jersey for Not Fade Away, his first movie. Vince Guaraldi’s score to A Charlie Brown Christmas does the near-impossible — it’s holiday music that conjures childhood without getting too cute. Plus, we'll hear Kurt Andersen’s sci-fi story with a holiday twist.
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Paul Rudd’s Marriage & FDR’s Affair
Kurt Andersen talks with Paul Rudd, king of the bromance. In the new play Grace, he tries to shed his lovable screen persona in the role of an evangelical Christian motel owner. In a new movie about FDR, the fate of Europe is decided over a hot dog. And at Art Basel Miami Beach, an exhibition makes high art of the supremely annoying GIF.
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Judd Apatow's Married Blues & Macklemore's Gay Anthem
Kurt Andersen talks with Judd Apatow, the writer, director, producer behind some of the funniest movies of the last decade, about why his new film looks so much like his real life. The rapper Macklemore says homophobia in hip-hop is so over. And a new set of educational standards roils high-school English teachers.
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So You Think You're Creative?
We're always talking about creativity, but what do we mean? Can we find creativity, can we measure it, can we encourage it? Kurt talks with professor and author Gary Marcus (Guitar Zero) about what science tells us about creativity. A researcher shoves jazz musicians into an fMRI machines and has them improvise; an intrepid reporter gets her creativity tested and scored; and a little girl introduces us to her imaginary friends (all of them).
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Fake Photos & Cold Specks
Fake photos aren’t just Photoshop. An exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum showcases hundreds of strange and fascinating fakes from the predigital age, including high art, satire, and outright scams. Married photographers Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor are split on how best to create photomontage — he's an old-school darkroom guy, while she's embraced the computer. And the self-described “doom soul/gothic gospel” band Cold Specks plays live in the studio.
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American Icons: I Love Lucy
This is where television invented itself. It set the model for the hit family sitcom. Lucy was a bad girl trapped in the life of a ‘50s housewife; her slapstick quest for fame and fortune ended in abject failure weekly. Both the antics and the humiliation entered the DNA of TV comedy, from Desperate Housewives to 30 Rock — writers can’t live without Lucy. Rapper Mellow Man Ace celebrates the breaking of an ethnic taboo; a drag performer celebrates Lucy as a freak. With novelist Oscar...
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American Icons: I Love Lucy
This is where television invented itself. It set the model for the hit family sitcom. Lucy was a bad girl trapped in the life of a ‘50s housewife; her slapstick quest for fame and fortune ended in abject failure weekly. Both the antics and the humiliation entered the DNA of TV comedy, from Desperate Housewives to 30 Rock — writers can’t live without Lucy. Rapper Mellow Man Ace celebrates the breaking of an ethnic taboo; a drag performer celebrates Lucy as a freak. With novelist Oscar...
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Presidential Jingles and Sympathy for the Loser
If this presidential election were a Hollywood movie, how would it end? Kurt Andersen talks with Lawrence O’Donnell (formerly a writer on The West Wing, now a political pundit on MSNBC) about the more interesting outcome. For the loser, David Ellis Dickerson, a Hallmark veteran, has a custom greeting card to soothe a bruised ego. We reveal the winners of our campaign jingle challenge, and look at the new breed of mashup videos making politics into entertainment.
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Art Heist & Martin McDonagh
Thieves in Rotterdam walked off with $130 million of fine art in less than 90 seconds; Kurt Andersen talks with a security expert about this seemingly perfect crime. Playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh (Seven Psychopaths) explains why bad guys often have a soft spot for their pets. And an LA resident ditches her car and tries to live the 1980s hit “Walking in LA.”
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American Icons: The Wizard of Oz
Follow the yellow brick road through America’s favorite story and discover places in the land of Oz more wonderful, and weirder, than you ever imagined. It's been over seventy years since movie audiences first watched The Wizard of Oz.Meet the original man behind the curtain, L. Frank Baum, who had all the vision of Walt Disney, but none of the business sense. Discover how Ozcaptivated the imaginations of Russians living under Soviet rule.Hear how the playwright Neil LaBute, the late...
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Jack Black & Diana Krall
Jack Black, superstar clown, rocks out live and sings a cappella in our studio. Diana Krall tells Kurt Andersen how she pulled 78 rpm records out of the closet at random to find material for her new album. Rocky and Bullwinkle make the Cold War kid-friendly. And an art dealer helps Costco.com and other big retailers get into the fine art market.
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Campaign Ads & Steampunk Chic
What exactly is steampunk? We’ll meet some musicians who are making the dusty Victorian era new all over again. Kurt Andersen finds out why the presidential campaign ads have lost their edge. Mark Helprin (Winter’s Tale) reveals that his new novel — a story of war, romance, and gangsters — is actually based on his family. And singer-composer Shara Worden (who performs as My Brightest Diamond) plays live in the studio.
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Campaign Ads & Steampunk Chic
What exactly is steampunk? We’ll meet some musicians who are making the dusty Victorian era new all over again. Kurt Andersen finds out why the presidential campaign ads have lost their edge. Mark Helprin (Winter’s Tale) reveals that his new novel — a story of war, romance, and gangsters — is actually based on his family. And singer-composer Shara Worden (who performs as My Brightest Diamond) plays live in the studio.
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Andrew McCarthy & Theater for the People
Kurt Andersen talks with Andrew McCarthy, the Brat Pack heartthrob (don’t say it to his face) who’s now an award-winning travel writer. Oskar Eustis, maybe the most influential man in American theater, explains why theater can change the world. And a young woman dreams her way out of Brooklyn with a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
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Salman Rushdie & Andy Warhol
Kurt Andersen talks with Salman Rushdie. His new memoir chronicles the stranger-than-fiction decade he spent under threat of the Ayatollah Khomeni’s fatwa. We revisit the golden age of MTV. And Andy Warhol turns a can of Campbell’s soup into an American icon.(Segments in this week's show aired previously.)
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Philip Glass & Strippers
Kurt Andersen asks whether stripping is art — or at least, enough like art to win tax-exempt status in a case before a New York court. Philip Glass explains how his generation of avant-garde artists busted out of obscurity. And from all the listeners who participated in our Remix Challenge, DJ/rupture picks a winner.
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David Foster Wallace & Sadder Pop Hits
DT Max talks about his new biography of the late David Foster Wallace. Kurt Andersen asks rockers The Heavy, whose song “How You Like Me Now” is ubiquitous, why generations of Brits have reintroduced Americans to American music. And we find out why pop music has been getting sadder.
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Making Better People
What traits could we engineer to “improve” people? Kurt Andersen talks with Greg Stock, a leading proponent of genetic engineering. We’ll hear from a double amputee and MIT scientist who walks using bionic legs of his own creation; and from a doctor and an artist exploring mankind’s ability to defy the limits of nature with the help of a bit of bio-enhancement. (Originally aired: November 4, 2011)
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Making Better People
What traits could we engineer to “improve” people? Kurt Andersen talks with Greg Stock, a leading proponent of genetic engineering. We’ll hear from a double amputee and MIT scientist who walks using bionic legs of his own creation; and from a doctor and an artist exploring mankind’s ability to defy the limits of nature with the help of a bit of bio-enhancement. (Originally aired: November 4, 2011)
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Campaign Playlists & Celebrity Shrinks
Kurt Andersen talks with Barry Michels and Phil Stutz, therapists who help Hollywood actors and writers to stay positive in an unforgiving industry. We’ll check out the presidential campaign playlists carefully curated to rock your vote. And a new Afropop duo, The Very Best, shows that there’s more to Malawi than Madonna’s kids.
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Marjane Satrapi & DJ /rupture
Kurt Andersen talks with Marjane Satrapi, who’s turned her graphic novel Chicken With Plums into a new movie that blends live action, animation, and puppetry. Kurt takes a spin on the turntables with Jace Clayton, a world-class DJ who performs as DJ /rupture. And Janka Nabay, a singer who fled his native Sierra Leone, creates a new musical life with a bunch of indie rockers from Brooklyn.
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Marvin Hamlisch & Julian Barnes
Kurt Andersen sits at the piano with Marvin Hamlisch, the composer of The Sting, A Chorus Line, and other classic scores, in this interview from 2009. Hamlisch, who died this week, knew as well as anyone on earth how to get a melody stuck in your head. The literary shape-shifter Julian Barnes tries to figure out what makes a Barnesian novel. And a middle-aged couple rekindle their romance with tango. (Segments in this week’s episode aired previously.)
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Woody Harrelson & Burning Art
Kurt Andersen talks with Woody Harrelson. The versatile and prolific performer has co-written and directed a play, based loosely on a stoned summer before he became an actor. A piece of public art that drew attention to climate change abruptly disappears from the University of Wyoming campus, where the energy industry looms large. And an aspiring lawyer gets a reality check from the movie The Paper Chase.
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Hilary Hahn Improvs & Kids Blog
The violinist Hilary Hahn ditches the classical repertoire and goes full improv. She performs live in the studio with the pianist Hauschka. Kurt Andersen talks with the writer Adam Gopnik about how Hollywood-style violence might have played into the massacre in a Colorado movie theater. And Karen Thompson Walker imagines time slowing down in her debut novel The Age of Miracles.
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Breaking Bad & Black Sabbath
The creator of Breaking Bad explains how his feel-bad television series (about a meth-dealing high school teacher with cancer) can inspire so much love from audiences and critics. The pioneering indie rocker John Darnielle, of the Mountain Goats, reveals his soft spot for Black Sabbath. And we visit The Clock, a mash-up film comprising more than a thousand clips about time. It's 24 hours long, and we wouldn’t cut a minute. (Segments in this week’s episode aired previously.)
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Women Directors, Dirty Projectors
Are we entering a golden age for women directors in Hollywood? Kurt Andersen talks with Sarah Polley and Lynn Shelton about how the industry has changed, and where the glass ceiling remains. We’ll hear a report from Comic-Con, the bleeding edge of American pop culture. And Dirty Projectors, who make experimental rock you can dance to, perform live in the studio.
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Are Computers Creative?
This week, Kurt Andersen asks: can computers make art? And if so, is it any good? We’ll meet a program named AARON that’s been painting for nearly 40 years, a filmmaker who replaced her editor with an algorithm, and a professor who thinks what computers need is more Shakespeare. (Originally aired: December 16, 2011)
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Canada Redesigned & Beasts of the Southern Wild
Canada has a bold new look, thanks to our campaign to rebrand the country. We reveal the winner out of 750 Canada slogans submitted to our contest. And Kurt Andersen tests his knowledge of Canada against a real live Canadian radio host. Plus, Benh Zeitlin, the director of Beasts of the Southern Wild, tells Kurt about his debut film, an apocalyptic fairytale set in Louisiana with a six-year-old hero.
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Vampires, Werewolves, and Abraham Lincoln
Kurt Andersen talks with Timur Bekmambetov, director of a new movie that shows us Abraham Lincoln as we never knew him: vampire hunter. The playwright Eve Ensler and Michigan politicians stage The Vagina Monologues on the steps of the state capitol. And novelist Glen Duncan explains why werewolves show us how human we really are.
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Dads Man Up & the Art Market Bubble
In honor of Father's Day, Kurt Andersen heads to the rifle range with writer Joel Stein, the author of Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity. A cab driver bonds with his son over the love of opera. We check in on our rebranding of Canada with the head of Bruce Mau Design. And as the European economy teeters, we see how it’s affecting the 1% who are congregating at Art Basel, Europe’s largest art fair. → Spotify Playlist: Listen to the music used in this week's show
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Mad Men Style & Fifty Shades of Grey
Ahead of the Mad Men finale this weekend, we decode the social mores of the 1960s through the wardrobes of Joan, Peggy, and Don. And as the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy pushes our social mores now, publishers and readers explain what all the fuss is about. Plus, Kurt Andersen talks with the writer Paul Theroux. His new novel, The Lower River, follows a former Peace Corps volunteer back to Malawi. → Spotify Playlist: Listen to the music used in this week's show
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Tony Nominees & Indie Videogames
Kurt Andersen talks with playwright Bruce Norris. His Tony-nominated play Clybourne Park tackles race, class, and gentrification — and it’s a comedy. Nina Arianda, nominated for her leading role in Venus in Fur, shares her mantra for success. And a group of videogame designers creates a pop-up arcade with games that are defining a new world of indie gaming. → Spotify Playlist: Listen to the music used in this week's show
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Men in Black & The Return of TV's Dallas
Kurt Andersen talks with Men In Black III director Barry Sonnenfeld about the secret to a great sci-fi blockbuster. As part of our American Icons series, we visit Dallas, the 1980s soap opera about a wealthy oil family. The singer and composer Gabriel Kahane performs live in our studio. Plus a down-and-out rocker finds inspiration at a Curtis Mayfield concert. (Some segments in this week’s show were broadcast previously.)
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Art as Medicine
Art is changing medicine. Music helps patients recover in a burn unit and medical students learn how honing their narrative skills will make them better doctors. Kurt Andersen talks with the writer Chris Adrian about how his day job as a children’s cancer doctor finds its way into his novels. And an ER doc reveals which hospital television show tells it like it is. (Originally aired: December 10, 2010)
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Maurice Sendak & Filmmaker Mark Duplass
Acclaimed children's book author Mo Willems (Knuffle Bunny) considers Maurice Sendak’s legacy. Kurt Andersen talks with Mark Duplass, the actor/director/writer/producer who is giving 30-something slackers the spotlight. The music industry taps hackers for the next killer app. And Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith reveals the winner of our Ode to a Teen Idol poetry contest. → Spotify Playlist: Listen to the music used in this week's show
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The New Sherlock Holmes & The Outsiders
Kurt Andersen talks with Steven Moffat, the TV writer and producer behind two stylish reinventions of classic characters: Doctor Who and Sherlock. The religion scholar Elaine Pagels decodes the Bible’s most controversial and fantastical text, the Book of Revelation. And our American Icons series continues with the novel that created a new genre of young adult fiction: The Outsiders. → Spotify Playlist: Listen to the music used in this week's show
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The New Sherlock Holmes & The Outsiders
Kurt Andersen talks with Steven Moffat, the TV writer and producer behind two stylish reinventions of classic characters: Doctor Who and Sherlock. The religion scholar Elaine Pagels decodes the Bible’s most controversial and fantastical text, the Book of Revelation. And our American Icons series continues with the novel that created a new genre of young adult fiction: The Outsiders. → Spotify Playlist: Listen to the music used in this week's show
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Worshipping David Bowie, Becoming Michael Jackson
Kurt Andersen talks with Tracy K. Smith, whose Life on Mars (which pays homage to David Bowie) just won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Michael Jackson impersonators keep their idol’s legacy alive. And the lead singer of the band Of Montreal learns everything he needs to know from Mick and Keith.
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The Flaming Lips & Theresa Andersson
Kurt Andersen talks with Wayne Coyne, the mastermind of the Flaming Lips, about a near-death experience. Marina Abramović, the self-described "grandmother of performance art," sits silently in a museum atrium for months. And DIY soulster Theresa Andersson brings a garage’s worth of gadgets to the studio for a live performance. (Segments in this week’s show were broadcast previously.)
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Lena Dunham & Nneka
Kurt Andersen talks with Lena Dunham, the 25-year-old director, writer, and star of the new HBO series Girls. The Nigerian singer-songwriter Nneka performs live in the studio. And we announce the three listeners who turned junk into treasure for our Significant Object story contest.
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Isabel Toledo & Kerry Washington
Kurt Andersen visits the studio of Isabel and Ruben Toledo, who design and make clothes the old school way. Kerry Washington shows her mean streak as the star of Scandal, a new series about a publicist who specializes in VIP damage control. And the New Orleans rap group New Renaissance tries to clean up hip-hop’s Dirty South.
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Herb Alpert & Dirty Art
Kurt Andersen talks with the legendary trumpeter and bandleader Herb Alpert, whose Tijuana Brass gave the 1960s its swing. The novelist Lionel Shriver writes a comedy with terrorism in the background in her new book The New Republic. A Burmese punk band holds it breath for democracy. And we visit an exhibition of art made of dirt and dust bunnies.
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Willem Dafoe & Homemade Hunger Games
Kurt Andersen talks with Willem Dafoe — the shapeshifting actor is starring in three movies in theaters now. We’ll hear from fans of The Hunger Games who made their own film versions of the books long before Hollywood. And we’ll turn trash into treasure with the help of talented writers: you.
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Woody Guthrie & Andrew Bird
Kurt Andersen speaks with Pete Seeger, Sharon Jones, and others about why "This Land is Your Land" endures, as part of our American Icons series. Later in the hour, writer Anne Lamott and musician Andrew Bird let us in on their creative processes. Hint: one involves holing yourself up in a barn in the middle of nowhere.
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The 'War on Women' & Will Ferrell
This week Kurt Andersen talks with Will Ferrell. For his new movie, Casa de Mi Padre, he joined a cast of Mexican actors for a role performed entirely in Spanish. Director Joseph Cedar’s Footnote tells the story of a tense rivalry between professors, father and son. Hear how Amy Poehler and other entertainers are fighting the conservative "war on women" with laughs. And you are what you watch: a new study shows how your favorite TV shows reveal your political leanings.
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Kickstarter & A Kid’s Book About Meth
Arts funding in the age of Kickstarter. A co-founder of the online crowd-funding platform believes it will soon eclipse the NEA — and we’ll weigh the pros and cons of Kickstarter compared to government funding. Acclaimed young-adult novelist Jacqueline Woodson tells Kurt Andersen that teens are ready to read about meth addiction. And a scientist’s new theory unites biology, physics, and design, explaining why everything that moves forms certain familiar patterns. It’s the constructal law,...
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Hollywood’s Oscar Problem & Blondes on Film
Why is pop culture obsessed with blondes? From Marilyn Monroe to Rihanna, we look at the seductive power of golden locks. And on Hollywood’s biggest weekend, we ask, do the Oscars matter anymore? Plus Kurt Andersen gets a tour of the dozens of birds, plants, antiques, and oh yeah, paintings, in artist Hunt Slonem’s Manhattan studio.
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American Icons: Monticello
This is the home of America’s aspirations and its deepest contradictions. Monticello is home renovation run amok. Thomas Jefferson was as passionate about building his house as he was about founding the United States; he designed Monticello to the fraction of an inch and never stopped changing it. Yet Monticello was also a plantation worked by slaves, some of them Jefferson’s own children. Today his white and black descendants still battle over who can be buried at Monticello. It was trashed...
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Live with Eugene Mirman & tUnE-yArDs
This week, Studio 360 is live in WNYC’s Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, for a special episode about the art of reinvention. The comedian Eugene Mirman finds a new career as a consumer advocate (cable company, beware). Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation) goes from bad-girl memoirist to corporate lawyer. And Merrill Garbus transforms herself and indie-rock with the music project tUnE-yArDs — she performs live. (Originally aired: June 3, 2011) Video: Watch the entire show, recorded live on...
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Miss Bala & Jack DeJohnette
Kurt Andersen talks with Gerardo Naranjo, the director of the new film Miss Bala, about a beauty pageant contestant caught in the middle of Mexico’s drug war. The composer Eve Beglarian travels the length the Mississippi River collecting songs and stories — she performs live in the studio. And one of jazz’s greatest drummers, Jack DeJohnette, looks back at the road not taken.
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Nikola Tesla: Strange Genius
The astounding mad scientist life of Nikola Tesla. Just who was this pioneer of radio, radar, and wireless communication? We discover his legacy in the work of today’s scientists and artists. Samantha Hunt’s novel The Invention of Everything Else is a fictional portrait of Tesla. Monologist Mike Daisey tells us how Tesla X-rayed Mark Twain’s head. And across the country, garage inventors toil in obscurity at the next breakthrough that will change the world. (Originally aired: January 25,...
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David Byrne & Teachers Rebooted
David Byrne tells Kurt Andersen about starting a pop revolution in the early days of Talking Heads. We reveal a bold new graphic design for teachers that takes them out of the little one-room school house and launches them into the 21st century. And despite international accolades, Iran’s filmmakers have run afoul of their government, which just shuttered the country’s largest independent film institute.
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Suzan-Lori Parks & Ghostwriters
This week, 77 years after its debut, Porgy and Bess returns to Broadway, but this isn't just another revival. The playwright Suzan-Lori Parks tells Kurt Andersen about how she turned the Gershwin’s landmark 1935 opera into a musical. We get ghostwriters to reveal the tricks of their trade. And what’s wrong with Mitt Romney the candidate? He looks too presidential.
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Angelina Jolie
AngelinaJolie’s latest project found her behind the camera. In the Land of Blood and Honey is her directing and screenwriting debut. Set in the former Yugoslavia during the civil war of the 1990s, it follows a love story between a Bosnian Serb soldier and his Muslim prisoner. The film is violent, political, and it's performed in Serbo-Croatian by a local cast. “I was so excited as an artist to work with other artists from former Yugoslovia,” Jolie says. “What could we learn from each other?"
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Angelina Jolie Behind the Camera
Kurt Andersen talks with Angelina Jolie about the challenges of making In the Land of Blood and Honey, her directorial debut, in Serbo-Croatian. We tell the story of lost audio recordings that predate Thomas Edison’s phonograph. And we announce the winner of our 420-character story contest.
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American Icons: Moby-Dick
In this Peabody Award-winning show, Kurt Andersen sets sail in search of the great white whale. Herman Melville's white whale survived his battle with Captain Ahab only to surface in the works of contemporary filmmakers, painters, playwrights and musicians. Kurt Andersen explores the influence of this American Icon with the help of Ray Bradbury, Tony Kushner, Laurie Anderson and Frank Stella. Actor Edward Herrmann is our voice of Ishmael and Mark Price narrates David Ives's short play...
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Sherlock and Sci-Fi Christmas
This week, we'll follow the clues to decipher how Sherlock Holmes has stayed fresh for more than a century. We'll meet "Sherlock Holmes in sneakers" — 5th grade detective "Encyclopedia Brown" — and also the creator of hit TV show House, whose powers (and weaknesses) are modeled on Holmes'. Plus, we'll hear a sci-fi tale with a holiday twist written by Kurt Andersen.
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Are Computers Creative?
This week, Kurt Andersen asks: can computers make art? And if so, when? Will it be any good? We’ll meet a program named AARON that’s been painting for nearly 40 years, a filmmaker who replaced her editor with an algorithm, and professor who thinks what computers need is more Shakespeare.
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Kate Winslet & Newt the Novelist
Kurt Andersen talks with Kate Winslet about her new movie Carnage, her mastery of playing complicated women, and the challenges of on-screen vomiting. Lalah Hathaway comes to terms with the complicated legacy of her father, the RB singer and song-writer Donny Hathaway. Plus the illustrator Lou Beach tries his hand at writing super short stories — and we challenge listeners to write their own for our 420-character story contest.
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Umberto Eco & Harold O’Neal
Kurt Andersen talks with the novelist Umberto Eco, whose new thriller The Prague Cemetery imagines the author of one of the most notorious books ever written. The celebrated collage artist Romare Bearden is remembered by two friends who were with him in his last days. And the jazz pianist Harold O’Neal plays live in the studio (and does a little breakdancing on the side).
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Breaking Taboos with Tim Minchin and Colson Whitehead
Studio 360 is breaking taboos live onstage, at The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space in Manhattan. The Australian comedian-singer-songwriter Tim Minchin turns a diss into a show tune. Raconteur Cintra Wilson finds the hidden meanings in your bad fashion choices. And Colson Whitehead, a MacArthur genius, explains why his new novel is about zombies. → Weigh in: "_______ is a taboo I love breaking, but I wish _______ was still taboo."
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David Cronenberg & Soviet Art
David Cronenberg tells Kurt Andersen about his new movie, A Dangerous Method, and why Freud was so threatened by Jung. Congress is considering landmark legislation that would make it illegal for sites to host pirated content — say goodbye to all those old music videos on YouTube — and Kurt speaks with an author who thinks we’re overdue to tame the internet. And country music star Ronnie Dunn shows off his collection of Soviet paintings.
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MTV's Golden Age & Sarah Jessica Parker
Kurt Andersen talks with music journalist Craig Marks about his book on the golden age of MTV. Sarah Jessica Parker explains how she dreamed up the first reality show about fine art. And in our American Icons series, we see why the tragedy of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth still resonates for readers today.
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Making Better People
What traits could we engineer to “improve” people? Kurt Andersen talks with Greg Stock, a leading proponent of genetic engineering. We’ll hear from a double amputee and MIT scientist who walks using bionic legs of his own creation; and from a doctor and an artist exploring mankind’s ability to defy the limits of nature with the help of a bit of bio-enhancement.
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The Real Steve Jobs, & Hurricane Katrina in Fiction
Kurt Andersen talks with Walter Isaacson, whose landmark biography of Apple CEO Steve Jobs reveals the insufferable perfectionism of the innovator. Jesmyn Ward imagines a family bracing for Hurricane Katrina in her novel Salvage the Bones. Sandra Bernhard finds her muse in Carol Channing. And we peek into the unglamorous real lives of vampires.
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William Shatner and Ta Obreht
This week, William Shatner tells Kurt Andersen how he’s fine-tuned playing the role of William Shatner and why he likes going at warp speed. And we hear about another actor named William — last name Shakespeare — who may or may not have written some plays. The new film Anonymous buys the line that Shakespeare’s plays were ghost-written by a political insider at Queen Elizabeth’s court. Also, tattoos are no longer just for bikers and hipsters: scientists and mathematicians are showing off...
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Bjrk’s Biophilia and Creative Savants
This week,Bjrk releases an album too advanced for a CD: each track is also an interactive app. Kurt heads down to Wall Street with an architecture critic to see how protestors have created the space they’re occupying. And our reporter seeks a shortcut to creative ability, talking to scientists who study how savants do what they do.
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Surveillance
This week, the new culture of surveillance. Kurt Andersen talks to technologist and philosopher Jaron Lanier about why we have to watch the watchers. An artist meticulously tracks government spy satellites crossing the night sky. A computer scientist explains what goes into building a facial recognition system. And sitting silently in her car, a photographer secretly snaps pictures of strangers in their homes.
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John Wesley Harding and The Swerve
This week, singer-songwriter-turned-novelist John Wesley Harding performs live in the studio. And Kurt Andersen digs deep into a new book called The Swerve — it’s the story of how an ancient Roman poem predicted radical philosophical, scientific, even sexual ideas centuries before their time. Plus we uncover the secret life of the jazz bandleader Ina Ray Hutton.
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Superhero Makeovers and Magical Fiction
This week, superheroes are born again. From Superman to Batgirl, DC Comics has reinvented its entire line — but not all fans are pleased. A group of renegade artists get a retrospective at a museum they once defaced. And as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes headlines this week, we look at why a small exhibit of children’s art from Gaza is causing a major stir in Oakland, California.
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Albert Brooks in Drive, Nirvana’s Nevermind
This week, our American Icons series continues with a look at Nirvana’s Nevermind — was it rock and roll’s last great hurrah? Kurt Andersen talks with Albert Brooks about his surprising role in the new movie Drive, and his new futuristic novel. Plus, Kurt talks with Matt Damon about the apocalyptic thriller Contagion, and women take over primetime TV.
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Artists Remember 9/11
Ten years after 9/11, we are still trying to make sense of that day and its consequences. Kurt Andersen talks with Steve Reich about why it took him a decade to write about the attacks that ravaged his neighborhood. A group of stand-up comics remembers what it took to get people laughing again, and illustrator Maira Kalman explains the tragedy to children in a book about a brave fireboat. Kurt visits the new national 9/11 memorial with its architect, Michael Arad. Ten years after 9/11, we...
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Jonathan Franzen and The World Trade Center
This week, two stories from the World Trade Center as it once was: Kurt Andersen talks with Philippe Petit about his daring tightrope walk between the towers in 1974, and Stephen Vitiello composes music using the sounds of the building. Plus, the novelist Jonathan Franzen — his epic best-seller about an American family, Freedom, is out in paperback this month. And we consider Georgia O'Keeffe and her paintings of animal skulls as part of our American Icons series.
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American Icons: The Autobiography of Malcolm X
This is an American revolution set down on the page. When Malcolm X was assassinated at 39, his book nearly died with him. Today The Autobiography of Malcolm X — a favorite of President Obama and Justice Clarence Thomas alike — stands as a milestone in America’s struggle with race. The Autobiography is also a Horatio Alger tale, following a man’s journey from poverty to crime to militancy to wisdom. Muslims look to Malcolm as a figure of tolerance; a tea party activist claims him for the...
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Jeff Bridges and South African Sci-Fi
This week, Kurt Andersen talks with Jeff Bridges — the Oscar-winning actor has just released a country-rock album, produced by his old friend T Bone Burnett. Neil Finn, lead singer of Crowded House, gets inspired by the 80s dance-punk band ESG. And a sculpture in Indianapolis that’s supposed to bring people together instead divides the city. And we meet newly acclaimed sci-fi author Lauren Beukes.
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Ken Kesey’s Magic Trip and Extreme Tango
This week Kurt Andersen talks with Alex Gibney, whose new documentary follows Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters on the road trip that launched the psychedelic 1960s. Then we ride the economic roller coaster with novelist Gary Shteyngart. His novel Super Sad True Love Story imagined a debt crisis that feels all too similar to the one we’ve found ourselves in recently. And a respectable middle-aged couple ditches Houston for Buenos Aires when they fall hard for tango.
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American Icons: I Love Lucy
This is where television invented itself. It set the model for the hit family sitcom. Lucy was a bad girl trapped in the life of a ‘50s housewife; her slapstick quest for fame and fortune ended in abject failure weekly. Both the antics and the humiliation entered the DNA of TV comedy, from Desperate Housewives to 30 Rock — writers can’t live without Lucy. Rapper Mellow Man Ace celebrates the breaking of an ethnic taboo; a drag performer celebrates Lucy as a freak. With novelist Oscar...
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The Flaming Lips & Literary Porn
Kurt Andersen talks with Wayne Coyne, the mastermind behind the Flaming Lips, about a near-death experience. Nicholson Baker reads from his newest novel House of Holes, which is about sex and pretty much nothing but sex. And the filmmaker-actress-writer-artist Miranda July adds a new item to her c.v.: fortune telling. She tries her hand at psychic readings for our listeners.
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News Corp. Noir & Sapphire
This week, the News of the World scandal unfolded like a high-stakes political thriller — Kurt Andersen talks with a television executive about just how closely reality resembles fiction. The novelist Sapphire's new book picks up where Push (which became the movie Precious) left off: The Kid tells the story of Precious’s son. And the new film The Clock is a mash-up of more than a thousand movie clips all about time. It's 24 hours long, and we wouldn’t cut a minute.
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American Icons: Buffalo Bill's Wild West
This was the spectacle that colonized our dreams. He was the most famous American in the world — a showman and spin artist who parlayed a buffalo-hunting gig into an entertainment empire. William F. Cody’s stage show presented a new creation myth for America, bringing cowboys, Indians, settlers, and sharpshooters to audiences who had only read about the West in dime novels. He offered Indians a life off the reservation — reenacting their own defeats. Deadwood producer David Milch explains...
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American Icons: Monticello
This is the home of America’s aspirations and its deepest contradictions. Monticello is home renovation run amok. Thomas Jefferson was as passionate about building his house as he was about founding the United States; he designed Monticello to the fraction of an inch and never stopped changing it. Yet Monticello was also a plantation worked by slaves, some of them Jefferson’s own children. Today his white and black descendants still battle over who can be buried at Monticello. It was trashed...
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Breaking Bad & Libyan Hip-Hop
Vince Gilligan, creator ofBreaking Bad, explains how his feel-bad television series (about a meth-dealing high school teacher with cancer) can inspire so much love from audiences and critics.The Normal Heart finally opens on Broadway, a quarter-century after its first performance, and its account of theearly years of the AIDS epidemic is still surprising audiences. And as the revolution continues in Libya, music and art are helping to sustain the rebel cause — but fighting on the cultural...
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Gospel Crossover & Novelist Ta Obreht
The young novelist Ta Obreht, born in the former Yugoslavia, tells Kurt Andersen how the supersititions of that land influenced her celebrated debut novel The Tiger’s Wife.Gospel singer Kim Burrell is a star, but her new record embracing love songs has upset traditionalists in the church; the legendary Shirley Caesar explains why crossover threatens gospel music.And the hottest new digital product is an 89-year-old poem: we’ll see how the iPad application for T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land...
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Microbial Videogames & Singer Laura Cantrell
When Laura Cantrell learned to play country, she started with the music of Kitty Wells. Cantrell’s new record is a tribute to the straight-talking 1950s “Queen of Country Music,” and she performs a few songs live in studio. We’ll check out the cutting edge of videogame design, with gameplay that lets players control living organisms. Stanford University professor Ingmar Reidel-Kruse lets us beta test his game Pacmecium, played with single-celled paramecia. And Apple sets the design world...
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The Book of Mormon & The Antlers
The Tony Awards are this weekend, and the heaviest contender is the filthiest show on Broadway, The Book of Mormon. Robert Lopez, the composer and co-creator, sits down at the piano to show Kurt Andersen the recipe for his cocktail of sweet and snarky. We also go Off-Broadway to the most innovative, extraordinary show in New York, Sleep No More — an installation performance piece that riffs on Macbeth. Plus The Antlers perform songs from their new album live in the studio.
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Live with Eugene Mirman & tUnE-yArDs
This week, Studio 360 is live in WNYC’s Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, for a special episode about the art of reinvention. The comedian Eugene Mirman finds a new career as a consumer advocate (cable company, beware). Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation) goes from bad-girl memoirist to corporate lawyer. And Merrill Garbus transforms herself and indie-rock with the music project tUnE-yArDs — she performs live. Video: Watch the whole show, recorded live on May 23, 2011 // (function(){var...
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David Simon's Treme & Rickie Lee Jones
The writer and producer David Simon (best known for his hit series The Wire) talks New Orleans with Kurt Andersen. Simon’s HBO drama Treme is in its second season. Kermit Ruffins, who plays the trumpet and plays himself on Treme, shows us around his neighborhood. And folk rock songstress Rickie Lee Jones performs live in the studio.
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Michael Stipe & Monopoly Redesigned
R.E.M.’s enigmatic frontman Michael Stipe tells Kurt Andersen that the decision to pursue music as a teenager was “the most courageous act in my life.” Alexandra Styron, the daughter of novelist William Styron, reexamines the life of the talented, tormented writer. And we reveal our version of the board game Monopoly, redesigned for the 21st century: it's called Boom.
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Mississippi Delta Blues & Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster explains what it was like to direct Mel Gibson in the new film The Beaver: "There's a little madness in there," she tells Kurt Andersen. Pop star Suzanne Vega creates a song cycle based on the life of the novelist Carson McCullers. And from the floodwaters of the Mississippi, great music rises.
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Bin Laden's Hollywood Ending & Faking Shakespeare
Hollywood comes to Abbottabad. Kurt Andersen says that the ten-year manhunt for Osama bin Laden has played out like a movie, with a surprise ending. Also in the hour, conversations with playwright Tony Kushner and novelist Arthur Phillips, who has written a new play by Shakespeare — anyone can do it, he says. Plus a new short story about codebreaking by author David Leavitt.
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3D Sound & Werner Herzog
Kurt Andersen gets a sneak preview of the next big thing in entertainment: 3D sound. And more adventures in 3D: for cult film director Werner Herzog, 3D was the only way he could do justice to the 30,000-year-old cave paintings he documents in his new movie, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. In Los Angeles, a museum exhibition about graffiti prompts a flurry of arrests. And novelist Anne Lamott boils down the basics to being a successful writer.
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Creative Minds Go Green
To celebrate Earth Day, Kurt Andersen looks at creative approaches to our environmental challenges. President Obama is still pushing on environmental issues even in the face of Congressional gridlock. We hear from scientists, engineers, and artists developing cutting-edge solutions that just might change their corners of the world entirely. Special thanks this week to producer Sarah Lilley. Funding for our series on Creativity and Science is provided by the Sloan Foundation.
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The Battle of Dixie & Robbie Robertson
One hundred fifty years after the start of the Civil War, a musical revolution continues to divide America: why are we still fighting over the song “Dixie?” Robbie Robertson tells Kurt Andersen about another revolution — going electric with Dylan. And Kurt asks a documentaryfilmmaker about the arrest of the artist Ai Weiwei. China’s most famous artist internationally, Ai has found clever, headline-grabbing ways to critique the Chinese regime, and now the government is striking back.
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The Civil War: Then and Now
The Civil War began 150 years ago this week, when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter. The four years of bitter conflict that followed still echo in America today. “At every point in the history of this country, we feel like we're on the verge of Civil War,” historian Adam Goodheart tells Kurt Andersen. America’s leading artists pioneered new ways of depicting battle. And for some, the battles still haven’t ended: Civil War culture thrives among the re-enactors, where a gun and a...
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China Takes Over the (Art) World
The corridors are so long, you may want to bring extra shoes. China’s newly-expanded National Museum is now the world’s largest museum — what does it say about the country’s cultural ambitions? And we’ll meet rising pop star Marsha Ambrosius. Her RB sound is smooth and sexy, but her songs are sometimes caustic, and she’s upsetting the status quo with a very personal video about a taboo subject.
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Do We Still Need Bookstores?
It used to be the big chains that were feared and loathed by the old-fashioned independent booksellers. Now, some of those independent bookstores are cooking up survival strategies for the rapid dawning of the eBook Age. And at the South by Southwest festival, which took place in Austin last week, a great new act is a needle in the haystack – but we found a needle: blues guitarist Gary Clark, Jr.
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The Fall of Spider-Man
With director Julie Taymor out, will Spider-Man soar or splat? Jennifer Egan’s book A Visit from the Goon Squad goes inside the music business, with sleazeball executives, aging stars, and pathological journalists. And Kurt Andersen speaks with two Japan scholars about the imagination of disaster.
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Steven Soderbergh Says Goodbye to Hollywood
The filmmaker Steven Soderbergh says he's ready to leave the movie business behind. Kurt Andersen asks playwright Wajahat Ali about what this politically charged moment means for creative Muslim-Americans. And Teller (of the duo Penn Teller) creates an Off-Broadway magic show with a surprising take on death, darkness, ghosts, and spirits.
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Patton Oswalt & The Ballad of Lady Gaga
Love gets messy when a super-fan tries to date Lady Gaga. An American in Cairo explains the role culture has played in the revolution. Kurt Andersen talks with David Lindsay-Abaire about his new Broadway play, "Good People." And the comedian Patton Oswalt breaks down the universe to its three essential parts: zombies, spaceships, and wastelands.
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Studio 360 Live: Josh Ritter, Martha Plimpton, & Junot...
In this rebroadcast of Studio 360’s 2010 live event at WNYC’s Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, we hear from three creative Gen-Xers about crossing into adulthood. Singer-songwriter Josh Ritter, author Junot Diaz, and actress Martha Plimpton join Kurt Andersen on stage to discuss growing up — as artists and people. Originally aired: May 14, 2010
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Arts on the Chopping Block & TV's Dallas
The American Icons series gets a brand new installment with a look at "Dallas," the 1980s soap opera about a wealthy oil family. Kansas considers eliminating its Arts Commission, and a Republican state senator jumps to the defense. Kurt talks with the writer John Geary, who reveals the power of metaphor in everyday life. And we call up one of the winners of our "Material Mashup" listener challenge: a toothpick artist with a vision.
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Elizabeth Gilbert & IBM’s Watson
It’s the ultimate matchup of human vs. machine: IBM developed a supercomputer named Watson, and to prove the processor’s mettle, it’s going to compete against human champions on Jeopardy. Elizabeth Gilbert describes how an officer from the Department of Homeland Security transformed her from a marriage skeptic into a true believer. And listeners tell Kurt how they get creative with unlikely materials like icicles and coffee grounds.
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Baitz, Spark, Frankfurt Kitchen (Studio 360)
This week in Studio 360, we make a prediction about the identity of the anonymous author of O: A Presidential Novel. Kurt Andersen talks with the playwright Jon Robin Baitz about "Other Desert Cities," his new drama about a family in crisis. The director Lisa Cholodenko has a fresh take on the modern family with her Oscar-nominated movie "The Kids are All Right." And in the new book, Spark, Studio 360 celebrates its first decade on the air and unlocks the secret to being a great artist.
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Shara Worden & On the Road (Studio 360)
The co-founder of the Belarus Free Theatre, Natalia Kaliada, tells Kurt about her run-in with the KGB of Belarus, and her new status as an exile. Shara Worden — part of a new generation of musicians who isn't afraid to mix classical composition with indie rock sounds — performs live in our studio. And we’ll hear about a redesign of the nation’s interstate highway signs.
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A Free Man of Color (Studio 360)
Kurt Andersen talks with John Guare about his new Broadway play A Free Man of Color, an epic farce about the Louisiana Purchase. Child psychiatrist Robert Coles remembers meeting six year-old Ruby Bridges, the girl who integrated the New Orleans schools in 1960. And indie-rock kingpin Jack White pays tribute to Loretta Lynn and her signature song "Coal Miner's Daughter."
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The Great Gatsby
Episodes of false identity, living large, and murder in the suburbs add up to the great American novel. Studio 360 explores F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and finds out how this compact novel became the great American story of our age. Novelist Jonathan Franzen tells Kurt Andersen why he still reads it every year or two, and writer Patricia Hampl explains why its lightness is deceptive. We’ll drive around the tony Long Island suburbs where Gatsby was set, and we’ll hear from Andrew...
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Tea Party Hip-Hop & Edith Wharton (Studio 360)
As Election Day approaches, the Tea Party gets out its message with help from a folksinger and a hip-hop MC. Pee-wee Herman — the oddball of 1980s children’s TV — prepares for his Broadway debut. And our series on American Icons continues with a look at Edith Wharton's groundbreaking novel, The House of Mirth.
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July 4th Redesigned, Jason Moran (Studio 360)
Studio 360 celebrates America's 234th birthday. We commission a makeover for Uncle Sam, and the indie band The Apples in stereo plays Kurt Andersen a new national anthem. Jazz pianist Jason Moran explains how he's influenced by everything from hip-hop to traditional quilts, and he plays live for us in the studio. Plus, music pioneer Laurie Anderson reveals some mysteries behind her new record Homeland.
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New Culture for a New South Africa (Studio 360)
Kurt Andersen takes a look at South African culture since the end of apartheid. The artist William Kentridge tells stories of police brutality through the surreal animation of his charcoal drawings. Afrikaans writer Marlene van Niekerk gets discovered by English-speaking audiences. Also - back in the U.S. - the legendary ballerina Darci Kistler dances with the New York City Ballet for the last time.
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Evolution (Studio 360)
Studio 360 puts evolution to the test. On the Origin of Species is 150 years old, but the work of Charles Darwin remains as influential as ever. Darwin's descendant, Ruth Padel, writes poems about her famous relative. Spencer Wells gathers DNA around the world to determine where we came from. An amateur paleontologist finds a way to believe in both God and the fossil record. Plus the world premiere of a short science fiction story by Lydia Millet, imagining the downside of messing too much...
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Psycho at 50 & Terrorism in Film (Studio 360)
This week, Studio 360 looks at "Psycho" at fifty. With murder, motels, and the mind of Norman Bates, Hitchcock's film transformed cinema forever. In India, Bollywood makes movies that address terrorism, but it's a subject that Hollywood is far more skittish about depicting. And a father lets his son drop out of high school, on the condition that they spend their days watching films together.
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Bee, Sing Sing, Foreclosed (Studio 360)
This week, Kurt Andersen talks with "Daily Show" correspondent Samantha Bee about her new memoir I Know I Am, But What Are You. An artist pieces together striking images of foreclosed homes vandalized by their owners. And a group of prisoners at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility temporarily trade their cells for the theater stage.
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Parker, Molina, Banjo Fest (Studio 360)
Sarah Jessica Parker on her new movie, "Sex and the City 2," and the new Bravo reality series she created: "Work of Art." Alfred Molina tells Kurt Andersen how he transforms into the abstract painter Mark Rothko for his current Broadway show, "Red." And a gathering of black banjo players in North Carolina highlights a forgotten chapter of music history.
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Twyla Tharp, Lost, School of Pop (Studio 360)
Kurt talks with legendary Broadway and modern dance choreographer Twyla Tharp. Her new musical "Come Fly Away" is a dance narrative set to tunes by Frank Sinatra. An online pop music vocals class preps "American Idol" wannabes. And a new folk ballad mourns the end of the television thriller, "Lost."
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Plimpton, Ritter, Diaz (Studio 360)
Studio 360 was recorded before a live audience at WNYC's Jerome L. Greene Performance Space. Singer-songwriter Josh Ritter, author Junot Diaz, and actress Martha Plimpton joined Kurt Andersen on stage, with live performances by Ritter and Plimpton. Kurt talks to these three creative Gen-Xers about growing up.
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Higdon, Pakistani Art, Allende (Studio 360)
Kurt Andersen talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon. She says daydreaming is the first step in writing a great piece of music. Two young Pakistani artists aim to tell stories about Islam in a Western classical painting style. And Isabel Allende tells Kurt how she edits her manuscripts specially for her mother.
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War Lovers, Streb, Knuffle Bunny (Studio 360)
Choreographer Elizabeth Streb tells Kurt what it takes to be an extreme action hero. Author Evan Thomas shows us how the war-mongering that led to the 1898 Spanish-American war resonates today. And the writer Quang Bao reveals the moment he learned that a poem could be sexy.
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A Ricky Gervais Extra
In this weeks show, Ricky Gervais drops by Studio 360. And listening back to the tape, my stomach muscles are aching. We couldnt wait until the weekend to share a piece of the interview. In this straight-from-the-studio preview, Gervais declares his love for Karl Pilkington, the secret behind both the podcast and new HBO show. [...]
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Treme, Sea Level, Iranian Rock (Studio 360)
David Simon and Eric Overmyer on their new HBO show, "Treme." It's about people getting their lives back together in post-Katrina New Orleans. In the face of rising sea levels, urban designers imagine radical plans for coastal cities. And two young Iranian musicians talk about the joys and risks of the underground music scene in Tehran.
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Creative Minds Go Green (Studio 360)
Studio 360 saves the planet. On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, we explore design solutions for a changing environment. Kurt Andersen visits a solar-powered subway station in Coney Island and talks to an engineer making biofuel from bacteria. And meet the creative thinkers behind a hand-cranked street generator, the adobe house of the future, carbon-neutral rock shows, and the Eco Art movement.
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Walken, Jimmy Cliff, Female MCs (Studio 360)
Kurt Andersen talks with actor Christopher Walken. His scene-stealing roles have ranged from super-creepy to hilarious. We hear from up-and-coming female MCs who are changing the sound of hip-hop. The "grandmother of performance art," Marina Abramovic, sits silently – for hours - in the Museum of Modern Art. And reggae legend Jimmy Cliff plays live in our studio.
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Avatar, 2,000 Year-Old Man, Millet (Studio 360)
Meet the $380 million dollar man. With its stunning 3-D effects, director James Cameron tells Kurt about the insane ambition and expense it took to complete his new movie "Avatar." Billy Crystal and Rob Reiner recall the genius of Mel Brooks' and Carl Reiner's routine "The 2,000 Year Old Man." What do Sharon Stone, Noam Chomsky, David Hasselhoff, and a komodo dragon have in common? Author Lydia Millet explains.
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Burton, Mamet, Ruhl (Studio 360)
The strange and wonderful career of the filmmaker Tim Burton ("Edward Scissorhands"; "The Nightmare Before Christmas"). His life's work is now on display at New York's MoMA. Kurt sees David Mamet's new play "Race" with theater critic Hilton Als, and they discuss whether Mamet's play deserves the controversy. Plus music and stories from one of indie-folk's royalty, Rickie Lee Jones.
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Reitman, Kingsolver, Swell Season (Studio 360)
Studio 360 reaches new altitudes. "Up in the Air" director Jason Reitman explains what it's like to release a film about layoffs and layovers in a time of financial hardship. Barbara Kingsolver says the flamboyant painter Frida Kahlo tried to take over her new novel The Lacuna. And the Oscar-winning songwriting duo from "Once," The Swell Season, perform live in our studio.
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Moby-Dick (Studio 360: American Icons)
In this Peabody Award-winning show, Kurt Andersen sets sail in search of Moby-Dick. Herman Melville's white whale survived his battle with Captain Ahab only to surface in the works of contemporary filmmakers, painters, playwrights and musicians.
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Evolution (Studio 360)
Studio 360 puts evolution to the test. 2009 is Darwin's bicentennial, and this week marks 150 years since "On the Origin of Species" was published. Darwin's descendent, Ruth Padel, writes poems about her famous relative. Spencer Wells gathers DNA around the world to determine where we came from. An amateur paleontologist finds a way to believe in both God and the fossil record. Plus the world premiere of a short science fiction story by Lydia Millet, imagining the downside of messing too...
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Almodvar, In Verse, Precious (Studio 360)
Movies make it all better. Pedro Almodvar says his new film "Broken Embraces" is an ode to cinema itself. Gabourey Sidibe, the star of "Precious," reflects on her life-changing role as a troubled Harlem teenager. In her Broadway show, Carrie Fisher makes peace with her career-making role as Star Wars' Princess Leia. And in the second installment of Studio 360's "In Verse" series, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey writes about the lives of two of her relatives, coping with the...
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Hockney, In Verse, Paper Airplanes (Studio 360)
Studio 360 waits for David Hockney. The artist returns to the English countryside where he grew up, to paint some of the most vivid landscapes of his career. In the documentary "Waiting for David Hockney" outsider artist Billy Pappas hopes his idol, Hockney, will come to see a single drawing Pappas has been working on for eight years. And we'll meet the struggling single moms of Troy, NY through the eyes of a poet and a photographer.
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Zombies, Skulls, Gore Vidal (Studio 360)
Studio 360 is ready for Halloween with plenty of gore. That's Gore Vidal, novelist and political firebrand, who captures his memories and the images to go with them in his new book. Things get spooky for real when George Romero, one of the great horror filmmakers, debates the scariness of monsters with Ruben Fleischer, director of the hit "Zombieland." And Kurt talks with Del the Funky Homosapien, who has also carved out a niche as hip-hop's oddball.
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Richard Powers, A Cappella, Squier (Studio 360)
An oil painter is the $250,000 winner of ArtPrize. A cappella gets its due: the Yale Whiffenpoofs celebrate their centennial and Sonos, the harmonizing indie group, performs live in the studio. And in the only radio interview he's doing for his new book, "Generosity: An Enhancement," the novelist Richard Powers finds his muse in genetic engineering.
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Fela, Sounding Black, Leibovitz (Studio 360)
Hear how Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti inspired choreographer Bill T. Jones' new musical, "Fela!" Performer Sarah Jones explores what it means to sound black in the age of Obama. And Kurt visits America's leading portrait photographer, Annie Leibovitz, in her studio.
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Copeland, Disney, Chabon (Studio 360)
Studio 360 revisits childhood. Before he was the drummer for The Police, Stewart Copeland was a boy in Beirut with a CIA spy for a dad. He dishes about Sting in a new memoir. Author Michael Chabon thinks modern parenting has gone overboard, not allowing children any unsupervised adventures - he reads from his new book Manhood for Amateurs. And on the North Slope of Alaska, Inuit filmmaker Andrew Okpeha MacLean explains how bad TV got him to rethink native culture.
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Yoko Ono, Arctic, Hamlisch (Studio 360)
Studio 360 reaches the ends of the earth. Yoko Ono is one of the few artists who can stay experimental while hitting number one on the dance charts. Her musical polar opposite is Marvin Hamlisch the composer of "A Chorus Line" and "The Sting." He recalls creating some of Broadway's and Hollywood's best known scores. And then it's off to the North Pole. Really. Hear how artists prepare for a journey to the Arctic Circle where frostbite is the greatest barrier to creativity.
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Cash, ArtPrize, Tim Page (Studio 360)
Studio 360, Cash and prizes. Rosanne Cash's late father Johnny made a list of his favorite country songs for her; now she's recorded her own versions of these American classics. This fall in Grand Rapids, MI $250,000 will be awarded to one lucky artist. We meet the founder of ArtPrize and some of its participants. And for music critic Tim Page, Asperger's Syndrome was the key to a brilliant career.
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Cody, Ellroy, Sparky (Studio 360)
Studio 360 visits the underworld. In the new horror movie, "Jennifer's Body," a high school alpha female is possessed by a man-eating demon; screenwriter Diablo Cody explains why she wrote the story. The novelist James Ellroy imagines political conspiracies and covert crimes in his new novel about the 1960s, Blood’s a Rover. And one of our listeners gets a sad lesson in life from REM’s Automatic for the People.
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Rudnick, Lehman, BLK JKS (Studio 360)
Studio 360 takes stock one year after Wall Street’s meltdown; the real-life drama of the fall of Lehman Brothers inspires a BBC radio play. And the playwright Paul Rudnick reveals the absurd demands Hollywood studios make on their screenwriters.
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Vogue, Don Draper, Theremin (Studio 360)
Studio 360 is ready to wear. Filmmaker R.J. Cutler gets the story behind Vogue's legendary September issue. Lorrie Moore tells Kurt why there's a little bit of Jane Eyre in her new novel, A Gate at the Stairs. We'll hear from some schlumpy 21st century men who wish they could be a little more like "Mad Men"'s Don Draper. And don't touch that instrument: Kurt gets a lesson on the theremin and picks up some good vibrations.
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The Wizard of Oz (Studio 360: American Icons)
Kurt Andersen follows the yellow brick road through America’s favorite story and discovers places in the land of Oz more wonderful, and weirder, than you ever imagined.
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Green, Kudrow, Stew (Studio 360)
This week in Studio 360, pop go the pundits. "Auto-Tune the News" transforms wonky political speech and news anchor chatter into infectious pop music; the secret's in the software. Novelist George Dawes Green returns after a 14-year silence with his thriller "Ravens." "Friends" alum Lisa Kudrow discovers life after Phoebe. And Stew, the creator of the musical "Passing Strange," tells Kurt about his teenaged escape from L.A. for bohemian Berlin.
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Chali 2na, Del Close, Art Stars (Studio 360)
Studio 360 brings the revolution to the radio. Underground hip-hop star Chali 2na explains why lately, oil painting is as important to him as rapping. The Black Panther poster artist Emory Douglas gets a museum retrospective. Stars pay tribute to the late improv comedy guru Del Close. And we join the line at the casting call for a new reality show looking for America's next top artist.
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Giamatti, Sassoon, Alaska (Studio 360)
If you don't look good, we don't look good. Hairdressing superstar Vidal Sassoon reveals the source of his inspiration: great architecture. Paul Giamatti tells Kurt Andersen what it's like to take on the soul of another person. And we follow a poet to an Alaskan Gold Rush town to survey the damage from the Yukon River's flooding. And Texas indie rockers Girl in a Coma get in touch with their inner Latinas on their new album Trio B.C.
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Live in Aspen 2009 (Studio 360)
This week, Studio 360 comes to us from the Aspen Ideas Festival, where Kurt and his guests are looking for ways to use the economic crisis to our advantage: think of it as the Great American Reset. Writer Susan Orlean remembers the optimism of her late father, who came of age during the Depression. The band They Might Be Giants has a warning about dangerous fads. And inventor Saul Griffith explains how to get kids excited about the future again.
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Toro, Afghan Star, Next to Normal (Studio 360)
Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro can't shake his love for vampires, monsters, and witches. Warlords find a way to influence Afghanistan's televised pop-music competition, "Afghan Star." And Tony-winner Alice Ripley, of Broadway's "Next to Normal," the musical about bipolar disorder, performs.
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Shovel Ready, Strout, Fiona (Studio 360)
David Bowie's son, filmmaker Duncan Jones, has a new sci-fi movie out, "Moon," that would make Ziggy Stardust proud. Elizabeth Strout, winner of the Pulitzer for her book of short stories "Olive Kitteridge," stops by. And we’ll follow the stimulus money to a shovel-ready public project in Rochester, NY called ARTWalk.
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Wilson, Rush, Raimi (Studio 360)
With Tony awards upon us, we check in on some of Broadway's best. A revival of August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" is up for six Tonys, but has caused controversy with the choice of a white director. Wilson’s widow says that critics have misunderstood Wilson’s position. Kurt Andersen talks with Geoffrey Rush, nominated for his role in "Exit the King." And later, "Spiderman" director Sam Raimi talks about his new horror movie, "Drag Me to Hell."
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WALL-E, The Class, Kweller (Studio 360)
Meet the Oscar nominees behind the movies Wall-E, the Class, and Man on Wire. The in-coming conductor of the LA Philharmonic finds his base, in the students of the Los Angeles public schools. Plus, singer Ben Kweller performs.
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Mandell, Haiku, Barbie (Studio 360)
Hold the chocolates and roses. Eleni Mandell's love songs skew way more bitter than sweet. Listeners share their haiku on the failing economy. And after decades of drastic haircuts and career changes, the Barbie doll turns fifty.
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Studio 360 in Japan (Studio 360)
Studio 360 is big in Japan. Kurt Andersen hits the streets of Tokyo in search of cutting-edge art and design. Female art stars take on the schoolgirl stereotype; young rebels scream against an economic system that failed them. And Kurt goes undercover at the epicenter of all things nerdy to get a taste of otaku culture.
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- English
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Studio 360
WNYC Radio
160 Varick St.
NY, NY 10013(212) 433-9692 -
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