Studio 360 (Arts and Entertainment)

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)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,...

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...

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.

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.

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?"

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...

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.

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).

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.