December 28, 2007 (Show #852)
Studio 360 stops the suffering... from awful holiday music. Kurt Andersen brings you interviews and performances with some of the best musicians around. Featured artists include They Might Be Giants, ukuleleist Herb Ohta, singer Me'Shell Ndegeocello, and country music legend Willie Nelson.
December 21, 2007 (Show #851)
Studio 360 looks at the other Iran –- not the “rogue state,” but the nation with a 4,000-year-old cultural history and flourishing contemporary film, literature, and music. Kurt Andersen talks to graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi about her youth as an Iranian punk; her new animated film is an adaptation of her illustrated memoir "Persepolis." Writers Reza Aslan and Roya Hakakian read Persian poems that fly in the face of Iran’s oppressive government.
December 14, 2007 (Show #850)
Free lunch! The MacDowell Colony celebrates 100 years of providing artists studio space in the woods, no interruptions, and a picnic basket delivered to the cabin door. We’ll hear from MacDowell alums monologist Mike Daisey, and visual artist Tara Geer. Plus, Maira Kalman trolls for ideas on the streets of New York, and Miranda July performs her short story about the surprising consequences of a medical procedure.
December 07, 2007 (Show #849)
Studio 360 takes to the streets. We get swept up in strike fervor at a WGA rally. Novelist Will Self exits LaGuardia Airport and tries to walk to Manhattan. Kurt Andersen and filmmaker Gary Hustwit go hunting for a 50-year-old typeface. And Julian Schnabel on his new movie, the Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It’s based on the memoir of a man who survived a stroke, but suffered in a condition called “locked-in syndrome”, only able to communicate by blinking his left eye.
November 30, 2007 (Show #848)
Studio 360 pulls back the curtain on the world of fakes. Kurt Andersen and art expert Thomas Hoving look at why we still get fooled by artifice. We’ll hear from an art forger in England who did time for his crimes, and about the actors who impersonated presidents during radio’s early days. And later, singer-songwriter Laura Veirs performs live in the studio with her band, Saltbreakers.
November 23, 2007 (Show #847)
Some of the greatest shape-shifters of all time. Throughout his career Bob Dylan tried out several different personas, and filmmaker Todd Haynes captures them in his new biopic, I’m Not There. Actor Scott Shepherd takes on Hamlet by channeling a 1960s Richard Burton. And writer Jonah Lehrer tells us how science is just now proving what artists like Whitman and Cezanne observed over a century ago.
November 16, 2007 (Show #846)
China's increased openness to cultural expression is making waves worldwide. Kurt Andersen talks with Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee (Lust, Caution, Brokeback Mountain) who negotiates the divide between Shanghai and Hollywood. A songwriter sings of the woes of 100 million migrant workers who have left rural homes for China's booming cities. And a scholar at the Asia Society explains why the Olympic Games are so important to China, and how they could turn into a PR nightmare.
November 09, 2007 (Show #845)
How does F. Scott Fitzgerald's immensely popular, compact novel capture the essence of the American Dream? We travel from the tony suburbs of New York to the Midwest and back again to find out.
November 02, 2007 (Show #844)
Good Grief! Charles Schulz's biographer reveals some surprising secrets about the creator of "Peanuts." And we hear from a mother and daughter who learned about the US from the comic strip, living in Panama. We’ll visit Berlin with Detroit-born poet Sadiq Bey and our special correspondent Fiona Chutney. Plus, Led Zeppelin rock god Robert Plant joins forces with bluegrass star Alison Krauss for an album of twangy covers.
October 26, 2007 (Show #843)
In honor of Halloween, we talk to aspiring make-up artists learning how to give zombies that special glow of decomposition. We tour a haunted house that’s intended to scare folks out of sinning. Comedy writer Jack Handey offers tips for making your skeleton scarier. Plus, Annie Lennox on her new record, Songs of Mass Destruction. And we find out why musical instruments don’t spontaneously combust in space.
October 19, 2007 (Show #842)
Studio 360 gets physical and Boston’s got class. A college professor transforms the way he taught physics after attending ballet class. World-class cellist Yo-Yo Ma gives Kurt a lesson in world music. The subtleties of class in South Boston surface on the silver screen, again, in Gone Baby Gone. And Muslim teenagers turn into superheroes in the new comic book The 99.
October 13, 2007 (Show #841b)
We cross the oceans and back again. Director Mira Nair talks about making movies between two worlds –- Calcutta and New York. An Austrian designer raves about his favorite album cover of all time. And back home we look at an American classic: Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue -- perhaps the most recognizable, and the best-selling, jazz record ever.
October 12, 2007 (Show #841)
It’s plug ‘n play as we look at the art and science of video games. Kurt Andersen and writer Clive Thompson explore how this multi billion dollar industry is changing the culture. And we’ll check out the prototype for Urban Resolve, the military’s game designed to teach soldiers how to fight urban battles. Plus, Sons and Other Flammable Objects, the dark and witty debut novel from Porochista Khakpour.
October 05, 2007 (Show #840)
We celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sputnik and look at the satellite’s long-lasting impact on American culture, language, and design. The writer John Haskell imagines the thoughts racing through the furry head of the most famous space dog, Laika. Plus, a look at the fantasy-filled TV season - and 1960s-style soul from Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings.
September 28, 2007 (Show #839)
Geeks and Greeks. Jazz legend Herbie Hancock tells us how starting out as a science geek led him to his radical musical experimentation. Playwright Charles Mee says the ancient Greeks built their plays like Rolls Royces. Mee explains why he still wanted to update a 2400-year-old classic by Euripides. And we’ll hear smart indie-pop from the Montreal band Stars, off their new record In Our Bedroom After the War.
September 21, 2007 (Show #838)
Video game violence nearly snuffs out host Kurt Andersen. Body armor and advanced weapons are recommended for guests on a talk show taped inside the violent online game "Halo 2." We hear a forgotten chapter in the history of "West Side Story," which debuted on Broadway 50 years ago this week. Violinist Eugene Drucker, of the Emerson Quartet, makes his debut as a novelist with The Savior. And we squeeze an interview out of notoriously shy musician Meshell Ndegeocello.
September 14, 2007 (Show #837)
The road trip as a rite of passage. Sean Penn tells us about his new movie, Into the Wild, a true story about a young man who leaves everything behind to live alone in the Alaskan wilderness. And we celebrate the 50th anniversary of On the Road. A couple of newlyweds struggle over whether it’s just a boy book - and the cellist Erik Friedlander improvises music to a passage from the book.
September 07, 2007 (Show #836)
Art and Iraq. We find out what it takes to keep art alive in the middle of a war zone with a visit to one of the only remaining art galleries in Baghdad. Jane Smiley sets her latest novel during the first days of the war – not in Iraq, but in Hollywood. A group of young soldiers sit for a portrait series by photographer Suzanne Opton. The war's harsh realities get hashed out in a distant sector of the universe, in "Battlestar Galactica." Plus, the strange popular reign of a YouTube princess: Lonelygirl15.
August 31, 2007 (Show #835)
The secret lives of monkeys, giraffes, and sexy jungle explorers. Comedy writer Jack Handey reinvents the television nature documentary -- it’s not pretty. The young tabla master Suphala stops by the studio to perform, and trumpeter Terrence Blanchard composes music for a broken New Orleans.
August 24, 2007 (Show #834)
Accents and Altitude. Kurt Andersen went to far-flung summer festivals, and all he got us was this lousy T-shirt. In an audio postcard from Edinburgh’s Fringe Fest, special correspondent Fiona Chutney guides Kurt through the festival’s tidal wave of theater options. And later, in the Rocky Mountains, actress/playwright Anna Deavere Smith, novelist Edward P. Jones, and the band Elizabeth and the Catapult join Kurt on stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
August 17, 2007 (Show #833)
Ethan Hawke writes, directs, and acts in his new movie: The Hottest State. Rapper Talib Kweli weighs in on some hip-hop controversies. And after the collapse in Minneapolis, we start paying close attention to the bridges all around us.
August 10, 2007 (Show #832)
We survive a visit from flamboyant rock diva Courtney Love. Then, our series on American Icons continues with a look at Gone With The Wind, the bestselling novel and blockbuster movie that made the cause of losing gloriously romantic. Plus, a Southern novelist who kept his fiction in the North: Mississippi-born Richard Ford.
August 03, 2007 (Show #831)
Saxophonist Joshua Redman emerges from his father Dewey Redman’s shadow only to cast his own. The Constitutional Law scholar and novelist Stephen L. Carter talks about his new book New England White. And sculptor Takashi Horisaki spends the last several months in New Orleans preserving a home Hurricane Katrina nearly destroyed -- and reconstructs it on the banks of New York City’s East River.
July 27, 2007 (Show #830)
Life’s a beach. Kurt Andersen hits Coney Island with musical guests They Might Be Giants. The band performs songs written specially for the seashore. Plus, a “sand sculptor” who takes castle construction very seriously.
July 20, 2007 (Show #829)
Director Miloš Forman talks with Kurt Andersen about his new movie, “Goya’s Ghosts.” He explains his decades-long fascination with the Spanish Inquisition, and wonders about links between wars -- Napoleon’s invasions in Europe and today’s war in Iraq. A cancer researcher talks about the movies that nurtured his love for science, and Belizean music star Andy Palacio plays a live set in our studio.
July 13, 2007 (Show #828)
Little reminders of our humanity. We’ll consider the fate of Harry Potter, find out what it takes to photograph something much bigger than ourselves: Mars. Then we’ll hear a story from Miranda July that might break your heart. And later, singer-songwriter Patty Griffin performs.
July 06, 2007 (Show #827)
Studio 360 goes Hollywood. Kurt Andersen is live at the Getty Center in Los Angeles talking to some of the city’s creative movers and shakers. East L.A. fusion rockers Quetzal show how they're pushing the boundaries of Chicano music to a new level of cool. Jon Robin Baitz (creator of ABC's "Brothers and Sisters") explains why it’s good to be a playwright writing for TV. Plus, insightful commentary from Svetlana, L.A.'s most highly cultured escort (as performed by actress and playwright Iris Bahr).
June 29, 2007 (Show #826)
Studio 360 escapes into the jungle. Werner Herzog talks with Kurt Andersen about his new movie, Rescue Dawn, which tells the true story of the mind-boggling heroics and survival skills of Vietnam War pilot Dieter Dengler. Movie actors tell us what it’s like working with a green screen -— where their computer generated costars get filled in later. And singer k.d. lang looks back on her Canadian roots.
June 22, 2007 (Show #825)
Studio 360 throws you for a loop. Gandhi plays a hitman, and an Irish-American novelist discovers her Jewish heritage. And old technology is new again: we pay tribute to the trusty typewriter and then travel down dusty roads in Cuba's sugarcane country to hear a 19th century mechanical organ.
June 15, 2007 (Show #824)
Father's Day with a twist. Kafka meets Claymation when real-life parents are turned into bumble bees. Deadwood and Hill Street Blues creator David Milch says the shady real-life dealings of his own dad inspired several of his unsavory characters. And a toymaker's son has a soft spot for the 2-cent tchotkes his dad created for cereal boxes. Plus: novelist Ian McEwan on his new book, On Chesil Beach.
June 08, 2007 (Show #823)
Like OMG, you guys... it’s the husband-and-wife songwriting team behind the Tony-nominated songs of Legally Blonde: The Musical. They’ll show Kurt Andersen how almost any blockbuster movie can be turned into a Broadway hit. We’ll peek at a new album from Guns N’ Roses, which rock fans have been eagerly expecting for more than a decade. And film director Eric Steele talks about a year in the life of the Golden Gate Bridge: its postcard good looks are shrouded in tragedy.
June 01, 2007 (Show #822)
Kurt Andersen talks with Christine Ebersole and Scott Frankel, the star and composer of the Tony-nominated music "Grey Gardens." Astronomer Mario Livio, who explains how the properties of symmetry are linked to human creativity -- and how symmetry informs the works of M.C. Escher, J.S. Bach, and Steve Reich. Plus, a beauty expert considers whether symmetry makes us sexy.
May 25, 2007 (Show #821)
Meet America’s real life man of steel, the sculptor Richard Serra. Serra walks Kurt Andersen through a major retrospective that opens at New York’s Museum of Modern Art next week. We'll find out why Susanna Moore set her new novel The Big Girls in a women's prison -- and hear a live performance by singer-songwriter Laura Veirs. Plus, a dusty record bin yields a 70s soul singer who really is too good to be true.
May 18, 2007 (Show #820)
Inspiration strikes in the dead of night. A coffee-fueled Kurt pays a midnight visit to filmmaker Alan Berliner, whose documentary about insomnia airs next week on HBO. We'll hear why novelist Sherman Alexie compares his insomnia to a bad romance. Plus, indie-pop act Alsace Lorraine -- featuring an American priest and an Argentine illustrator who made their gorgeous new record without ever meeting face to face.
May 11, 2007 (Show #819)
disbelief and make-believe. Kurt Andersen talks with creative genius and serious atheist Jonathan Miller, who’s hosting a documentary on the subject. We’ll meet an artist who got mistaken for a terrorist, and take a guided journey to the digital universe Second Life, to check out some masterpieces of virtual art.
May 04, 2007 (Show #818)
Conventional thinkers need not apply. Pop star Tori Amos tells us why she'll never take her cues from record executives. A NASA scientist picks a fight with Walt Whitman. A Southern California grows a Cambodian hip-hop star. And with her new film Away From Her, Canadian actress Sarah Polley takes the leap into directing with powerful results.
April 27, 2007 (Show #817)
This week in Studio 360, we’re in love – painfully in love. It’s Tristan and Isolde, Richard Wagner’s epic-length opera about young passion. Kurt Andersen talks with video artist Bill Viola about a new multimedia production of the work on stage in New York. We’ll also hear from the creators of the new cop caper Hot Fuzz, and groove to the sounds of the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, whose 8 horn players are the sons of one legendary Chicago trumpeter.
April 20, 2007 (Show #816)
Kurt talks with creative writing teachers about the tragedy at Virginia Tech, and the difficulty of identifying dangerous students through their writing. We’ll also go to rural Pennsylvania for a theater production so big, it could rival the bright lights of Broadway. And later, music from the alterna-rocker Grant-Lee Phillips.
April 13, 2007 (Show #815)
This week in Studio 360, it’s Omaha or bust: Kurt Andersen finds that his Great Plains hometown is no sleepy cow town. Kurt taps into the culture with everyone from Mayor Mike Fahey to indie-rock superstar Conor Oberst. Also in the show, two very different memoirs: one recalling 1970s Louisiana, the other 1940s Hungary.
April 06, 2007 (Show #814)
How does F. Scott Fitzgerald's immensely popular, compact novel capture the essence of the American Dream? We travel from the tony suburbs of New York to the Midwest and back again to find out.
March 30, 2007 (Show #813)
Studio 360 tries on some new identities. The novelist Howard Jacobson struggles to strike a balance between being Jewish and British. A horrible accident convinces a budding computer geek to change course and make a life as a jazz musician. African-American actors find a way to make Shakespeare their own. And young architects throw out the foamcore, in favor of a hunk of cheese.
March 23, 2007 (Show #812)
Novelist Jonathan Lethem tells Kurt how he learned to love the solitary life of a writer. Songwriter and violinist Andrew Bird finds his muse in a barn in western Illinois. We also have a live performance from the duo that’s been called the sexiest couple in indie rock: Dean & Britta. And we announce the winner of our love song contest.
March 16, 2007 (Show #811)
Filmmaker Mira Nair takes us halfway around the world in her new movie, “The Namesake,” based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri. Kurt Andersen talks with both storytellers. We find out what kind of art we can buy for just a pint of blood; and we open the mail to find a piece of toast - signed, sealed, and delivered.
March 09, 2007 (Show #810)
This season, a host of new books and movies tell us that the end of the world (or at least modern civilization) is on its way. Journalist Daniel Pinchbeck explains how an ancient Mayan prophecy convinced him. And Cormac McCarthy’s bleak novel The Road takes the apocalypse out of the hands of science-fiction writers. We’ll also hear a performance by New York theater sensation Iris Bahr and from the man millions of French people know as the voice of Samuel Jackson.
March 02, 2007 (Show #809)
Studio 360 spends time with rebels, loners and romantics. Singer-songwriter Ruthie Foster tells Kurt Andersen why she leapt from folky blues to old school soul. Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick is remembered in the film Factory Girl. Movie director Michel Gondry longs for his creativity to be his ticket to romance. Edward Scissorhands, the misunderstood dreamer from the Tim Burton film, can be seen on a stage in tights in a ballet touring the country now. And Kurt speaks with Joan Didion about her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking -— it arrives on Broadway this week as a one-woman show.
February 23, 2007 (Show #808)
Studio 360 looks at how the war in Iraq is affecting the culture back home. Kurt Andersen talks with Jane Smiley, who set her sexy novel Ten Days in the Hills against the tense backdrop of the opening days of the invasion in 2003. And we’ll see how the war's harsh realities get hashed out in a distant sector of the universe, in Battlestar Galactica. And a group of young soldiers sit for a portrait series by photographer Suzanne Opton. Later in the show, stars from Broadway's Company, the Stephen Sondheim musical, stop by to perform in the studio.
February 16, 2007 (Show #807)
Kurt Andersen explores how the Lincoln Memorial became America's soapbox, and how our yearning to connect with Lincoln speaks to the better angels of our nature.
February 09, 2007 (Show #806)
We heart custom-made love songs. Kurt Andersen announces a contest to win an original love song by singer-songwriter Corey Dargel. Avant-garde chanteuse Diamanda Galás has a tribute to Valentine’s Day that's anything but sweet. Plus, Kurt talks with writer Dave Eggers and Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng about turning Deng’s life into a novel.
February 02, 2007 (Show #805)
Literary legend Norman Mailer talks with Kurt Andersen about The Castle in the Forest, Mailer's first novel in ten years. Our American Icons series continues with a deep look at Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue – maybe the most recognizable, and the best-selling, jazz record ever. Plus Kurt gets the inside dope on talent picking from two casting directors who discovered Julia Roberts and Leonardo DiCaprio.
January 26, 2007 (Show #804)
Susan Cheever dishes the dirt about Emerson, Thoreau, and Louisa May Alcott in her new book, American Bloomsbury. We’ll revisit the cultural scene in New Orleans – where standup comedy has made an unlikely comeback, along with the indie rock act Rotary Downs. And we’ll see what Sasha Baron Cohen, Stephen Colbert, and Sarah Silverman owe to the surreal comedy genius Andy Kaufman.
January 19, 2007 (Show #803)
This week in Studio 360, Gary Shteyngart, author of the novel Absurdistan, talks about his grotesque and hilarious take on immigrant life in America. The Wall Street Journal changes its format in favor of tall and skinny. A poet inspires a messy attempt at home paper-making. And we’ll hear musical offerings from the grandfather of indie-rock, Lee Hazlewood, as well as one of his younger admirers, the beautifully melancholic singer-songwriter Lisa Germano.
January 12, 2007 (Show #802)
We meditate on war and culture. Kurt talks with the author Evan Thomas about what makes Clint Eastwood’s pair of Word War II movies so compelling for audiences today. During WWII the campy image of the pin-up girl was wildly popular, and she's still around 60 years later, thanks to artist Olivia de Berardinis. David Lynch describes how meditation fuels his surreal filmmaking. And we’ll hear music from the Somali-born hip-hop artist K’naan and singer-songwriter Ben Kweller, already on his second music career at age 25.
January 05, 2007 (Show #801)
Kurt Andersen explores the history of Superman and why "The Man of Steel" remains as popular and elusive as ever.
