May 09, 2008
The Dalai Lama has lived most of his life in exile outside his Tibet, which has been controlled by China since just after the communist revolution. He’s become a kind of superstar in the West, not by lecturing on Buddhist enlightenment, but by preaching tolerance. The writer Pico Iyer has known the Dalai Lama for years, and tells Kurt about his new book about him called The Open Road.
Natural historian Janine Benyus believes that imitating nature’s best ideas can provide solutions to human problems. Could we store electricity like an electric eel to build a nontoxic battery? Benyus told Studio 360's Sarah Lilley how copying nature’s design is the key to our own sustainability.
Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez are not your average fragrance writers; in Perfumes: The Guide, they called Paris Hilton’s scent "barfbag floral." Turin is a biophysicist; Sanchez is a perfume critic. Kurt brought them to a nearby drugstore to unlock the mysteries of body spray, handiwipes, and crayons.
Weigh in: What’s your favorite (non-perfume) scent?
The pipa, or Chinese lute, has been part of traditional music in China for more than 2,000 years. These days, a few intrepid players have been incorporating the pipa’s sound into jazz, bluegrass, and modern classical music. Pipa virtuoso Min Xiao-Fen finds it impossible to stick to just one genre. Produced by Studio 360's Lu Olkowski.
Min Xiao-Fen performs with Björk:
In the pantheon of "Saturday Night Live" segments, "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey" are legendary. Well, now Handey has written his own legend -- it's part of his new humor collection, What I’d Say to the Martians and Other Veiled Threats. With production by John DeLore.
The Whitney Biennial exhibition features dozens of works. So the curators used every nook and cranny of the Whitney’s four floors -– even the coat check. Studio 360's Pejk Malinovski explored a sound installation by Mungo Thomson that is getting on the staff's nerves.
Studio 360 is a co-production of
Public
Radio International and
WNYC New York Public Radio, and is funded in part by
Ken and Lucy Lehman, the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, and
DK Eyewitness Travel. Studio 360's American Icons series is supported in part by the
National Endowment for the Humanities. Our series on creativity and science is supported in part by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Our series on Underground Heroes is supported in part by the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. 
