September 05, 2008
The biographer comes clean about her years as a literary con artist. Israel was a pro at digging up letters by famous writers like Dorothy Parker and selling them for a good profit. It turns out that Israel was the one writing them. Kurt talks with Israel about her crimes, which she recounts in her new memoir, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
In Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State, Steven Heller describes how four famous tyrannies (the Nazi party, Stalin, the Italian Fascists, and Mao's Communist Party) used architecture and design for propaganda and control.
Mao Zedong believed in the radical transformation of every aspect of Chinese life. "Art" under Mao meant extolling the glories of communism. Sarah Campbell discovered a strange footnote to Mao's biography: he was a poet, and not altogether a bad one –- but he might have had himself persecuted as a reactionary.
Guy Deslisle was a rare foreigner working in North Korea -– he lived there for a few months in 2001 doing animation work. He recounts his experience in the graphic memoir Pyongyang. From monuments to lapel pins, Delisle describes how the faces of Kim Jung Il and Kim Il Sung are everywhere.
We reveal Bernie Krause's mystery nature sound.
Kudos to listener Dustin O'Neill of New York City.
Before this election, rapper Talib Kweli (like one-third of Americans) didn’t vote. But that doesn’t mean his music isn’t politically engaged. His latest record, Ear Drum, is full of socially conscious lyrics that buck trends in hip hop.
(Originally aired: August 17, 2007)
From Talib Kweli's album Ear Drum (Warner Bros / Wea).
The king of Hollywood voice-overs, Don LaFontaine, died this week. In an interview from 2001, LaFontaine reveals some of his trade secrets. Produced by Steve Nelson and Kerrie Hillman.
(Originally aired: May 19, 2001)
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