December 25, 2009 (Show #1052)
The game's afoot -- from Baker Street to Minnesota to Kathmandu. 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, a conversation with rock and roll poet Patti Smith, who is the subject of a new documentary airing on PBS.
December 24, 2009 (Show #)
Every year the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress selects 25 recordings to be preserved for all time. We highlight five of the selections: John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen"; Carmen Miranda's "O Que è Que a Bahiana Tem"; Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner's "The 2,000 Year Old Man"; the George Jones hit "He Stopped Loving Her Today"; and Link Wray's "Rumble."
December 18, 2009 (Show #1051)
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.
December 11, 2009 (Show #1050)
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.
December 04, 2009 (Show #1049)
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.
November 27, 2009 (Show #1048)
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.
November 20, 2009 (Show #1047)
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 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 with genes.
November 13, 2009 (Show #1046)
Movies make it all better. Pedro Almodóvar 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 aftermath of Katrina in Gulfport, Mississippi.
November 06, 2009 (Show #1045)
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.
October 30, 2009 (Show #1044)
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.
October 23, 2009 (Show #1043)
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.
October 16, 2009 (Show #1042)
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.
October 09, 2009 (Show #1041)
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.
October 02, 2009 (Show #1040)
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.
September 25, 2009 (Show #1039)
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.
September 18, 2009 (Show #1038)
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.
September 11, 2009 (Show #1037)
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.
September 04, 2009 (Show #1036)
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.
August 28, 2009 (Show #1035)
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.
August 21, 2009 (Show #1034)
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.
August 14, 2009 (Show #1033)
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.
August 07, 2009 (Show #1032)
Studio 360 goes Pop. Andy Warhol would have turned 81 this week. He revolutionized the art world by making paintings out of Hollywood faces and stuff he found at the supermarket. Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale describes Warhol's influence on art, album covers, and a celebrity-obsessed culture he helped create. And later, Kurt talks with Wilco, the alt-country indie rock band unafraid to label their music "art."
July 31, 2009 (Show #1031)
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.
July 24, 2009 (Show #1030)
Kathryn Bigelow, director of the intense new Iraq war movie "The Hurt Locker" tells Kurt how Andy Warhol inspired her to make action movies. Samantha Peale depicts the unglamorous lives behind the art world in her novel The American Painter Emma Dial, which draws on her own experience as an assistant to Jeff Koons. And we hear from the late Frank McCourt, recorded in Studio 360 in 2002.
July 17, 2009 (Show #1029)
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.
July 10, 2009 (Show #1028)
"Things Fall Apart." Kurt Andersen asks Chinua Achebe, whose novel is a cornerstone of modern African literature, to reflect on his legacy. We’ll hear from one of Achebe’s successors, the acclaimed Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her new book of stories "The Thing Around Your Neck" is just out. And we take a look at how the late Andy Kaufman set the stage for today’s cutting-edge comedians -- like Sacha Baron Cohen, the performer of Borat and the new Bruno.
July 03, 2009 (Show #1027)
Studio 360 explores F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and finds out how this compact novel became the great American novel 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 Lauren about his film G, which sets Gatsby among the hip hop moguls. And Azar Nafisi describes the power of teaching the book to university students in Tehran. Readings come courtesy of Scott Shepherd, an actor who sometimes performs the entire book from memory.
June 26, 2009 (Show #1026)
Forty years after Stonewall, where is gay culture today? The design firm Worldstudio rethinks the rainbow flag. Gay rappers struggle for acceptance in the LGBT and hip-hop worlds. A decade after "Will and Grace," where are the non-sidekick gay characters on TV? And later, singer-songwriter Regina Spektor performs songs from her new album, Far.
June 25, 2009 (Show #)
Design firm Worldstudio presents their 21st century take on the Gay Pride flag. And Kurt Andersen and Isaac Mizrahi reveal the winner of our listener challenge.
June 19, 2009 (Show #1025)
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.
June 12, 2009 (Show #1024)
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.
June 05, 2009 (Show #1023)
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."
May 29, 2009 (Show #1022)
People with something to prove. Author Harlan Ellison makes the case that he's heir to Poe, Kafka, and Borges. We visit indie rocker Thao Nguyen in her mother's laundromat. Miranda July reads her short story, "This Person." And hear why a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece failed to start a revolution.
May 22, 2009 (Show #1021)
Superfans unite. Kurt Andersen speaks with a linguist who makes the case for non-Trekkies to learn Klingon. Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule gets her fans to finance the making of her record. Plus, a sneak preview of 3-D movies Hollywood won't let you see.
May 15, 2009 (Show #1020)
Kurt Andersen talks with Lynn Nottage, the playwright behind the Pulitzer prize-winning play, "Ruined." Arts critics are forced to get resourceful when their old funding sources dry up. And out in the Mojave Desert, 82-year-old Gene Winfield designs the cars of the future.
May 08, 2009 (Show #1019)
Writer Ben Greenman and soul legend Swamp Dogg tell Kurt Andersen about their unlikely collaboration. The music of tiny Botswana makes it out into the world, thanks to the TV series "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency." And Canadian band Bell Orchestre leaves its indie-rock roots behind and perform live in the studio.
May 01, 2009 (Show #1018)
Folk music gets a makeover in Mexico and Mali. Meet Bostich and Fussible of Tijuana's Nortec Collective. The kora master from Mali, Toumani Diabate, performs live in the studio. And an artist takes fragments of the Iraq war on a road trip across the U.S.
April 24, 2009 (Show #1017)
Jump-starting the American car. Kurt takes a tour through L.A.'s car culture, talking to hot rodders and low riders and emerging designers who just might be able to rescue the U.S. auto industry. A new play in Charlotte, NC looks back at a nasty culture war from 1996. And two cult favorites from Cleveland: horror movie host Ghoulardi and the rock band Pere Ubu.
April 17, 2009 (Show #1016)
Kurt Andersen gets a cello lesson. Ben Hong taught Jamie Foxx how to play for the new film "The Soloist," and now takes on Kurt as a student. West Side Story is back on Broadway and en español! Neuroscientists wrap their brains around magic. And the rabid fan base of Sufjan Stevens gets ugly with the winner of a songwriting contest.
April 10, 2009 (Show #1015)
Kurt visits the kitchen of Wylie Dufresne, who owns the adventurous New York restaurant WD-50. Dufresne believes that organic ingredients and fine food are not incompatible with the kind of chemicals we might see on a package of Twinkies. We'll follow the creation of a single dish – Eggs Benedict – from the chicken farm to the taste test. Plus, the indie-soul sound of Theresa Andersson, who recorded her latest record in her home kitchen in New Orleans.
April 03, 2009 (Show #1014)
Meet Mr. Jalopy. He transforms garage sale junk into extraordinary machines. Hear how the quirky 80s new wave band Devo started out political. Filmmaker Paul H-O tells Kurt about his life in the shadow of art star photographer Cindy Sherman. After layoffs, former music executives reinvent themselves. And an artist offers free therapy sessions in a museum gallery.
March 27, 2009 (Show #1013)
Two men pull off one of the biggest art thefts in history, and crime writer Ulrich Boser thinks he's nailed them. Sci-fi meets soul in the music of Janelle Monáe. Designers respond to the recession. Plus, a visit with the piano doctor of Malibu, who's also Kurt's brother.
March 20, 2009 (Show #1012)
Meet the recession's new creative class. The finance industry laid them off, but now they're full-time artists. William Cohan's account of Bear Stearns' demise, House of Cards, tells us a lot about this tough time. "Flower," a popular new videogame, just says no to guns. And deep in the Virginia woods, we go deer hunting with a poet.
March 13, 2009 (Show #1011)
South African art rock lands in the States, and we get our own live performance from BLK JKS. Kurt Andersen takes a walk through "Tehran-geles" - the Iranian neighborhood of Los Angeles - with singer Mamak Khadem. And how do you the raise $300 million needed to clean up the lead-poisoned soil of New Orleans? The artist Mel Chin decided to literally make it. It's not counterfeit - it's art.
March 06, 2009 (Show #1010)
Comic book superheroes and a gun-toting grandma. Find out why audiences are going nuts for two very different new movies- "Watchmen" and "Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail." In a new work of historical fiction, female slaves lead a rebellion on a Jamaican sugar plantation; Kurt talks with Marlon James, the author of The Book of Night Women. And discover what it takes to rescue a 450-year-old painting.
February 27, 2009 (Show #1009)
Old is the new young. At a home for retired actors, residents keep up their talents. Composer Elliot Carter turns 100. And Kurt Andersen seeks wisdom from his very first boss, the film critic Gene Shalit. Plus, music and stories from songwriter Ruthie Foster and Somali-born rapper K'naan.
February 20, 2009 (Show #1008)
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.
February 13, 2009 (Show #1007)
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.
February 06, 2009 (Show #1006)
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.
February 04, 2009 (Show #)
It's that golden time again, and Studio 360 is proud to look back on a year of interviews with some of the top Oscar contenders. Hear the personal story behind an animated war documentary, a high wire walk between the Twin Towers, and the secret sounds of R2D2 and WALL-E. Check out this week's show for yet another Oscar story: "The Class." It's nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, and we hear from director Laurent Cantet about his months of preparation - in a Parisian high school.
January 30, 2009 (Show #1005)
Hedge fund poetry and the secrets of old Japan. Find out how a job in the complicated world of high finance inspired the poet Katy Lederer. Despite 20 years of living in Japan, writer Pico Iyer embraces his outsider status there. The ancient Japanese tea ceremony finds a place in the modern world. And hear the haunting story behind a Japanese forest that attracts those seeking to end their lives.
January 23, 2009 (Show #1004)
Actors, poets, and artists defy convention. Indie actor Liev Schrieber wields a machine gun in his new movie, "Defiance." A new poetry movement bubbles up from the internet, but it's not all sunshine and moonbeams. When a multimedia artist discovered the government was tracking him, he decided to one-up the feds and track himself. Plus a conversation with saxophonist Joshua Redman.
January 16, 2009 (Show #1003)
To mark the Inauguration we asked poets, actors, and musicians to leave voicemails for the new president. Artists who turned Obama into an icon during the campaign, find themselves in a quandary. And Kurt has an exit interview with departing NEA chairman Dana Gioia. Plus, all of New York City fits into a single room in Queens.
January 09, 2009 (Show #1002)
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; with Sarah Vowell, David Strathairn, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Doris Kearns Goodwin.
January 02, 2009 (Show #1001)
This week in Studio 360, multiple personalities. In a program recorded last July at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Tony Award-winning performer Sarah Jones joins Kurt Andersen on stage, and transforms herself into a dizzying range of characters – from a Jewish grandmother to a teenaged rapper. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, who developed the theory of multiple intelligences, gives some free analysis to audience members who tell us about big decisions. And country rocker Steve Earle sings about leaving Tennessee, performing tracks from his new record "Washington Square Serenade."
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, and the Lily Auchincloss Foundation. 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. 
