April 24, 2009
It's like an amazing ad hoc auto museum, with open hoods and idling engines. Every week hundreds of car nuts gather at this diner parking lot in Burbank, CA to show off their big, beautiful, all-American machines. Produced by Studio 360's Derek John.
At the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, instructors Tisha Johnson and Blair Taylor explain why car design has changed so little in the last 20 years. Kurt talks with students Ben Messmer and Lili Melikian about the prototypes they're working on. And Jim Heimann weighs in on the future of car design.
"It does fly... right by a gas station." Kurt goes for a test drive with Steve Fambro, the inventor/engineer behind a 3-wheeled electric car that looks like George Jetson's space pod. Produced by Queena Kim.
Ghoulardi hosted late night broadcasts of old sci-fi and horror movies in Cleveland -- and he made a huge impression on 10-year-old David Thomas, who went on to found Cleveland's most notorious rock band, Pere Ubu. Produced by Adda Birnir.
Urban historian Jim Heimann takes Kurt on a driving tour of some of L.A.'s most imaginative roadside architecture.
At the Dub Magazine car show at the L.A. Convention Center, photographer Jae Bueno introduces us to the customizers behind tricked-out Cadillac Coupes and fancy pin-stripes. Produced by Studio 360's Derek John and Ave Carrillo.
Julie Fisher takes us for a spin in her 1959 Chevy El Camino and asks why all new cars are "boxes or bubbles." And Coco Shinomiya tells us her old car is way more reliable than her new one. Produced by Suzie Lechtenberg.
The new play Southern Rapture takes place in 1996, when a local production of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" became a political hot potato and put artistic freedom and arts funding on the line. Mary C. Curtis looks back at the ruckus.
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. 
