July 24, 2009
Director Kathryn Bigelow’s new movie follows a three-man Explosive Ordnance Disposal team around Baghdad in 2004, as the insurgency was cresting – and the tension doesn’t let up for a minute. Bigelow (who directed the cult surfer movie “Point Break”) tells Kurt that she cast unknown actors to keep audiences guessing: "If it's a very well-known face in the lead role, you're going to anticipate he can't die."
Frank McCourt, who died last week, won the Pulitzer Prize for Angela's Ashes, his desperate, unsentimental memoir of a destitute childhood. When he spoke with Kurt in 2002, he proposed a new parenting philosophy: "Give children nothing."
After art school, Samantha Peale served as an assistant to one of contemporary art's biggest stars, Jeff Koons. In her new novel The American Painter Emma Dial, a talented young artist does virtually all the painting while her famous boss woos collectors. But Peale, surprisingly, tells Kurt she’s not judgmental about an artist who doesn’t pick up a brush.
Is that Harriet Tubman by the nachos? Every summer, people who make their living re-enacting historical characters gather for dinner. Paul Revere gets into an argument with his mother-in-law, while Abraham Lincoln cracks wise about broccoli. They don’t come in costume, but for these performers, it’s hard to stay out of character. We sent producer Mark Anderson for a date with history.
When Islamic convert Michael Muhammad Knight wrote a novel about Muslim-American punk rockers, The Taqwacores, he thought it was a fantasy. Turns out he was onto something. Soon he was the guest of honor at the first mosh pit in Pakistan. Produced by Nick Heling.
Nathan Austin isn't your typical poet: he gets his material – word for word – from TV. For two months, Austin transcribed answers given on "Family Feud" and alphabetized them for a new book called Survey Says! Produced by Sarah Campbell. Reading by WNYC's Melissa Eagan.
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. 
