Studio 360 from PRI and WNYC: Episodes
<p>This week in Studio 360, Kurt Andersen speaks with Edie Falco, who has taken on the toughest roles of any leading lady in this “golden age” of cable television. A Mexican artist gets creative with a hoard of confiscated guns, turning them into an orchestra of playable musical instruments. And ...
<p>An epidemiologist explains how life is like <em>World of Warcraft</em> when a deadly plague breaks out online. Rabies experts connect the dots between <em>The Illiad</em>, <em>Twilight</em>, and Louis Pasteur; plus, an apocalyptic world where children should be seen and not heard — the sound they ...
<p>The art world is reeling at the news that Charles Krafft, a sculptor noted (and respected) for making ironic Nazi kitsch, has come out as a Holocaust denier and white supremacist. Isaac Newton sticks a needle in his eye in a new play. Sandra Bernhard falls hard for Carol Channing, and we give you ...
<p>Kurt Andersen talks with Judd Apatow, the writer, director, producer behind some of the funniest movies of the last decade, about why his new film looks so much like his real life. The rapper Macklemore says homophobia in hip-hop is so over. And a new set of educational standards roils high-school ...
<p>We're always talking about creativity, but what do we mean? Can we find creativity, can we measure it, can we encourage it? Kurt talks with professor and author Gary Marcus (<em>Guitar Zero</em>) about what science tells us about creativity. A researcher shoves jazz musicians into an fMRI machines ...
<p>Fake photos aren’t just Photoshop. An exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum showcases hundreds of strange and fascinating fakes from the predigital age, including high art, satire, and outright scams. Married photographers Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor are split on how best to create photomontage ...
<p><strong>This is where television invented itself</strong>.</p> <p>It set the model for the hit family sitcom. Lucy was a bad girl trapped in the life of a ‘50s housewife; her slapstick quest for fame and fortune ended in abject failure weekly. Both the antics and the humiliation entered the DNA ...
<p>If this presidential election were a Hollywood movie, how would it end? Kurt Andersen talks with Lawrence O’Donnell (formerly a writer on <em>The West Wing</em>, now a political pundit on MSNBC) about the more interesting outcome. For the loser, David Ellis Dickerson, a Hallmark veteran, has a ...
<p>Thieves in Rotterdam walked off with $130 million of fine art in less than 90 seconds; Kurt Andersen talks with a security expert about this seemingly perfect crime. Playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh (<em>Seven Psychopaths</em>) explains why bad guys often have a soft spot for their pets. ...
<p><strong>Follow the yellow brick road through America’s favorite story and discover places in the land of Oz more wonderful, and weirder, than you ever imagined.</strong></p> <p>It's been over seventy years since movie audiences first watched <em>The Wizard of Oz</em>. Meet the original man behind ...
<p>Jack Black, superstar clown, rocks out live and sings a cappella in our studio. Diana Krall tells Kurt Andersen how she pulled 78 rpm records out of the closet at random to find material for her new album. <em>Rocky and Bullwinkle</em> make the Cold War kid-friendly. And an art dealer helps Costco.com ...
<p>What exactly is <em>steampunk</em>? We’ll meet some musicians who are making the dusty Victorian era new all over again. Kurt Andersen finds out why the presidential campaign ads have lost their edge. Mark Helprin (<em>Winter’s Tale</em>)<em> </em>reveals that his new novel — a story of ...
<p>Kurt Andersen talks with Andrew McCarthy, the Brat Pack heartthrob (don’t say it to his face) who’s now an award-winning travel writer. Oskar Eustis, maybe the most influential man in American theater, explains why theater can change the world. And a young woman dreams her way out of Brooklyn ...
<p>DT Max talks about his new biography of the late David Foster Wallace. Kurt Andersen asks rockers The Heavy, whose song “How You Like Me Now” is ubiquitous, why generations of Brits have reintroduced Americans to American music. And we find out why pop music has been getting sadder.</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/studio360/podcast/~4/0Z9oNE8RHhY" ...
<p>What traits could we engineer to “improve” people? Kurt Andersen talks with Greg Stock, a leading proponent of genetic engineering. We’ll hear from a double amputee and MIT scientist who walks using bionic legs of his own creation; and from a doctor and an artist exploring mankind’s ability ...
<p>Kurt Andersen talks with Barry Michels and Phil Stutz, therapists who help Hollywood actors and writers to stay positive in an unforgiving industry. We’ll check out the presidential campaign playlists carefully curated to rock your vote. And a new Afropop duo, The Very Best, shows that there’s ...
<p>Kurt Andersen talks with Marjane Satrapi, who’s turned her graphic novel <em>Chicken With Plums</em> into a new movie that blends live action, animation, and puppetry. Kurt takes a spin on the turntables with Jace Clayton, a world-class DJ who performs as DJ /rupture. And Janka Nabay, a singer ...
<p>Kurt Andersen sits at the piano with Marvin Hamlisch, the composer of <em>The Sting</em>, <em>A Chorus Line</em>, and other classic scores, in this interview from 2009. Hamlisch, who died this week, knew as well as anyone on earth how to get a melody stuck in your head. The literary shape-shifter ...
<p>Kurt Andersen talks with Woody Harrelson. The versatile and prolific performer has co-written and directed a play, based loosely on a stoned summer before he became an actor. A piece of public art that drew attention to climate change abruptly disappears from the University of Wyoming campus, where ...
<p>The violinist Hilary Hahn ditches the classical repertoire and goes full improv. She performs live in the studio with the pianist Hauschka. Kurt Andersen talks with the writer Adam Gopnik about how Hollywood-style violence might have played into the massacre in a Colorado movie theater. And Karen ...