Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

After 20 years, Studio 360 is switching off the ON AIR light one last time. Alec Baldwin conducts Kurt Andersen’s exit interview and they listen to some of Kurt’s favorite moments with guests. Since it’s this show’s finale, Kurt talks with TV showrunners David Mandel and Warren Leight about the art of writing a finale — and some of their favorites to watch. And finally — for real, finally — a longtime friend of Kurt whom h...

From 1910 to 1970, 6.6 million African Americans migrated from the rural south – a dramatic movement that would permanently change the social, political and cultural fabric of our nation. In 1941, Jacob Lawerence’s iconic series The Migration of the Negro (now generally referred to as The Great Migration) rocked the art world with its depictions of an active moment very much underway. Over the course of 60 panels, the hard...

Studio 360 broadcast its first episode on November 4, 2000, just before we elected George W. Bush as President and we all learned what a “hanging chad” was. Fittingly, that first program was an exploration of art and politics hosted by a newcomer to radio, author and journalist Kurt Andersen.

Originally produced out of WNYC Radio, and most recently a Slate podcast, Studio 360 looks at the cool, but complicated, and someti...

How Public Enemy brought the revolution to hip-hop with “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.” Plus, our Americans Icons segment on Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” which broke boundaries when it was published and still profoundly resonates with readers today. And Young Adult author Angie Thomas on how the late TLC performer Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes spoke to her at a very troubling point in her life...

New York was the original center of American moviemaking. But soon filmmakers figured out it was cheaper and simpler to work in California’s open spaces and good weather. With the westward migration, however, certain types of filmmakers were still drawn to New York. They found a home at Paramount’s “Big House,” a grand movie studio built by Adolph Zukor during the silent film heyday in Astoria, Queens. That studio still st...

Where do you turn when you’re heartbroken in the dead of night? Delilah, of course. Her radio call-in show pairs romantic advice with the perfect song. Plus, how Yanni, John Tesh and others discovered an improbable vehicle to ‘90s stardom: the PBS pledge drive. For our Guilty Pleasures series, the writer and “This American Life” producer Bim Adewunmi explains how the “Sweet Valley High” series is kind of preposterous and o...

It’s all about the Oscars. Kurt talks with Thelma Schoonmaker, the longtime editor for Martin Scorsese who’s up for an Academy Award for “The Irishman”; Adam Driver, who’s a contender for his performance in “Marriage Story”; Quentin Tarantino, nominated for his film, “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”; and Antonio Banderas, nominated for his performance in “Pain & Glory.” Plus, the surprising story behind the man who act...

This Woman’s Work is a series of stories from Classic Album Sundays and Studio 360, highlighting classic albums by female artists who have made a lasting impact on music and pop culture. This time: the Grammy nominated live album “Black Gold” by singer and pianist Nina Simone. It was recorded in front of a packed audience at Philharmonic Hall in New York City on October 26, 1969 and released in 1970. “Black Gold” displays ...

He’s a jazz icon, but Wynton Marsalis has always been drawn to classical music as well. Marsalis talks with Kurt Andersen about composing symphonies and performing with orchestras. And the newest installment in our series about influential albums by women, This Woman's Work, features “Hounds of Love” by Kate Bush, with performers as varied Outkast’s Big Boi and singer Julia Holter revealing how the work inspired them.

Lea...

The final eight episodes of “BoJack Horseman” — Netflix’s animated series about a washed-up ’90s sitcom star living in the Hollywood Hills — will be released on January 31. Its protagonist is half-horse, half-man, and its tone is half-jokes, half-existential-angst. That’s a study in contrasts that seems inexplicable—until you talk with the show’s creator, Raphael Bob-Waksberg.

In 2017, he talked with host Kurt Andersen ab...

Six decades after it premiered on Broadway, “West Side Story” is everywhere again, with a revival on Broadway and a movie in the works. But many still are troubled by the way Puerto Ricans are depicted. Plus, the story behind Garry Winogrand’s 1967 photo, "Central Park Zoo," which featured a white woman and a black man holding chimpanzees dressed in human clothes, and is one of his most widely exhibited — and controversial...

Ranky Tanky performs live in our studio, and explains to Kurt Andersen how their music is rooted in the regional Gullah culture — descendants of West African slaves who lived on isolated islands along the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas. For our Guilty Pleasures series, comic Tig Notaro says why she loves the widely loathed band Nickelback, especially their song “Photograph.” And mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, a rising st...

Garry Winogrand was a master of street photography, even though he disavowed that label. He photographed across the United States, including Texas and California, but his hometown, New York City, remained his greatest inspiration. His 1967 Central Park Zoo photo, of a white woman and a black man holding chimpanzees dressed in human clothes, is one of his most widely exhibited — and controversial — images. Despite its popul...

A half century later, Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” is still shaping our future. With no help from CGI, the movie predicted private space travel, artificial intelligence and much of Apple’s product line. It showed the promise and perils of technology and explored life’s biggest mystery: Are we alone in the universe? In Part Two of our look at the movie in our American Icons series, we visit the same IBM researc...

A half century later, Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” is still shaping our future. With no help from CGI, the movie predicted private space travel, artificial intelligence and half of Apple’s product line. It showed the promise and perils of technology and explored life’s biggest mystery: Are we alone in the universe? In Part One, we look at the movie’s origins in 1960s New York and how it went from opening night...

Our latest New York Icons segment is about Midtown Manhattan’s Brill Building era, when songwriters like Carole King, Ellie Greenwich and Cynthia Weil churned out hit after hit for artists like The Shirelles, The Crystals and Little Eva. And producer Evan Chung investigates the strange story of a song from that era about a craze that was most definitely not a craze, “Mugmates.”

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To celebrate the 75th anniversary of Tennessee Williams’ classic play, “The Glass Menagerie,” Studio 360 is devoting a whole hour to the art of glass. Kurt Andersen and architect Frances Bronet tour the glass towers of Midtown Manhattan to see firsthand the architectural legacy of the Bauhaus. After Hillary Clinton failed to break the glass ceiling in 2016, artist Bunny Burson found a use for her unused victory confetti. A...