Jonathan Mitchell

Sand sculptor Kirk Rademaker makes architecture out of sand — with arches and balconies, fantastical structures as high as ten feet, and sloping curves that stretch all over the beach. He showed off his skills for us at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

Stephen Mancusi has been a police forensic artist for 19 years. Mancusi has to conjure up the face of the suspect, often from the memories of a crime victim who is uncertain in what he or she saw. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

For the upcoming release of its new movie, Finding Nemo, the animation studio Pixar created an entire ocean full of fish in incredible detail. The movie is about a clown fish, with a voice by Albert Brooks, whose son Nemo gets stolen from a coral reef home to live in ...

Part of the fun of Eminem's movie 8 Mile was watching him and another rapper battle it out, improvising insults for the approval of the crowd. Hip hop has always depended on rappers being paired off like this. Three writers who watch hip hop tell us how it works — ...

In the book House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski it seems like almost every word has a triple meaning. The story is told from a variety of perspectives in several different typefaces with many footnotes and a 200 page appendix complete with fake critical essays. But the core of House ...

Ray Matterson was in prison for an armed robbery he committed with a toy gun to support his cocaine habit. He spent the first year of his seven and a half-year jail term being mad at the world and angry with himself for what he had done. And then he ...

What do we know about a particular war, after we've seen it reenacted dozens of times in dozens of different films? The U.S. pulled out of Vietnam in 1975, and we've been watching movies about it ever since. Film historians Larry Suid and Frank McAdams help us sort through ...

Meet “Reverend” Brendan Powell Smith, a California artist who’s applied all of Lego’s variety toward telling one story — the one with gardens of forbidden fruit, and rains of fire and brimstone.  

(Originally aired: July 4, 2002)

Why does revenge show up so much in kids books? Critic Leonard Marcus and Valerie Lewis, the owner of a children's bookstore in San Jose, explain.

(Originally aired: May 2, 2002)

Artist and multi-media professor Paras Kaul is less interested in how our brain experiences art, and more concerned about harnessing the mysteries of what's inside the brain. She uses mental electricity itself as the raw material for her work.

If you thought Godzilla was a symbol for the atom bomb, you were half right. He also stands in for a threat the Japanese have lived with for centuries. David Kalat, author of A Critical History of the Godzilla series, J.D. Lees of G-Fan, and Chris Holland and Scott Hamilton ...

In the movies, a single cut can jump several decades. Bullets stop and linger onscreen. What do those leaps in cinematic time reveal about our own, daily experience? Three film critics dissect how directors have twisted time in recent movies.

(Originally aired: May 16, 2002)

Gangster Rap didn't just appeal to the young men whose violent, sexy universe it reflected — the LA street gang culture of the late '80s and early '90s — it appealed to the gangster voyeur in many millions of young people. Nelson George, a writer and filmmaker who has chronicled ...

Artist Andra McCartney tries to capture the sounds that reveal, if only to your subconscious, where you are.

(Originally aired: December 1, 2001)

The filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt has earned a strong critical reputation for his films Human Remains and The Smell of Burning Ants. But not many outside the art film world know who he is.

(Originally aired: April 25, 2002)

The writer Sherman Alexie reads a passage from Tim O'Brien's short story, On the Rainy River, and talks about why it captures summer for him.

Poet Marie Ponsot finds a poem that defines summer for her. She reads and talks about "A Summer Morning" by Richard Wilbur. 

Meet “Reverend” Brendan Powell Smith, a California artist who’s applied all of Lego’s variety toward telling one story — the one with gardens of forbidden fruit, and rains of fire and brimstone.

The film From Hell is just out on video and DVD. It’s a retelling of the Jack the Ripper story, but its gruesome features are not so much visual as sonic. Steve Boeddeker the sound designer for From Hell demonstrates some of his scary sounds in his California studio.