studio360blog

Ah, Christmas. Time to sit around the fire with eggnog and tell stories of... extraterrestrial spies?

Final preparations are underway for tonight’s live show in WNYC’s Greene Space: the science magician loads in his equipment in a couple hours, then Reggie Watts will soundcheck, and doors will open at 7pm.  And then… black holes will play drums!  We’ll bend space and time!  And we may just come up with the Theory of Everything. (At the very least, we'll come up with a Theory of A Lot of Things.)

The Vaselines were persona non grata in the US when the late Kurt Cobain called them his favorite songwriters. Cult status was instantaneous, but the band had already dissolved. After a 20 year hiatus, the Scottish pop duo has reunited, though not remarried. On last weekend's show, Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee told Kurt what brought them back together -- and they played songs from their new album Sex With an X.

The music industry is dying, and the smart money says the key to success is giving music away for free.  Scott Blaszak has a better idea: he’ll pay you $10 to download his album.  “Free is not enough!” Blaszak says.  He has a name for his revolutionary business model: “PremiFree.”  You saw it here first

Ready for an extreme close-up?

When guests come into Studio 360 and get settled, I tend to have a bit of friendly small talk with them before we start the Official Interview. But as Jonathan Franzen and I chit-chatted earlier this week as we prepared to talk about his terrific new novel Freedom, one bit of that talk wasn't so small. When I passingly, joshingly used the verb phrase 'to man up,' it struck a nerve.

Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko in the Donmar Warehouse's Broadway production of  "Red" (photo by Johan Persson)

 

Last week, Alfred Molina stopped by Studio 360 to chat with Kurt about his Tony-nominated performance as Mark Rothko in the play 'Red.' Bet you didn't know that ...

This season, Broadway got a boost from some serious Hollywood star wattage -- and from great productions imported from London's West End.  But we can see from the Tony nominations there were also some homegrown stand-outs.

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Valentine’s Day is just two weeks away – and we're hoping that 2010 can be the year of the new-and-improved Valentine.  We’re thrilled that so many talented folks have submitted their ideas to “Be My Valentine: A Studio 360 Design Challenge.”

And doesn't a competition merit a celebrity ...

We're counting down... Tonight, Studio 360 is live in the Greene Space, taping a show all about time travel.  We have an all-star line-up of experts: astrophysicist David Goldberg, novelist Connie Willis, monogloguist Mike Daisey, and 28th century pop idol Janelle Monae (a.k.a. Cindy Mayweather).

Last weekend on the show, we heard from Paulus Berensohn -- a sculptor based at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, and a man of strong opinions when it comes to things clay. He believes clay is the source of life on this planet, that there is movement everywhere, and that it’s important to understand both principles when taking on the potter's wheel.

Fifty years ago today, Columbia Records released Miles Davis' groundbreaking album Kind of Blue. In a year of amazing jazz releases - among them John Coltrane's Giant Steps and Charles Mingus' Mingus Ah Um - Blue stands out. Fifty years later, it's still the album that hardcore jazz buffs and neophytes can agree is one of the all time greats.

 

We were quite taken with Jill Sobule when she came into the studio for a performance chat with Kurt earlier this summer.

Oh, recession. What was once a swag deluge is now a trickle. Gone are the fat and happy days of bands promoting albums with faux airplane barf bags.

Ever since we ran this piece about Thao Nguyen, we've been hooked on her music--'Bag of Hammers' is so catchy! Our reporter went to visit Thao at her mother's Laundromat in Virginia, where she grew up practicing guitar and making change.

June is gay pride month, and rainbow flags will be flying high at pride celebrations around the country. The flag was designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978 and is recognized around the ...

Kurt's Vanity Fair article on the new era of Beijing architecture, 'From Mao to Wow,' just won a Deadline Club Award for best Arts Reporting.  Lucky for us, he did a radio version of the piece, too.  Listen here.

Greetings from Studio 360's home base in New York City!

After weeks of listening to tape and mixing (and remixing) our stories, we're proud to post the first sounds of our trip to Japan. On this past week's show, we broadcast an interview with the writer Pico Iyer in ...

10. “Chemi Bebia” (My Grandmother) - 1929 
Directed by Kote Mikaberidze
An eccentric Georgian silent film from the wild 1920s, a time of modernism in Tbilisi, repackaged by American composer Beth Custer, who has released it in DVD format with her own musical track.

9. “Dakarguli Samotkhe” (Paradise Lost) - ...

Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada, Jr. is once again denying any wrongdoing, after state and federal authorities raided his government-funded health clinic in the Bronx yesterday.