Matt Frassica

When Stephen King publishes a novel with the same title as your modestly selling book, you can expect a big bump in (mistaken) sales. 

This letter from legendary sourpuss Ayn Rand to Cat Fancy proves that everyone, literally everyone, loves cute cat pictures.

Legions of horror fans collaboratively invented the mythology of a fictional character named Slender Man, a monster tailored to the internet age. Then two 12-year-olds, inspired by th...

W.C. Handy published “Yellow Dog Blues,” one of the first blues tunes ever recorded, 100 years ago. We asked you to send in your cover versions, and the results have been delightful a...

A new pro soccer team in Louisville learned the dangers of slapdash design when an avalanche of Twitter ridicule greeted their new logo.

She’s been acclaimed in serious roles in Caroline, or Change, and now as an aspiring doctor in A Raisin in the Sun. She’s played a Disney princess. But Anika Noni Rose would like to...

Should professors be required to warn students about content in their classes that might traumatize them? Some colleges want to put red flags on books like The Great Gatsby (for misog...

Seth Rogen has built a career playing overgrown adolescents. But in his new movie, Neighbors, he’s a new father who just wants to get some sleep. Does that mean Rogen has left man-chi...

James Franco may be a conceptual artist, writer, and English professor — but Seth Rogen is especially impressed at his longtime comic partner’s skills at improvisation.

Kevin Spacey has made a career out of hard-to-like characters: from “Verbal” Kint in The Usual Suspects to Francis Underwood in House of Cards. A new documentary follows Spacey as he ...

Shakespeare coined scores of words, but where did he get his? Two booksellers think they’ve found Shakespeare’s own copy of a popular 16th century dictionary — with annotations highli...

More than 350 years ago, Antonio Stradivari created the best string instruments ever made — or at least, that’s the popular myth reinforced by stratospheric auction prices. But a st...

Nathan Isherwood owns a moped repair and retail shop in Brooklyn. He loves the modest motorbikes because they're easy to fix and they get 100 miles per gallon. Produced by Matt Frassica.

Once in a while, a listener will write in to Studio 360 asking for a transcript of a story we've broadcast. Unfortunately, we don't have transcripts of the shows (it's just too time consuming and we have a very small staff), so we normally direct our listeners to the free streaming audio and mp3 downloads available on our website.

Reports of the death of Auto-Tune are greatly exaggerated. This week on the show, we hear from the Gregory Brothers, a band that has turned the music industry's favorite note-correction software on TV newscasters and politicians. With their series of viral web videos "Auto-Tune the News," they've made divas out of talking heads.

Like most people, I wanted to be a magician when I grew up. I recently attended a screening of the 2007 Swedish film You, The Living (Du levande) by director Roy Andersson, a funny/sad movie made up of 50 vignettes that portray everyday life as absurd, petty, and hilarious. In the following scene, a man tries to enliven a family reunion by performing the tablecloth trick.

We were saddened by the news this morning that Merce Cunningham has died. Cunningham was a giant of American modern dance and choreography – and an astoundingly talented dancer, who started his career dancing for Martha Graham, and appeared in his own company’s performances into his 70s.

Forsooth, the next item on our reference-book most-wanted list this fall is going to be the new Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, due out in October. Forty-four years in the making, this puppy's got 800,000 words ('almost every word,' they claim, from Old English to the present)--that's more than double the size of Roget's International. Vasty. And, like Roget, it's organized by concept, so if you're looking for the perfect synonym for 'honey pie,' just flip right to the section on 'Terms of Endearment.'

Our gay pride flag redesign challenge drew lots of great listener entries — and no small amount of criticism (see here and here). Yesterday, Papermag ran an interview with Kurt about ...