Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

Meet Ray Christian.  Some people call him a storyteller, historian, father. Shoot, if you’ve got the time, he could fill you in on everything he’s been called. But first and foremost, he’s a Black veteran from the rural South who finds himself floating between life in academia, public speaking, storytelling, parenting, and tending to the goats in his backyard.  And he’s got stories. Really good ones. And stories that make you think a little differently about the world.  In each episode of What’s Ray Saying, Ray shares his love of cultural history, personal narrative, and social justice. Think of him as your favorite uncle—a voice you can trust, filled with wise talk and scars and scratches, who makes you feel comfortable enough to listen to things that aren’t always that easy to hear.  And don’t worry, you’ll meet the goats too. For more on the show, visit https://drraychristian.com and subscribe wherever you get your stories.

We Disrupt This Broadcast, a new podcast from The Peabody Awards and the Center for Media & Social Impact, features intimate interviews with award-winning television creatives shaping the future of entertainment with disruptive new narratives and fresh approaches. Join us as we explore how our favorite critically-acclaimed TV shows are re-imagining the world and tackling the big issues that move us forward. Upcoming guests include Quinta Brunson, Damon Lindelof, Ramy Youssef, Pamela Adlon, Charlie Brooker, and more. The podcast is hosted by Gabe González (comedian, writer and actor) with episodes releasing the second Thursday of every month. For more about the show, go to peabodyawards.com/podcast.

For listeners of Studio 360, we’re featuring an episode from the new PRX podcast Monumental. The landscape of public memory is shifting. As we re-examine the plaques in our parks and the sculptures on our streets, we grapple with what to do with them. Once we learn the stories these objects tell about who we are, will tearing down statues and renaming schools be enough? Monumental interrogates the state of American monuments and what their future says about our own. In this 10-episode series, host and author Ashley C Ford and a team of audio journalists from around the country will piece together the complex stories behind some of the thousands of monuments that exist in every corner of the U.S In this episode, we uncover the story of the only successful coup d’etat ever to happen on American soil. This act of racial violence was designed to eliminate all memory of a highly successful Black community in Wilmington, North Carolina back in 1898. That suppression involved racist mobs, as well as historians, city planners, journalists and countless others. They conspired for decades to make a Black community’s onetime prosperity and strength unimaginable. Almost unimaginable. For more information about Monumental, visit our website at www.prx.org/monumental

Hello Studio 360 fans! We're sharing the first episode of a new podcast project, Nixon at War, hosted by Studio 360's Kurt Andersen. Nixon at War is a seven-episode history, a fresh new kind of chronicle about how Richard Nixon turned Vietnam into a war at home… that we’re still fighting today. Most accounts of the collapse of Richard Nixon’s presidency begin with Watergate - the now iconic tale of a bungled break-in and the misbegotten cover-up that followed.  But what led to Watergate?  How - and more puzzlingly, why - did one of the shrewdest, most gifted political figures of his time become embroiled in so manifestly lunatic an enterprise in the first place? Intrigued by that question, novelist and historian Kurt Andersen takes a deep dive into the vast archives at the Nixon Library and emerges with an answer he wasn’t expecting: While Watergate doubtless accelerated Nixon’s spectacular fall, it was the Vietnam War that led inexorably to the break-in, and from there to the sinking of his presidency. At the heart of the series are hundreds of tape recordings from the time. Buried, never before heard, confidential conversations that play like dark drama. To listen to the new series, visit NixonAtWar.org, or search "Nixon at War" wherever you’re listening.

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 he met when he first interviewed her for the show, Rosanne Cash, comes back one last time to say farewell with a song. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 hardships of the South, the disappointments of the North, and the first steps of the Civil Rights movement are masterfully displayed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 sometimes strange ways that art touches our lives. Two decades later that mission hasn’t changed even if the people making the show have come and gone. The show’s current Executive Producer Jocelyn Gonzales was a still-wet-behind-the-ears associate producer when the show debuted. As Studio 360 comes to a close after 20 years on the air, she turned to her colleagues from the earliest days of the show for their impressions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 stands and now operates as Kaufman Astoria Studios. For a hundred years, Astoria has been the East Coast alternative for artists who choose to be in New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 over-the-top — and completely obsessed her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 actually posed for the sculpture that became the Oscar statue. And we meet Mark Sussman, the voiceover actor who overdubs Brad Pitt’s profane lines for the versions of his movies that run on airplanes and on television. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Nina Simone’s talents at interpreting a song, not to mention her range, moving from soul and gospel to show tunes and folk music. Through it all, her distinctive voice soars into moments of defiance and uplift. Political activist and scholar Angela Davis says Simone’s influence extends beyond her musical gifts. “I don't think I have ever met anyone before meeting Nina Simone who was so focused on using her talents to change the world. She wanted to use her music, use her voice, use her capacity to create new worlds.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For our latest installment of American Icons, Studio 360’s Sam Kim explores “12 Angry Men,” the courtroom drama that has inspired jurists — and Hollywood script writers — for decades. And how Kris Maddigan, a first-time video game composer, wrote a 3-hour long jazz album for the popular indie game Cuphead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 about why so many people who go to Harvard are dummies, the genius of the film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” and the underappreciated poignancy of “The Simpsons.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 — images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 star of the opera world, performs love songs directed at women that were meant to be sung by men, and tells Slate’s June Thomas how a sense of bisexual pride drives such performances. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 popularity, its ultimate success as a photograph was always an open question for Winogrand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 research lab that helped inspire HAL. We meet CIMON, a real-life AI robot on the International Space Station and Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut who blasted the “Blue Danube” in the space shuttle. Plus we speak to New York Times critic Wesley Morris, filmmakers Christopher Nolan and Tom Hanks, artist James Turrell and former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith. American Icons is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 bomb to counterculture icon. We’ll hear from effects wizard Doug Trumbull, actor Keir Dullea and superfan Tom Hanks, who has seen the movie more than 200 times. American Icons is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen’s version of a Christmas story doesn’t have your typical talking snowman or mistletoe. Instead, this holiday tale involves extraterrestrial surveillance and melting polar ice caps. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. And Philip Glass shares how he went from taxi driver to star composer overnight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For a few years in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, the heart of the music industry was an 11-story structure in midtown Manhattan: The Brill Building. There, and at the nearby 1650 Broadway, a group of very young songwriters including Carole King, Ellie Greenwich, and Cynthia Weil crafted their own take on rock and roll that was heavily influenced by their New York City setting. They churned out hit after hit for artists like The Shirelles, The Crystals, and Little Eva. But when the British Invasion hit in the mid-1960s, the Brill Building songwriters’ moment was over almost as soon as it began. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our latest American Icons feature explores Patricia Highsmith’s series that began with “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” and how Tom Ripley fits into an American tradition of protagonists struggling with identity and morality. Kurt Andersen visits perfumer Tanwi Nandini Islam as she concocts a fragrance based on Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.” And a favorite from our Guilty Pleasures series: Writer Sadie Stein on the word that so many find icky but that she really likes: “moist.” American Icons is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this Studio 360 extra, we’re sharing a podcast called “Aria Code.” Produced by WQXR and the Metropolitan Opera, it features singers and opera observers revealing the magic of a single song from an opera, followed by the aria uninterrupted. In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens and her guests explore the power of hope in Puccini's tragic “Madama Butterfly,” as well as in a real-world Butterfly story. Then, you'll hear Ana María Martínez sing the complete “Un bel dì vedremo” aria onstage at the Metropolitan Opera. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with director Jennifer Reeder about her path from making short arthouse films in the 1990s to her new film, “Knives and Skin.” Producer Sam Kim has the story of erotic potboiler “Naked Came the Stranger,” which climbed The New York Times bestseller list in 1969 but, it turns out, was meant to be a parody of the very bodice-rippers it was outselling. And Richard Curtis’ 2003 movie “Love Actually” is much parodied for its cheesy gimmicks and accelerated marriage proposals, but screenwriter Oliver Butcher makes a case for why it is actually a deft work of screenwriting and direction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wynton Marsalis is a jazz icon — a renowned trumpet player and composer, he is also the music director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. But since the very beginning, classical music has been a part of his musical makeup. Marsalis tells Kurt Andersen about how a chance encounter on a New Orleans streetcar began his love of classical music and guides us through the composition of his “Swing Symphony.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cartoonist Lynda Barry is famous for drawing the darkly funny strip “Ernie Pook’s Comeek” that appeared in alternative newsweeklies for three decades, but for the latest installment in our Guilty Pleasure series, she makes a case for why she loves perhaps the most mainstream and most mocked comic of all: “The Family Circus.” Our latest American Icon installment is about “My Ántonia” by Willa Cather, and why that novel — and author — have never really gotten their due. And Kurt Andersen talks with Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins about working on so many Coen brothers films, why he still operates the camera himself and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

West Side Story, the tragic musical about star-crossed lovers from two rival gangs, was a hit on Broadway in the 1950s and then exploded across the country when it came to the silver screen. At the time, New York City’s demographics and landscape were rapidly changing, and choreographer Jerome Robbins, composer Leonard Bernstein, author Arthur Laurents, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim wanted an updated Romeo and Juliet that wrestled with what that meant. Who could belong in this new America? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Studio 360’s American Icon series has explored dozens of influential works of art and entertainment that have shaped who we are as Americans. Now we turn to our hometown of New York for a new batch of Icons stories about works of art that were born in the city and impacted the lives of people everywhere. This hour: the 1963 book “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, and the 1978 salsa album “Siembra” by Ruben Blades and Willie Colón. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The childlike, cartoonish typeface Comic Sans is the most hated font in the world. Twenty-five years after its release, it's become notorious for showing up in seemingly inappropriate contexts, from office memos to newspapers and government documents. But librarian and technology educator Jessamyn West argues that hating on Comic Sans is elitist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with the choreographer Mark Morris about how music has always been central to his work. The author Carmen Maria Machado reveals how an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” had the unlikely effect of helping her write her new book about domestic abuse. And how the cartoon "Rocky and Bullwinkle" was strangely prescient about the Cold War. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton is a rising opera star, performing on some of the world’s most venerable classical music stages. In concert halls from London to New York, Barton not only flaunts her velvety rich tone, but also her commitment to social justice as an openly queer performer. Now, Barton and pianist Kathleen Kelly have put together a recital program that celebrates women, currently on tour. The pair perform three songs from the feminist recital tour live in Studio 360. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are so familiar they’ve become part of our cultural wallpaper. A raven croaking “nevermore?” An enemy bricked up in a cellar? A heart beating under the floorboards? These images are the stuff of our collective nightmares, but Poe dreamed them all up first. For better and worse, Poe’s themes and obsessions continue to crop up throughout pop culture. He showed us the dark side of the American dream, and that’s something we can’t unsee. American Icons is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Bell Jar is often read as a sort of literary suicide note by poet Sylvia Plath. The autobiographical novel memorably follows her first attempt at taking her own life and her experiences living in a mental institution and undergoing electroshock therapy, but its accounts of weeks spent in New York City preceding the breakdown provide a captivating picture, not just of Plath’s mental state, but of the impossible demands made of women in 1950s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with Amy Sherald, who painted the official Michelle Obama portrait, about her strict religious upbringing, the surreal experience of interviewing with the Obamas and why she’ll only ever paint African Americans. Our latest American Icons feature: “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians, and how the band of Mexican American teens managed to top the charts and help fuel the growing Latin influence on pop music in the 1960s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charleston band Ranky Tanky draws on the musical traditions of the Gullah culture from the Lowcountry region of the Southeastern U.S. They perform live in Studio 360 and then break the music down into its essential components, explaining what exactly makes this “Gullah” and how that cultural heritage has informed American jazz.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two highlights from our American Icons special series. First, producer Arun Venugopal revisits “The Searchers,” the John Ford film starring John Wayne that is widely regarded as a masterpiece, but which many see as racially problematic in the way that Wayne’s character pursues revenge against the Comanche who killed his family in a raid. Then, producer June Thomas on the unlikely history of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” the movie that flopped in theaters when it was released in 1975, only to become an interactive movie experience where audiences shouted back at the screen, brandished water pistols and delighted in the film’s risqué raucousness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 we’re looking at the artist who inspired the name of this series: the singer-songwriter, dancer and producer Kate Bush. With its sophisticated arrangements and embrace of technology, her self-produced 1985 album “Hounds of Love” pushed the boundaries of musical structure and personal expression. Classic Albums host Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy discusses Kate Bush's “Hounds of Love” with singer Julia Holter and Outkast’s Big Boi.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our latest Americans Icons segment is about “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” Maya Angelou’s first book broke boundaries when it was published 50 years ago and still profoundly resonates with readers today. And Kurt Andersen talks with Liz Phair, the trailblazing indie rocker who’s just published a memoir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Anderson talks with Antonio Banderas about “Pain and Glory,” where he plays his longtime friend and collaborator –– and the director of this same movie –– Pedro Almodóvar. With the opening of “Joker,” starring Joaquin Phoenix, Kurt talks with Rick Baker, the celebrated makeup artist, about how Hollywood has clowned around with the character over the decades. This week marks 50 years since the release of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” a remarkable pop song recorded when Michael Jackson was so young that, in the wake of the latest allegations of molestation against him, even some people who stopped listening to his solo work still enjoy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Byrne’s stage show “American Utopia” is heading to Broadway in October. The show will feature songs from his latest album of the same name, as well as some older works from his former band, Talking Heads. This month also marks the 35th anniversary of “Stop Making Sense,” the brilliant Talking Heads’ concert film, made by Jonathan Demme. Kurt Andersen spoke with David Byrne in 2012 about the group’s early years. In an era of punk decadence, Talking Heads created a pop revolution by combining tight, funk-based rhythms, a clean-cut image, and themes of anxiety and social isolation. Kurt brings up the early song “I’m Not in Love,” in which Byrne wonders, “Do people really fall in love?” “I was just asking all the most super-obvious questions,” explains Byrne, who has said that he may have had Asperger’s syndrome as a young person. “Why do humans, people, we do these things? And how does it work?” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conceptual artist Fred Wilson has spent much of his career examining how museum collections are chosen and exhibited, so Kurt Andersen meets Wilson at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a chat and a tour. With this year marking the centennial of the birth of Uta Hagen, the actress who also became a revered acting teacher, we hear from her students and colleagues, including F. Murray Abraham, Mercedes Ruehl and David Hyde Pierce. Plus, the story behind the song known as "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stepping in for Kurt Andersen this week, guest host Hari Kondabolu, the stand-up comic, gets the hour started with a conversation with fellow comic Hannah Gadsby. They discuss the success (and blowback) from Gadsby’s Netflix special last year, “Nanette,” her new show that she’s currently touring in the US, and her hilariously surreal encounter with Jennifer Anniston. Then Hari bravely reveals how in the mid-'90s, when all of his buddies were watching action movies, he at 14 was secretly obsessing over a romantic drama, "Untamed Heart." Finally, Hari closes with a conversation with Sophia Chang, who has a new audio-only memoir on Audible about her remarkable career in hip hop and her decades-long friendship with the Wu-Tang Clan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Studio 360’s American Icon series has explored dozens of influential works of art and entertainment that have shaped who we are as Americans. Now we turn to our hometown of New York for a new batch of Icons stories about works of art that were born in the city and impacted the lives of people everywhere. This time: the album “Siembra” by Willie Colón and Ruben Blades, which many salsa fanatics thought was doomed when it came out on Fania Records in 1978. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The writer and poet Hanif Abdurraqib fills in for Kurt Andersen. Hanif talks to fellow writer — and fellow proud Midwesterner — Ashley C. Ford about some of her inspirations, including Toni Morrison (who, yes, was also from the Midwest). Then, with the Notorious B.I.G.’s hip hop classic “Ready to Die” turning 25 this week, we hear from one of its producers, Easy Mo Bee, and music writers Cheo Hodari Coker and Sowmya Krishnamurthy, about how the album first landed — and how its impact is still profound. Finally, Hanif talks with Laetitia Tamko, the indie rock innovator and multi-instrumentalist who performs under the stage name Vagabon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writer and comedian Maeve Higgins fills in as guest host this week, interviewing playwright Michael R. Jackson about his new musical “A Strange Loop” and artist-journalist Molly Crabapple about her illustrations of ISIS-occupied Syria. Plus, the creators and cast of “Felix Starro,” a new musical from the Ma-Yi Theater Company, which is celebrating 30 years of bringing the work of Asian American theater artists to the stage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most artists have to lead a sort of double life: holding down a steady job during the day that allows them to do what they love in their free time. Alex Kramer is an actor who lives in Brooklyn, but he moonlights as an “unannounced standardized patient”: someone who goes into hospital clinics undercover to evaluate residents on their performance. Alex says that at the end of the day, working undercover isn’t all that different from acting on screen. “Ultimately, when it boils down to it, all you’re doing is tricking someone.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“The Handmaid’s Tale” is getting a sequel, “The Testaments,” so it’s a good time to look at what originally influenced Margaret Atwood, and how the book continues to influence others. First, Atwood herself talks about her inspirations for the book — the rise of the Christian right in the 1980s and a woman in New England in the 17th century who was accused of being a witch. Then Ann Dowd, who portrays the character Aunt Lydia on the Hulu adaptation, talks with Kurt Andersen about how she has spent a career making scary characters so real and recognizable. Finally, Louise Erdrich and Megan Hunter talk about how their dystopian novels also explore the significance of pregnancy.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When noir haunts and inspires. Portishead’s seminal album “Dummy,” which came out 25 years ago this week, was inspired by the band members’ obsession with mid-century spy movies. Karen Russell was struggling writing her first novel when she saw the classic noir film “The Night of the Hunter.” It helped her pull off the critically acclaimed “Swamplandia” and has been an inspiration ever since. And Kurt Andersen talks with Carter Burwell, who has scored most of the Coen Brothers films, beginning with their first, the very noirish “Blood Simple.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Laura Lippman is an Edgar Award-winning author of detective fiction, most famously for the Tess Monaghan series. And this summer, she has a new book on the New York Times Best Seller list called “Lady in the Lake.” Kurt Andersen recently visited Baltimore to talk to her for another story we’re working on: an American Icons hour about the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is best known for his gothic tales and poems, but he also wrote what are considered by many to be the first detective stories. As a mystery writer and lifelong Baltimore resident, Laura gave us her take on Poe’s legacy and the genre he helped create. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fifty summers after Woodstock. First, Kurt Andersen talks with Sha Na Na co-founders Robert Leonard and George Leonard about the utter incongruity of a ’50s throwback band taking the stage at the festival. The Jimi Hendrix version of the national anthem on the last day of the festival that embodies the chaos and distortion of the time. How the Sly and the Family Stone album "Stand!"  dropped at a moment of intense cultural and political change, and provided a soundtrack for that fight. And the surprising power of the other Woodstock — the “Peanuts” character named after the festival. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nick Waterhouse, the Los Angeles-based musician who has cultivated a ’50s and ’60s inspired sound, joins Kurt Andersen to perform live and talk about his influences and his self-titled fourth album. For our latest installment of Guilty Pleasures, the writer and “This American Life” producer Bim Adewunmi explains how the “Sweet Valley High” series is kind of preposterous and over-the-top — and completely obsessed her. And producer Lauren Hansen explains how a reverence for Leonard Cohen was passed down in her family, and how a group of artists are honoring Cohen’s memory at a new exhibit at the Jewish Museum. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Toni Morrison, the author of books including “Beloved” and “Song of Solomon,” died on August 5 at the age of 88. Her novels won the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize, and in 2012, Barack Obama awarded her a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Morrison’s work inspired countless readers … and writers, like “New Yorker” critic Hilton Als.When Als guest hosted Studio 360 in 2014, Toni Morrison was his first choice of interviewee. They spoke at Morrison’s home about her writerly habits and why, at age 39, she decided to become a novelist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After a 67-year run, the “usual gang of idiots” will no longer be serving up the snark. After the August 2019 issue of “Mad Magazine,” old material will be reprinted with new covers, but you won’t find any new parodies or cartoons in those pages, aside from the occasional one-off or special feature. To mark this end of an era, we’re revisiting our story on why “Mad” is an American Icon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

August 1 marks the 200th anniversary of Herman Melville’s birth. To celebrate, we’re revisiting our Peabody Award-winning American Icons hour on his masterpiece, “Moby-Dick.” Melville's white whale survived his battle with Captain Ahab only to surface in the works of contemporary filmmakers, painters, playwrights and musicians. Kurt Andersen explores the influence of this American Icon with the help of Ray Bradbury, Tony Kushner, Laurie Anderson and Frank Stella. Actor Edward Herrmann is our voice of Ishmael and Mark Price narrates David Ives' short play “Moby-Dude.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with John Leguizamo about his latest one-man play, “Latin History for Morons,” and his career toggling between film and theater. The revival of “Oklahoma!” took a bold approach to updating the well-known musical, including the play’s famous “Dream Ballet.” The show’s choreographer, John Heginbotham, and dancer, Gabrielle Hamilton, discuss how they took it on, while dance journalist Gia Kourlas explains how the new dance impressed her, but perplexed some theatergoers. And “What Next” host Mary Harris talks with Cindy Chang, a reporter with the Los Angeles Times, about how the death of rapper Nipsy Hussle led to a cease-fire among some Los Angeles gangs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s another edition of This Woman’s Work, a series of stories from Classic Album Sundays and Studio 360 where we highlight classic albums by female musicians, women who continue to influence the world of pop culture and inspire others. This time, we’re looking at the debut album from a band who seems to have landed here from outer space. Four decades ago, the B-52’s arrived on the Athens, Georgia party scene with killer guitar riffs, their silly, but eerie lyrics, and their sky-high beehive wigs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An episode about singers, alone and in harmony. The latest installment of This Woman’s Work, a series from Classic Album Sundays and Studio 360 highlighting classic albums by female artists, focuses on “Lady Sings the Blues” by Billie Holiday, whose role as an innovator we are still coming to grasp. Kurt Andersen talks with composer Eric Whitacre about how his virtual choir is changing the game of choral music. And Aimee Mann explains how she wrote “Easy to Die,” about a friend’s overdose, for The Silver Lake Chorus, which commissions indie rock artists to write songs for them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with the director Lynn Shelton about how conspiracy theories and improvisation figure into her new film, “Sword of Trust,” which stars Marc Maron. Michael Bowen felt isolated growing up, but then he saw the animated feature film “One Hundred and One Dalmatians,” and oddly enough, its villain, Cruella de Vil, gave him hope that he would fit in. And it can be hard to know what to make of Ursula von Rydingsvard’s spectacular sculptures, but the mystery of how they’re made is solved with a visit to her Brooklyn studio.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Leguizamo has a long and successful film and TV career. Early on he had recurring roles on Miami Vice and ER and worked with directors like Brian DePalma, Spike Lee, and Baz Lurhman. And he also provided a voice in the endless animated franchise Ice Age, playing Sid the sloth. But alongside this life on screen, Leguizamo has also built a singularly successful theater career based on a form he helped pioneer — the funny autobiographical one-man play.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our recent live show was recorded in New York on a glorious spring day on the High Line, the elevated park. It begins with Kurt Andersen welcoming to the stage Friends Who Folk, the music comedic duo of Rachel Wenitsky and Ned Risely, who perform and discuss how they’re truly devotees to the folk tradition, even though their songs are satirical. Next to join Kurt is former “Daily Show” correspondent Aasif Mandvi, who performs a stand-up set before talking with Kurt about his career as both a serious and comic actor. Finally, Yo La Tengo performs and members Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan and James McNew reflect on the band’s 35 years together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with Julio Torres and Ana Fabrega — two of the co-creators, writers, producers and stars of the new HBO series “LosEspookys.” Gauging how films have shaped — and skewed — our understanding of the Stonewall uprising, with Mark Segal, who participated in the riots, and Jude Dry, a film and television critic at IndieWire. And the phenomenon of “multiple discovery,” when artists come up with the same idea independently, but tend to suspect their idea was stolen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1971 Richard Roundtree stepped out of a subway entrance to the Oscar-winning sounds of Isaac Hayes, and changed American movie-making. The box-office success of Shaft, about a fiercely independent, courageous, and sexy private eye, led to an explosion of black action B-movies, and crystalized a version of black macho cool that hadn’t been shown on the big screen before. And it was all put together by one of the most important American photographers of the mid-20th century, Gordon Parks. The story of Shaft is told by those that made the movie, and those they inspired. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist Taffy Brodesser-Akner talks with Kurt Andersen about her first novel, “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” a book about divorce that has both humor and bite. John Cameron Mitchell was behind the punk musical “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” and his latest project is “Anthem: Homunculus,” a podcast musical. Mitchell and composer Bryan Weller perform music from the podcast in our studio. And our latest installment of Day Jobs features Steve Von Till, the guitarist in the post-metal band Neurosis, who also has a decidedly more subdued career — as an elementary school teacher.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Los Angeles-based musician Nick Waterhouse weaves together classic rhythm and blues, jazz, and soul, lending his songs a ‘50s and ‘60s inspired sound. Waterhouse stopped by Studio 360 to tell Kurt Andersen about his self-titled fourth album. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Singer-songwriter Regina Spektor talks with Kurt Andersen about her upcoming Broadway residency and, seated at a Steinway, performs some songs. The story behind the Empire Zinc strike 70 years ago and the film it inspired, “Salt of the Earth.” And how one scene from “Finding Nemo” inspired Kiki Kienstra to up and move to Mexico. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To commemorate Deadwood and its long-awaited conclusion, Kurt Andersen revisits his 2006 conversation with the show’s creator, David Milch. They discuss the show’s reprobate cast of characters and their florid, profane dialogue. “I did a lot of research,” Milch says. “Everyone without exception said that in the mining camps, the language was of an unrelieved coarseness and obscenity.“ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1987 Elaine May’s comedy “Ishtar” was savaged by critics and flopped spectacularly, but it turns out that the movie is actually pretty funny — and the reason it failed is pretty complicated. Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever, the stars of “Booksmart,” tell Kurt Andersen about how they became friends after they were cast as friends — and they bring a playlist of some of their favorite on-screen friendships. The final episode of the original “Star Trek” series aired 50 years ago this week, and Ronald D. Moore reveals how watching reruns of the show made him a science-fiction fan and ultimately led to becoming staff writer for “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and, in a movie for the franchise, to killing off his hero, James T. Kirk. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 research lab that helped inspire HAL. We meet CIMON, a real-life AI robot on the International Space Station and Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut who blasted the “Blue Danube” in the space shuttle. Plus we speak to New York Times critic Wesley Morris, filmmakers Christopher Nolan and Tom Hanks, artist James Turrell and U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Booksmart is a new movie directed by Olivia Wilde, about two smart young women, Molly and Amy, who are best friends finishing at the top of their class because they spent high school doing homework and volunteering instead of partying so they could get into good colleges. Only to realize that their hard-partying classmates also got into those same good schools. Queue the wild, wacky, booze-fueled odyssey to get to the mega-party. But the depiction of the two girls and their friendship is not generic, but specific, and fresh, and believable. The stars, Beanie Feldstein (Lady Bird) and Kaitlyn Dever (Justified), talk with Kurt Andersen about stereotypes, role models, and how they decided to become roommates before shooting the film and actually became friends before portraying them.  They also share their favorite on-screen friendships that inspired the enchanting bond between their characters.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Theater magic, starting with “Tootsie” composer David Yazbek and musical theater obsessive John McWhorter on the art and wonder of tongue-twisting patter songs. Kurt Andersen talks with performance artist Taylor Mac on writing the new Broadway play, "Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus." And the odd mixture of religious fervor, class concerns and gender politics that made performing Shakespeare outdoors so popular in the United States.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This Woman’s Work is a series of stories from Classic Album Sundays and Studio 360, highlighting classic albums by female artists that have made a lasting impact on music and pop culture. This time, we focus on Lady Sings the Blues by legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday. It was released in 1956 to coincide with her autobiography of the same name. By this point in her career, when she was just in her early 40s, Holiday’s voice had taken on a fragile and worn quality. Hardship, abusive relationships, and addiction had taken their toll on her famous instrument.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with filmmaker Werner Herzog about his latest documentary, "Meeting Gorbachev," his unusual approach to narrating documentaries and their mutual obsession with cat videos. One of the busiest directors of TV comedy, Beth McCarthy-Miller, tells Kurt how she has gone about directing “SNL,” sitcoms and that notorious Super Bowl halftime show that popularized the term “wardrobe malfunction.” And 35 years ago, Prince went from a popular musician to a phenomenon, with the release of “When Doves Cry,” and the movie he wrote it for, “Purple Rain.” Two members of Prince’s band, Wendy Melvoin and Matt “Doctor” Fink, as well as music journalist and author Alan Light, tell the story of that remarkable song. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Anthem: Homunculus, John Cameron Mitchell and composer Bryan Weller have taken the podcast musical to new heights. They join Kurt to discuss the shows origins, and perform a song live in our studio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 bomb to counterculture icon. We’ll hear from effects wizard Doug Trumbull, actor Keir Dullea and superfan Tom Hanks, who has seen the movie more than 200 times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with novelist Karl Ove Knausgård about his nonfiction book about Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Ani DiFranco’s new memoir chronicles the ups and downs of being a feminist folk hero. Pete Seeger would have been 100 this week, and Kurt revisits a lovely afternoon he spent with the singer in the home he built himself along the river. And a site-specific art project, “Romantic Songs of the Patriarchy,” exposes misogyny in popular music in a grueling yet entertaining way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ali Smith’s 2016 book Autumn was heralded as the first great post-Brexit novel. Kurt talks with her about politics, art, and the very nature of time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with Susan Choi, whose engrossing new novel about on- and offstage drama at a performance arts high school is called “Trust Exercise.” How Edward Doyle-Gillespie ended up writing poetry about being a Baltimore cop. And This Woman’s Work, our new series in collaboration with Classic Album Sundays that highlights classic albums by female artists, kicks off with Patti Smith’s groundbreaking first album, “Horses.”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with playwright Suzan-Lori Parks about “White Noise,” along with one of the play’s stars, Daveed Diggs from the original cast of “Hamilton.” Iggy Berlin explains what he does as an extra for operas and ballets, where they’re called supernumeraries. And the rich history of the song “In the Pines,” which many luminaries sang in their signature style, from Kurt Cobain to Lead Belly to Bill Monroe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month marks the birth centennial of American dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham. His defiant work transformed contemporary arts beyond dance. Cunningham talks about movement and technology, and dancers Daniel Roberts and Bill T. Jones tell us about his influence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At 82, the writer Frederic Tuten has published a memoir of his formative years in New York, “My Young Life,” and Kurt Andersen strolls the East Village with him as he reminisces.  Cartoonist Cathy Guisewite looks back at how some of her own struggles and insecurities inspired the “Cathy” comic strip, and how while many women loved the strip, others thought it didn’t do enough to forward the cause of feminism. And Helado Negro performs songs from his new album, “This Is How You Smile.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Studio 360 is teaming up with Classic Album Sundays for a series of storiescalled This Woman’s Work, highlighting classic albums by female artists. We'll talk about records that represent women musicians at the peak of their creative powers, and whose influence is felt all over the musical map. From what is arguably one of the most arresting opening lines on a debut album, to the mournful romanticism of its final track, Patti Smith's Horses is one of the most significant records in American music history. Classic Album Sundays founder Colleen "Cosmo" Murphy explains how the word "freedom" defines the album through and through: the social and sexual freedom of the era, the artistic freedom born of a city in crisis, and the freedom of rock n’ roll. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Understanding our fascination with the criminal underworld. Jia Zhangke’s takes an empathetic look at criminal brotherhoods in China in his new gangster film “Ash Is Purest White.” Stand-up comics reveal what it was like working in Vegas when mobsters owned the clubs. A brave critic defends “The Godfather: Part III.” And how the late Sue Grafton created the seedy universe of her “Alphabet” crime novels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Susan Choi’s new novel, Trust Exercise, is a story about trust, betrayal, and the blurry lines between fiction and real life. It focuses on a group of teenagers at a performing arts high school in the 1980s and their fraught relationships with the eccentric teachers whom they idolize. The book takes a metafictional twist about halfway through, but Choi is loathe to describe it as such: “Don't use the M-word. Don't!”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The trailblazing filmmaker Agnès Varda died on Friday of breast cancer at age 90. In tribute to her, we’re revisiting Kurt’s 2017 interview with Varda and her collaborator JR. Their Oscar-nominated movie,Faces Places,documents their loving — albeit unexpected — friendship. She was a founding member of the French New Wave, while he is a 36-year-old French artist known for plastering huge black-and-white photographs on the sides of buildings around the world. A few years ago, they hit the road for a tour of the French countryside, creating a series of public art projects everywhere they stopped. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our monsters, ourselves: Why creatures repel us, yet attract us. Our latest American Icons segment is about “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and producer June Thomas reports on how the movie became an audience-participation phenomenon — and gave a sense of belonging to some of those moviegoers who were made to feel like outcasts elsewhere. Kurt Andersen talks with author and filmmaker Mallory O’Meara about her new book “The Lady From the Black Lagoon,” the story of Milicent Patrick, who designed one of Hollywood’s most famous monsters but didn’t get credit for it. And how author Helen Phillips’ life was changed when she read Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with Marcia Clark, prominent again after two highly regarded television shows revisited her role prosecuting the O.J. Simpson case, and who now has a new legal-drama TV show, “The Fix.” And producer Sam Kim takes on a case of his own: He helps unravel the mystery of an old “Sesame Street” cartoon called “Cracks.” Many people who are middle-aged now remember it terrifying them as kids — and then the cartoon vanished. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For much of his career, Jia Zhangke’s films were officially banned in his home country, China. But through austere, realist movies like Still Life, Platform, and The World, Jia became one of the most celebrated directors on the international arthouse circuit. His latest film, Ash Is Purest White, appears at first to be a conventional mob epic, focused on a “gangster’s moll” character played magnificently by Zhao Tao. But with a story beginning in 2001 and spanning 17 years, the movie is just as much about the effects of the rapid growth of China’s economy on its society. The dramatic changes led some working-class Chinese to form criminal brotherhoods for support.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck about his new film “Never Look Away,” and why the director interviewed the artist Gerhard Richter extensively to make a film that is only kind of about Richter. Plus, how Yanni, John Tesh and other musicians discovered an improbable vehicle to ‘90s stardom: the PBS pledge drive. Nat King Cole would be 100 this week, and to celebrate: an appreciation from both his biographer, David Mark Epstein, and actor Dulé Hill, who is currently playing Cole on-stage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with Heidi Schreck about her new play, based on oratory competitions she took part in as a teenager, called “What the Constitution Means to Me.” Siblings Elan and Jonathan Bogarín join Kurt to talk about their new documentary “306 Hollywood,” an artful and even surreal look at how they dealt with their beloved grandmother’s house after she died. How Niki Russ Federman meant to stay out of her family’s smoked fish business, Russ & Daughters, and then found herself drawn in by klezmer music. And how Broadway productions are hosting special performances that take into account some of the heightened sensitivities and needs of audience members who are autistic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Edward Doyle-Gillespie always found writing stories cathartic, a way to process whatever was going on in his life. But as a police officer in Baltimore, witnessing people in the most desperate conditions, he increasingly turned to poetry as a vehicle for understanding and expressing his experiences on the job. “There are these moments in policing, distilled moments of a word, an image, a smell, a concept, that to me bespeaks of a kind of encapsulated poem right there.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Andersen talks with author N.K. Jemisin about writing, politics, and her new book “How Long 'til Black Future Month?” Our latest American Icons segment is about “Cross Road Blues,” the song that helped to posthumously popularize — and mythologize — Robert Johnson. And how “This Is Spinal Tap,” which opened 35 years ago this week, helped create the template for other hilarious mockumentaries.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The annual Oscar hour. Kurt Andersen starts it off with his takeaway from this year’s crop of nominees: some actors delivered great performances in films that overall were not so great. Then Kurt talks with Richard E. Grant about his nomination for "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" and some of his other memorable roles, including in “Withnail & I.” Finally, the invaluable yet seldom acknowledged job of a movement director, namely Polly Bennett, who helped Rami Malek embody Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the mid-1970s, Jon Armond was traumatized by something he saw on Sesame Street. It was a cartoon about a little girl who encounters creatures formed by the cracks on her bedroom wall — including a horrifying, screaming face who called himself “The Crack Master.” Decades later, Armond wasn’t sure if the cartoon actually existed… until he discovered a subculture of obsessives who remembered the exact same thing. Armond details the bizarre rabbit hole he fell into trying to track it down. Plus, Sesame Street Executive Producer Ben Lehmann talks about the cartoon’s disappearance and uncovers some of its elusive mysteries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Cupid takes aim this week, a look at how sex and sexuality are handled — and mishandled — on-screen. Kurt Andersen speaks with Slate’s Jeffrey Bloomer on depictions of first-time sex. Intimacy-scene consultant Alicia Rodis describes how she helps actors who are virtual strangers seem like they are deeply and lustilly in love during sex scenes. Desiree Akhavan’s show “The Bisexual” takes on what she sees as an anti-bisexual bias, a bias she demonstrates with clips from shows including “Sex and the City” and “Orange is the New Black.” Plus a look back at how “Reality Bites,”which hit theaters 25 years ago this week, helped channel the Gen X zeitgeist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An hour on country music: past, present and future. Nashville-based music reporter Jewly Hight gives Kurt an update on how women artists in country music are forging new paths in an industry that’s become unwelcoming. Dolly Parton reflects on her long career. Willie Nelson shares an Aha Moment about the song that changed his life. And the incomparable Dwight Yoakam performs live in studio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2015, an autistic boy disrupted a performance of The King & I on Broadway, reacting loudly to a scene where a slave is whipped. He and his mother were asked to leave the theater. After the performance, one of the actors from the ensemble posted a reaction to the incident on Facebook. He wrote: “When did we as theater people, performers and audience members become so concerned with our own experience that we lose compassion for others?” The Facebook post went viral. What’s interesting is that Broadway was kind of responding the King & I incident even before it happened. Theater leaders were working to create a safe environment for families with autistic children — a place to enjoy art free of discrimination — with special autism-friendly performances at musicals and plays.   “It just takes away all the stress of taking her to a typical show where, you know, she might yell a little too loud or clap a little too loud or want to jump up and down and it may not be acceptable,” says Carmen Mendez, whose daughter is autistic. “Here she can be herself.”   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices