Studio 360 With Kurt Andersen

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