Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

Ethan Hawke came of age as a Gen X heartthrob, but he’s stayed relevant and is as busy as ever. He’s appeared recently in Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” and the Nick Hornby adaptation “Juliet, Naked,” and the fourth film he’s directed, “Blaze,” is out now. Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” has become so strongly associated with film noir, it’s hard to know whether film noir was more influenced by the painting or the other way around. And the members of Balún explain how they developed a sound they describe as “music that you can sleep to while dancing.”

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Swingin’ on the flippity-flop in the PNW. Sub Pop CEO Megan Jasper on her legendary hoax on The New York Times with her lexicon of grunge terms. Carrie Brownstein on Sleater-Kinney and the difference between TV stardom and music stardom. What residents in the Washington towns where “Twin Peaks” was filmed love — and hate — about the show. And the generation-defining album that is Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”

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BoJack Horseman, Netflix’s animated series about a washed-up ’90s sitcom star living in the Hollywood Hills, is beginning its fifth season. 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.

Bob-Waksberg is about as introspective, funny and dark as you can be at the tender age of 34. 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.

This podcast was produced by Schuyler Swenson.

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Ann Dowd, who won an Emmy for her portrayal of Aunt Lydia on “The Handmaid’s Tale,” joins Kurt to talk about playing characters — many of them terrifying — for three decades. In the 1960s, when hippies turned to Christianity in what’s commonly called the Jesus Movement, Christian rock was born. And so was a belief that the end of the world was coming any minute. And how the guitarist Stephane Wrembel’s life was changed when he discovered Django Reinhardt. 

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Only 12 entertainers have won the EGOT sweep: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. In this hour of Studio 360, we look back at some of our favorite stories about EGOT winners. Composers Robert Lopez and Marvin Hamlisch both perform in our studio. Mel Brooks’ classic comedy skit, “The 2,000 Year Old Man.” And finding inspiration in Whoopi Goldberg’s stand-up. 

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Young guitarists emulate standard-bearers like The Kinks’ Dave Davies, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton. But when those guitarists were making their mark in the 1960s, they worshipped their own guitar hero: Link Wray.

Sixty years ago, in 1958, Wray released “Rumble,” an instrumental song that had the 12-bar form of blues but pioneered the distortion effect that would become a defining element in rock. It’s what you hear in the very first notes of songs like The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” and The Who’s “I Can See for Miles. “

On this podcast extra, Steven Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and James Hutchinson, who plays bass guitar with Bonnie Raitt, weigh in on Wray’s technique and influence.

“It’s got to be one of the most basic and yet fundamentally moving songs that have ever been recorded for the purposes of rock music,” says Brian Wright-McLeod, author of The Encyclopedia of Native Music.

Guitar player Stevie Salas says Wray was proud of his Native American heritage, and the song’s success turned Wray into an inspiration for other Native American musicians. In fact, the song is in a title of a documentary about Native Americans in rock that Salas produced and appears in: Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World.

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Kurt Andersen talks with the celebrated architect Liz Diller about how making buildings is like making movies, and she picks some of her favorite examples of films that use architecture brilliantly. How court-ordered psychotherapy helped spur the material Richard Pryor performed for his album “Wanted: Live in Concert,” which marks its fortieth anniversary this year and has been inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. And poet Maya Phillips joins Kurt to talk about “Blindspotting,” “BlacKkKlansman” and “Sorry to Bother You.”

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What happens when artists get political. Kurt talks to conservative painter Jon McNaughton about protest art in the age of Trump. The dramatic use of masks in the paintings of Detroit’s Tylonn Sawyer. Our American Icons series looks at the song “Dixie,” the Confederate symbol that’s impossible to remove. And Roya Hakakian and Reza Aslan on Iranian politics and poetry.

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The excellent new movie Blindspotting deals in complex ways with issues of race, gentrification, and police brutality. But it’s a drama both leavened and enhanced by its unique use of rap and verse. Co-writers and stars Daveed Diggs (Hamilton) and Rafael Casal (Def Jam Poetry) play best friends Collin and Miles who, over the course of the last few days of Collin’s probation, navigate their rapidly gentrifying hometown of Oakland as well as their relationship to each other.

That Diggs and Casal also grew up together and share a background in music, theater, and poetry makes the sometimes surreal moments of rap monologues not only believable but also, remarkably, effective. But, as poet Maya Phillips points out, there’s more meaning behind the pretty bounce language. “Rap was a black form and it was commodified,” she tells Kurt Andersen. “It’s very much involved in this aesthetic. We have this idea of a black man who is a rapper and that is packaged and that is sold.”

Blindspotting isn’t the only summer movie to uniquely use language and manners of speaking to talk about race. Phillips digs into the linguistics of Blindspotting, BlacKkKlansman, and Sorry To Bother You and considers the inflection point of the future of black cinema.

Read more of Maya Phillips’ poetic takes on film at Slate.com and her website.

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Some of the greatest film music of the 20th century came from readymade stock albums recorded by virtually anonymous musicians. Author David Hollander and composer Keith Mansfield tell the story of vintage library music. How Lucille Fletcher’s thrilling 1943 drama “Sorry, Wrong Number” shocked American radio listeners. And writer Matt Novak uncovers the surprising movies watched by American presidents inside the White House.

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