Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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