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

Why Werner Herzog loves cat videos

The Peabody Award-winning Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen, from PRI, is a smart and surprising guide to what's happening in pop culture and the arts. Each week, Kurt introduces the people who are creating and shaping our culture. Life is busy – so let Studio 360 steer you to the must-see movie this weekend, the next book for your nightstand, or the song that will change your life. Produced in association with Slate.

Arts

Literature

Performing Arts

Design

Food

Fashion & Beauty

Visual Arts

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.

Introducing: We Disrupt This Broadcast

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

Introducing: Monumental - Whispers in Wilmington

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.

S360 Extra: Nixon at War - Ep 1 October Surprise

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

The final episode

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

Why Werner Herzog loves cat videos

Download our free app to listen on your phone