Love the Front Korea

Once in a while, a listener will write in to Studio 360 asking for a transcript of a story we’ve broadcast. Unfortunately, we don’t have transcripts of the shows (it’s just too time consuming and we have a very small staff), so we normally direct our listeners to the free streaming audio and mp3 downloads [...]

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Off to See the Wizard

This week on Studio 360, we take an in-depth look at The Wizard of Oz, assuredly one of the most beloved (and bizarre) fables to capture Americans’ imaginations. This year marks the 70th anniversary of Warner Bros’ film adaptation of Frank L. Baum’s children’s book and for the past year the studio has been throwing [...]

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Cuteness gets remixed

Don’t be fooled by the first 20 seconds of this video– it’s is not just another cute toddler Youtube sensation. Prepare to be impressed and a little freaked out by some very slick video editing. The toddler noises and mugging for the camera get transformed into what could quite possibly be the next dance hall [...]

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Kurt Gets Auto-Tuned

Reports of the death of Auto-Tune are greatly exaggerated. This week on the show, we hear from the Gregory Brothers, a band that has turned the music industry’s favorite note-correction software on TV newscasters and politicians. With their series of viral web videos “Auto-Tune the News,” they’ve made divas out of talking heads. Check out [...]

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Kurt on The Leonard Lopate Show

Our host didn’t have to go far for his most recent media appearance. On Tuesday, Kurt was a guest on  The Leonard Lopate Show– our friendly neighbors in the WNYC office. Kurt tells Leonard about his new book Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America and shares one of his own [...]

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Blue Turns Fifty

Fifty years ago today, Columbia Records released Miles Davis’ groundbreaking album Kind of Blue. In a year of amazing jazz releases – among them John Coltrane’s Giant Steps and Charles Mingus’ Mingus Ah Um – Blue stands out. Fifty years later, it’s still the album that hardcore jazz buffs and neophytes can agree is one [...]

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The Sound of SLOrk

This week, Angela Frucci brings us the story of Ocarina, the iPhone app created by computer programmer Ge Wang that allows you “play” your iPhone by blowing into its microphone (with pleasant, vaguely pan-pipe-like results). A YouTube search yields Ocarina performances of everything from “Stairway to Heaven” to that favorite of high school choral directors [...]

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The Priciest Way to Remember Michael

What happens when you mix the King of Pop with the King of Pop Art? The answer is Andy Warhol’s 1984 portrait of Michael Jackson, which will hit the New York auction block later this month. The bidding will start at $840,000, but since both Jackson and Warhol are dead, the piece is expected to [...]

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The Tablecloth Trick

Like most people, I wanted to be a magician when I grew up. I recently attended a screening of the 2007 Swedish film You, The Living (Du levande) by director Roy Andersson, a funny/sad movie made up of 50 vignettes that portray everyday life as absurd, petty, and hilarious. In the following scene, a man [...]

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Goodbye, John Hughes

John Hughes, the director who brought us the ’80s classics “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “The Breakfast Club,” and “Sixteen Candles,” passed away yesterday. Hughes was the undisputed master of the teen movie: the high school scene he depicted over twenty years ago is still imitated, never equaled. Maybe that’s because he was truly sympathetic to [...]

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