360 Staff Pick: Speech Therapy

Speech Therapy Speech Debelle In our contest-obsessed culture, it’s easy to tune out awards hoopla. But England’s Mercury Prize has done what a meaningful award should do: shine a light on an artist who deserves it.  Twenty-six year-old Speech Debelle was virtually unknown before she won the prize last month.  Her debut record, Speech Therapy, [...]

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Doo-Doo Doo-Doo

Errant kid-carrying balloons, planes that overshoot the runway by 150 miles — these days, preternatural occurrences are the stuff of cable news. But 50 years ago, viewers tuned in to “The Twilight Zone” to get their weekly eeriness fix. Before the “The Twilight Saga,” and before “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF” became the creepiest show [...]

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360 Staff Pick: Honor Still Lost

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum By Heinrich Boll When I first read this 1974 novel, set in West Germany around the time of the Red Army Faction, it seemed very foreign to me in every sense.  A serious terrorist threat?  Law enforcement overreach to deal with it?  Powerful, sensationalist right-wing media whipping up the [...]

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Today in Swag

With Halloween fast approaching, the swag coming into the studio this week has taken a spooky turn. We appreciated these vampire teeth, which accompanied The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published… … and brought out our ghoulish side! We’ll have some ghoulish stories on the show this week – including [...]

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Johannes Brahms v. Tony the Tiger

I know I’m well past the age of someone who should be doing this, but every once in a while I like to watch Saturday morning cartoons. Last weekend while watching “Jane and the Dragon” (great show, by the way), I saw a commercial for a new cereal called Raisin Brahms. As in the 19th [...]

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Bulletproof Baby Gear

I got outed on the elevator the other day. A co-worker spotted knitting needles in my bag. I rarely have a chance to knit these days, and compensate by indulging in the next best thing: looking at weird knitted art online. Listening to this week’s show, I remembered an odd, thought-provoking site that can add [...]

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Squara Meets Squier

Even if you don’t know it, you’ve probably already heard the music of Orba Squara. The New York City-based singer-songwriter Mitch Davis’ one-man band is responsible for the effervescent tune featured in the iPhone commercials that have been blanketing the airwaves for the last couple of years. The song is called “Perfect Timing (This Morning),” [...]

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Yalies Unplugged

Seniority rules at Yale, but not entirely.  The Whiffenpoofs are the century-old men’s a cappella ensemble, limited to 14 vocalists from each year’s senior class – you’ll hear them on this week’s show.  But there’s a noteworthy junior who’s hot on their heels. Tenor Sam Tsui is a featured soloist with the Duke’s Men of [...]

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Returning to El Barrio

New York City’s El Museo del Barrio has reopened after a well-deserved multi-million dollar renovation. The museum was started 40 years ago by performance artist Rafael Montañez Ortiz in a public school classroom with the mission of highlighting Puerto Rican artists. Since then, it’s grown into an important cultural institution with a collection of more [...]

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A Wild Homage

Tomorrow, the much-anticipated film, “Where the Wild Things Are” is coming to theaters. It’s based on the beloved children’s book by Maurice Sendak, whose fantastical illustrations have inspired innumerable artists. One of those inspired artists is Cory Godbey. Godbey is an illustrator who started the fabulous blog Terrible Yellow Eyes, an homage to Sendak by [...]

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