Christmas, Atheism, and Intolerance

As I write this post, Christmas is just days away, and despite the overworked (though still valid) lament that it’s all about commerce, hundreds of millions of Christians will take the time to go to church and turn their thoughts to the Divine. This will undoubtedly drive a small group of true believers nuts. I’m [...]

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Free Theatre Belarus Leaders In Hiding

Belarus is called the last dictatorship in Europe.  The government censors the arts, so performance troupe Free Theatre Belarus performs secretly, in converted houses, to avoid arrest.  Back in 2008, New York-based playwright and performer Aaron Landsman visited the group in Minsk.  He was astonished by how the group remained prolific under such difficult circumstances [...]

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Modern Madrigals for December

What, you think you’re too cool for Christmas records?  You’re going to like this one, and so will your grandma. The LA-based a cappella group Sonos has just released December Songs, filled with music for the season – several originals, plus some strange and soulful covers of classics.  The group’s “Ave Maria” is an especially [...]

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Kurt Andersen’s “Human Intelligence: A Holiday Tale”

Ah, Christmas. Time to sit around the fire with eggnog and tell stories of… extraterrestrial spies? This holiday week, Studio 360 presents a new kind of holiday tale.  “Human Intelligence” is by none other than Kurt Andersen, and was published this year in Stories: All-New Tales, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio.  Studio 360′s [...]

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Reggie Watts Gets Cosmic

Earlier this week, one-of-a-kind comedian/musician Reggie Watts rocked WNYC’s Jerome L. Greene Performance Space for a special “Studio 360″ all about Theoretical Physics. That’s right…Theoretical Physics.  Here at 360, we like a little science sprinkled in with our arts and culture. It turns out that Reggie Watts – an improviser who seeds audiences with disinformation [...]

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360 Pick: Requiem for Steam

Requiem for Steam: The Railroad Photographs of David Plowden David Plowden spent his childhood obsessed with trains. He would ride them just for the thrill of it, often without any direct destination in mind. A couple years ago, Plowden told Kurt “I rode all over the place, to the despair of my uncles and aunts [...]

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Jazzercise from the Jazz Age

Last weekend, Studio 360 was all about art as medicine. We had stories about how music helps patients recover in a burn unit; why a children’s cancer doctor turns to fiction writing; and medical students learning how honing their narrative skills will make them better doctors. When we were doing research for the show, we [...]

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Live Webcast: Our Universe Goes to 11

Final preparations are underway for tonight’s live show in WNYC’s Greene Space: the science magician loads in his equipment in a couple hours, then Reggie Watts will soundcheck, and doors will open at 7pm.  And then… black holes will play drums!  We’ll bend space and time!  And we may just come up with the Theory [...]

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The (New) Last Supper

There’s a new art installation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that’s creating quite a stir.  It opened just last weekend, but already, it’s commanding attention for its dramatic, novel use of light and sound.  You may have heard of the artist: Leonardo da Vinci. Sort of. The artwork in question is a kind of collaboration [...]

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Earthlike planets are right around the corner

A few weeks ago, a couple of astronomers made headlines when they announced that they’d found a planet orbiting a distant star. It was hardly the first: since 1995, about 500 planets have been discovered in orbit around stars beyond the Sun. What made this one extraordinary was, first of all, that it wasn’t all [...]

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