Podcasts
Nixon At War, a seven-episode history of President Nixon's conduct of the Vietnam War (and how it led to Watergate) that Kurt wrote, co-produced and narrated and was released in 2021.
A series of conversations in 2021 with six world-class thinkers called The World As You'll Know It about our technology-driven inflection point and the mixed prospects for the digital future.
Premiering as a weekly national arts show on public radio in 2000, Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen became a podcast as well in 2016.
Short Fiction
“Human Intelligence,” a story commissioned for Neil Gaiman's collection Stories: All-New Tales (2010), later adapted as a radio drama and republished by the magazine Future Human (2020)
In The Book of Men, a collection edited by Colum McCann, a story in which Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, Warren Buffet, and the mass murderer Charles Startweather are characters.
“Memories of the Gore Administration,” one-fifth of a counterfactual fiction co-written with Kevin Baker, Walter Kirn, Jane Smiley and Glenn Beck that appeared in New York, 2010. And here’s a story in The Atlantic about the project.
“Santa Claus Nutcracker,” a story for the Significant Objects project, 2009.
”New Right Now,” a short story for Metropolis (2003) that turned into a chapter in Heyday (2007)
Book Contributions
Essay in Better Than Fiction: True Travel Tales From Great Fiction Writers (Lonely Planet, 2013)
Foreword to Spark: How Creativity Works (HarperCollins, 2011)
Introduction to The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll (Penguin Classics, 2009)
Entry in City Secrets Movies: The Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Cinema’s Hidden Gems (Universe, 2009)
Foreword to Public Relations and the Press: The Troubled Embrace by Karla Gower (Northwestern University Press, 2007)
Chapter in Pleasure: The Architecture and Design of Rockwell Group (Universe, 2002)
Magazines
At the beginning of 1994, Kurt became editor of the weekly magazine New York. After presiding for two-and-a-half years over increases in circulation and advertising and profits and verve, Kurt was fired, evidently because the magazine had gotten too interesting, or at least too annoying in its coverage of the then-owner’s business and social and political associates.
In 1999, exactly a year after Kurt called the “digital revolution” a “bubble” in The New Yorker, he teamed up with Michael Hirschorn and Deanna Brown to create Inside.com, which was an online news service and an associated biweekly magazine employing a couple of dozen extraordinary reporters and writers covering the entertainment and media businesses. They sold Inside to Brill Media Holdings in 2001, which in turn sold it to Primedia. Primedia, alas, does not maintain an archive of Inside articles on the web.
During 2004 and 2005, Kurt was the editorial director of four issues of Colors magazine.
Other Projects
Hollywood Does Politics
A curated film series at Film Streams in Omaha. As Kurt wrote in the summer of 2016: “Here we are, watching an actual presidential election campaign more like an over-the-top dark comedy than I ever imagined possible. It seemed like a perfect moment to mount a festival of a dozen films, variously great and intriguing, about American politics. Several are classics, featuring idealist politicians, but several others seemed particularly apt for the present political moment. Bullworth is about an entertainingly impolitic, truth-telling candidate. Gabriel Over the White House is a drama about a fascist President and Idiocracy is a dystopian comedy about a future President who’d been a pro wrestler and porn star.”
The AIGA National Design Conferences
Moderator of 2013, 2011, and 2007 conferences. Opening and closing remarks, breakout session discussions, and Q&As with designers, artists, and social entrepreneurs over three days.
Kings County
With Steve Bodow of The Daily Show and Gatz, Paul Simms of News Radio and The New Yorker, and Chris Bannon of WNYC, in 2012 Kurt created and hosted a limited run summer variety show for WNYC called Kings County. His co-hosts and guests included Kristen Schaal, Reggie Watts, Francesca Ramsey, Lucy Sexton, Paul Rudnkick, the musicians Chairlift, Eleanor Friedberger, Sean Lennon & Charlotte Kemp Muhl, the magician Steve Cuiffo, and the comedians Kurt Braunohler, Jessi Klein and Wyatt Cenac. Here’s a review of the second live show. You can stream or download those shows right here.
Sites of Memory
Walking tours of Manhattan guided by spooky history and narrated by Lewis Lapham, Luc Santre, and Kurt. Launched in 2012.
Very Short List
In 2006, Kurt helped start a little magazine-ish entity called Very Short List, a free email service which every weekday recommends one excellent (and possibly overlooked) book, movie, record or other cultural thing. VSL’s financial backer, IAC, sold it to The New York Observer in 2009.
Out There: Nebraska and the Great Plains in the Movies
A curated series at Film Streams in Omaha in 2007 of 10 films from Boys Town to Badlands to About Schmidt. An article and public radio interview about the series.
Bench Marks
A bus-stop bench, part of a public art project in Omaha, Nebraska, 2005-06.
"Faster, Cheaper, Newer, More: The Revolutions of 1848"
Show at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City. The show, inspired by the era of Heyday, featured 96 objects from the 1840s and 50s.
Inside
In 1999, Kurt teamed up with Michael Hirschorn and Deanna Brown to create Inside.com, which was an online news service and an associated biweekly magazine employing a couple of dozen extraordinary reporters and writers (including David Carr, Michael Cieply, Jared Hohlt, Lorne Manly, Sara Nelson and Kyle Pope) covering the entertainment and media businesses. Kurt and co sold Inside to Brill Media Holdings in 2001, which in turn sold it to Primedia, which in turn sold the name to another publisher. Alas, no archive of Inside articles exists on the internet.
Loose Lips
Kurt, Lisa Birnbach, and Jamie Malanowski created Loose Lips with the director Martin Charnin. They unearthed verbatim transcripts–from government wiretaps, voiceover recording sessions, courtroom and congressional testimony, wherever–and turned them into a satirical stage revue. The 1995 debut production ran for six months at the Triad Theater in New York, starring Bebe Neuwirth and Peter Boyle, and a production at the Santa Monica Playhouse starring Martin Mull and Buck Henry opened later that year and ran for several months. In 1998, inspired by the tape-recorded Clinton-Lewinsky-Tripp revelations, there was a limited-run New York revival starring Andy Richter.
Spy Pranks
A 1992 pilot for NBC, hosted by Kevin Nealon of Saturday Night Live. One prank involved sending a clown to deliver balloons to John Gotti at his mafia social club; for another they pretended to set up a rabbit-meat-based fast food chain called Bunny Burgers; and for a third, called “My Kid Could Do That,” they commissioned small children to create abstract paintings that we exhibited at a SoHo gallery as if they were works by adults.