Studio 360

studio 360 AT THE END of the last century, Public Radio International and New York's public radio station WNYC decided to create a weekly one-hour national magazine program about culture and the arts. They asked me to help create it, and to be the host.

Albright Allen Anderson Bennett Bogosian Close

Studio 360 went on the air in New York and Los Angeles and a few other cities in the fall of 2000; today we’re broadcast on about 140 stations, and a half million smart people listen with what seems to be enormous enthusiasm. The official marketing ballyhoo describes it thusly: "PRI’s Peabody Award-winning 'Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen' from WNYC is public radio’s smart and surprising guide to what's happening in pop culture and the arts. Each week, Kurt Andersen introduces you to 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."

My guests have included Madeline Albright, Sherman Alexie, Woody Allen, Isabel Allende, Robert Altman, Tori Amos, Laurie Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Kevin Bacon, Jon Robin Baitz, Nicholson Baker, Tony Bennett, Michael Bierut, Harold Bloom, Eric Bogosian, TC Boyle, Ray Bradbury, Billy Bragg, Bill Buford, Solomon Burke, David Byrne, Don Byron, John Cale, Roseanne Cash, Susan Cheever, Chuck Close, Daniel Clowes, Billy Collins, Elvis Costello, Jonathan Demme, Joan Didion, Steve Earle, Christine Ebersol, Dave Eggers, Chris Elliott, Nora Ephron, Jonathan Safran Foer, Caio Fonseca, Milos Forman, Jonathtan Franzen, Ian Frazier, Neil Gaiman, Frank Gehry, Terry Gilliam, Milton Glaser, Adam Gopnik, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Merle Haggard, Donald Hall, Ethan Hawke, Todd Haynes, Tony Hendra, Werner Herzog, A.M. Homes, Nick Hornby, Thomas Hoving, Arianna Huffington, John Irving, Pico Iyer, Howard Jacobson, Bill T. Jones, Edward P. Jones, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Maira Kalman, Catherine Keener, Sir Ben Kingsley, Allison Krauss, Barbara Kruger, Tony Kushner, Talib Kweli, Sean Lennon, Neal Labute, Jhumpa Lahiri, k.d. lang, Ang Lee, Ursula Le Guin, Sean Lennon, Annie Lennox, Elmore Leonard, Jonathan Lethem, Richard Linklater, George Lois, Courtney Love, Baz Luhrmann, David Lynch, Frank McCourt, Ian McEwan, Bobby McFerrin, Larry McMurtry, Yo-Yo Ma, Norman Mailer, David Michaelis, David Milch, Jonathan Miller, Anthony Minghella, Susan Minot, Moby, Samuel Mockbee, Susanna Moore, Walter Mosley, Rick Moody, Errol Morris, Toni Morrison, Azar Nafisi, Mira Nair, Conor Oberst, Todd Oldham, Chuck Palahniuk, Gary Panter, Dolly Parton, Alexander Payne, Austin Pendleton, Sean Penn, Itzhak Perlman, Marisha Pessl, Robert Plant, Amy Poehler, Sarah Polley, David Rakoff, David Remnick, Robert Redford, Richard Rhodes, Anne Rice, Ron Rosenbaum, James Rosenquist, Paul Rudnick, Stefan Sagmeister, Luc Sante, Marjane Satrapi, George Saunders, Simon Schama, James Schamus, Ridley Scott, Liev Schreiber, Amy Sedaris, Richard Serra, Gary Shteyngart, Jane Smiley, Anna Deavere Smith, Todd Solondz, Susan Sontag, Art Spiegelman, Frank Stella, Tom Stoppard, Lili Taylor, Paul Theroux, They Might Be Giants, John Updike, Laura Veirs, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Bill Viola, Sarah Vowell, Wendy Wasserstein, John Waters, Lawrence Weschler, Wim Wenders, Colson Whitehead, Wilco and Neil Young.

And it is huge fun.

My surpassingly smart, kind, professional, hard-working colleagues – Julie Burstein, Derek John, David Krasnow, Jenny Lawton, Pejk Malinovski, Leital Molad and Michele Siegel – make it easy for me. They deserve a lot of the credit for the generous coverage the show receives in the press, such as New York Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman's description of Studio 360 as "the best program on radio," and articles like these in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Current.