This is the home of America’s aspirations and its deepest contradictions. Thomas Jefferson was as passionate about building his house as he was about founding the United States. Yet Monticello was a plantation worked by slaves, some of them Jefferson’s own children.

This week, Studio 360 is live in WNYC’s Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, for a special episode about the art of reinvention. The comedian Eugene Mirman finds a new career as a consumer advocate (cable company, beware). Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation) goes from bad-girl memoirist to corporate lawyer. And Merrill ...

Kurt Andersen talks with Gerardo Naranjo, the director of the new film Miss Bala, about a beauty pageant contestant caught in the middle of Mexico’s drug war. The composer Eve Beglarian travels the length the Mississippi River collecting songs and stories — she performs live in the studio. And one ...