I started writing on a computer in the early 1980s when I worked at Time magazine. The several of us younger writers, including Walter Isaacson, who were eager to abandon typewriters had to go to use special non-PC consoles in a special little room. There were no PCs, no on-screen icons, ...

Before I left Los Angeles for New York City, one of the cultural experiences I was encouraged — no actually commanded — to experience by the culturally elite of my friends, was a Jon Brion show at the Largo.  (He had an ongoing residency at ...

Saul Perlmutter, 2011 Nobel Laureate in Physics, teaches "Physics and Music" at UC Berkeley. From his course description: "The mysteries of music have long inspired scientists to invent new tools of thought, and some of the earliest scientific concepts were invented to understand music. ... Questions as simple as "Why do different instruments ...

“General Orders No. 9” was the document in which Robert E. Lee ordered his troops to surrender to Ulysses S. Grant.  A film of the same name by Robert Persons never refers to this document or to the Civil War itself, which is strange.  There is a lot ...

Are you an avid rereader of books or rewatcher of movies?  Or is once enough?  Take our survey.

In September, DC Comics rebooted all of its main story lines, wiping the slate clean for the best-known superhero titles.  Each starts over at issue #1.  Fans were puzzled as Wonder Woman came back as a horror comic, fighting supernatural ickies rather than putting bad guys in the place. It’s been a tough year for Wonder Woman.  NBC’s much-anticipated pilot ...

Slideshow: Wonder Woman Through the Ages

Filmmaker and photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders' new documentary The Latino List explores the complexity of Latino identity in America. The film is comprised of 15 interviews with a range of contemporary Latino icons: from the actress Eva Longoria to professional golfer “Chi-Chi” Rodríguez, to US Supreme Court Justice Sonia ...

Back in the 1990s, R.E.M. used to joke that they’d play their final concert on December 31, 1999 and break up the next day.  Had they done that, with the original lineup intact (drummer Bill Berry left in 1997), they would have certainly gone out with a bang.The ...

Many scientists have no trouble conjuring rich images in their heads just from scanning columns of data. For the rest of us, it's essential to turn that data into something we can relate to more easily. This is where the designers of scientific visualizations come in. Using models enriched with colors and contours ...

Video: Earthquake simulation

Last weekend, the journal Nature Structure & Molecular Biology published a key discovery in the study of HIV — and it was made with the help of online gamers. They were playing Foldit, a game which challenges players to figure out the structures of real enzymes and proteins.  One of those puzzles was a protein ...

This summer, Alexander McQueen's Savage Beauty exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art drew in over half a million visitors, making it the most viewed fashion exhibition in the museum's history.  It was also one of the hardest exhibits to get into — I personally made four unsuccessful trips to the Met. But a recent Twitter campaign may help the show go global. ...

The first track on Wild Flag’s debut release is called “Romance,” and ends with this: We love the sound, the sound is what found us, sound is the love between me and you. I love how we don’t know who the “you” is.  The song might be about a lover, but the way Carrie Brownstein switches to “we” suggests something else.  She could be singing to us fans, who’ve kept the indie-rock flame alive in our hearts. ...

Countless artists in the past decade, from novelists to comic book illustrators to documentary theater directors, have grappled with the events of 9/11 and the War on Terror. What follows is a curated list of crucial works, by no means complete or definitive, that help us make sense of what happened a decade ago. (With thanks to Studio 360's listeners.)

Over the last several months, Kurt Andersen has been asking guests about their memories of 9/11 and the changes that came after it. Hear responses from Michael Stipe, Jodie Foster, Björk, Suzanne Vega, Robert Lopez, and Miranda July.

On September 15, Kurt will lead an all-star panel discussion about creativity as part of The Economist's Human Potential conference: "Finding your spark: a special session from Studio 360 from Public Radio International."

Look around you, specifically at the objects that are surrounding you right now.  How would you describe the products you use for your everyday life?  Unobtrusive?  Innovative?  Honest?  These are the kind of questions that make up the legendary industrial designer Deitar Rams' 10 Guiding Principles of Good Design. ...

When Studio 360 contributor and science reporter Ari Daniel Shapiro visited at the Japanese Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology last winter, he met Dhugal Lindsay.  The Australian researcher explores the deep seas using robotic submersibles carrying video cameras and sampling equipment.  And he's given names to some of the species he's found.

Delta blues legend David "Honeyboy" Edwards passed away at his home in Chicago yesterday at the age of 96. A singer and guitarist known for his complex fingerpicking style and his bottleneck-slide guitar work, Edwards played with everyone from country bluesman Big Joe Williams to "the King of the Delta Blues," Robert Johnson. ...

Last month, President Obama installed Norman Rockwell's "The Problem We All Live With" in a hallway just outside the Oval Office. The iconic painting shows Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old African American girl, being escorted by US Marshals to a New Orleans elementary school during the integration of the school system in 1960. ...