February 23, 2006
Every theory—from Chinese troops infiltrating the U.S. to exterrestrial healing—has an advocate at Conspiracy Con, which took place last year in Santa Clara, California. We visited with the people who devote their lives to notions the rest of us would rather ignore.
There's a conspiracy at the heart of every political thriller—from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to Oscar contenders Munich and Syriana. In the mid-1970s, the best filmmakers in America put the turmoil of that era into dark, paranoid movies about forces beyond our control. Studio 360's Derek John spoke with Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman about the golden age of political thrillers.
Mark Lombardi was obsessed with financial chicanery, and with drawing the lines in which power flows. When he died in 2000, he left 14,000 index cards with entries on everything from multinational corporations to arms dealers to his own friends. But why are his huge, detailed drawings so difficult to decode? Produced by Ilya Marritz
Remember the old Saturday Night Live skit that asked, "What if Eleanor Roosevelt Could Fly?" Sound artist Jane Philbrick asked a question just as unlikely: "What if retired Senator Jesse Helms could recite a lesbian love poem by Gertrude Stein?" Andrew Adam Newman found out how Philbrick's quixotic project took her to the cutting edge of voice-synthesis technology.
Special Guest
Jon Ronson is a widely published British journalist. His most recent book, The Men Who Stare at Goats, documents the US military's ongoing interest in psychic phenomena. In Them, Ronson spent years with members of various extremist groups, from Aryan Nations in Idaho to a Bin Laden wanna-be living in London to David Icke, a former sportscaster who uncovered a plot (by extraterrestrial lizards) to take over the world.
Stuart Oderman was a tough kid. He ran errands for small-time bookies in Newark, New Jersey, and used to skip school to go to the movies. One day at a matinee he met a faded star of the golden age of Hollywood, and his life was never the same.
Studio 360 is a co-production of
Public
Radio International and
WNYC New York Public Radio, and is funded in part by
Ken and Lucy Lehman, the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, and
DK Eyewitness Travel. Studio 360's American Icons series is supported in part by the
National Endowment for the Humanities. Our series on creativity and science is supported in part by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Our series on Underground Heroes is supported in part by the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. 
