March 02, 2007
Though she came from a home where Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke played on the stereo, Ruthie Foster built a robust musical career on the folk festival circuit. Kurt talks to Ruthie about her new album, The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster, which brings the artist back to the classic soul sound of her youth.
Today the public’s alternate fascination and disgust with celebrities continues to escalate with the spotlight on uninhibited baronesses and teen divas gone bad. Edie Sedgwick was a classy, well-bred young woman who became the muse for the fashion world, the literati and Andy Warhol’s Factory crowd. Many remember her as the celebrity who set the standard for what it meant to be the “It” girl. Produced by Dan Kramer.
Most digital devices today are designed to give you access to lots of media at once. The Playaway –- an audiobook with headphones attached -- does just one thing. Andrew Adam Newman asks why it’s complicated to design something simple.
In a moment of deep personal tragedy following her husband’s death and the illness of her daughter, Joan Didion’s impulse was to write. The result was the award-winning memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. Now her book has been taken to the Broadway stage as a monologue starring Vanessa Redgrave. Kurt spoke with Didion at the time of her book’s release on confronting her own loss and the way we grieve.
With his new ballet, English choreographer Matthew Bourne brings Tim Burton’s 1990 movie Edward Scissorhands to the stage. For him, it’s a classic story about the American suburbs. Produced by Eric Molinsky.
It’s crazy the things we will do for love. Movie director Michel Gondry, for instance, claims his drive to create such achievements as The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is fueled by his trouble finding a date. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.
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, and the Lily Auchincloss Foundation. 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. 
