March 09, 2007
Iris Bahr took New York by storm this winter with her one-woman show Dai (Enough). Bahr performs characters from the play, about a cross-section of Israelis at a Tel Aviv café – moments before it’s hit by a suicide bomber. And she talks with Kurt about her new memoir, Dork Whore, about her youthful travels across Asia.
Visions of a post-apocalyptic future have long been the province of science fiction. Cormac McCarthy, one of America’s finest novelists, ventures onto that horrifying terrain in his latest book, The Road, about a father and son who survive. Editor and critic Rob Spillman talks about McCarthy’s grim achievement, with selections from the book read by Larry Pine and Charlie Panek. Produced by Pejk Malinovski.
Archeologists tells us that ancient Mayan documents predict that the world, as we know it now, will be end in five years. Daniel Pinchbeck was a cynical, non-believing journalist when he started experimenting with hallucinogens and spiritual enlightenment. He tells Kurt how his experience with a Mayan diety, Quetzlcoatl, convinced him the predictions are accurate. Headlines in the current newspapers, he says, bears them out.
Peggy Diggs believes that the “inconvenient truth” is true: rising tides and severe storms will wreak havoc. If someday whole cities of people are forced to live like refugees (like Katrina’s victims), Peggy thinks they’ll need somewhere to put whatever belongings they salvage. She told Peter Crimmins why she sought design help from inmates in a maximum security prison.
The Musicians’ Union Hall in Kansas City is famous worldwide for its jams – locals and visiting greats blowing into night, long after the clubs shut down. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker started to cook up the bebop sound at Local 627. But a recent crackdown by city liquor authorities has left fans wondering if Kansas City jazz can still be the real thing. KCUR’s Sylvia Maria Gross checked in late one Saturday night. Actually, it was Sunday morning.
When French moviegoers see Black Snake Moan, the voice they’ll hear as Samuel Jackson is Thierry Desroses, who has dubbed all of Jackson’s films into French since Pulp Fiction. Yes, including Snakes on a Plane. Overdubbing, he explains, is an exercise in losing your ego. Produced by Sarah Elzas.
Studio 360 is a co-production of
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Radio International and
WNYC New York Public Radio, and is funded in part by
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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. 
