May 11, 2007
In the 1960s, Jonathan Miller helped redefine funny as a member of the English comedy revue Beyond the Fringe. Now the comedian and opera director (oh and, by the way, neurologist and sculptor, too) is hosting a BBC series called A Brief History of Disbelief -- it airs on PBS this month. Kurt talks with Jonathan about how not believing in God has shaped his storied career.
Meet Hasan Elahi. He's an American artist with a focus on new media. After someone reported him as a terrorist, he began using the power of the internet to clear his name: he posts every last detail of his private life, from cell phone records to lunches to urinals. He told Brooke Darrah Shuman how he's made his website an art project called Tracking Transience.
It's not a computer game. Second Life is an online virtual world designed and controlled by its inhabitants. In some ways it’s just like “real” life: full of buying, selling, entertainment and sex. But the high-power graphic tools that make Second Life possible also make it a great place to design visual art and sculpture. Second Life resident Richard Minsky takes Kurt on a tour of the new virtual masterpieces.
It's got nudity, sex and love triangles, but Young American Bodies isn’t porn. It’s a soap opera posted on Nerve.com, complete with strong characters and twisty plot-lines. And it paints a pretty bright future for the video entertainment on the web, according to its newest fan, Sean Cole.
Four years after Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended, creator Joss Whedon has resurrected his cult hit TV series in a very surprising fashion: as a comic book. Produced by Eric Molinsky.
Kate Munger leads an unusual choir. She trains groups of women, mostly amateur singers, to perform in private homes and hospices at the bedsides of people who are dying. She calls the group a Threshold Choir. Produced by Lonny Shavelson.
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. 
