Studio 360

Porter Wagoner

In the 1960s and ‘70s, Porter Wagoner was Nashville royalty. His television variety show helped keep the Grand Ole Opry alive. This month, a new Wagoner album comes out on a rock label, but don’t call it crossover: as Waylon Jennings once said, “Porter couldn’t go pop with a mouth full of firecrackers.” Produced by Trey Kay.

• WEB EXTRA: "Committed to Parkview"
• Porter Wagoner's website
• Porter and Dolly on The Porter Wagoner Show
• Buy Wagonmaster

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates' new novel, her 36th, is called The Gravedigger's Daughter. It's an imagined account of her own grandmother's life. Oates knew her great-grandparents were German immigrants, but it was the discovery of her grandmother's Jewish background (turned up by an inquisitive biographer) that prompted Oates to write the book.

• Celestial Timepiece: A Joyce Carol Oates Home Page
• Buy The Gravedigger's Daughter

Design for the Real World: Typewriter

Darren Wershler-Henry, a professor of Communications, pays tribute to the whack of metal against paper, the smell of ink, and a technology we’ve almost forgotten. Produced by Zeke Turner.

• Darren Wershler-Henry's website
• Buy The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting

Cuban Organ

Music journalist Gianluca Tramontana took a bumpy, 8-hour bus ride from Havana to the remote eastern province of Granma —- the heart of Cuba’s sugarcane country -- to find an extraordinary relic: a hand-cranked mechanical organ that is still the life of the party.

• SLIDESHOW: Images of Cuban organs

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