All over the country, amazing science is happening without institutional or government funding. We visit inventors working in garages, basements, even a Quonset hut on a farm. Rachel Zimmerman works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, but she was an amateur inventor first ...

Video: Frank Polifka's "Tornado in a Can"

Despite success abroad, the Iranian film industry is in serious trouble with the government. Prominent directors have been jailed, and last week the government shut down the House of Cinema, Iran's largest independent film institute. Filmmaker Rafi Pitts believes the industry "has been pushed ...

As Mitt Romney wraps up his audition to be the Republican nominee, he looks increasingly in control of everything but his image. The problem, according to New York film critic David Edelstein, is that Romney fits the role of President too well. “If you were a casting director and you ...

Kurt Andersen notes that we're in an age of flux and paralysis at the same time. In entertainment, we yearn for authenticity — but ten million of us watch the Kardashians every week. Where do we go from here? Playwright and screenwriter Paul Rudnick and Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams help ...

Forty-eight years ago, Donald J. Sobol put sneakers on Sherlock Holmes and set him in small-town America. Produced by Studio 360's Derek John ...

There is no shortage of 2011 year-end playlists, but few are as trustworthy as what's currently on David Byrne's iPod. The former Talking Heads front man sat down with Kurt Andersen this week to talk about the new Talking Heads: Chronology DVD, a collection of rare ...

This morning, TIME announced 2011's Person of the Year: The Protester. Studio 360's own Kurt Andersen wrote the cover story, and was sworn to secrecy so we were just as surprised as everyone else. But in retrospect, we probably could have seen it coming. We’ve been covering the art ...

A few hundred years ago, classical pianists would impress audiences by original cadenzas in the middle of a concerto — riffing, we would say now. Now improvisation is firmly in the realm of jazz. But a new record called Marvelous Fantasy explores the connection between jazz and classical ...

Video: O'Neal performs "Marvelous Fantasy," "The Lovers," and breakdances in the studio

The centennial of Romare Bearden’s birth is being celebrated by a number of museums this year and early in 2012. Probably the most famous African-American visual artist of the 20th century, Bearden was best known for a singular approach to collage art that incorporated scraps of wallpaper ...

Slideshow: Romare Bearden in his Studio

David Cronenberg is best known for films like The Fly, The Dead Zone, Dead Ringers and A History of Violence. They can be shocking, violent, and gory — but they’re also unmistakably personal films that make you think while you’re squirming in your seat. Cronenberg’s new film is a straightforward historical drama. ...

Bonus Track: Cronenberg's horror debut

Thirty years ago, hardly anyone knew what a music video was. On the night MTV was launched, its founders — a ragtag bunch of music fans and rookie television execs — had to take a bus from Manhattan to New Jersey to watch the broadcast, because no New York cable company carried the fledgling channel ...

Last week Amazon had its second Campfire conference, bringing a group of writers together for an under-the-radar gathering in Santa Fe, NM. Kurt Andersen attended last year, and he felt the company was trying to soften up the literary establishment as it moves toward publishing. In recent months ...

In the last year the Federal Trade Commission announced they were considering a DO NOT TRACK list — web users could click and sign up for greater anonymity, to hide from online marketers. The technology that makes all this possible? Cookies. “’Cookies’ are by far the most controversial and misunderstood thing that I’ve ever invented,” ...

Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, philosopher, and author of the manifesto You Are Not A Gadget. “The thing about information is that it can hypnotize you. It can make you think you're wise, when you aren't,” he tells Kurt Andersen. “And as long as you have a dose of self–skepticism ...

With the proliferation of big-budget superhero movies, it’s easy to forget about the pulpy comic books on which the characters are based.  But it seems many people have: sales of comics are way down.  As fanboys have become fanmen, publishers are desperate to find new — and younger — readers ...

Slideshow: Inside Bergen Street Comics and the "New 52"

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is back on the front pages this week. The Palestinian Authority is seeking admission as a member state to the United Nations and emotions are running high — even about an exhibit at a tiny museum in Oakland, California. This weekend, the Museum of Children's Art (MOCHA) planned to open an exhibition ...

Slideshow: Work from “A Child’s View from Gaza”

The new fall TV season is upon us and there's a not so subtle subtext: women rule. The primetime lineup is dominated by new half-hour comedies featuring women in the lead roles, including HBO's much anticipated Girls and network sitcoms New Girl starring Zooey Deschanel (FOX), Two Broke Girls (CBS) and Whitney (NBC). ...

Video: Promo for New Girl

A work of public art is causing a stir in Indianapolis — and it hasn’t even gone up yet. The dispute involves a monument of a freed slave that was supposed to be placed in downtown Indianapolis. The work, “E Pluribus Unum,” is by the celebrated African-American artist Fred Wilson ...

Slideshow: Fred Wilson's “E Pluribus Unum”

The sickening ups and downs of the debt ceiling crisis are feeding worries that American politics and the economy are unraveling. For the novelist Gary Shteyngart, it all sounds very familiar: “I’ll turn on the news, I’ll vomit from nervousness and then I’ll wipe my chin and say ‘Oh, you know ...