For our next redesign project, Studio 360 is giving schoolteachers a makeover. Turns out a lot of teachers hate the treacly, old-fashioned visual imagery that gets dumped on them (ABCs, 123s, chalkboards, rulers, apples). One teacher told us she calls this iconography "apple crapple." ...

Back in the 1990s, R.E.M. used to joke that they’d play their final concert on December 31, 1999 and break up the next day.  Had they done that, with the original lineup intact (drummer Bill Berry left in 1997), they would have certainly gone out with a bang.The ...

On a given weekend, you might find Gabriel Kahane performing a piano sonata in a concert hall ... or stumble upon him at a bar, playing with a rock band. He composes classical music for chamber groups and orchestras — but he also writes and sings his own indie pop songs. These days, those two worlds ...

Video: “Charming Disease” live in the studio

He’s written books about World War II, poetry, the fate of newspapers. But as a novelist, Nicholson Baker has another side. Back in the 1990s, he published two R-rated works of fiction: Vox (1993) and The Fermata (1995).  Now he’s returning ...

In July we lost one of the great American painters — Cy Twombly, who was 83. Twombly defied categories. Unlike the abstract painters of the previous generation, like Jackson Pollock and Willem DeKooning, Twombly’s work was playful...

Bonus Track: Music Inspired by Twombly's Painting

We were saddened to learn of the death today of Cy Twombly, the American artist known for his abstract, childlike paintings. A couple years ago on the show, the songwriter Tift Merritt shared this touching story with us about how a Twombly painting saved her from her writer's block.

In the age of the downloaded single, The Antlers had an unlikely hit with their 2009 concept album Hospice. The main storyline is about coming to terms with the death of a friend. But the music isn't what you'd expect — it’s not morose and spare, it's big and lush. The Antlers have lightened up some, subject-wise, but...

Video: The Antlers perform “I Don’t Want Love”

Even after they became world superstars, the band R.E.M. never quite followed the pop mainstream.  And a lot of that has to do with the band’s frontman, Michael Stipe. Stipe has a distinctive voice and enigmatic lyrics.  But he’s also a photographer and filmmaker.  For 30 years, R.E.M. has released videos that...

Wretches & Jabberers follows two men with autism as they go on a global tour to raise awareness about the disorder.  It's a vivid portrait of their struggles which manages to be both gripping and entertaining.

The blues has an awkward PR problem: it is one of the pillars of African-American culture, but for the last few decades, the people playing it and listening to it have been largely white. Gary Clark, Jr., would like to change that. There’s no trick to getting young people back to the blues, he thinks – it’s just a matter of awareness.

Video: Gary Clark, Jr., performs "Bright Lights" at SXSW

Today the SXSW Music Festival kicks off in Austin, Texas.  I’ll be heading out there tomorrow to check out 1/100th of the nearly 2000 bands that will be there: including blues guitarist Gary Clark Jr., BoB, Das Racist, and the gender-bending sissy bounce rappers Big Freedia and Katey Red.

Thirty years after defining “college rock,” R.E.M. releases their 15^th studio album, Collapse Into Now. Everyone’s buzzing about the band’s signature acoustic-driven sound. But long before career-defining records like Out of Time and Automatic for the People, there was "Radio Free Europe" – R.E.M.’s first officially released single.

It's easy to be cynical about the Grammy awards -- but if there's one reason to watch the show this weekend it's Janelle Monáe.

The frontman for Antony and the Johnsons says everything changed for him when he discovered the Japanese modern dance, butoh. Hegarty talks about the butoh master, Kazuo Ohno, and describes his growing fascination with the minimalist and sometimes grotesque art form.

Girl in a Coma's creation story reads like a fairy tale: teen girls plaster bedroom walls with posters of dreamy pop star; start a band named after pop star's song; play hard in that band for 10 years.  Until one day... the phone rings.  It's the man from the posters.  Morrissey.  He invites them to open for him on tour.

When we made a documentary about The Lincoln Memorial for our American Icons series, one person captured two seminal moments in the Memorial's history for us: Dorothy Height.  She was at the Memorial in 1939 when Marian Anderson sang triumphantly after being banned from performing at Constitution Hall.  ...

The hip-hop world has seen a handful of superstar female MCs - but where's this decade's Missy Elliott? At the SXSW music festival in Austin last month, Studio 360's Leital Molad met some artists ready to break through the boys' club. "We're waking ...

Hip-hop gets a bad rap for being male-dominated and misogynist.  But female MCs have been on the cutting edge of hip-hop since the beginning. The 80's saw outspoken artists like MC Lyte, J.J. Fad, Salt-n-Pepa, Queen Latifah; in the 90's we had Missy Elliott, Eve, and Lauryn Hill. If you ...