Twenty years ago this month, a new sound blasted the cobwebs out of every radio station in America. It was angry and bracingly cynical; the album featured a naked baby swimming toward a dollar bill dangling on a fish hook, and it went #1 in the blink of an eye. In the words of music scholar Joshua Clover ...

Video: "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

It’s been a century-and-a-half since a minstrel tune called “Dixie” debuted in New York.  The song went viral, and soon North and South alike were whistling “Dixie.”  With the outbreak of the Civil War, “Dixie” became an anthem of the antebellum way of life.  And today we are still fighting over “Dixie.”

"Dallas" has been off the air for 20 years but it's still considered one of the most successful television shows in history. Studio 360 listener Laura Detre nominated “Dallas” on our American Icons website, and we liked her idea so much, we went to Southfork Ranch to understand how Dallas changed the way the world sees America.

Using a whammy bar and a fuzz box, Hendrix captured the sound of bombs falling overseas and screaming protestors.  “I didn’t think it was unorthodox,” Hendrix said. “I thought it was beautiful.”

“The men were all talking about the great American novel, the great American play,...the great American everything,” said Georgia O’Keeffe. “So I thought . . . I’ll make it an American painting.”

In The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton examined the dangerous compromises facing a woman who wants to set her own destiny, and broke ground for countless writers who followed.

It’s not the fastest motorcycle or the fanciest, but to many Americans, a motorcycle is a Harley-Davidson.

All of America sings it at school and summer camp; Bruce Springsteen sang it at President Obama’s inauguration. Yet Woody Guthrie’s song was once called anti-American, even Communist.

How did Emily Dickinson's unusual poem about death become standard high school curriculum? Studio 360 takes a closer reading at a literary masterpiece.

Andy Warhol told people he painted soup because he ate it for lunch every day, but the paintings remain mysterious more than 40 years later.

A look at the most famous little house in America: Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, still hanging off a cliff after nearly seventy years.

How did a German streetwalker become the All-American Girl? Writers, artists, scholars and (of course!) kids talk about the staying power of Barbie.