COVER STORY
Failure
Kurt Andersen and Chris Elliott talk about failures, great and small.

Jumping the Shark
Named after an infamously stupid episode of Happy Days, "jumping the shark" describes the moment when the inspiration dries up and it all starts to go downhill. Kurt called some of our listeners to ask about when the artist they truly loved jumped the shark.
Go to the Jump the Shark page

Guns N' Roses Forever
Axl Rose has been working on a comeback record for 14 years: holed up in a mansion in Los Angeles, he's still trying to top his band Guns N'Roses' huge hit, "Sweet Child o'Mine." Jennifer Ordonez has the story of how great expectations turn into no expectations. Coproduced by Queena Kim of KPCC, Pasadena
Guns N' Roses fan site
Frontline interview with two former bandmembers
Buy Guns N' Roses CDs

Orson's Shadow
Orson's Shadow, based on real events, is set in 1960, with Orson Welles already in his twilight. A theater critic tries to restart Welles' career by getting him a new job -directing a newfangled piece of Absurdist theater called Rhinoceros. Playwright (and actor) Austin Pendleton joins Kurt in the studio to talk about Orson's Shadow, and the cast performs a scene.
The play's homepage
Review in "Curtain Up"

SPECIAL GUEST
Chris Elliott
Chris Elliott got his break on David Letterman's show, playing an assortment of creepy losers like "the guy under the stairs." In the '90s his TV series Get a Life, and his film, Cabin Boy, were considered huge bombs, but both went on to become cult favorites. Elliott's new novel, The Shroud of the Thwacker, is a historical time-traveling murder mystery, written with absolutely no research.
Biography of Chris Elliott
Buy Shroud of The Thwacker
Buy DVDs with Chris Elliott

Audio Help
To listen to audio from this site, you will need RealPlayer.
Go to instructions for downloading

Stealing Beauty
Scandals are rocking America's big art museums: it seems that the Getty, Metropolitan Museum, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and others may own a lot of precious items looted from archeological sites. Disgraced curators are implicated alongside tomb robbers. Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan, talks with Kurt about the fallout.
Read the transcript of this interview
Antiquities collection at the Getty
Hoving's Op/Ed Column in the LA Times
Buy books by Thomas Hoving

Download this show from