Jonathan Mitchell

Ned Kahn is a sculptor with dangerous dreams. When a museum in Switzerland asked him what he’d always wanted to make but couldn’t quite pull off, he answered: A tornado made of fire. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

What happens when people in power attempt to suppress an outburst of cultural energy? That’s the conflict at the center of Ishmael Reed’s comic novel Mumbo Jumbo. Reed and the Jazz scholar Robert O’Meally talk about how Jazz terrified politicians who saw the music as a virus sweeping ...

How do you make sculpture out of water? The people at W.E.T. Design, a fountain design firm, have a pretty good handle on it. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

When Portland artist damali ayo turned on the radio recently, she was so blown away she had the sudden desire to play air cello. What piece of music could be so powerful? A new version of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic and conducted by Simon Rattle. Produced ...

There's no art form more western than … a western. A western movie, that is, like The Magnificent Seven, Johnny Guitar, or Red River. Not just Americans love these movies. In the 1960s, Italian filmmakers proved their devotion by churning out B-grade western movies, and amazingly they found an audience ...

Critics make mistakes all the time. A musicologist named Nicholas Slonimsky collected them — short-sighted, ignorant, or vitriolic reviews of what we now consider masterpieces. We set excerpts from Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective to music. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

Smells can be hard to describe, but a good writer can transport readers pulling them by the nose. Adam Haslett, author of the short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here, admires Thomas Mann's Death in Venice for its stench. Everything in the story, he says, is "overripe." Produced Jonathan Mitchell.

Morton Feldman was a composer who decided graph paper could set his music free. He created a whole new way of notating music in the 1960's. It included a lot of scribbled marks in rows of little boxes. The music scholar David Bernstein and percussionist Jan Williams describe how Feldman's ...

Stephen Mancusi has been a police forensic artist for 20 years. Mancusi has to conjure up the face of the suspect, often from the memories of a crime victim who is uncertain in what he or she saw. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

Yuri Yunakov is a saxophonist who will do anything to play his music. He is a member of the Roma culture (better known to most people as Gypsies) which historically has been a marginalized group in Europe. Wherever they've gone across Europe, they've been discriminated against, and have survived mostly ...

Sand sculptor Kirk Rademaker makes architecture out of sand-with arches and balconies, fantastical structures as high as ten feet, and sloping curves that stretch all over the beach. He showed off his skills for us at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

When Studio 360 asked producer Jonathan Mitchell to put together his audio impression of monsters he went to the movies … and to the TV news. Among his sources: A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original version),The Werewolf, It!, The Terror from Beyond Space, ...

"Gangster Rap" didn't just appeal to the young men whose violent sexy universe it reflected — the LA street gang culture of the late 80's and early 90's — it appealed to the gangster voyeur in many millions of young people. Nelson George, a writer and film-maker who ...

Smells can be hard to describe, but a good writer can transport readers pulling them by the nose. Adam Haslett, author of the short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here, admires Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice for its stench. Everything in the story, he says, is "overripe." Produced Jonathan Mitchell.

What happens when people in power attempt to suppress an outburst of cultural energy? That's the conflict at the center of Ishmael Reed's comic novel Mumbo Jumbo. Reed and the Jazz scholar Robert O'Meally talk about how Jazz terrified politicians who saw the music as a virus sweeping the nation, ...

In the book House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski it seems like almost every word has a triple meaning. The story is told from a variety of perspectives in several different typefaces with many footnotes and a 200 page appendix complete with fake critical essays. But the core of House ...

Forty years ago Lenny Bruce crossed a line and became comedy's greatest free speech martyr. Ronald Collins and David Skover — the authors of The Trials of Lenny Bruce — describe how the comedian fought the law and the law won. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

Filmmaker Mike Rogers wanted to create a glimpse of America, from one end to the other — and he did it, in a 23 minute movie. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.

Songwriter Paul Pena wrote the 70s-rock classic "Jet Airliner," and he's been singing the blues since he was a kid. But after an unexpected encounter with the throat-singing tradition of Tuva, Pena recharted his musical life. He studied, practiced, and then flew all the way ...