Host
Studio 360Kurt Andersen has been a columnist for "The New Yorker" and was editor-in-chief of both "New York" and "Spy" magazines, the latter of which he co-founded. Andersen began his career in journalism at "Time," where he was an award-winning writer on national affairs and criminal justice, and then for eight years the magazine's architecture and design critic.
Kurt Andersen is a writer as well as host and co-creator of Studio 360.His most recent book, "Fantasyland," spent a month on the New York Times' bestseller list, and has been called "a great revisionist history of America" (Hanna Rosin in the Times), "deeply insightful" (Harvard professor Laurence Tribe), "dazzling, an absolute joy" (Freakonomics' Stephen Dubner), "incredibly illuminating, urgent, terrifying and funny" (Harvard professor Jorie Graham) and "the most important book that I have read this year" (MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell).He is also co-author of "You Can't Spell America Without Me," another 2017 Times bestseller, and the author of three other critically acclaimed bestselling novels — "True Believers," "Heyday" and "Turn of the Century." His other books include "Reset," about the history and consequences of the 2008 financial crisis, and "The Real Thing," a book of humorous essays. He has written and produced prime-time network television programs, and co-wrote "Loose Lips," an off-Broadway theatrical revue. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times and Vanity Fair, and frequent commentator on MSNBC.Previously, Andersen was a staff writer and columnist for The New Yorker, a columnist for New York, and the architecture and design critic for Time. He was also editor-in-chief of both New York and Spy magazines, the latter of which he co-founded. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, and received an honorary doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design.
I knew about otaku, the term for Japanese obsessively interested in particular cultural artifacts — particular kinds of anime, arcade video games, 1950s L.A. jazz, whatever. But I had no idea how deep and odd the obsessions ran until today. As I was wandering through the neighborhood of used book stores called Kanda, I came […]
As we walked down one of the narrow side streets of theTimes Square-ish entertainment district around the Shibuya train station, past swank rock clubs and ‘love hotels,’ we came upon an unlit, grimy, highly decorative stone-and-stucco facade that looked to be from the first third of the 20th century –an anomaly in a city where […]
I will probably never be an expatriate. But that doesn’t mean I don’t fantasize in every foreign city I visit about which neighborhood I’d live in. In Tokyo, I think it’d probably be on the Naka-meguro canal, a quiet, Amsterdamish stretch of just-hip-enough gentility only two subway stops from the high-rise neon clangor of Shibuya. […]
Last night I visited the new highrise called Tokyo Midtown, which is the tallest building in the city and on its lower floors contains — thanks to vast swaths of wood, elaborate lighting, and other beyond-the-call-of-duty architectural and furnishing details — the most convincingly, tastefully luxurious shopping mall I’ve ever experienced. And the luxury extended […]