Arts And Ideas

The fall of the investment bank Bear Stearns can tell us a lot about how we ended up in the current recession. Writer and former banker William Cohan gives Kurt his take on the narrative of the new economy. Cohan’s new book is House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall […]

The members of They Might Be Giants have started keeping a list of meaningless phrases that prevent real communication. “It is what it is” — what does that mean, anyway?

When she was 18, Rosanne Cash‘s father Johnny gave her a list of “100 Essential Country Songs” she had to learn. Now decades after she was handed that sheet of yellow legal paper from the man in black, those tunes are the basis for her new album, The List. Her awe for these country classics […]

From Snow White to Hannah Montana, the Disney company knows how to use music to capture the hearts (and cash) of generations of kids. And those songs lead to theme park rides and Broadway shows. Studio 360’s Eric Molinsky looks into how Disney used music to build its empire.

Novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated and the upcoming non-fiction work Eating Animals, explains how boxes by the artist Joseph Cornell inspired his own creative process.