Sherman Alexie

Kurt Andersen and writer Rebecca Solnit look at the American West as our favorite mythic landscape. We hear the sweet strains of pedal steel guitar and revel in the B-movie grandeur of spaghetti westerns. The show visits Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, huge concrete tubes she plunked into the Utah desert. And, the writer Sherman Alexie […]

Kurt Andersen talks with writer Sherman Alexie about being a Native American artist. We’ll explore the National Museum of the American Indian, just days before its grand opening on the National Mall. A traditional potter from New Mexico works with civil engineers to design native symbols on a grand scale. And we hear Native photographers […]

Inspiration strikes in the dead of night. A coffee-fueled Kurt pays a midnight visit to filmmaker Alan Berliner, whose documentary about insomnia airs next week on HBO. We’ll hear why novelist Sherman Alexie compares his insomnia to a bad romance. Plus, indie-pop act Alsace Lorraine — featuring an American priest and an Argentine illustrator who […]

Ken Kesey had worked in a mental hospital, but his first novel was really a parable of what happens when you stand up to the Man — a counterculture fable that doesn’t end well.