Studio 360

This week, we talk about telling stories in science through words and pictures. The new book The Where, the Why, and the How pairs explanations of scientific mysteries with playful, intriguing illustrations by 75 artists. Kurt Andersen speaks with one of the book’s editors, and gives our listeners a new challenge. And in two true stories from a live Studio 360 event, a mother loses her memories, a father protects his, and their children spend their lives trying to understand what memory is and how it works.

This program was produced in collaboration with The Story Collider.

Watch the entire event: Studio 360 & The Story Collider

Kurt Andersen talks with the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and actor Tracy Letts, who stars as half of American theater’s most notoriously bitter couple in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And who’s afraid of Zero Dark Thirty, the Osama bin Laden manhunt movie? Several powerful US senators. Plus Kurt talks with George Saunders, maybe America’s most important writer of short stories, who miraculously does dark and funny and poignant all at once.

Kurt Andersen talks with Lois Lowry, author of the dystopian children’s book The Giver, which has been widely celebrated and widely banned. Her new book Son is the final chapter in The Giver series. The celebrated collage artist Romare Bearden is remembered by two friends who were with him in his last days. And a kindergarten teacher learns to let go from Finding Nemo.