Matt came to Studio 360 in 2014 from Louisville, Kentucky, where he was a features reporter for the Courier-Journal. There, he wrote about celebrity chefs, the world’s largest collection of poisonous snakes, and a former monk turned furniture maker to the presidents. He also taught courses on literary journalism, feature writing, and arts and culture reporting at Bellarmine University. Although he lived for four years in Louisville, he still doesn’t know how to bet on a horse race. His writing has appeared in Salon, The New York Observer, USA Today, the Detroit Free Press, The Rumpus and elsewhere. A former Studio 360 intern, Matt’s first piece for the show was on the design of that quintessential 1970s mode of transportation, the moped.
Compendious philological volumes
Forsooth, the next item on our reference-book most-wanted list this fall is going to be the new Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, due out in October. Forty-four years in the making, this puppy’s got 800,000 words (‘almost every word,’ they claim, from Old English to the present)–that’s more than double the size of […]
Merce Cunningham: 1919 – 2009
We were saddened by thenewsthis morning thatMerce Cunninghamhas died. Cunningham was a giant of American modern dance and choreography — and an astoundingly talented dancer, who started his career dancing for Martha Graham, and appeared in his own company’s performances into his 70s. We had the good fortune at Studio 360 to interview Cunningham in […]
The Tablecloth Trick
Like most people, I wanted to be a magician when I grew up. I recently attended a screening of the 2007 Swedish filmYou, The Living (Du levande)by director Roy Andersson, a funny/sad movie made up of 50 vignettes that portray everyday life as absurd, petty, and hilarious. In the following scene, a man tries to […]
Kurt Gets Auto-Tuned
Reports of the death of Auto-Tune are greatly exaggerated. This week on the show, we hear from the Gregory Brothers, a band that has turned the music industry’s favorite note-correction software on TV newscasters and politicians. With their series of viral web videos “Auto-Tune the News,” they’ve made divas out of talking heads. Check out […]
Love the Front Korea
Once in a while, a listener will write in to Studio 360 asking for a transcript of a story we’ve broadcast. Unfortunately, we don’t have transcripts of the shows (it’s just too time consuming and we have a very small staff), so we normally direct our listeners to the free streaming audio and mp3 downloads […]