Studio 360

Kurt Andersen talks with Marcia Clark, prominent again after two highly regarded television shows revisited her role prosecuting the O.J. Simpson case, and who now has a new legal-drama TV show, “The Fix.” And producer Sam Kim takes on a case of his own: He helps unravel the mystery of an old “Sesame Street” cartoon called “Cracks.” Many people who are middle-aged now remember it terrifying them as kids — and then the cartoon vanished. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

For much of his career, Jia Zhangke’s films were officially banned in his home country, China. But through austere, realist movies like Still Life , Platform , and The World , Jia became one of the most celebrated directors on the international arthouse circuit. His latest film, Ash Is Purest White , appears at first to be a conventional mob epic, focused on a “gangster’s moll” character played magnificently by Zhao Tao. But with a story beginning in 2001 and spanning 17 years, the movie is just as much about the effects of the rapid growth of China’s economy on its society. The dramatic changes led some working-class Chinese to form criminal brotherhoods for support.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

Kurt Andersen talks with director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck about his new film “Never Look Away,” and why the director interviewed the artist Gerhard Richter extensively to make a film that is only kind of about Richter. Plus, how Yanni, John Tesh and other musicians discovered an improbable vehicle to ‘90s stardom: the PBS pledge drive. Nat King Cole would be 100 this week, and to celebrate: an appreciation from both his biographer, David Mark Epstein, and actor Dulé Hill, who is currently playing Cole on-stage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

Kurt Andersen talks with Heidi Schreck about her new play, based on oratory competitions she took part in as a teenager, called “What the Constitution Means to Me.” Siblings Elan and Jonathan Bogarín join Kurt to talk about their new documentary “306 Hollywood,” an artful and even surreal look at how they dealt with their beloved grandmother’s house after she died. How Niki Russ Federman meant to stay out of her family’s smoked fish business, Russ & Daughters, and then found herself drawn in by klezmer music. And how Broadway productions are hosting special performances that take into account some of the heightened sensitivities and needs of audience members who are autistic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

Edward Doyle-Gillespie always found writing stories cathartic, a way to process whatever was going on in his life. But as a police officer in Baltimore, witnessing people in the most desperate conditions, he increasingly turned to poetry as a vehicle for understanding and expressing his experiences on the job. “There are these moments in policing, distilled moments of a word, an image, a smell, a concept, that to me bespeaks of a kind of encapsulated poem right there.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit