"Kurt Andersen" is an American novelist who is also host of the Peabody Award/Peabody-winning public radio program Studio 360, a co-production between Public Radio International and WNYC.

More Kurt Andersen on Wikipedia.

It's high and low (culture), and we're casting a net wide. Almost everyone knows of these things; it's not like we're bringing them some obscure things.

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We're focusing on particular works — films, books, pieces of music, architecture — that deserve the name 'icon' and have this influence on our culture. Everybody knows those things, but almost because they're icons, people don't look below the fact of them.

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We got 200 e-mails (about it). Lots of people had the same reaction. They were assigned to read it in school and didn't. We try to take things that sometimes people turn off of because they're introduced to them too early or for some other reason, and try to make them entertaining.

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It is so much the first among equals of that world.

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