Studio 360 dives into music’s deep end. Kurt talks with Del the Funky Homosapien, who’s made huge hits but has also carved out a niche as hip-hop’s oddball. Simone Dinnerstein performs a few "Goldberg Variations," and Swedes plot their government-backed global takeover of indie rock. Plus, photographer Taryn Simon with tips on gaining access to forbidden zones.

Kurt Andersen asks what art reveals about autism. Researcher Blythe Corbett guides Kurt through some of the controversial questions surrounding the disorder. A man with autism writes a dark satire about the world of special education. Scientists try to understand the perceptions of autistic people by watching movies with them – and following their eye movements with a laser. And a playwright presents an extreme hypothesis: in our technological, disconnected world, is autism an evolutionary adaptation?

Making sense of the Iraq War on film, in rock music, and on-stage. The director Kimberley Peirce tells a hidden war story in "Stop-Loss." The band Black 47 writes songs for a surprising fan base: combat soldiers. George Packer transforms his article on Iraqi translators into a stage play. Plus, songs and stories from Stew, the creator of "Passing Strange," the new rock musical that’s revolutionizing Broadway.

Studio 360 gets tough. Kurt Andersen asks author John Silber, about architecture he considers absurd. S. Epatha Merkerson tells us how she plays the no nonsense "Law and Order" character, Lt. Anita van Buren. And when 360 leaves the office early to make a movie, Kurt does his own stunts.

How artists help us to make sense of war. As the 5th anniversary of the Iraq invasion approaches, Kurt Andersen revisits his conversation with the late writer Susan Sontag. Recorded a month before the war in Iraq began and only a year before her death, Sontag looks at how we interpret images of war, and tells us how she staged theater in the war zone. Also, novelists who escaped war find meaning in poetry, and two film critics look at how American filmmakers have fought and refought the Viet Nam war on-screen.

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