Road Trip with WNYC

The jazz musician Charles Mingus was a celebrated band leader and one of the most important composers of his generation. But at the same time he was recording The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, he was working on another masterpiece of sorts. He figured out how to get his cat, Nightlife, to poop in a toilet — and he decided he’d share his method with the world. Subscribe to Studio 360.

Amy Schumer, who stars as a romantic train wreck in the new Judd Apatow film Trainwreck, is at the top of her game in real life. The third season of Inside Amy Schumer premieres April 21st on Comedy Central. The show just won a Peabody Award. And a screening of the new season's first episode at the Tribeca Film Festival showed there's nothing Schumer won't tackle. Visit the Tribeca Film Festival podcast archives.

The Sporkful debates burrito construction and the LA/SF rivalry with MaxFun's Jesse Thorn and Good Food's Evan Kleiman. Plus Matt Yglesias compares Chipotle burritos to iPhones. Subscribe to The Sporkful.

Comedian Eugene Mirman offers Soundcheck a list of his favorite funny songs—whether they were intended to be funny or not. Subscribe to Soundcheck.

Radiolab tells stories of striving, grasping, tripping, and falling for happiness, perfection, and Bliss. Subscribe to Radiolab.

Joan Rivers guest-hosts the Leonard Lopate Show and talks to Deon Cole, Billy Eichner, and Reza Farahan about comedy and life. Subscribe to The Leonard Lopate Show.  Phone: off. Email: off. Brain: off. Podcasts: on. The Beach Day Edition is perfect for: smiling, soaking, sunning. 

Alec Baldwin talks to Paula Pell, who was singing and dancing at a Florida theme park when she got a call from SNL.  Subscribe to Here's The Thing.

It's been over eighty years since audiences first watched The Wizard of Oz. Meet the original man behind the curtain, L Frank Baum, and trace the history of his greatest creation.  Subscribe to Studio 360.

Radiolab tells the story of a family literally saved by movies. Ron and Cornelia Suskind had two healthy young sons, promising careers, and a brand new home when their youngest son Owen started to disappear. But the Suskind family finds an unlikely way to access their silent son's world. Subscribe to Radiolab.

Snap Judgement tells stories about what it's like to find yourself on someone else's wavelength.

The New Yorker cartoonist and author talks to Alec Baldwin about mothers, man-pants, and birds. Subscribe to Here's The Thing.

Studio 360 talks to film critic David Gilmour about his decision to let his son Jesse drop out of school and watch movies all day.   Subscribe to Studio 360.

Note To Self talks to someone who makes a strong case for listening to—and valuing—your voicemail. "Voicemail is a default archive of your life. You would miss it if it were gone." Subscribe to Note To Self.

This Movie Date podcast has a little something for everyone, especially those who love quirky girls, or hate crazy dads. To wit: The story of six brothers who are locked in their lower east side Manhattan apartment by their father for their entire lives, with only a collection of movies to connect them to the outside world. Subscribe to Movie Date. 

Freakonomics Radio host Stephen Dubner's childhood home goes from sacred to profane...and back again. Subscribe to Freakonomics Radio.

It costs $50,000 to have Billy Idol appear at a private event, but in 2012, a 25-year-old working at a Seattle mall convinced the rock star and his band to play his birthday party for free. Michael Henrichsen tells Sideshow how he enlisted a boatload of B-listers, friends, and family to help make his '80s dream come true.  Subscribe to Sideshow.

The Sporkful follows a pair of young lovers on a quest for the perfect Buffalo wing. But will the universe deliver a happy ending for their hearts and bellies? Subscribe to The Sporkful.

The Sporkful and Radiolab's Jad Abumrad explore the new frontier of weed-infused foods with a French pastry chef. They'll tell you how it tastes. They'll tell you how it makes them feel. And they'll tell you what happens when you eat way, way too much of it. Subscribe to The Sporkful.

Al Madrigal has been The Daily Show's "Senior Latino Correspondent" for years. In his funny new documentary, Half Like Me, he travels across the United States and Mexico to explore his ambivalence with that ethnic identity. Sideshow explores what it means that Madrigal can't really pronounce his own name—and that he doesn't really care.  Subscribe to Sideshow.

What does it mean to pursue something that everyone else think is nuts? And what does it take to succeed? You’ll hear about three radical thinkers whose lives didn’t proceed in a perfectly straight line. In each case, their work was ridiculed or ignored—but ultimately, they triumphed. Subscribe to Freakonomics Radio.

A real CIA spy gives her take on the new Melissa McCarthy movie, "Spy." Plus Rafer and Kristen review "Entourage," "Testament of Youth," "Love and Mercy," and a special Mystery Date: "Sexual Intelligence," hosted by Kim Cattrall.  Subscribe to Movie Date.

Ken Jeong met his wife while they were both practicing medicine at the same hospital in Los Angeles. But after he married, he quit medicine to pursue acting full-time. Then, a year later, his wife was diagnosed with aggressive stage III breast cancer. They had twins who were a year old. And Ken had just gotten an offer to play an Asian mobster in a Las Vegas buddy movie called "The Hangover." Subscribe to Death Sex & Money.

Yillah Natalie grew up studying ballet. But when her family couldn’t afford classes anymore, she had to quit. Later, Yillah was mesmerized by the belly dancer in the video for U2's 1991 hit "Mysterious Ways" — both with the way she moved and the power she seemed to possess. Twenty years later, Yillah is a professional belly dancer.  Subscribe to Studio 360.

Jerry Seinfeld was just 27 when he first appeared on Johnny Carson in 1981. His unique comedy style eventually led him to create his namesake show with Larry David. After Seinfeld ran for nine seasons, he decided to go back to stand-up, and to his audience.   Subscribe to Here's The Thing.

You pick up your phone to send an email. You see a notification for a text message. All of a sudden, you're on Instagram debating whether or not to like an old high school classmate's engagement picture, Pinterest-ing the photographer, and contemplating the ice cream options within range. Note To Self talks with two people who work in the digital marketing worlds, who are worried about the consequences of their attention-grabbing tactics.  Subscribe to Note To Self.

Fifty years ago, John Steinbeck took a road trip across America with only his dog Charley for company. He published a non-fiction book about his experiences two years later, called Travels with Charley: In Search of America. Journalist Bill Steigerwald retraced Steinbeck’s journey this year and says the only problem with Steinbeck’s story is that it’s mostly a fabrication. Subscribe to On The Media.

For almost six decades, Jack Kerouac’s classic novel has been a totem for anyone who crawls behind the wheel in search of adventure. Studio 360 wanted to find out whether the book still speaks to readers—and provoked a little marital tension in the process. Subscribe to Studio 360.  

Matt George runs a new bus company that doesn't own buses. And he's making some big promises: He says his company Bridj is going to rethink the way mass transportation works for the first time, really, since 1897 when the first subway tracks were laid. Subscribe to Note To Self. 

A father writes in to Movie Date to ask for suggestions on what to show his 8-year-old daughter while on a road trip. Also, Jack Black’s new movie, “The D Train,” focuses on a man traveling from his small town to LA to get the BMOC to come back for the high school reunion. Finally, the Sofia Vergara/Reese Witherspoon film “Hot Pursuit” is about a criminal and cop on an unlikely road trip. Subscribe to Movie Date.

When you hear that someone’s a best-selling, award-winning author, what do you imagine their life is like? A big house with a BMW in the driveway? James McBride, author of the smash hit The Color of Water and The Good Lord Bird, had all that for a while. But living like a celebrity distracted him from the sort of work he really wanted to do.  Subscribe to Death Sex & Money.

Will Knight covers artificial intelligence and robotics for MIT Technology Review. He traveled to Germany and got a taste for what it feels like to take your hands off the wheel, remove your feet from the pedals and let the car take over while zipping across Germany at 80 miles per hour. Subscribe to Money Talking.

An extreme close-up of a piece of music that everyone seems to know. Subscribe to The Fishko Files.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire." And it’s still as close a definition as we have. This hour of Radiolab tries to unlock the mysteries of time. Subscribe to Radiolab.

Billy Joel has sold more records than The Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and Madonna—though the “rock star thing” is something he can “take off.” Joel started playing piano when he was about four or five years old. He admits that he doesn't remember how to read sheet music anymore, saying it’d be like reading Chinese. That doesn't stop the third best-selling solo artist of all time in the U.S. from plunking out a few tunes with Alec. Subscribe to Here's The Thing.

From an East Coast view, or West, it can appear that Chicago is the middle of nowhere. In this episode, Freakonomics Radio makes the argument that Chicago is, in fact, the middle of everywhere. Subscribe to Freakonomics Radio.

Radiolab tells the story of the night a group of paranormal investigators showed up at Dennis Conrow's door in Kansas and made him realize what it really means for a house, or a man, to be haunted. Subscribe to Radiolab.

Studio 360 explains why William F. Cody was the most famous American in the world—a showman and spin artist who presented a new creation myth for America, bringing cowboys, Indians, settlers, and sharpshooters to audiences who had only read about the West in dime novels.  Subscribe to Studio 360.

Dan Pashman talks to the curator of the Moist Towelette Museum about the best way to use them and what makes an especially great one. Then Dan and his friend Mark Garrison debate cloth vs. paper napkins, whether napkin color affects meal enjoyment, and whether restaurants should be banned from using scented hand soap. Subscribe to The Sporkful.

There's a neighborhood in Austin, Texas, where the refrigerators tell stories. The roofs are paved in solar panels. There are more electric cars per capita here in the Muëller community than in any residential neighborhood in America. It's a kind of paradise. And it could drive you nuts. Subscribe to Note to Self.

Over the past few years, a number of media outlets have made the editorial choice not to publish the word "Redskin" when referring to Washington's professional football team. OTM producer Chris Neary has the story of one Pennsylvania paper that stopped using the word. Subscribe to On The Media.

The Replacements were famously hard-living and raucous during their mid-to-late 1980s heyday. Recently, another of Minnesota's favorite musical sons, Craig Finn of the Hold Steady, found himself sharing a stage with his childhood heroes. He walks Soundcheck through a playlist of his favorite tunes.  Subscribe to Soundcheck.