Kurt Andersen
PopTech 2009
If anyone can claim to be the quintessential New Yorker, it’s Kurt Andersen. With a career that spans many media and an unparalleled devotion to the arts and culture of urban America, he has turned his indefatigable curiosity to examining everything from 19th-century health farms to the dot.com boom to Mick Jagger’s resemblance to Don Knotts.
Andersen is the author of the novels Heyday and the national bestseller Turn of the Century. He has written screenplays for Walt Disney Pictures and Village Roadshow, is developing a series for HBO, and meanwhile Turn of the Century is being developed as a film, for which Andersen is serving as an executive producer.
He began his career in journalism at Time, where during the 1980s he won awards for his writing on politics and criminal justice before becoming the magazine’s architecture and design critic. As an editor, he co-founded the legendary Spy, a seminal publication still mourned and celebrated. He was editor-in-chief of New York Magazine during the mid-90s, is currently host and co-creator of Studio 360, the Peabody Award-winning cultural magazine show produced by Public Radio International and WNYC. His most recent book is a timely work of nonfiction: Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America.