Midday on WNYC

Andrew Bolton, curator in the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute, talks about the exhibition “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” on view at the Metropolitan through August 14. The show examines punk’s impact on high fashion from the movement’s birth in the 1970s through its continuing influence today.

Some of the country’s greatest thinkers had obsessive natures, and many of their greatest achievements—from the Declaration of Independence to the invention of the iPhone—have roots in the disappointments and frustrations of early childhood. Joshua Kendall looks at the arc of American history through the lens of compulsive behavior. In his book the America’s Obsessives: The Compulsive Energy that Built a Nation he presents portraits of American icons such as Charles Lindbergh, Steve Jobs, Thomas Jefferson, condiment kingpin H. J. Heinz, slugger Ted Williams, and Estee Lauder, and looks at how they shaped our culture and country.

John Amos, President of SkyTruth, talks about using public domain satellite imagery to monitor environmentally harmful developments.

Toby Barlow talks about his new novel, Babayaga, about love, spies, and witches in 1950s Paris—and a cop turned into a flea. It follows Will, a young executive at an American ad agency in Paris that’s a front for the CIA. Will doesn’t think he’s a Cold War warrior, he’s just a good-hearted Detroit ad guy who can’t seem to figure out Parisian girls.

Heather Woodfield, Executive Director of One Percent for Culture, Susan Fuhrman, President of Teachers College, Columbia University, and Nancy Kleaver, Executive Director of Young Audiences, discuss the state of arts education in New York City schools and funding of New York’s cultural institutions. Last week Leonard Lopate and Studio 360 host Kurt Anderson moderated a conversation with mayoral candidates about arts education and funding, and we’ll find out where the candidates stand on those issues.

Joe Flint of the Los Angeles Times, talks about the standoff between CBS and Time Warner, and why disagreements between cable companies and broadcasters are increasingly more common.

Ariel Levy, staff writer of The New Yorker, investigates the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case—in which high-school football players assaulted an intoxicated girl—and looks at how online communities and social media transformed and distorted the story, turning a local crime into a national crusade. She discusses whether justice was served. Levy’s article “Trial by Twitter” appears in the August 5 issue of The New Yorker.

Matthew Carrano, Curator of Dinosauria at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, discusses the dueling dinosaur fossils that were discovered in Montana in 2006, by commercial prospectors on a privately owned land. They’ll be auctioned and are expected to fetch possibly of the highest price ever paid for dinosaur fossils, which excludes museums from acquiring them. He’ll also look at  how fossils are acquired by museums and collectors.

Brenda Wineapple looks at one of the most dramatic and momentous chapters in America's past, when the country dreamed of expansion and new freedom, and was bitterly divided over its great moral wrong: slavery. Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877 includes extraordinary characters, such as P. T. Barnum, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, and L.C Q. Lamar, and brilliantly balances cultural and political history.

Mark Slouka talks about his new novel, Brewster, about a friendship between two teenage boys and their hopes for escape from a dead-end town. Set in 1968, 16-year-old Jon Mosher and Ray Cappicciano form a tight friendship, finding in each other everything they lack at home, and begin to dream of breaking away from Brewster for good.

Bill Kovach and Clayborne Carson discuss putting together the two-volume anthology Reporting Civil Rights and the history of the civil rights movement it tells. It brings together for the first time nearly 200 newspaper and magazine reports and book excerpts, and features 151 writers, including James Baldwin, Robert Penn Warren, David Halberstam, Lillian Smith, Gordon Parks, Murray Kempton, Ted Poston, Claude Sitton, and Anne Moody, capturing the impassioned struggle for freedom and equality that transformed America.

Jeff Guinn gives an account of how an ordinary juvenile delinquent named Charles Manson became the notorious murderer whose crimes still shock and horrify us today. More than 40 years ago Manson and his mostly female commune killed nine people, among them the pregnant actress Sharon Tate. His book Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson puts the killer in the context of his times, the turbulent late 1960s, an era of race riots and street protests when authority in all its forms was under siege.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie discusses her latest novel, Americanah, which explores race and identity.

Digital technology has been evolving rapidly, leading to conservation challenges for museums whose collections include digital art. Recently, Christiane Paul, Curator of New Media at the Whitney Museum, and conservator Carol Mancusi-Ungaro undertook the restoration of a pioneering Internet artwork, Douglas Davis' “The World's First Collaborative Sentence.” They explain how they were able to restore it, and discuss the challenges facing museums, collectors and artists to insure that these artworks will survive.

At the height of the Cold War, figure skater Katarina Witt became one of East Germany’s most famous athletes, winning six European titles, four world championships and back-to-back Olympic gold medals. Known as “the most beautiful face of socialism,” she earned unique benefits in East Germany but also constant surveillance from the Stasi, the notorious secret police force. She’s joined by Jennifer Arnold and Senain Kheshgi, directors of “The Diplomat,” a documentary that chronicles Witt’s fight for her future at home before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. "The Diplomat" premieres August 6 at 8PM, as part of ESPN Films & espnW's Nine for IX series.   .