Joe Boyd on the Birth of Rock, World Music, a...

Sign up for the Chicago CWT Listener Meetup. Henry Oliver is the preeminent literary critic for non-literary nerds. His Substack, The Common Reader, has thousands of subscribers drawn in by Henry's conviction that great literature is where ideas "walk and talk amongst the mess of ...  Show more

When Tyler called Joe Studwell's How Asia Works "perhaps my favorite economics book of the year" back in 2013, he wasn't alone: it became one of the most influential treatments of industrial policy ever written. Now Studwell has turned his attention to Africa with How Africa Work ...  Show more

Joe Boyd is part of the music industry in so many ways, as a producer, label founder and more, that his new memoir And The Roots of Rhythm Remain also serves as a history of global music, a political roadmap of popular music trends, and an education in traditional music forms. Jo ...  Show more

Stephen Armstrong's new book I Want You Around: The Ramones and the Making of Rock-n-Roll High School (Backbeat Books, 2023), provides a detailed production history of this beloved film that draws upon extensive interviews the author has conducted with many of the people who cont ...  Show more

In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space, and it remains the only human-made object to have left the solar system. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecrafts contained world music and sounds of Earth to represent humanity to any extraterrestrial civilizations. Alien Lis ...  Show more

On October 21, 1961, Bob Dylan recorded his debut album, titled "Bob Dylan," at Columbia Recording Studios in New York City. The album was produced by John Hammond, who had previously signed Dylan to Columbia Records. The recording session lasted just two days, with Dylan recordi ...  Show more