Join Emmy award-winning host Luke Burbank for the first ever New York taping of Live Wire, the fastest growing entertainment show on public radio.
Get turned on to new music, comedy and conversations with a diverse range of original voices — and an anything-can-happen-vibe. Tonight’s guests are novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, comedian Michelle Buteau and musical artist Kadhja Bonet.
More About the Guests
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
Let’s talk about what we talk about when we talk about Jonathan Safran Foer. In part we talk about fiction, seeing as he’s written the best-selling novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, both recently adapted into major motion pictures. We talk, also, about diet, considering his publication of the book Eating Animals, a treatise why and how it is we justify just that: eating living things. We talk about Judaism, and family, and history, and humanity, too, because these are the things he talks about. We talk a little about awards like the Guardian First Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, and the New Yorker 40 Under 40 listing, because he has won them. We talk about his new book, Here I Am, out this fall, because it’s his first novel in a decade. We talk about a lot of things, but mostly we plan to let him talk for himself.
MICHELLE BUTEAU
Michelle Buteau wouldn’t want us to say any of this – she is a spunky TV host, a vivacious performer, and has just debuted her first comedy album, titled Shut Up. But we’re going to ignore that mandate and go on. She has appeared on practically every VH1 show ever made including: Big Morning Buzz Live, Best Week Ever, the I Love the…(80s etc) series, and The Jenny McCarthy Show. She guests on Broad City, has stopped by the Late Night shows, and here she is taking on public radio. You will love her unique perspective and her pizazz from her head down to her Buteau. There, we’re done, we’ll shut up now.
CHRIS HAYES
Are you with Chris Hayes? We are. Let us tell you why – Chris is a journalist, author and host of Up with Chris Hayes, and now All In with Chris Hayes, on MSNBC. He has been a writer for the publication, The Nation and a guest host of the television programs The Rachel Maddow Show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. But that’s not all that up with Chris Hayes. He’s with the times and with aplomb and with not a few impressive accolades. In 2013 Chris became the youngest person to host a prime-time show (he was 34!) on a major cable network. His first book, Twilight of the Elites: America After Mediocrity, was published in 2012. His second book, A Colony in a Nation, debuts in March 2017. We’re with him, are you with it?
KADHJA BONET
Kadhja Bonet is a visitor from the future. It’s unclear exactly where she came from, as is the case with so many time travelers. We know she’s been cutting her musical teeth, as it were, in the LA underground scene. We know her debut album, The Visitor is coming out the day before our show, via Fat Possum and Fresh Selects, and we know she sounds like a french noir film played backwards, in an underground jazz club, during an electrical storm. Her music is genre-defying and her voice is soothing and lovely, and from another time. Maybe not a time before or after this one, maybe a time swept under the rug, or embedded in the roofbeams. We’re telling you: this is the kind of music that makes you talk in goofy poems, guys. This. Is. The. Music.
LUKE BURBANK
Luke Burbank grew up one of seven kids, learning early on how to vie for attention. Those profound childhood issues have propelled him to various media projects including This American Life, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, CBS Sunday Morning, and the daily podcast Too Beautiful To Live. He lives in Seattle with his wife and daughter.
