Studio 360: Gary Shteyngart & Amanda Palmer

Gary Shteyngart set his new novel, Super Sad True Love Story, in a dystopian, not-too-distant future where books are passé and social media reigns supreme — just like the present, only worse. Shteyngart tells Kurt how the reality of America's decline ended up outpacing his fiction and why love in the face of authoritarian systems is especially romantic.

Next, summer is touring season for musicians, and Studio 360 is asking what they like to listen to on the road. Thao Nguyen, of the band Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, relies on the Zombies song "This Will Be Our Year." It's a tune about starting fresh, and Thao explains that's necessary when living like a nomad. Produced by Michael Raphael.

Then, Amanda Palmer, best known as the front-woman of the punk cabaret band The Dresden Dolls, just released an album of covers where she re-imagines Radiohead's dour electro-rock with cheery ukulele. She performs live in our studio and tells Kurt that the collision between light and dark is where magic really happens.

Finally, when the author John Irving was still a young man, his father disappeared. Irving tells Kurt that absence has informed his fiction ever since: inventing fathers through all his novels. Kurt talked to Irving in 2005 when he'd just published Until I Find You. John Irving's latest book is Last Night in Twisted River. [Broadcast Date: July 31, 2010]