Lou Reed, musician, rock icon, poet, leader of the legendary Velvet Underground, was obsessed with tai chi — the practice, the community, the health and spiritual benefits. Lou had been writing a book about this ancient martial art that was unfinished when he died in 2013.
Lou’s wife, the artist and musician Laurie Anderson, looked at Lou's unfinished work and decided the book needed to be completed, that there was something important to be shared in Lou’s long, life-altering journey with tai chi.
She turned to three of Lou's friends to help her with the project. By the time the book, The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi by Lou Reed, hit the stands in the spring of 2023, they had spoken with nearly 100 people and created a riveting portrait of Lou’s spiritual, medical and musical life, beckoning readers to enter the world of tai chi.
The Kitchen Sisters read the book and we kept thinking, these conversations must have been taped. We asked Laurie if there were recordings. There were. Dozens and dozens of them from rock stars, to tai chi masters, to doctors, to family….
We listened to the raw interviews, this remarkable trove of sound and story, and created a podcast that goes deep inside the making of this book. Voices heard in the story include Laurie Anderson, Iggy Pop, Julian Schnabel, Hal Willner, Anohni, Master Ren and many more, plus archival recordings of Lou Reed.
The Kitchen Sisters Present: Lou Reed’s Tai Chi.
“Well, everybody does something, some people race cars, others collect stamps. I find tai chi to be philosophically, aesthetically, physically and spiritually fascinating.” — Lou Reed
220 - Archiving the Underground — Hip Hop at Harvard & Cornell
219 - Edith Warner's Atomic Tea Room
218 - Remembering "The Day After Trinity - J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb"
217 - International Congress of Youth Voices—Youth on Fire
216 - Amaza Lee Meredith, African American Architect: Love & Home
215—Prince and the Technician
214 - The Passion of Chris Strachwitz 1931-2023 —Arhoolie Records
213 - Ada Louise Huxtable, Architecture Critic: The Art We Must Live With
212 - Tony Schwartz Centennial- 30,000 Recordings Later
211 - House/Full of Black Women
210-Ray Eames—Industrial Designer & Artist: Beauty in the Everyday
209 - Black Reconstruction in America - W.E.B. Du Bois' 1935 Groundbreaking / Myth-Busting Book
208 - Never a Man Spake Like This Man: The Black Preacher As Performing Artist
207 - The Golden Arches in Black America
206 - Curtis "Wall Street" Carroll - The Stock Market Wizard of San Quentin is Released!
205-Silent Echoes: Sound Artist Bill Fontana —The Bells of Notre Dame
204 - Library of Congress Acquires Kitchen Sisters' Audio Collection - KQED Forum Interview
203 - A San Quentin Wedding
202 — Harvesting Wild Rice—White Earth Ojibwe Land Recovery Project
201- From Nashville to Nairobi: A History of Country Western Music in Kenya
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Criminal
Ear Hustle
Song Exploder
The Truth
the memory palace