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
180 - The Great Amish Pandemic Sewing Frolic
179 - The Nights of Edith Piaf
178- Hidden Kitchens - With Host Frances McDormand
177 - The Pardoning of Homer Plessy
176-Arctic Ice, Extreme Weather—Activist Photographer Camille Seaman
175 - Finding Julia Morgan
174 - The Braveheart Grandmothers and Yankton Sioux Coming of Age Ceremony
173 - Betty Reid Soskin, Celebrating the 100th Birthday of the Oldest Park Ranger in America
172 - The Sonic Memorial—The 20th Anniversary of 9/11m], Narrated by Paul Auster
171—What Fire Reveals: Stories from the CZU August Lightning Fires in The Santa Cruz Mountains
170—Route 66—The Mother Road
169—Cry Me A River
169-Gert McMullin—Sewing on the Frontline—From the AIDS Quilt to COVID-19 PPE
168-Soul to Soul at 50 — A Homecoming Festival in Ghana for African American Artists, 1971
166—Danni Washington and The Genius Generation
166-Dave Brubeck & The Ambassadors of Jazz
165—Spotlight on Black-Owned Pet Business Entrepreneurs
164 - Francis Coppola and North Beach Citizens—A Neighborhood Vision
163—Tales from Vietnamese Nail Shops in America
162—The Osaka Ramones: The All-Girl Punk Band - Shonen Knife
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