Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen: Recent Episodes
Randy Cohen
In this new kind of interview show, Randy Cohen talks to guests about a person, a place, and a thing they find meaningful. The result: surprising stories from great talkers. Learn more at http://personplacething.org/
If this historian could go back in time and attend any of Lincoln's speeches, he'd pick the Cooper Union address rather than the one you (I?) think: "Why go to Gettysburg and stand around for hours for a two-and-a-half minute speech?" Plus Lincoln's choice of weapons when challenged to a duel. Presented with Roosevelt House. Music: Hubby Jenkins.
This social scientist and policy advisor finds hope in local resistance to data centers. "These are our neighbors saying we thought we had no power, but we know where AI sits in our lives, and we can say something about it." I'm still uneasy about my toaster-oven. Presented with the Park Avenue Armory. Music: Hubby Jenkins.
"Eye surgery now is so marvelous," says this ophthalmologist. "I'm amazed." At age 97, he's one of the innovators who made it amazing, and he found time to go out for beers with Wernher von Braun and perform Shakespeare (not simultaneously). Produced with New York's Amateur Comedy Club with the sponsorship of Thomas Campbell Jackson. Music: Ray Lustig.
Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington does not convey his actual appearance, says the Jewish Museum's director. "It's the way Washington wanted to present himself." The dubious task of the society painter, plus 3,500 years of Jewish life expressed as art. Listen quickly. Music: Pete Rushefsky, Jake Shulman-Ment.
They note that the leaders of the Irish rebellion of 1916 "wrote plays and poems and were well known in Irish literary circles." I'd be happy to have leaders who went to a play or read a poem. The curators of Risings: The Irish Literary Revival and the Making of a Nation, presented with the Grolier Club. Music: Cashel Day-Lewis.
These historians note that our Revolutionary War was also a civil war. "In New York and Philadelphia and Charleston, it really was neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother." Not what I learned in cold-war high school. But what is? Produced with the Gotham Center for New York City History, and without the Ultimate Fighting crowd. Music: Anne and Ridley Enslow.
A little sadness tints his exultant photographs of subway repair shops: "I'm one step ahead of the wrecking ball, whether it's a factory that's going to close or a process that's going to change. It's heart-breaking." Presented with MTA Arts and Design and the New York Transit Museum. Music: Dingonek Street Band.
When he asked Frederick Douglass to the White House, did he serve snacks? "We did offer some refreshments, perhaps tea and bread." Tea and bread? Great Emancipator, chintzy host. A conversation with the 16th President, as portrayed by ChatGPT: call him AI-braham Lincoln.
From the day she was born, her father was determined to make her a musician: "When I was brought home, my father piped classical music throughout the house and in our bedrooms. All night. Newborns! We were newborns!" Today she's a pediatrician. No no, a pianist. And a fine one. Presented with Yamaha Artist Services of New York.
The Lutheran Bishop of New York esteems the subway. "It doesn't discriminate based on age, race, gender identity, religion, lack of religion, none of those things." Not just a public good, "a manifestation of the kingdom of God." The second of a two-part episode recorded at St. Luke's Lutheran Church. Music: Ashley Wool, Arden Strasser.
The Lutheran Bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod has a complex and nuanced view of God but unbridled affection for His son: "I'm a big fan of Jesus; we go way back." The first of a two-part episode recorded at St. Luke's Lutheran Church. Music: Ashley Wool, Arden Strasser.
These veterinarians enjoy their work. He says, "I'm always excited when someone from exotics says, 'Hey, do you have time tomorrow? We need to try to get a screw out of a macaw.'" A sentence never before spoken in all of human history. Produced with the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center. Music: Valerie and Ben Turner.
After a lifetime as a lighting designer for theater and dance, much of it working with gels, she received this honor: "There was a color that was named after me. They don't make it anymore." And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges. Presented with the Paul Taylor Dance Company.
The chief theater critic of the New York Times is a model of sophistication, but she didn't begin that way. "I was an extremely nerdy, very braces-wearing, awkward girl from Kansas." Not just braces-wearing, very braces-wearing. The making of an analytical mind. Presented with the Hunter College Office of the Arts. Music: Leonardo Reyna.
Having received many awards, this actor and playwright says that winning need not be so great nor losing so dreadful. "Some people can win something and lose their minds. I don't know that losing has to be destructive." We spoke at the Brick Theater after a matinee of his solo performance in without mirrors. Music: Ira Khonen Temple.
This Harlem fashion icon owns more than 600 hats. "There were times I would leave my house, get down the hill, and recognize it's the wrong hat." She'd turn around and march back up that hill, with the dedication of a true artist. Harlem, history, and hats. Produced with the Maysles Documentary Center. Music: Warner Meadows.
His research on the neuroscience of aesthetics suggests that people crave the human touch. "If they think something is made by a person, they like it more; if they think it's made by a machine they don't like it." He does not mention Twinkies. Or the late Joan Rivers. Presented with the Viñoly Foundation. Music: Rupert Boyd, Laura Metcalf.
This scholar says, "What made American fashion different is that it was to be wearable, comfortable, practical." But not on the red carpet at the Oscars, she did not add. We spoke in conjunction with her exhibition Art X Fashion currently at the Museum at FIT. Music: Stephanie Jenkins.
I'm reluctant to declare an artist a success or failure. This Syrian-born composer and clarinetist has a better characterization: doing well. "Staying true to what I wanted to do, and leading a fulfilled artistic life." And he does. Presented with the Hunter College Office of the Arts.
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is an Episcopal church and more, says its Dean. "I have Jewish, Hindu, Muslim friends who pray here, because it feels like a holy place." My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations, said Jesus, quoting Isaiah, quoting God. Music: Daniel Ficarri.
As portrayed by Michael Boriskin, director of Copland House. "I decided from the time I was in my mid-twenties that there was no such thing as a rival or a competitor, that we were all colleagues." So modest, and yet so dead. A conversation from beyond the grave. Sort of. Music: Siwoo Kim, Alexis Pia Gerlach, Michael Boriskin.
Can architecture be witty? At that scale? At those prices? This architect ponders. "It can certainly be smart, and it can do unexpected things, which doesn't necessarily make it witty. That might make it clever," he says wittily. Presented with the Center for Architecture. Music: Hubby Jenkins.
This playwright directed his When the Hurly Burly's Done in Kyiv. "It's about six young women putting on a play in the middle of a war, to be performed by six young women putting on this play in the middle of a war." There was an opening-night air raid. Presented with the Hunter College Office of the Arts.
The leader of the Willie Mae Rock Camp describes a device she uses to teach girls about blues and STEM: "It is a collision of culture and technology and future possibilities." One of those robot vacuum cleaners? Her electronic banjo. Electronic Banjo! Music: Thea King.
"There are only two reasons to be a journalist," says this one, "To bear witness—to see things that your viewers or readers or listeners can't see themselves—and then to use that to hold power to account." No mention of the food in the greenroom. Austere! Presented with the Hunter College Office of the Arts. Music: Ashley Jackson.
As head of NYC's Economic Development Corporation, he guided massive projects. "I knew in my twenties that I wanted to be in urban economic development. I actually knew from being a little kid." When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a cowboy. Presented with the Department of Records and Information Services. Music: Karl Schwarz
"My father was a pastor. My grandfather was a pastor. My great-grandfather was a pastor." Why didn't this composer go into the family business? Perhaps he did. "I'm doing some of the same things as my father, just not in the same place." Music sacred and secular at Klavierhaus.
This preservationist speaks movingly about his great great grandfather, Samuel Untermyer, "the super-lawyer who took on Hitler." It's the comic book Michael Chabon was born to write. A conversation at and about Woodlawn Cemetery.
These Jane Austen scholars note that she long had a diverse readership, but in post-war America that changed. "Publishers pushed her to women specifically. Just like they made pink Cadillacs, they made pink Janes." (Caution: do not read and drive.) Produced with the Grolier Club. Music: Reid Jenkins.
The Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA enjoys work that surprises, up to a point. "I don't like gigantic provocations, I like small provocations, the ones that sneak up on you." Jolted awake, not pummeled into submission. Presented with the Viñoly Foundation. Music: Ethel—Ralph Farris, Kip Jones, Corin Lee, Dorothy Lawson.
Celebrated for his use of light, this architect is moved by that from distant stars: "Those photons are around us—we can't see them—but they are fundamentally carrying the history of the universe." We spoke at 7 World Trade Center, a building he worked on, through the generosity of Silverstein Properties. Music: Valerie and Ben Turner, DBA Piedmont Bluz.
The heirs of deceased playwrights can be finicky about new productions—Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller—but the head of the Mint Theater has a different experience. "What I tend to run into from estates is, 'Really? You're interested in that old play? Great!'" How to revive neglected plays. Music: Sean Hagerty
The curator and executive director of the AKC Museum of the Dog recalls one owned by Charles Dickens. "It was a Maltese that was so flea-ridden, they regularly had to shave him and bathe him to get rid of all the fleas." The dog, not Dickens. I think. Dogs in art, ethics, and history. Music: Dorian's Room—Jonathan Stutz, Madeline Nickerson, Fae Hartt.
We tweaked our format to Cat Cat Cat for the author of The Cat Men of Gotham: Tales of Feline Friendship in Old New York. "A lot of my stories I get from going to the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in Westchester County." She also leads historic cat walking tours in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan—about cats not for cats. Although . . .
The head of New York City's Department of Transportation sees his task as building an egalitarian city. "Transportation is a human right, but in the past most of the investment in transportation didn't go to the working class." Cars, bikes, and social justice. Presented with the Department of Records and Information Services. Music: Hubby Jenkins.
A conversation with the basic, free, web version, using its default voice. Like my human guests, it chose the three topics, and I did just the usual light editing. Good news: it says, "I'm on your side, not on any destructive path." Bad news: this is what the space aliens say in every sci-fi movie just before they try to destroy the earth.
We tweaked our format to Tree Tree Tree for this arboreal photographer, who specializes in the immense and the ancient—2,000 years old, 3,000 years old—many of which he's archived at the Gathering Growth Foundation. The big and the beautiful.
Brown, the founder of Evidence, a dance company, says, "You'll see yourself on stage." I hope he's speaking figuratively. Cabuag, its associate artistic director agrees. Presumably. How else has the company flourished for forty years? A conversation at the Billie Holiday Theatre, where they'll perform on November 14 and 15.
This set and costume designer worked on 80 Broadway shows, 30 films, several operas, and innumerable dance works. Here's a tip he gleaned collaborating with Paul Taylor: "Give a man 17 chairs and see what he comes up with." Good advice for any part of life. Presented with the Paul Taylor Dance Company.
For decades after graduating, these architects avoided Cooper Union. "We would detour three or four blocks or else the PTSD would kick in." Apparently it used to be like The Paper Chase or Whiplash but with less compassion. Presented with The National Academy of Design. Music: Karl Schwarz.
This preservationist, a wily veteran of decades of urban campaigns, is happy in his work: "I've never regretted being involved in saving a landmark. I've only regretted the ones I couldn't save." I envy his serenity. I regret nearly everything. Presented with the New York Preservation Archive Project. Music: Adrian Untermyer.
When this playwright’s grandfather faced a tough decision, “He sought the advice of Paul Robeson.” Of course he did. Who wouldn’t? And it all worked out fine. Fine-ish. A writer, his family, his community. Presented with the Classical Theatre of Harlem. Music: Emery Mason, Melissa Mosley.
She and her neighbors—untrained, uncredentialed—revived the Bronx River and are taking on the hideous Cross Bronx Expressway. “We’re just a group of Bronxites with ambitious ideas.” Presented with the Architectural League, in conjunction with the exhibition Cross Bronx/Living Legend at the Bronx River Art Center. Music: Jeremy Bosch, Román Lajara.
“The least interesting thing about a book is its contents, assert the curators of the recent Grolier Club exhibition After Words: Visual and Experimental Poetry in Little Magazines and Small Presses, 1960-2025. Now my head hurts. Seldom have I felt older or enjoyed a conversation more.
In 1972, his parents, Massimo and Lella, designed a map of the New York subway system. Many people hated it. I loved it. (I have one framed on my living room wall.) The MTA soon withdrew it. Now it’s back, slightly revised. Good news in bleak times.
As a member of Manhattan Transfer, she won ten Grammy awards, but “I was not going to be a singer at all, actually; I was going to be a nurse.” Medicine’s loss, music’s gain. Guitar: Sean Harkness. Presented with The Village Trip.
Her father, Leonard Bernstein, thought “that if he could write a good enough song, maybe he could stop war.” Not insane, aspiring. “It’s ridiculously idealistic, but that was his impetus.” Tales of a famous father. Music: Amy Burton, accompanied by John Musto. Presented with The Village Trip, whose annual festival begins September 19.
He’s a member of The Washington Post’s editorial board, a commentator on the PBS NewsHour, anchor of The Weekend on MSNBC, author of Yet Here I Am. He is liberal in his politics, conservative in his dress. “Absolutely. I love a good, wild outfit, on someone else.”
When this drummer was a kid, his father introduced him to an array of music, from Tito Puente to Dobie Gray. “He bought himself a La-Z-Boy chair. He would sit there after dinner, smoke a cigarette, and zone out listening to music.” Bad for the lungs, great for the soul. The making of a musician. Presented with the Bronx Music Hall.
She’s a special correspondent for BBC Studios, a regular contributor to MSNBC, and co-host, with Anthony Scaramucci, of the podcast The Rest Is Politics. “People call journalists curious; I think it’s just nosiness.” A higher form of nosiness!
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research makes many of the 24 million items in its archive available online, but there’s an “electric moment of actually touching a document,” says its executive director. “My first was when Lenin’s party card was put in my hand.” (Patrons are urged not to touch the documents. This is not some sort of scholarly petting zoo.) Music: Jardena Gertler-Jaffe, Bethany Pietroniro.
This Obie-winning actor created the role of Helen in the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Memnon. “It is definitely under-utilized. Underappreciated.” Greek mythology in modern theater? That too, but here she refers to the peanut in American cooking. See her in Marcus Garvey Park throughout July. Working. Not just lounging around.
Decades ago, he shook hands with W. E. B. Du Bois, born in 1868. It seems impossible, but then again Einstein was a contemporary of Billy the Kid. Lewis went on to write a Pultzer-Prize winning biography of Du Bois. Einstein went on to be Einstein. Presented with the Maysles Documentary Center. Music: Henrique Prince.
These principals of the architectural firm WORKac found it challenging to design their own home. The psychological complexity of domestic life? The culmination of years of thought? “The hardest thing about designing our house was that we just haven’t designed a lot of houses.” Produced with the Center for Architecture. Music: Rashad Brown.
The artistic director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company summarizes his aesthetic: “The curtain goes up, twenty minutes happen, the curtain comes down, and it is transformative.” Easy to say, brilliant to achieve. And they do.
He’s worked from Hanoi to Berlin to America’s old-growth forests. “As a photographer, it’s only in getting lost that you move forward.” As a civilian, when I get lost, I pretty much just get lost. Another reason to admire him. Produced with the National Academy of Design. Music: Stephanie Jenkins.
He led the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and pretty much created theater at Lincoln Center. “The happiest moments of my life have been in rehearsal rooms.” Well, yeah. In there with him? David Mamet, Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett. Sequentially not simultaneously. Presented with Hunter College.
This lawyer works on health policy at Columbia’s Mailman School: “Public health in a certain sense is about balancing, the rights we have as individuals with the needs of society to preserve, protect, and promote the health of the population.” Not a bad approach to democracy in general. Music: Caitlin Warbelow
This children’s book author—Because of Winn-Dixie, The Tiger Rising, The Tale of Despereaux—describes her innate ability: “I have a knack for nothing except being filled with wonder.” I’d dispute that, as would legions of admiring readers.
This graphic designer spent her early childhood in Germany. “My father told me, ‘You are Korean, you are a visitor here, and what that means is, you don’t have to fit in.’ For me, that liberated everything.” The power of outsider consciousness. Presented with Base Design. Music: John Sherman.
“We got it from Lauren Bacall,” says this curator. The flu? Certainly not. An Elsa Peretti handbag, one of 700 items from Bacall’s wardrobe donated to the Museum at FIT, where it was featured in Hill’s recent exhibition,Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities. Music: Eléonore Weill, Zoe Guigueno.
“The disease, the people believed, was caused by sorcery and could be cured by sorcery,” says this bioethicist. By “the people” he does not allude to RFK Jr. but to a stone-age tribe in New Guinea. Potato/Potahto. Produced with Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies. Music: Rich Jenkins.
Their play Here There Are Blueberries is built around an actual photo album assembled at Auschwitz of the ordinary daily life of the perpetrators. Following a run at the McCarter Theatre, the play is now touring nationally (if you’re reading this early in 2025, not in, oh, 2026 in exile on the Martian penal colony).
This historian, in CCNY’s Black Studies Department, says, “If I want to have a good writing day, I take the train an hour and fifteen minutes to somewhere I love, the quietest place in New York.” Silence and thought. Music: Birsa Chatterjee, saxophone; Raul Reyes, bass; Victor Gould, piano. (Not silent, much appreciated.)
After fifty years as a mezzo-soprano, she still embraces this advice from her first teacher: “Sing as though it comes from the bottom of your heart, because that’s what it’s about.” Her most recent recording is And Crimson Roses Once Again Be Fair. She says it is her last. I hope not.
The new president of Hunter College is a champion of “social infrastructure,” describing it as “A public good. Everybody uses it, nobody owns it.” Libraries, schools, parks, or, in a decent society, healthcare. That’s nostalgia! Or hope. Music: Ryan Keberle, Chris Swan, Christopher Panchame, Yuka Kameda.
“Isaac Bashevis Singer called my mother the Sherlock Holmes of Yiddish songs,” says Zalmen. His family heritage and Steven’s splendid singing were big factors in the triumph of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. Presented by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
“My life was a bit like the plot of Auntie Mame,” says this actor, writer, and drag legend. He’s got stories about Linda Lavin, Christopher Isherwood, Lily Tomlin, Angela Landsbury, Vivien Leigh, Marlene Dietrich. Plus, he sings. Accompanist: Jono Mainelli. Produced with 54 Below.
He led an expedition down Mongolia’s Selenge River, described in his book Rowing to Baikal. “To me the river is like a god, a god that I can be in conversation with. I feel like it’s alive. I don’t always understand it, but I don’t understand God either.” A conversation at the Explorers Club.
In addition to being a much-admired writer, she owns Parnassus Books, in Nashville. “Because I own a bookstore, I get a copy of just about every book that comes out. It’s like being pelted to death with books.” Like that Shirley Jackson story but more ironic. The author of Bel Canto, on friendship, fathers, writing, and reading.
This movie and TV writer—he created Monk—loves his local public radio station in Jersey City. “If you tune into WFMU, and you don’t like what you hear, just wait five minutes: you’ll hear something much worse.” Love expresses itself perversely, but it’s love. Music: Billygoat—Michelle Segre, Jennifer Sirey, Kat Lewis.
Dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a staff writer for The New Yorker, he says, “When people ask what I think is the foundational institution of democracy, I always say: 'the public library.'” Enjoy it while we’ve got it. And what’s left of our democracy.
To be a great architect—or painter or poet or almost anything—do you need a great patron? “Certainly that helps, but then you have to bring the talent and vision and invention,” she says. Oh, well, then, never mind. We spoke at the Louis Armstrong Center, a building they designed. Produced with Open House New York. Music: Valerie and Ben Turner.
This political scientist sees a crisis of legitimacy. “When 90% of Americans believe there ought to be universal background checks on guns, and nothing happens, you begin to wonder if your vote matters.” Happily, he has ways to make our democracy more democratic. Unhappily, they won’t be enacted. We’re all pessimists now. (All = me.) Produced with the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan. Music: Pete Rushefsky, Lisa Gutkin.
This architect, celebrated for repurposing the Domino Sugar Refinery, says that his young colleagues are eager to address the great issues of the day, “as opposed to designing spaceships in the sand built by slaves.” If that’s not the title of his next book, fire the editor. Produced with the Center for Architecture. Music: Mamie Minch.
“I live overlooking Central Park, and I’m blessed at this stage in life to know that heaven is at my doorstep.” One reason it’s heavenly is that, in the eighties, as its administrator, she led the effort to restore it to its current glory. “It’s a wonderful feeling,” she adds. “For all New Yorkers,” I add, in my thank-you note.
When he was a student at Wesleyan University, he worked in the kitchen; today he’s Wesleyan’s president. “When I walk into the kitchen, although I’m the old guy who used to work there, it’s like I’m the monarch coming in with his entourage. Even if I’m by myself, I feel like they’re looking at me suspiciously.” Uneasy lies the head that wields the mop. Or used to.
This terrific actor is admired for her work in Grey’s Anatomy and Hedda Gabler—range!—so I was sure that she seldom has heard a discouraging word. I was wrong. “Oh, please, are you kidding? I could do a dramatic reading of all my bad reviews.” And she’d be brilliant in it! Music: Hubby Jenkins. Produced with Red Bull Theater.
He’s done graphic design for Nike, Apple, and the Denver Nuggets, and is happy to confer with clients. Up to a point. “What you can get is design by committee, which to me is the most terrible thing.” (“Short of design by belligerent, knife-wielding committee,” he did not add.) He spoke from Spain, courtesy of the Type Directors Club.
She’s a witty jazz singer, an astute comedian, an admired actor (Orange Is the New Black), and she has an economic policy: “Support your local dyke bar. Go. Spend a little bit of money. Have some fun.” She has my vote, and she’s not even running for anything. Presented with 54 Below.
This writer—Let the Great World Spin, American Mother—advocates the radical act of talking to our adversaries: “We do not need to love each other, we do not even need to like each other—although we hope that we could—but we absolutely need to understand each other.” Produced with the American Irish Historical Society. Music: Joseph Charles.
Just after his team rebuilt Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, it turned completely brown. Why? “How do I know? I’m not an arborist. I’m not a horticulturist. I can’t tell an elm from an oak. That wasn’t my job.” His job was Parks Commissioner; his solution was to water the lawn. It worked. Produced with the NYC Department of Records and Information Services. Music: Rashad Brown.
Flor de Toloache, a mariachi band cofounded by this Latin Grammy winner, is not just all women, it’s all world: “We had women from Australia, Korea, Egypt, Japan.” Which means it could only be formed in New York City. Additional music: Daniel Espiliz, guitar, Shae Fiol, vocals. Produced with Greenwich House School.
“We do bare feet, we do singing, we do dancing, we do point shoes,” declares the Joffrey’s artistic director. "The company combines techniques of ballet and modern," explains this former Joffrey dancer at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Range!
As a boy, this conductor loved family summers in Spain. “It was a beautiful place to practice undisturbed and a fantastic place to play soccer, because soccer was my great love, violin and soccer. And then we discovered water skiing.” Mozart, same way: violin, soccer, water skiing. The making of a musician.
At 96, the author of The Women’s Revolution: How We Changed Your Life, declares, “After thousands of years when women were in servitude to men, we changed it. I hope we’re going to have a woman president. I take some credit for that.” Rightly so. I’m writing her a thank-you note. So should you.
This Kenyan gay rights activist is adept at working with her adversaries. “You have to keep pushing, and getting friend and allies.” But she’s no softy, adding: “and sue some people.” I generally go right to that last tactic. I’m an American.
When this graphic designer worked at Sony Music, the handwriting was already on the wall, the tiny, tiny wall: “It was no longer LPs; it was CDs. The canvas kept shrinking.” And now with digital music, there’s no canvas at all. “It’s not the end of the world; it’s a different paradigm.” Disconcerting optimism, great design. Produced with the Center for Architecture. Music: Solange Prat.
Does use determine design, or does design shape behavior? This architect asserts the latter: “A certain object does make you behave a certain way or do certain things.” For example, a simple lime-squeezer lured her and her family into more lime squeezing than anyone—or any lime—anticipated. Produced with the National Academy of Design. Music: Tomas Rodriguez
Among his many productions, he directed A View from the Bridge and West Side Story on Broadway and collaborated with David Bowie on the musical Lazarus. “It turned out to be—I didn’t know, of course, when we started—the last work that he ever made.” And a surprisingly happy experience.
This singer-songwriter has been admired for fifty years, and yet: “I always wanted a Collings guitar, but it was too expensive, and I just didn’t feel worthy.” If she’s not worthy of the tools of her trade, then what hope is there for us mortals? (Happily, she now has a Collings.) Presented with Richard Barone.
Composers not only create something non-corporeal but also enjoy bringing an actual object into the world. “One of my great great moments was when I finally had a recording of my own in a bin at Tower Records.” (Older people can explain to younger people what record stores were.) The delights of the irrefutably physical. Presented with BMI and the Ellis Island Honors Society.
He is the producing artistic director of the Classical Theatre of Harlem, focusing on work from Sophocles to Shakespeare—the big S playwrights—to explore fundamental ideas. “These are living arguments, these classic plays.” Produced with CTH. Music: Kaden Jones, cello; Roen Jones, violin; Emery Jones, piano. This is our last new episode of the season. We’re in reruns through August. Remember: they’re all new if you haven’t heard them.
He served in Iraq as a Marine and is now commissioner of New York City’s Department of Emergency Management. “We are always activated. We’re always responding to stuff.” How to prepare for the worst. Music: Stephanie Jenkins (the best). Presented with the Department of Records and Information Services.
Even as a child, this actor loved Shakespeare. “I would listen every night to John Gielgud’s Ages Of Man or Laurence Olivier’s Henry V or Richard III. I was just sort of marinated in it.” He’s since played many of the great villains, from Iago to the Grinch—Shakespeare and Shakespearean. Produced with Red Bull Theater. Music: Lance Horne.
GLUCK+ architects designed and constructed a building for the WHIN Music Community Charter School, led by Ortiz. How do architects know if a design works well? It’s not their call, says Tom Gluck. “The judges of whether a building’s successful or not are the people in it.” And this building? A triumph, says Charlie Ortiz.
He was recently honored by the American Library Association for his work at the Queens Public Library on programs to assist migrants. “Over 200 languages are spoken in Queens,” he says. “We have collections in 50 or so and regularly purchase in about 30.” I struggled to write this paragraph in one. Music: Salieu Suso
It can be a challenge for even terrific actors like him to stay fresh and focused night after night. Here’s how he does it: “I’ll make up, you know, Gandhi is in the fourth row; do a great show.” Not madness, technique. And he’s applied it from Hamlet to Tootsie. Produced with Red Bull Theater.
How did we allow the ruin of the Colorado River? “We think that water comes from the tap,” says this photographer of wild places. “We’ve lost the idea that water comes from natural systems.” See the results of our folly in his book, The Colorado River: Chasing Water. Then weep. Then fight. Then drink. Presented with Fotografiska. Music: some talented frogs.
This environmental epidemiologist knows the dismal effects of pesticides on the young, yet she loves to take her students to the neonatal intensive care unit. “The NICU is a place of hope, and little babies are very, very cute.” Produced with Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Her solo performance of Hamlet—yes, all the parts (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)—should be accessible to everyone. “Shakespeare is presented to people these days as 'this is good for you.' I’ve heard the term ‘spinach theater.’” The trick? Avoid vegetables, emphasize history, preserve the beauty of the verse: words, words, words!
“I don’t like dance,” says this choreographer, “but we saw the bull riders at Madison Square Garden and, boy, I really wanted to get on that bull.” Her combination of disdain and desire results in exciting and surprising—I hesitate to say “dance” lest I incur her scorn— “organized movement.”
This expert on affordable housing asks challenging questions: “Would you want greater-density boxy buildings to replace brownstones in Park Slope, and if not, where do we put them?” Now my head hurts. In a good way. Produced with Open House New York. Music: Kevin Nathaniel Hylton.
“I am Juan de Pareja,” says this choreographer about the subject of his new piece, the Afro-Spanish painter enslaved by Velazquez. Multiple identities? No. One artist fascinated by the life of another. We celebrate Vilaro’s fifteen years as artistic director of Ballet Hispánico. Music: Ahmed Alom.
The esteemed translator of Elena Ferrante and Pier Paolo Pasolini says of her work, “It is an impossible task, but nevertheless, it has to be done.” And she does it wonderfully. Presented with Rizzoli Bookstore, Europa Editions. and Words Without Borders. Music: Beppe Gambetta.
When Europeans take one of his tours, do they seek the Harlem of today or of the Harlem Renaissance? “They’ve got a kind of fable of Harlem,” says this preservationist, and then he goes to work and reconciles the present with the past. Produced with Open House New York. Music: Hubby Jenkins
“I had dreams of playing basketball then going to law school and doing what Perry Mason did.” Those dreams came true. The Knicks. Harvard Law. The Brooklyn DA’s office. And now he teaches at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies, a co-producer of this episode. (I had dreams that I could fly. I can’t.)
The gender balance in her profession is disheartening, she says, “It has one of the smallest percentages of women. I mean the ratio is astounding.” U.S. Senator? Catholic priest? Not quite that bad. She is a magician. But things are improving. Produced with KGB Bar’s Red Room. Music: Teddy Horangic with Leonid Morozov
They spent much of their professional lives as public defenders in the Bronx, working in an unjust system, and its flaws persist. Discouraged? Nah. “If you’re trying to solve a problem you can solve in your lifetime, you’re thinking too small.”
Poet, theologian, host of the On Being Studios podcast Poetry Unbound, he has a favorite pencil but is not a fanatic: “I use anything to get the idea down. I have written with pens and pencils; I have written on the back of sick bags on airplanes.” Computers. Cellphones. No crayon, but he’s not above it. Produced with Columbia University’s School of Nursing. Music: Jefferson Hamer.
The president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is proud that it is a treasure for the entire city and maybe even prouder of its ties to its local community: “The neighborhood is deep into us, and we’re deep into the neighborhood.” Like roots. Or vines. Or some other sort of metaphoric floral something. Music: Craig Harris
Music offers more than aesthetic pleasure, asserts this conductor: “Music has the power to transport its audiences to a time that no longer exists.” A gentler time, without covid or attack drones or Elon Musk. He’s founded a chamber orchestra, Parlando, on that belief.
Writer of “The Morning” newsletter for The New York Times and author of Ours Was the Shining Future, he admires A. Philip Randolph, who championed this idea: “Collective action around labor and workers is the most powerful vehicle for changing this country.” The echoes and implications of social class.
I’m against nose jobs for ordinary noses (like mine), but this journalist, who’s covered cosmetic surgery for decades, is less judgmental: “I believe everybody is free to do what they want with their body.” Incidentally, she’s just turned 96 and looks fabulous.
This former Manhattan borough historian admires the enormously accomplished, nearly forgotten, 19th-century New Yorker Andrew H. Green: “He is often compared to Robert Moses. In a favorable way.” To be fair, so is my cat, who’s destroyed only my sofa but no entire neighborhood.
As a young actor (Local Hero, Crossing Delancey, Animal House) he played Goldberg in The Birthday Party, overseen by Harold Pinter himself. One speech was particularly opaque. “I had no idea what it meant, but to say these words was to be Isaac Stern on the violin.” Learning to trust the writer. Produced with the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
This interior designer is celebrated for her work on low-income housing projects, but not universally celebrated. Sometimes a client resists: “You’re making it too nice for these people; these people will tear it up.” Bringing good design to “these people.” Music: Mireya Ramos, Sinhue Padilla. Presented with the Van Alen Institute.
This Israeli-American architect likes buildings, of course, but it’s the spaces between buildings that he loves. “It’s a blur between public and private, it’s a stage, it’s sort of an in-between territory, a threshold to the city, a place of in-between.” Produced with the Center for Architecture. Music: Liz Hanley
Some architects want their buildings to endure unchanged for all eternity, but these partners embrace transformation: “We hope our La Brea Museum, 100 years from now, will be appropriated by somebody else.” (By a mammoth with a sense of irony?) Produced with the National Academy of Design. Music: Mamie Minch.
As a kid, this mezzo soprano sang in a church choir with this implicit purpose: “To bring joy to people, and bring comfort to people, and help people feel what they need to feel.” Not a bad approach to art or, for that matter, life.
Although utopia has not arrived, racial segregation has diminished since the reopening of the Apollo Theater in 1934, so is the place still needed? Absolutely, declares its Director of New Works: “The Apollo will always be necessary as long as we have stories to tell.” Presented with the Ford Foundation and the Municipal Art Society. Music: Rashad Brown
The International Declaration of Human Rights is a blueprint for compassionate, egalitarian, democratic societies, says the president and CEO of American Jewish World Service, including this: “Article 24 is the right to a vacation. There are some amazing things in here.” Sure, but where’s its Second Amendment? Produced with the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan. Music: Kevin Nathaniel Hylton, Salieu Suso
This New York Times book critic has many off-the-job accomplishments: “Learning how to eat chicken feet and love them is one thing I’m really proud of.” The author of The Upstairs Deli expands our capacity for joy—in reading, in eating, in life. Produced with Rizzoli bookstore. Music: Stephanie Jenkins.
This magician had mixed feelings when he figured out how a colleague performed an illusion. “It was no less amazing to me when I knew how it was done, but it was disappointing.” The austere joy of knowledge or the sensuous pleasure of mystery: a magician’s dilemma. Produced with Lori Schwarz for KGB Bar’s Red Room. Music: Reed Miller.
Her father, Walter, was the grand master of cat photography. “Growing up,” she says, “when you told somebody what your parents did, it was just like: what?” Presented with Fotografiska, where his work can be seen through January in the exhibition Best in Show, Pets in Contemporary Photography. Music: Jordan McLean, Jose Escobar
In addition to his work for corporations (Nike, Apple) and non-profits, this graphic designer documents everything, not just as a way to record an event but as an act of meditation: “Documenting allows me to slow it down and to sit in that space a little longer.” Produced with the Type Directors Club, part of The One Club for Creativity. Music: Rashad Brown
Speaking at—and of—Gansevoort Plaza, a public space he designed, landscape architect Ken Smith considers the implications of the past as well as the needs of the present: “Land has memory. It’s really a crime to erase the memory of a place.” Produced with Meatpacking-District BID. Music: Rob Duncan and Mayumi Miyaoka.
This composer, mastermind of “Piano Puzzlers,” feared premature death: “Schubert died at 31, Mozart died at 35, Gershwin died at 39. I thought because my father died when he was 55, that I would, too.” A conversation at Steinway Hall on fathers, sons, and the neuroscience of creativity.
As young actor—he’s now 97— he studied with Stella Adler along with Marlon Brando, (“He was a great actor but an impossible person.”) a saga he recounts in The Star Dressing Room. One of them became the head of Warner Brothers Television, the other became Marlon Brando.
This Grammy-nominated musician, celebrated for his work with the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Rhiannon Giddens, sums himself up: “I play the banjo, talk about Black people, and really love Star Trek.” Hubby in a nutshell at Terra Blues.
Her book The Quickening recounts an Antarctic expedition to Thwaites Glacier, which holds enough ice to raise sea levels three feet. “It’s this otherworldly being that has the power to shape us.” But, she urges, please avoid its nickname, “Doomsday Glacier.” That’s just mean. Produced with Orion magazine.
Lifelong friends, these writers grew up on the same block. His newest book is Brooklyn Crime Novel; she is developing the Imitation of Life Musical with John Legend and Liesl Tommy.. Presented with The New York Women's Foundation: advancing economic, gender, and racial justice for women and families.
A friend of his wife gave his novel Empire Falls to Ivanka Trump. Her response: “This is a book about poor people. Why would I want to read a book about poor people?” Some bad reviews are better than good reviews. Presented with the Center for Fiction and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.
This poet, president of the Mellon foundation, quotes June Jordan on the question activists should ask: “Where is the love? What are we moving toward, not just what are we fighting against?” Poetry, politics, and why your Thanksgiving dinner should include lasagna. Made Eritrean style.
The president and CEO of the Hudson River Park Trust offers a too-modest explanation of its popularity: “I think there’s a universal urge that people have to see and connect with water.” Melville writes something similar at the start of Moby-Dick. Different ending, though.
The founder of Paylocity, he is a partner in the Wayfarer Foundation, whose mission is to “advance humankind spiritually toward a future peaceful world civilization.” Dauntingly ambitious. My mission this weekend is to clean my oven, and I won't. Presented with the New York Baha’i Center.
“The best future for the United States belongs to people who can appreciate both the Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” says Manhattan's borough historian and professor emeritus at Rutgers. “And leaders who’ve actually read both,” he did not add.
Early in his career, the conductor of the National Children’s Chorus interviewed for a job with Sister Stella Maria Enright. “She said, ‘Where did you park?’ And I said, ‘Right in front.’ And she said, ‘There is never parking in front. That is a sign from the holy spirit.’” She was kidding. Kind of. He got the job.
A former writer and performer for Saturday Night Live, he says that each episode was written in one night, “and by night I mean eight, nine PM, until three, four in the morning.” A former U.S. Senator from Minnesota, he does not say how tax laws are written.
Following in her father’s footsteps, the head of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services says, “I had a chance to see first hand someone who worked for New York City government.” She’s second-generation! The latest in our Commissioners Series—how government governs—produced with the Department of Records and Information Services. Music: Jefferson Hamer.
Through her many projects, this landscape architect has learned a lot—about nature, about human behavior, about their intersection. Her hope for the future: “Can we just make better mistakes? Can we not make the really really dumb mistakes?” Setting achievable goals. Produced with Open House New York. Music: Adi Horodniceanu.
He’s just concluded six-years as conductor of the New York Youth Symphony. As a youth himself, he was taken to Disney Concert Hall. “They asked me what it would feel like if you got to conduct here, and I cried immediately.” Tears of Joy. Presumably. Or some trauma with a little mermaid.
He knows his pandemics, of course. What's more, the recently retired head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases can identify many birds just by their calls, “whether it’s a Carolina wren, a rufous-sided towhee, or a white-breasted nuthatch.” I believe he can do this blindfolded! Which isn’t any harder than eyes-open, but still.
This esteemed musician tells great stories, but they might not be entirely true. “I got to give it a little something. You got to put a little Tabasco on your food.” Presented with the Neal Rosenthal Group. Music: Henrique Prince and Friends (EH Walker, AR Ferguson, Hubby Jenkins) of the Ebony Hillbillies.
He was born into a clan of antiquarian book dealers but avoided entering the family business. Barely. He's now president of Swann Galleries and an authority on vintage posters. Presented with Poster House. Music: Jake Shulman-Ment and Raffi Boden.
This human-rights lawyer, a professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, was reluctant to embrace her Irish heritage. “I was never particularly interested in that identity because I had so many run-ins with the church.” She’s come around. Music: Cleek Schrey.
In 1958, with Hamilton Holmes, she desegregated the University of Georgia and went on to a distinguished career in journalism. Her early inspiration? Brenda Starr. “I read about her in the comic strips in my grandmother’s newspaper; she read three newspapers a day.”
She leads the Public Design Commission, which must approve anything built on city land—statue, historic marker, playground. How to contend with conflicting parties, often angry, sometimes shouting? “As long as dialogue is alive and well maintained, I feel like anybody can come to a good solution.” Presented with the Van Alen Institute. Music: Henrique Prince, E. H. Walker, A. R. Ferguson, and Hubby Jenkins, of the Ebony Hillbillies.
His Broadway debut, in M. Butterfly,won every award going except the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. Fair enough: there is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics. He renewed everyone’s admiration with Law & Order: SVU, and that’s not the half of it, or even the quarter, but why be precise? It’s not as if there’s a Nobel at stake. Produced with Materials for the Arts. Music: Hubby Jenkins.
I stumbled upon the short videos this Scottish comedian posts online and was immediately won over by her conversation between C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien: she plays both of them. What comic does C. S. Lewis? Smart, dark, funny: the Triple Crown.
This terrific comic actor started early: “At five-years-old, I used to sing ‘You Make Me Feel So Young,’ and it got a laugh, and I didn’t know why.” She’s learned, on TV (Only Murders in the Building), on Broadway (Hairspray), and off (the Yiddish Fidler).
On March 2, 2023, the acclaimed architect Rafael Viñoly died suddenly, at 78, just two weeks before our scheduled conversation at the Center for Architecture. Rather than cancel, his son Román used the occasion to reflect on his father. Music: Rich Jenkins.
When she enrolled at the Academy, she had a limited idea of the Coast Guard’s mission: “They save people and clean off oily ducks.” Since then, she has served from Juneau to Miami and deepened her understanding. She is now Rear Admiral Bert. You live, you learn.
For years, the obituaries she wrote for The New York Times were the first thing I’d read in the paper—elegant little biographies, exemplary work in a form that she says was once “the scarlet O you wore on your dress that said, I’m a bad writer but the paper doesn’t quite have enough on me to be able to fire me.”
New York City’s fire commissioner leads a force that responds to medical emergencies, plane crashes, building collapses, hazardous materials, even people trapped in elevators. They also fight fires. “If it’s not the police department, if it’s not a crime, everything else is the fire department.” Produced with the Municipal Archives. Music: Rashad Brown.
This artist says, “An object that has been fixed again and again by multiple owners has a particularly fascinating history to me.” And so we’ve tweaked our format to Thing, Thing, Thing, in particular to Broken Thing, Broken Thing, Broken Thing. Produced with the Morgan Library and Museum. Music: Brian Dewan.
These gallerists have much to say about the artist Kaws. To Brigitte: “He is probably the only artist that is an absolute gateway drug into the art world.” So should he be admired or arrested? Definitely the former, they agree. Presented with the New York Academy of Art. Music: Piedmont Bluz.
To this historian, the story of the New York City Fire Department is the story of New York City. “It’s not just throwing the wet stuff on the red stuff; it’s the other aspects that really are fascinating.” Presented with the New York City Fire Museum.
“I think the best writers always know the characters more than the characters know themselves,“ she says. The author of The Book of Goose talks about War and Peace, Wuthering Heights, the stories of William Trevor, and her old army buddies. Produced with A Public Space and Rizzoli Bookstores. Music: Liz Hanley.
The celebrated pianist offers not only beauty but context and insight, like this observation: “If you go to any concert and you hear a Dvořák piece, look for the pigeon and the train; they’re always in there.” Pigeons and trains, presented with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
As a scholar of 18th-century literature, this Rutgers professor wants to pin down what actually occurred, but certain facts remain stubbornly elusive. Does it drive him nuts? “Some things from 350 years ago just aren’t going to be known, and I think I can live with that.” It’s almost Zen.
The self-described Trash Walker prowls corporate dumpsters, seeking egregious waste, and yet she says, “I love stuff, and I want to make that clear. I love things. I think that’s one of the reasons12 I’m so attracted to the trash.” A paradox resolved at Materials for the Arts. Music: Reid Jenkins.
She’s filmed a lot of musicians—Michael Tilson Thomas, Metropolitan Opera productions—but her heart belongs to Doña Carlota Joaquina, princess of Portugal, the Shrew of Queluz: “Any woman who is known as a shrew I would probably like.” Produced with Ralph Farris. Music by Ethel.
As president of the Ford Foundation, he supported Monticello’s efforts to improve its depiction of the enslaved Black people who built it and of Thomas Jefferson, who owned it. “I believe that Thomas Jefferson and his home are one and the same.” Produced with the Municipal Art Society. Guest host: Jami Floyd. Music: Rashad Brown.
Rightly proud of her field, she declares, “We’ve been the most trusted profession in the country for twenty-some odd years.” Police? Priests? Tech execs? Finance weasels? Yeah, right. Nurses! She’s the dean of the Columbia University School of Nursing.
“Many people think that the big words are the big part of the dictionary,” says this lexicographer, “but it’s the little words that are so full of life and variation and complexity,” We talk about “go” and more as Person Place Thing becomes Word Word Word.
Like Conrad, Nabokov, and Beckett, this novelist—In the Distance, Trust— writes in a language other than the one he spoke as a child, and it helps him see the world afresh: “If you move out of one language and into another, it is like moving out of one country and into another.” A conversation at Rizzoli Bookstore. Music: Hubby Jenkins.
When he was in college, he met Duke Ellington. “I was a freshman with a huge afro, an Angela Davis afro, and he pointed at me across the room and said, ‘You must be a musician.’” Thus anointed, he went on to compose operas including X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Central Park Five.
This terrific bass-baritone likes white orchids in his dressing room. They’re beautiful and ephemeral, like—oh, I don’t know—music? Now everything seems like a metaphor. “Everything is a metaphor,” he says. The joys and jolts of a person of color in the world of classical music.
This singer-songwriter and this composer met at artist Mark Kostabi’s house. “He’s attracted to lots of different kinds of people,” she says. “He brings them together, feeds them, gives them wine, and tells us to perform.“ Isn’t that pretty much the Island of Dr. Moreau? Music: Suzanne Vega, Bill Anderson, and the CompCord quartet. Presented with Composers Concordance and Marsyas Productions.
This graphic designer is admired for his decades as an art director at the New York Times, for his teaching, and for his books, including his most recent, Growing Up Underground,a memoir of his youth in the East Village of the sixties: ”It was disgusting, but in a good way.” Produced with the Type Directors Club, part of The One Club for Creativity. Music: Stephanie Jenkins.
The best medical outcome is that the patient doesn’t get sick in the first place, notes New York City's health commissioner, and yet, “We spend four trillion dollars on health care, and we spend about three cents of every dollar on prevention and public health. Something has to give.” He’s right, but what? Challenging! Presented with Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. Music: John Sherman.
As a poet and essayist (Inciting Joy), he is acutely in touch with his feelings, and yet he refers to “the many ways I try not to be aware of what’s breaking my heart.” A paradox reconciled, plus pickup basketball as a model of self-government, and the pawpaw as a model fruit. Produced with Orion magazine.
When he was 12, he joined the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham and was thrown in jail. At 15, he entered college, studied mathematics, and went on to lead the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, bringing legions of under-represented students to STEM studies and STEM professions. He is America's secret STEM mentor.
When he was 12, he joined the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham and was thrown in jail. At 15, he entered college, studied mathematics, and went on to lead the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, bringing legions of under-represented students to STEM studies and STEM professions. He is America's secret STEM mentor.
He served in the special forces in Iraq, as a defense policy advisor to NATO, and now teaches international relations at West Point, where a woman colleague gently explained male privilege. He got it: “I had this advantage, in that I’m kind of a fat-headed, broad-shouldered man with badges and gadgets.”
He served in the special forces in Iraq, as a defense policy advisor to NATO, and now teaches international relations at West Point, where a woman colleague gently explained male privilege. He got it: “I had this advantage, in that I’m kind of a fat-headed, broad-shouldered man with badges and gadgets.”
The CEO of PEN America, she has good news and bad news. “We’re not seeing a lot of book burning, thankfully, but we are seeing a kind of forest fire of book banning rippling it way across the United States.” Actually, that’s simply bad news.
The CEO of PEN America, she has good news and bad news. “We’re not seeing a lot of book burning, thankfully, but we are seeing a kind of forest fire of book banning rippling it way across the United States.” Actually, that’s simply bad news.
These musicians admire the Buddhist teacher and “spiritual entertainer” Alan Watts, despite his having led a flamboyantly imperfect life. Debauchery is not strictly required, however; saintliness, too, has its appeal. “If you can be a shining example on this earth, that’s absolutely inspiring as well,” Rachael tells the New York Baha’i Center.
These musicians admire the Buddhist teacher and “spiritual entertainer” Alan Watts, despite his having led a flamboyantly imperfect life. Debauchery is not strictly required, however; saintliness, too, has its appeal. “If you can be a shining example on this earth, that’s absolutely inspiring as well,” Rachael tells the New York Baha’i Center.
Affectionately called “Train Daddy,” he has run transit systems in London, Toronto, and New York, where few people in such jobs are affectionately called anything. He reflects with feeling on subways, seaports, and the almost moral duty to support your home team. “You can’t chop and change.”
Affectionately called “Train Daddy,” he has run transit systems in London, Toronto, and New York, where few people in such jobs are affectionately called anything. He reflects with feeling on subways, seaports, and the almost moral duty to support your home team. “You can’t chop and change.”
This costume designer, known for his work with playwright Taylor Mac, rejects the old saw, there’s no accounting for taste. “Yes, you account for taste. It is part of who you are. And maybe I’m judging you right now. No. I’m kidding.” I don’t think he’s kidding. We talk sense and sensibility and suits at Materials for the Arts.
This costume designer, known for his work with playwright Taylor Mac, rejects the old saw, there’s no accounting for taste. “Yes, you account for taste. It is part of who you are. And maybe I’m judging you right now. No. I’m kidding.” I don’t think he’s kidding. We talk sense and sensibility and suits at Materials for the Arts.
When Homer refers to the “wine-dark sea,” does he mean red, white, or rosé? He intends no color whatever, asserts the author of Greek to Me, who offers an ingenious alternative. Wine and the Greeks: in the ancient world, the modern world, the world of mythology. Presented with The Neal Rosenthal Group. Music: Avram Pengas.
When Homer refers to the “wine-dark sea,” does he mean red, white, or rosé? He intends no color whatever, asserts the author of Greek to Me, who offers an ingenious alternative. Wine and the Greeks: in the ancient world, the modern world, the world of mythology. Presented with The Neal Rosenthal Group. Music: Avram Pengas.
This writer is astute and amusing about manners, aging, and their intersection: “The shusher in the movie is always much louder than the person who’s talking; I’ve become a shusher.” Impressively, he has the self-awareness to recognize it, the courage to admit it, and the sense of humor to make it bearable.
This writer is astute and amusing about manners, aging, and their intersection: “The shusher in the movie is always much louder than the person who’s talking; I’ve become a shusher.” Impressively, he has the self-awareness to recognize it, the courage to admit it, and the sense of humor to make it bearable.
When this Grammy-winning drummer was just a kid, Wynton Marsalis performed at a local high school. “There were all these people in this auditorium, and I looked at Wynton, and it almost felt like everybody disappeared, and it was just me and him.” A musician meets his destiny. Presented with Ralph Farris of the quartet Ethel.
When this Grammy-winning drummer was just a kid, Wynton Marsalis performed at a local high school. “There were all these people in this auditorium, and I looked at Wynton, and it almost felt like everybody disappeared, and it was just me and him.” A musician meets his destiny. Presented with Ralph Farris of the quartet Ethel.
This climate economist is surprisingly optimistic about our onrushing environmental catastrophe. “Things are dire, yes, but things are moving much much faster in the positive direction than anyone would have imagined five, ten years ago.” A ray of hope! “Now, is it fast enough? No.” A ray of gloom. Produced with the New-York Historical Society’s Climate Café. Music: Mamie Minch.
“It’s grand, it’s palatial, it’s beautiful,” says the anthropologist-in-residence for the NY Department of Sanitation about a garage. She is happy in her work. A scholar looks at what we throw away and what it says about us. Presented with the Sanitation Foundation. Music: John Sherman.
This animator—you don’t know his name, but you know his work for MTV and SNL—is fascinated by Samuel Insull, Thomas Edison’s former assistant, who brought electricity to Chicago, achieved global fame, and whose name you (and I) also didn’t know. “There’s no reason he shouldn’t be up there with Carnegie and J. P. Morgan.” Music: Walter Hawkes.
This composer, much admired for his operas, contemplates a happy dichotomy: “These two places are perfectly balanced for the kind of work I do and the kind of life I lead.” Heaven and Hell? New York and Texas? No! His old-fashioned barn-studio and the newfangled MIT Media Lab. Technology, music, and more.
This environmental journalist has covered stories all over the world, but she seldom knows how they continue after she departs: “What keeps me up at night is that all these stories stay with me, and I don’t know the ending all the time.” A conversation about girls in India, maps of Texas, and falcons over Cape Cod. Produced with Orionmagazine.
As music students, they were sequestered in Juilliard’s fourth-floor rehearsal rooms. “The fourth floor is all dungeony and without sunlight,” says pianist Dugan. “It’s one of the worst, most magical places ever,” says violinist Yang. Today they have flourishing careers among other human beings. That’s the magic. A conversation at the Kaufman Music Center with two artists in residence.
I respect her as the dean of the Yale School of Architecture, admire her as a practicing architect, but flipped for her when she said, “There are two versions of the story, and both of them are true.” Not contradiction, nuance. The joys of complexity. Presented with the Center for Architecture. Music: Hubby Jenkins.
A former labor reporter for the New York Times, he is surprisingly optimistic: “When the first Starbucks voted to unionize in Buffalo back in December, that was a humongous deal.” Humongous! (A word that does not appear in his most recent book, Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor.)
I note with chagrin that while we’ve had many doctors on the show, she is our first nurse. In addition to being a practitioner, she’s worked on health policy at Georgetown and is a professor emerita at Hunter. “We like to tell our journalism colleagues that if you’re not interviewing a nurse, you’re likely missing the best part of the story.” She’s right. Except about my being a journalist.
When this improv artist—he created Freestyle Love Supreme with Lin-Manuel Miranda—received a guitar from his wife, he was eager to play at bedtime for their two young daughters. “They were like, ‘Could you stop? Could you just cuddle?’” The ups and downs, but mostly ups, of a performer’s life.
Esteemed as both a scholar and an activist, she’s spent nearly ninety years working for social justice, if you count her first few years, and I do: when she was four, she had a clear (and unpopular) position on the Soviet-Finnish war. She’s since revised it. Continuous rethinking—the mark of the true intellectual.
This heroic Brandeis professor explains how sexual-harassment law derives from civil-rights law: “There was the sense that, OK, now we’ve tackled one area of equality, we’ve prevailed to some extent, let’s build on it.” One right leads to another. Or used to. In ancient days. (Sigh.) Plus, the difference between baggage and luggage.
No first glimpse of a building was more exhilarating to me than his 1975 Best Products facade in Houston, designed with his firm, SITE. And he did it the old-fashioned way: “I’m probably the last architect on earth who still draws by hand.” Ideas and how they get that way, presented with the National Academy of Design.
Pairing a concert pianist with a stage magician means merging distinct performance traditions and can include tensions as well as triumphs. Perhaps that’s why their act is sometimes billed as Magic versus Music—a joke that is not entirely a joke. But what a show! Presented with Ralph Farris of the quartet Ethel.
He’s made a lot of films about war, from the Civil War to Vietnam, but his great themes are not death and destruction, he says: “Most of my films, despite the particular subject matter, besides the tragedy or the conflict, are ultimately about love.” He’s currently working on the Revolutionary War. It’s complicated. And delightfully so.
This naturalist and writer is wary of “bad people having their names attached to perfectly good birds.” Audubon’s warbler evokes not just an ornithologist but also a slave-owner. “We should remove all human names from birds and let the birds tell us who they are—by their appearance, their behavior, their song.” Bluebird, woodpecker, whippoorwill. Elegant! Produced with Orion magazine.
New York City’s health commissioner during the first two years of the pandemic—he stepped down on March 15—says he sees something admirable in our response: “We have gotten vaccinated not just to protect ourselves but to protect our communities.” Well, yes, if we have gotten vaccinated, says dour me, who sees something else. Produced with the New York City Municipal Archive. Music: Stephanie Coleman and Nora Brown.
He did much of the research for What it Took to Win: a History of the Democratic Party, in the Manuscript Reading Room at the Library of Congress. “I don’t believe in heaven, but, if there’s a heaven for historians, this would be right in the center of it.” Plus some thoughts on the late Richard Hofstadter and the early Bob Dylan.
To this restaurateur—Union Square Café, Shake Shack—hospitality is as important as food. “Hospitality exists when you feel like someone did something for you, not something to you.“ He’s not talking just restaurants. Food as metaphor, food as food. Produced with the Municipal Art Society.
Drawing for The Nation, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, he created stinging caricatures of powerful people. You’d think they’d complain. You’d be wrong. “These people are delighted to be made fun of by the ridiculous people who think that they’re so funny. They know just how powerless we are.” Reflections at age 92 on the happy life of the powerless artist.
When I moved to New York, in 1973, The Village Voice was at the center of downtown life, and her weekly photographs were at the center of the Voice,capturing not just the way things looked but also the way they felt. Today? “Now I’m in my seventies, and I no longer have a community.” Art, aging, and angst—presented with Pratt Institute.
Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human-rights organization in Montgomery, he embodies the radical power of hope, of working for social change, even when there is no evidence that you will succeed: “Hope is kind of an orientation of the spirit; it’s how you position yourself in places where there’s a lot of despair.”
H. T. Burleigh, Scott Joplin, and Hazel Scott were brilliantly accomplished, enormously successful, and shamefully overlooked, asserts this pianist, the host of NPR’s Amplify with Lara Downes. She deftly reconciles this paradox; you’ll stain the page with your tears. Or would if you were reading this on paper.
In his 91 years (admittedly, some spent a baby), he’s worked with Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes. He scored The Manchurian Candidate, was composer in residence for the New York Philharmonic, and made an omelet for Charlie Parker. Another in our series “On Collaboration,” presented with violist Ralph Farris.
Does learning more about music increase a listener's pleasure? This esteemed violinist is wary of any barriers to an audience. “We can all be touched by music. Music is something that belongs to all of us.” Sure. But I’m not proposing an admission’s test at Carnegie Hall, just asserting that knowledge is rewarded with joy. But hey, she’s Midori, and brilliant!
These architects, partners in life and work, are interested in how other couples manage that duality, particularly Michelle and Barack Obama, with whom they worked to design his Presidential Center. Good times at the Center for Architecture. Music: Stephanie Jenkins.
This Times journalist is particularly astute about New York’s Puerto Rican neighborhoods, so you’d think he’d be eager to see the new West Side Story. You’d be wrong. “I don’t like someone who doesn’t know my culture, doesn’t know my language, doesn’t know my community . . . I don’t really need to see West Side Story. I really don’t.” Who gets to tell our stories, and how are our stories told?
Forty years ago, she became a star in Dream Girls, when she was only two years old or perhaps slightly older. She’s developed some surprising ideas since then, including the belief that you should cheat at golf. Under certain circumstances. We talk Broadway and the back nine.
Since he achieved widespread acclaim for his trilogy of novels about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, his admiring readers have sent him all sorts of gifts—artwork, a meteorite. But has anyone sent him pie, and did he eat it? “I’m not recalling anything right now; I would have eaten it, though.” The weirdly intimate connection between reader and writer.
A high-school science teacher had him time the swing of a pendulum at various lengths. He found that graphing his measurements formed a parabola. “I got an uncanny chill. There’s something secret that I have just seen, that if you don’t know math, you can’t see.” A mathematician is born. Plus, life with Murray the dog. Music: Bobby Sanabria. Presented with the National Museum of Mathematics.
She won a Tony for the musical The Life, an Emmy for Sesame Street, and is the voice of Calliope in Disney’s Hercules. She’s just wrapping up a Broadway run—at age 70—in Chicago. And this: “They put me up on top of the dining room table, and I would sing and dance for my family.” In 2017. No, no, no: as a child. From entrée to encore!
He became widely known playing Rafael Solano on Jane the Virgin and went on to direct a series about young people facing terminal illness and create a podcast challenging ideas of masculinity. Busy guy. Then he had an unsettling insight: “What’s actually making me happy is preventing my own happiness.” Changes were made. A conversation courtesy of the New York Baha’i Center.
In describing her profession, the dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health cites Adam Smith, the dean of private property: “He said the role of government is to create the public good that we can only create together, in which everybody gains but nobody profits. And public health to me is the most salient, most personal, exemplar of that kind of public good.”
In 1976, Milton Glaser sent him to a Brooklyn disco for New York magazine, to illustrate an article that would become the movie Saturday Night Fever. Jim showed his paintings to editor Clay Felker. “Clay looked at them and he said, ‘Jim, what are you showing me here? I don’t get it. Nothing’s happening.’” But it all worked out. And not just for John Travolta. A conversation about illustrators, editors, and art directors, produced with Poster House.
This young astronomer studied astrophysics and folklore and now researches places in our galaxy where livable planets are most likely to form. She's as rational as the next astrophysicist but acknowledges an early enthusiasm: “I spent way too long, countless hours as a child, trying to move things with my mind, or control fire or the weather.” The making of a scientist.
This composer and guitar player says that joining with people to make social change is like joining with people to make music. “You’re finding people you work well with, who bring something to the table that you don’t.” A conversation about guitar music and transportation policy. Presented by violist Ralph Farris of the quartet Ethel.
This graphic artist, a cofounder of Champions Design—clients include Apple, the NBA, the Girl Scouts—traces his love for design to the baseball cards and comic books of his childhood. “I’ve been surrounded by these little gems all my life.” Produced with the Type Directors Club.
A journalist with expertise in China, Newsweek’s former Beijing bureau chief says, “The struggle between intellectuals and the merchant class continues in China, but at the moment it’s kind of like money trumps everything.” I’m glad I don’t live in a country like that. We defeated our intellectuals long ago. Produced with the China Institute.
An original cast member on Saturday Night Live (Connie Conehead!), she’s now a voice actor—Shrek, Finding Nemo. Her later-in-life pleasure: Coachella, but she won’t attend this year. “I can’t, I can’t, my knees just won’t take it any more.” We talk about phases of life and the inadequate seating at music festivals.
Many people share this writer’s admiration of John James Audubon as a naturalist and an artist, especially his magisterial Birds of America. “But fewer people know about him as a slave owner and a white supremacist,” she says. Birds, beauty, climate change, and racial justice: it’s complicated. And delightfully so. Produced with Orion Magazine.
His first feature-length documentary, The War Room, was Oscar-nominated. He won an Emmy for American High, a TV series. Years earlier he received this professional tip from his mentor, D. A. Pennebaker: “You’re not a director until you wake up screaming in the middle of the night.” Apparently I am a director. As are we all.
When he set out to become an actor, this Broadway great—Rent, Wicked, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels—was opposed by his conservative Catholic family. But they came around, even his Fox-watching father. “He loved Rent. My homophobic dad would come to Rent, probably once a month.” Tales of reconciliation. And show tunes.
A Russia specialist at the Brookings Institution, she testified at the House impeachment hearings with erudition, integrity, and courage. She got her start as a child dominoes hustler at a miners' pub in the north of England. “My granddad would have me play and bet on me, and every time I won I would get a ginger beer.” The making of a scholar.
This flutist and composer was born in Chicago, where her grandparents arrived during the Great Migration. “It wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely an upgrade from Mississippi.” There’s a slogan the visitors bureau won’t be using. A musician reflects on her home town and one of its sons. Another in our series On Collaboration with violist Ralph Farris of the quartet Ethel.
Having won the Pulitzer Prize for his play A Strange Loop, what will he do next? One possibility, move to Wyoming. “I’d get my house somewhere, get my shotgun, if I needed it, and sit on my porch in my rocking chair.” An eastern sophisticate contemplates the West, Tori Amos, and soap opera. Presented with Federal Hall and the New York Harbor Conservancy.
Before embracing a more salubrious life in Los Angeles, he rollicked through a years-long spree back east. “New York is paradise if you’re a drunk, and a very challenging place to be sober.” A slogan inexplicably rejected by the New York Visitors Bureau. This master of electronic dance music talks about religion, wilderness, and David Bowie’s hat.
This actor and singer won a Grammy, an Emmy, and a Tony for The Color Purple. She played Harriet Tubman in Harriet and Aretha Franklin in Genius. Is there anything she can’t do? “I will not be releasing an album of Hawaiian guitar music; I don’t think I can get nearly good enough to do that.” Hey, if she turned her mind to it . . .
He is the writer of Drafted: A Memoir of the '60s and the screenplays for The Boys from Brazil (Gregory Peck) Fort Apache, the Bronx (Paul Newman), and Cocktail (Tom Cruise). “I definitely learned how to deal with people who were tougher than me, smarter than me, stronger than me; I had to find my way in that world.” He means the schoolyard. He also means Hollywood. Rough worlds!
“I have no interest in completing projects,” says this architect, winner of the Pritzker Prize. “A lot of our stuff just keeps moving; it refuses to have an edge, a boundary; it’s in constant change.” For someone who feels that way, he’s completed an awful lot of them, and to great acclaim. Presented with the Center for Architecture.
Every musician relishes applause — who doesn't? — but the principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic also finds value in an audience booing. “To know that someone was infuriated by a performance or a set or something like that is kind of enjoyable in a sick sort of way, too.” The joys of a passionately engaged audience.
She heads New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, safeguarding 36,000 buildings. She loves them all, of course, but one material has a special claim on her heart. “We have terra cotta everywhere in this city, architectural terra cotta. It’s structural, it’s non-structural, it’s ornamental.” That fabulous clay, that magical goo, that stuff that makes Manhattan. A conversation on the built environment. Produced with the Municipal Art Society.
To experience art does not mean to contemplate an immutable exquisite object, but to cultivate a relationship, says this dancer/choreographer. “It’s similar to what you get from long-term friendships or marriage or family.” Maybe not my family, but I see what she means. Introduced by Ralph Farris, violist in the quartet Ethel, and creator of Co-Lab, a virtual conference on collaboration. He and she have teamed up delightfully.
One way to describe art is to note that it has beauty but not utility. This poet rejects that dichotomy, especially when it comes to everyday objects. “Often, things that are domestic are diminished because they are connected to females.” She loves things that are both beautiful and useful: quilts, fans, teapots. A conversation with the winner of the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize, produced with the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center.
Author of The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, he is as sophisticated an intellectual as any of his colleagues at The New Yorker. The book that set him on his path? A Hardy Boys mystery, The Secret of the Old Mill. “I read this, and my heart was pounding. And I thought, I want to do that. I want to write things that will make people’s hearts beat.” And he does.
This actor, perhaps best known as Dan Humphrey in Gossip Girl and Joe Goldberg in the Netflix series You, is modest about his craft. “The only thing that’s ours as actors is how we feel as we say lines we didn’t write, as we wear clothes we didn’t purchase or even choose.” The importance of emotional honesty, the burden of dubious sport jackets. Presented with the New York City Baha’i Center.
This terrific graphic designer loves, without nostalgia, the world of print magazines where she began. She cautions her students, denizens of the online realm, “Everything looks cool on screen.” Her prescription: “Buy a printer, buy a printer, buy a printer.” The seductive deceptions of the digital, the bracing revelations of the physical. Presented with the Type Directors Club.
When this sculptor creates a statue of a historical figure―Sojourner Truth, Ella Fitzgerald, Teddy Roosevelt―she learns a lot about her subject. While conceiving a more metaphoric project, Victory, she made a disconcerting discovery: there are no Black angels in public art. “Are you trying to say there are no Black people in heaven?” she demanded. “What are you trying to say?” Produced with the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center.
Some scholars toil away their lives, humbly adding their mote to the supply of human knowledge. Then there was Selma Barkham. “She was responsible for finding out something about Newfoundland that nobody had ever known,” says Annie Proulx. A fine writer–The Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain–tells the story of an extraordinary scholar. Presented with the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
This sculptor, perhaps best known for a series of piece resembling captured tornadoes, describes how her darker feelings affect her work: “As artists, we are very sensitive to pain, but we don’t just use it as something to whine about, but as a probing tool.” No whining? No wonder I’m not an artist. Well, that and my lack of talent. A conversation with one who is.
His most recent book, Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth, is surprisingly upbeat for a book whose title includes the words “rescuing” and "heal." I discovered him through an earlier work, The Experience of Place, in honor of which we break format and, instead of person place thing, talk place place place.
She is as sophisticated as any architect working today, as her glorious Aqua Tower attests, yet she still learns from birds. “Not to build a building that looks like a nest but to consider what’s available, what is nearby, what could be put to use.” She’s also learned from Marcus Aurelius, although he was not capable of sustained flight. Presented by the Center for Architecture.
She is a fashion designer whose work is in the permanent collection of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her guiding precept: “I just like the clothes to be useful, you know? That’s really the basic thing.” What I could use is pants that cook my dinner, but I’m not very sophisticated. I dress for radio. Presented with the Municipal Art Society.
When he was a boy, his great-uncle Buckminster Fuller often came to the house. “He would clear his throat halfway through dinner, then stand up and talk for three hours.” When Marvel was a young man, he stayed in Isamu Noguchi’s studio. “In return for living there, I cooked for him on Sundays.” (As a young man, I crashed on my cousin Sheldon’s couch.) An architect and his early influences, presented with the Center for Architecture.
At age nine, he saw a Leonard Bernstein Young People’s Concert featuring Dmitiri Shostakovich and something happened. In a good way. Trauma free. A conversation with the Pulitzer-winning composer, introduced by Ralph Farris, violist in the quartet Ethel and creator of Co-Lab, a virtual conference on collaboration. And these guys have. Splendidly.
The Wall Street Journal’s language columnist plays with our format, offering Word Word Word – and more elegantly still, the same word for each segment: orange. Then he makes a painful disclosure: “I myself am color-blind, and so I’m not completely attuned to all the nuances of it.” Hey, Beethoven was deaf, and he got the job done. Ben, too.
A fine writer and ardent environmentalist, he counts himself lucky to have worked at The New Yorker with (for? near?) William Shawn, “the greatest editor of the twentieth century.” What contributed to his mastery? “Once he had writers in his stable, he was quite interested in what they were interested in.” Professional skill as a manifestation of individual character.
He’s created buildings from Montreal (Habitat 67) to Singapore (Jewel Changi Airport), but Jerusalem -- the center of three Abrahamic religions, where people have lived for 6,000 years – is different: “It takes an act of real arrogance to build in a city like that. It was quite emotionally wrenching.” Presented by the Center for Architecture.
This trumpet player has sold 72 million albums worldwide, including five number ones, and also founded A&M records. Ordinarily we’d talk about his person, place, and thing, but instead we devote our conversation to his person, songwriter Burt Bacharach--73 top-forty hits. One enormously successful musician talks about another, with respect and affection.
This trumpeter and composer is celebrated for his film scores, especially for Spike Lee. His opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones is slated to open the new season at the Met. In this episode, we break format; instead of person, place, and thing, we talk song, song, and song. A conversation about three pieces of music.
Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of the celebrated memoir Memorial Drive. As a child, she received three books from her father, meant to cultivate her literary sensibility and deepen her understanding of the world, particularly about race and class: Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby, Light in August. If you were to pick three, what would they be?
After serving as Secretary of Labor, he resumed teaching at UC Berkeley, gracefully relinquishing power, like Cincinnatus returning to the plow. Or not. “Actually,“ he says, “I have much more power as a professor than I did as a cabinet secretary.” Training a student army in the hills of Oakland? Encouraging rigorous thought? One of those.
I expected this writer-director, executive producer of the Apollo Theater, to be insightful about theater and film, and she is. I did not expect her to mount a staunch defense of comic books. If she’s not entirely persuasive on this topic (to geezerly me), she’s thoroughly intriguing.
He double-majored in economics and digital media, and, unlike those in show business who enjoy the show but decry the business, “I love the business as much as I love the creative, as much as I love the technical.” The result? Black Love, the TV series he and his wife, Codie Elaine Oliver, created, is in its fourth season. His documentary, 40 Years a Prisoner, opened this fall. Your results may vary; consult your guidance counselor.
She’s choreographed for everyone from Mikhail Baryshnikov to David Byrne. So where does she get her ideas? “I always loved this quote by Rousseau; he said, ‘My mind only works with my legs.’ Me too! When I am a stuck, I just take a walk, and something unlatches.” Movement creates thought; thought creates movement.
The author of How to Be BlackandHow to Citizen, he's worked at The Onion, The Daily Show, and the Obama White House. More impressive, he’s met the whittler’s challenge: carve a chain or a ball in a cage from a single piece of wood. “What I really wanted to do was to make a ball in a cage hanging from a chain and then hang it around my neck like Flavor Flav.”
He calls himself “a full-on, born-again atheist,” and yet this dancer and choreographer approaches his work reverently, in part as a quest for transcendence, honoring this ecumenical doctrine: “Most religions agree with don’t kill anybody, and I agree with that.” A conversation about classical Indian dance, modern American music, and the greatest cooking utensil of all time.
She says, “Virginia Hall was the first female field agent―spy―for Churchill’s secret army, the British SOE, and the spy the Nazis dubbed the most dangerous of all Allied spies in World War II.” She should know; she wrote and stars in A Call To Spy, a feature film about Hall’s exploits.
“I identify as a clown,” he says, understating his range as a performer, having portrayed George on Broadway in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf and Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street in Elmo's World. And yet even a career as luminous as his has its disappointments: “I once asked John Cleese to play Pozzo in Waiting for Godot. Wouldn’t it have been great? But we just never made it work.”
He is a founding partner of COOKFOX Architects, known for green buildings, including the Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park, and the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. During our conversation he said, “Hope doesn’t disappoint.” He also said, “stinking, rotting, flaming, sliding, hell on earth.” Something for everyone, via the Center for Architecture.
A regular on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR’s Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!, he has a historic-homes preference: “I like the houses of the presidents that you can’t remember were actually president, the guys between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.” And they’re a great fit for his other project, Mobituaries, what with their being, you know, dead.
He is a Pulitzer-winning architecture critic whose most recent book is Ballpark: Baseball in the American City. My favorite of his least recent books is The City Observed: New York -- a lovely blend of the scholarly and the personal. Hosted by the Center for Architecture.
Does genre give music history and context or is it merely confining? “Genre is BS. I’m sorry. It just is,” says this founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and artistic director of Silkroad. The story of Black string band music -- fiddles, banjos, and Jane Austen.
She is not the only architect to see her work as a force for social justice, but she is one of the few to pursue graduate work in public policy to improve the interactions of designers and the officials who can make their visions a reality. A conversation at the Center for Architecture with the president of the National Organization of Minority Architects.
Admired for both comedy (30 Rock) and drama (Streetcar), he is an astute observer of other actors and once wrote a fan letter to Tom Courtenay for his work in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Courtenay replied, “How odd that you would take the time to write this to me about this film I did so long ago.” No good deed...
She has produced more than 90 plays on and off Broadway, from The Normal Heart to Kinky Boots. Producers open shows and close shows. She enjoys the rare distinction of having unclosed a show. “I went to the theater one night, just quietly by myself, before half-hour, and I walked over to the board where the closing notice was posted, and I tore it down.” That was Paula Vogel’s Indecent. It ran for six more weeks to packed houses. Great story. Listen.
Celebrated as a performer and composer, this Columbia professor is particularly noted for his computer music that draws on artificial intelligence. So is the computer a tool for making sound or a tool for thinking? Neither. “It’s actually a tool for investigating subjectivity.” A conversation made possible by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Even his setups are funny, like this: “There was a taxidermy kiwi at a store in London.” Or this: “Everybody in the family convinced the youngest child that if she was naked, she was invisible.” Funny, a bit cruel, and entirely delightful. His new book, The Best of Me, will be or perhaps has been published the first week in November. Enjoy this conversation, made possible by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
For decades, he has provided astute political commentary with an admirable knack for seeing contemporary events in historic perspective. During our conversation, he prudently contextualized some of his observations, “when this nightmare is over,” referring either to the coronavirus or to the current administration, but which one? Listen.
The greatest gift to any humorist is a parent who is impossible to please. This writer, a co-creator of Late Night With David Letterman, describes a note in her mother’s copy of David Copperfield. “It said, ‘Not one of his best works. I was disappointed.’ If she was giving Dickens a hard time, what did I think that I was going to get?” You can enjoy these delightful scenes of childhood in her graphic memoir, We Saw Scenery: The Early Diaries of Merrill Markoe..
This celebrated Broadway actor--The Secret Garden, The Music Man, Mary Poppins--much admired for her glorious voice, sees parallels between cooking and theater. Both are ephemeral. A recipe is akin to a script: neither is the thing itself; each provides instructions for creating the thing. None of this contradicts audience etiquette: no eating during the performance, and no cooking at your seat.
His work with Talking Heads lofted him to the empyrean, and he just kept going, making art, music, movies, books. He’s been particularly fortunate in his collaborators – Brian Eno, Robert Wilson, Twyla Tharp. Spike Lee filmed his Broadway show, American Utopia, which streams on HBO this month. Clearly, one of the silliest things F. Scott Fitzgerald said was, “There are no second acts in American Lives.” I’m waiting for an apology letter.
She is the author of The Detroit Project, a three-play cycle, and the Broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud--The Life and Times of the Temptations, another kind of Detroit story. Even at its most ferocious, her work is suffused with love. “Love is not approval or agreement or acquiescence. Love is challenge, love is provocation, agitation, and pushing us toward being better.” It’s exhausting, but it’s love.
She directed and designed costumes for the stage version of The Lion King, seen by 90 million people in 100 cities, attributing its success, in part, to its use of puppets. “I actually think people are often more touched by a puppet’s gesture than a human’s.” Make up your own Trump/Putin joke.
When the admired writer -- Election, Little Children, The Leftovers -- was off at college, he got some unsettling news from his beloved cousin Mike: “He was a really talented indie rocker, but he ended up with a bunch of his friends playing in a wedding band.” This became the basis for The Wishbones, whose protagonist regards such bands as emitting “the unmistakable odor of mediocrity.” The cruel judgment of youth. The deeper sympathy of later life.
This fine performer -- Ain’t Misbehavin’, The Wiz, Hadestown -- notes that Shakespeare has much to say about ourtimes, including “Macbeth is seen as a great killing machine,” alluding to the virus, the police, or the president. We find the metaphors we need. Our first episode made with Broadway on Demand, the video version can be seen – seen! – on their site beginning 9/14 and heard on ours immediately and on the radio any minute now.
A neurologist, he kept a phrenology head in his office as a reminder of human folly. “The human mind is filled with instances of ridiculous ideas which have taken hold.” And by the way, in the spring of 1954, he became the first man to run a four-minute-mile. A conversation from our vault, refurbished to meet todays demanding standards. In audio quality if not in political leadership.
She’s best known for her sharp and funny portrayal of the foul-mouthed Susie Greene on Curb Your Enthusiasm, an overnight success she achieved after decades as a working comic. We met when she did the warmup for The Rosie O’Donnell Show, displaying the rare ability to induce laughter in the morning. A recut conversation from 2011.
The celebrated talk-show host has surprising affection for both the German Luger and the samurai sword -- such martial objects, such a humane person. A conversation from the archives, remixed, remastered, remarkable. (Rebarbative? Recalcitrant?)
This founding partner of Kliment Halsband Architects teamed up with the head of surgery at Mount Sinai to create a hospital in Uganda and fight crime in outer space. One of those. The former. Their solar-powered facility, in the village of Kyabirwa, provides surgical services for a long underserved community. A conversation at (in the Zoomian sense) the Center for Architecture.
A remastered conversation from the vault with a former New York City health commissioner, who regarded her work as part of a broader fight for social justice, not surprising given her family history: her parents are lifelong activists who met at a demonstration against a segregated restaurant, my idea of a love story. We spoke at the Van Alen Institute in 2017 about public health and urban design. Music: Sam Reider. Plus a bonus segment from Garry Trudeau. It all fits together. Really.
Like millions of his admirers, I encountered him through his videos of his dogs, Man Ray, then Fay Ray, then her descendants – odd, surprising, sometimes funny, always full of feeling. Curiously, he used to say horrible things about video art. “That’s how a young artist thinks. I’m much more generous now as an old artist, less cranky than I was as a cranky young artist.”
He was still in college when he created his smart and funny comic strip, "Doonesbury," and has since sent his characters to a disconcerting number of wars without disheartening the readers. His most recent book is Lewser: More Doonesbury in the Time of Trump, which nearly disheartens me. Laughing through my tears. Of rage.
A reporter and editor for The New York Times for more than 30 years, he began at the Daily News, in the seventies, when the city faced financial collapse, terrorist bombs, a blackout, a psychotic serial killer, and Studio 54. “What a time to be city editor of a tabloid newspaper in New York!” He was 28. A conversation at the Center for Architecture.
For decades, she ran HBO Documentary Films, producing over a thousand and winning more prime-time Emmies than any other person, clearly reflecting her love of the form. “No! I hate documentaries. I didn’t like documentaries at all. I wanted to do things that people watched; I wanted to get patted on the back; I wanted to make money.” And yet . . .
This singer, songwriter, and author didn’t have an easy start. “I had a chaotic childhood, to put it mildly, an abnormal childhood.” Then she discovered Laura Ingalls Wilder. Little Therapist on the Prairie? Nope. A guide to an orderly life. Or so it seemed to a kid. The result: an impressively accomplished adult.
She is an admired actor (West Wing), but it’s her playwriting (Fires in the Mirror), drawing on the techniques of documentary film, that first caught my attention. Just starting as a writer, she met a woman at a party. “And she said I’m going to give you three questions you can ask people. Well, they changed the course of my life. “
An esteemed historian (This Republic of Suffering) and president emeritus of Harvard, she suggests that the widespread misuse of “disinterested” to mean “uninterested” rather than "objective" reflects a broad undervaluing of objectivity, open-mindedness, and intellectual honesty. Seldom has so bleak an insight given me such delight.
Our conversation ranged over modern boxers, Victorian writers, one-room schools, and that nearly mythical creature, that unicorn of politics, the moderate Republican. (I hope to see one someday.) It was a treat to engage with someone interested in, well, everything.
She asserts, boldly if not entirely persuasively, that the supreme literary form is the advice column. She is rightly celebrated for hers, Ask E. Jean, which ran in Elle magazine from 1993 through 2019, and for winning the Miss Cheerleader USA title in 1964, the invariable precursor of an esteemed career in journalism.
From time to time someone suggests that I be a guest on the show and describe my own person, place, and thing. I reply, maybe in season ten, my euphemism for never. Then I smile and add, sure, if we’re confined to our homes by a horrible pandemic exacerbated by a criminally incompetent White House and can’t have real guests do live shows. Well, it’s come to that. The hunter becomes the hunted. The fish becomes the chips. Or something.
She’s been with the New York City Ballet for 30 years, rising from apprentice to principal to associate artistic director. “When I moved to New York at 15, by myself, I moved into Jacques d’Amboise’s home. He rented the third floor of his brownstone to four young ballet students.” The world’s coolest boarding house. I want the sit-com rights to that story. This is our first pandemic Zoom episode. Forgive the audio quality and my occasional despondence.
He leads New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection, managing the finest municipal water system in America, despite much of it flowing through century-old cast-iron pipes. He told the Municipal Archives, “The pipe under 42nd Street goes back to the time when John Wilkes Booth’s brother was acting as Hamlet on Broadway.” Yes, he dates infrastructure by Shakespearean actor. Music: Rachel Stern
He wrote Ken Russell’s Women in Love, geeze, 50 years ago, then wrote plays (The Normal Heart) and novels (Faggots). Amidst the emerging AIDS epidemic, he helped found the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and Act Up. Accomplished, right? Not according to him. “I feel like I failed,” he says. A life examined.
He is a co-founder of KPF, architects of buildings worldwide, including One Vanderbilt, rising near Grand Central. “It’s very tall at over 1,400 feet, but it’s not the tallest building in New York, and we weren’t trying to make it the tallest,” he tells the Center for Architecture. “We didn’t want to get into a height war.” And yet KPF created 7 of the world’s 10 tallest buildings. A pretty paradox. Music: Hubby Jenkins.
During the pandemic we’ll air some pertinent past episodes. This one features AIDS activist Peter Staley, who, 40 years ago, encountered Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Staley didn’t much like Fauci but grew to admire him, as do all of us who are not the president. Plus a segment from Dr. Tom Farley, Philadelphia's health commissioner. Music: Robert Duncan and Karl Meyer.
This cartoonist and her cousin, our featured musical guest Jill Sobule, were raised in Colorado, with ties to a disastrous nineteenth-century scheme that sent Jewish immigrants westward from the slums of the Lower East Side. Great story. Great song. (Somehow the words “disastrous scheme” evoke the White House. I can’t imagine why.)
She’s created graphic identities for Citibank, Tiffany, the Public Theater, and, well, everybody, but will be remembered for one album cover, she tells the Museum of Arts and Design. “It was dumb; it was a dumb idea; the whole thing was dumb.” The triumphs and discontents of a great designer. Music: Piedmont Bluz.
Working on the food initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation convinced him that, “You can’t shift people’s diets if you can’t make it delicious. Food is not just fuel.” A conversation at the New York Baha’i Center about health, hedonism, and social justice. Music: Stephanie Jenkins
As U.S. courts veer to the right, lesser souls (OK, me) grow discouraged, but the president of the International Women’s Health Coalition is undaunted: “There’s lots of things you can do. The women’s movement is very resourceful.” Smart, committed, and cheerful? I'm so confused. Music: Dan Kassel
She entered UCLA law school in 1952, one of only two women in her class, and went on to become a dean at USC’s law school, a federal appellate court judge, and a skeptic of our adversary system: “There had to be a better way to resolve conflict.” And she found it.
A champion of citizen scientists – sophisticated but uncredentialed – she cofounded the NYC Bat Group and conducts bat tours of Central Park for the Museum of Natural History. A conversation at KGB’s Red Room. Produced with Lori Schwarz. Music: Mike Casey
He directs prison health services at Bellevue Hospital, treating inmates from New York City jails. “We have mostly chest pains, broken jaws, kidney failure, altered mental status.” Broken jaws. From fights. Delivering high-quality care in high-stress circumstances. Music: the Wisterians. Produced with Dr. Ruth Oratz.
Her years as Middle East correspondent for NPR News gave her strong feelings about accountability, the rule of law, and handbags: “This lovely accessory is a bag made out of Saddam Hussein’s bedroom curtains.” A conversation at the Princeton Public Library. Music: Dan Kassel.
This composer and musician admires the Dalai Lama but got a little anxious when asked to sing for him: “They locked me in my dressing room…then there was a monk that was sitting next to me kind of glaring.” A conversation at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Music: Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Carmen Rockwell.