Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen
326 episodes - English - Latest episode: 18 days ago - ★★★★ - 42 ratingsIn 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/
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Episodes
Patrick Page
July 05, 2024 18:17 - 27 minutes - 38 MBEven 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.
Thomas Gluck and Charlie Ortiz
June 30, 2024 10:38 - 27 minutes - 29.9 MBGLUCK+ 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.
Fred Gitner
June 22, 2024 17:43 - 27 minutes - 34.7 MBHe 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
Santino Fontana
June 15, 2024 17:30 - 27 minutes - 40 MBIt 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.
Pete McBride
June 08, 2024 18:05 - 27 minutes - 30.3 MBHow 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.
Virginia Rauh
June 01, 2024 17:50 - 27 minutes - 28.5 MBThis 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.
Eddie Izzard
May 25, 2024 18:09 - 27 minutes - 28 MBHer 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!
Elizabeth Streb
May 18, 2024 16:39 - 27 minutes - 35.5 MB“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.”
Marc Norman
May 12, 2024 11:01 - 27 minutes - 37.9 MBThis 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.
Eduardo Vilaro
May 04, 2024 18:42 - 27 minutes - 30.6 MB“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.
Ann Goldstein
April 27, 2024 13:04 - 27 minutes - 28.1 MBThe 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.
Michael Henry Adams
April 20, 2024 10:27 - 27 minutes - 27.9 MBWhen 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
Len Elmore
April 13, 2024 11:56 - 27 minutes - 39.1 MB“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.)
Rachel Wax
April 06, 2024 11:08 - 27 minutes - 30.3 MBThe 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
Robin Steinberg and David Feige
March 30, 2024 13:29 - 27 minutes - 26.6 MBThey 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.”
Pádraig Ó Tuama
March 23, 2024 12:28 - 27 minutes - 35.6 MBPoet, 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.
Adrian Benepe
March 16, 2024 18:03 - 27 minutes - 37.4 MBThe 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
Ian Niederhoffer
March 09, 2024 19:36 - 27 minutes - 37.7 MBMusic 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.
David Leonhardt
March 02, 2024 13:14 - 27 minutes - 30.2 MBWriter 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.
Joan Kron
February 24, 2024 17:36 - 27 minutes - 29.5 MBI’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.
Michael Miscione
February 17, 2024 11:49 - 27 minutes - 31.1 MBThis 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.
Peter Riegert
February 10, 2024 11:36 - 27 minutes - 28.7 MBAs 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.
Kia Weatherspoon
February 03, 2024 12:24 - 27 minutes - 36.8 MBThis 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.
Eran Chen
January 27, 2024 13:02 - 27 minutes - 37.8 MBThis 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
Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi
January 20, 2024 14:45 - 27 minutes - 32.7 MBSome 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.
Jennifer Johnson Cano
January 13, 2024 11:45 - 27 minutes - 31.9 MBAs 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.
Kelley Girod
January 06, 2024 12:05 - 27 minutes - 29.3 MBAlthough 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
Robert Bank
December 30, 2023 18:58 - 27 minutes - 37.7 MBThe 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
Dwight Garner
December 09, 2023 19:47 - 27 minutes - 34 MBThis 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.
Joshua Jay
December 02, 2023 18:29 - 27 minutes - 29.3 MBThis 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.
Fernanda Chandoha
November 24, 2023 16:20 - 27 minutes - 28.1 MBHer 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
Timothy Goodman
November 18, 2023 13:40 - 27 minutes - 37 MBIn 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
Ken Smith
November 10, 2023 20:16 - 27 minutes - 33.9 MBSpeaking 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.
Bruce Adolphe
November 04, 2023 11:52 - 27 minutes - 29.9 MBThis 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.
Alan Shayne
October 29, 2023 13:08 - 27 minutes - 27.5 MBAs 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.
Hubby Jenkins
October 21, 2023 13:34 - 27 minutes - 34.7 MBThis 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.
Elizabeth Rush
October 14, 2023 12:02 - 27 minutes - 30 MBHer 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.
Lynn Nottage and Jonathan Lethem
October 07, 2023 12:02 - 27 minutes - 32.4 MBLifelong 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.
Richard Russo
September 30, 2023 11:15 - 27 minutes - 36.3 MBA 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.
Elizabeth Alexander
September 23, 2023 13:45 - 27 minutes - 30.4 MBThis 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.
Noreen Doyle
September 16, 2023 13:19 - 27 minutes - 33.9 MBThe 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.
Steve Sarowitz
September 09, 2023 16:42 - 27 minutes - 40.1 MBThe 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.
Rob Snyder
September 02, 2023 10:35 - 27 minutes - 29.4 MB“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.
Luke McEndarfer
July 22, 2023 11:35 - 27 minutes - 39.7 MBEarly 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.
Al Franken
July 15, 2023 16:30 - 27 minutes - 31.2 MBA 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.
Dawn Pinnock
July 08, 2023 16:12 - 27 minutes - 33.8 MBFollowing 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.
Kate Orff
July 01, 2023 17:04 - 27 minutes - 29.1 MBThrough 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.
Michael Repper
June 24, 2023 10:35 - 27 minutes - 40 MBHe’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.
Anthony Fauci
June 17, 2023 10:42 - 27 minutes - 28.8 MBHe 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.
Wynton Marsalis
June 11, 2023 10:12 - 27 minutes - 31.3 MBThis 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.