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PODCAST

Person Place Thing with 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/

comedy comedy interviews

All Episodes

27:31

Lorraine Frazier

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2023/01/14

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.

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27:31

Ammon Shea

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2023/01/07

“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.

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27:31

Hernan Diaz

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/12/31

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.

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27:31

Anthony Davis

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/12/10

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.

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27:31

Davóne Tines

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/12/03

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.

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27:31

Suzanne Vega and Gene Pritsker

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/11/27

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.

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27:31

Steven Heller

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/11/19

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.

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27:31

Ashwin Vasan

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/11/12

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.

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27:31

Ross Gay

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/11/04

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.

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27:31

Freeman Hrabowski

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/10/29

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.

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27:31

Lt. Col. Jordan Becker

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/10/22

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.”

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27:31

Suzanne Nossel

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/10/15

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.

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27:31

Rachael Price & Taylor Ashton

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/10/08

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.

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27:31

Andy Byford

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/10/01

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.”

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27:31

Machine Dazzle

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/09/24

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.

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27:31

Mary Norris

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/09/17

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.

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27:31

Henry Alford

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/09/10

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.

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27:31

Ulysses Owens Jr.

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/09/03

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.

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27:31

Gernot Wagner

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/07/23

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.

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27:31

Robin Nagle

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/07/16

“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.

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189 results

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