x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

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

J. J. Sedelmaier

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/07/09

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.

en

27:31

Tod Machover

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/07/02

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.

en

27:31

Meera Subramanian

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/06/25

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 Orion magazine.

en

27:31

Peter Dugan and Charles Yang

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/06/18

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.

en

27:31

Deborah Berke

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/06/11

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.

en

27:31

Steven Greenhouse

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/06/04

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.)

en

27:31

Diana Mason

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/05/28

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.

en

27:31

Anthony Veneziale

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/05/21

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.

en

27:31

Frances Fox Piven

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/05/14

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.

en

27:31

Anita Hill

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/05/07

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.

en

27:31

James Wines

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/04/30

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.

en

27:31

Raja Rahman and Jarrett Parker

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/04/23

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.

en

27:31

Ken Burns

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/04/17

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.

en

27:31

Drew Lanham

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/04/09

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.

en

27:31

Dr. Dave Ashok Chokshi

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/04/02

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.

en

27:31

Michael Kazin

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/03/26

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.

en

27:31

Danny Meyer

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/03/19

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.

en

27:31

Ed Sorel

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/03/12

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.

en

27:31

Sylvia Plachy

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/03/05

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.

en

27:31

Bryan Stevenson

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/02/26

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.”

en

189 results

Similar Podcasts

射後不理＃爽就好了

咪咪 & 淳淳

Therapy Gecko

iHeartPodcasts

百靈果 News

Bailingguo News

Old Time Radio Comedy

solgoodmedia.com

The Hard Yarns Podcast

Cameron Branch and Daniel Delby