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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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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27:31

Lara Downes

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/02/19

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.

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27:31

David Amram

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/02/12

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.

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27:31

Midori

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/02/05

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!

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27:31

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/01/29

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.

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27:31

David Gonzalez

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/01/22

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?

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27:31

Jennifer Holliday

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/01/15

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.

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27:31

Madison Smartt Bell

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/01/08

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.

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27:31

Steven Strogatz

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2022/01/01

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.

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27:31

Lillias White

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen ·

2021/12/25

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!

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180 results

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