Sustainable business practices can make a company more profitable, so why resist them? Ignorance? Madness? Alien mind-control? A deft explanation from the former president of the Rainforest Alliance and current director of the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business. Music from Sid Whelan and Trevor Bridgewater. Photo by Kahn, courtesy of the NYU photo bureau. Continue reading »
Author Archives: Randy Cohen
Episode 275: Mierle Laderman Ukeles
The shift in usage from “garbageman” to “sanitation worker” was not cosmetic but an acknowledgement of what – and who — helps a city survive, says the artist-in-residence of the New York Department of Sanitation. Music from Hubby Jenkins. Photo by Harry Wilks. Continue reading »
Episode 274: Signe Nielsen
This landscape architect embraces the principles that underpin Olmsted’s Central Park. “He wanted the wealthy to mix with the poor; this was supposed to be a place where everybody came together.” Public parks as an institution of democracy, a conversation at the Center for Architecture. Music from Hubby Jenkins. Photo: Harry Wilks Continue reading »
Episode 273: Chip Kidd part two
Our conversation with this terrific designer was part of the Museum of Arts and Design’s exhibition Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: Punk Graphics 1976-1986. The musician was Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group, a luminary of that era, who made a shocking revelation: he played in a fraternity band. Continue reading »
Episode 272: Chip Kidd part one
He created book jackets for Michael Crichton to John Updike, without bloody conflicts: “It’s the author’s book, and if I’m not taking them where they want with the cover, they have every right to say so, and then we figure it out.” Talent and humility. Imagine my disappointment. A conversation at the Museum of Arts … Continue reading »
Episode 271: Art Spiegelman
Best known for Maus, his graphic novel about the holocaust, he’s drawn dozens of New Yorker covers, including the black-on-black memorial for the World Trade Center. He is less known for creating Garbage Pail Kids. High Art, low Art? A conversation at the American Academy of Arts and Letters with music from the Wisterians. Continue reading »
Episode 270: Davida Smyth
When Antonie van Leeuwenhoek devised his microscope in 1676, it was not to study bacteria, says this microbiologist: “He designed it so he could look at thread; he was a draper.” Thus an amateur – a tailor – sparked a scientific revolution. A conversation with a champion of citizen scientists at KGB’s Red Room, produced … Continue reading »
Episode 269: Eric Bogosian
On a Berlin sidewalk in 1921, Soghomon Tehlirian assassinated Talaat Pasha, an architect of the Armenian genocide. Vengence or justice? Actor and writer Eric Bogosian talks about history, identity, and the cultural implications of curly hair. A conversation at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, with music from Zoë Aqua and Mattias Kaufmann. Continue reading »
Episode 268: Michael Kimmelman
The architecture critic for the Times loves the winding streets of Greenwich Village where he was raised, yet he also admires the city’s street grid: “New York makes itself so comprehensible and available to people, partly through the grid.” Urban design as a force for democracy. A conversation at the Center for Architecture with music from … Continue reading »
Episode 267: Carl Krebs
Perhaps best known for his work on the September 11 Museum, he is a partner at Davis Brody Bond, architects of record for the new Irish Arts Center, currently under construction. We spoke around the corner at the old Irish Arts Center – the one with a roof and walls and floors. Music: Caitlin Warbelow. Photo: Harry Wilks. Continue reading »
Episode 266: Robert Fullilove
As a college kid in 1964, he went to Mississippi for Freedom Summer. Later he began working with the Bard Prison Initiative, and he’s now a dean at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. In a sense, his work remains the same: the pursuit of of social justice. Music from Valerie and Ben Turner: Piedmont Bluz. Continue reading »
Episode 265: Russell Shorto
Holland’s seventeenth-century emphasis on trade rather than conquest helped build a culture of tolerance: everybody’s money is good. The author of The Island at the Center of the World offers a sort of moral defense of capitalism in a conversation at the Fraunces Tavern Museum: look out the window and see what he’s describing. Music from … Continue reading »