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 »
Author Archives: Randy Cohen
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 »
Episode 264: Sloane Crosley
Like many funny writers, this essayist and novelist grew up around someone with a highly cultivated sense of humor, in this case her grandmother Nettie. “She was extremely funny. She was sarcastic in a very loving way, which I think is a hard note to hit.” The challenge of being simultaneously funny and sweet. Plus … Continue reading »
Episode 263: Eben Bayer
The co-founder and CEO of Ecovative Designs, he trained as a mechanical engineer but now devises products made from mushrooms. Mushrooms! “If the last century was about electronics,” he says, “ the next century is going to be about biology.” How inventors invent. Plus music from Bendt. How musicians musish. Continue reading »
Episode 262: Einat Lev
Is scientific thought regional? Do people in Iceland devise different ideas from people in India? No, says geophysicist Einat Lev: science is science around the world. Yet she’s visited 40 countries, most with no volcano. Paradox or pleasure? A conversation at KGB’s Red Room, produced with Lori Schwarz and 500 Women Scientists. Music from Francois … Continue reading »
Episode 261: Dana Ivey
She is a fine actor and an honorable person with a weakness for that racist claptrap Gone With the Wind. “That’s the dichotomy in my heart and soul,” she tells the English Speaking Union. She’s not alone. It is the second most beloved book in America, behind only the Bible. When good people love bad … Continue reading »
Episode 260: Jeffrey Ervine
If you are defamed online, Google’s CEO will swiftly clean up the mess and come to your house with a comforting puppy. In Randyland. Here on earth, Ervine’s experience was different and led him to devise ways to fight cyberbullying. Plus music from James Shipp and Nadje Noordhuis. Continue reading »