Things have changed since she moved to a small town in the Hudson Valley. Now there are scented-candle stores to the left of her, a neighbor with a grenade launcher to the right of her, volleyed and thundered. Gentrification and odder incursions go rural. Plus memories of Spalding Gray, poetry from Bob Holman, music … Continue reading »
Author Archives: Randy Cohen
Episode 187: Fred Krupp
Having led The Environmental Defense Fund for more than 3 decades, he knows its history. “The founding motto, informally, of EDF was ‘Sue the bastards,” he recalls. Today its guideline is, “Environmental problems are solvable if people would just get on with solving them and stop shouting at each other.” Has he mellowed or … Continue reading »
Episode 186: Bill Persky
Does a sense of humor make you a better person? Bill Persky thinks it might, and he should know. He wrote for the Dick Van Dyke Show, co-created That Girl for Marlo Thomas, and directed 100 episodes of Kate and Allie. He says this about the president: “Nobody’s ever seen him laugh. He sneers, … Continue reading »
Episode 185: Dr. Richard Besser
He trained in pediatrics, was the acting head of the CDC, the chief medical editor for ABC News, and is now the CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Some people just can’t hold a job. Along the way, he’s had a run-in with deadly tainted apple cider and courteous but critical Diane Sawyer. … Continue reading »
Episode 184: Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Marwa Helal
Surely a Muslim TSA agent will be sensitive to the feelings of Muslim travellers. And by “surely,” I mean “surely not.” Writer Marwa Helal and artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed describe their encounters with the TSA, disheartening stories delightfully told. Plus tales of the weight room and the irrational fear of Egyptian pumpkin seeds. A conversation … Continue reading »
Episode 183: Tierney Sutton
A performer has obligations to her audience, of course, but jazz singer Tierney Sutton believes that the audience also has obligations to the performer: to be alert, to be present, to listen acutely. “And if I can’t be in that state,” she says, “I don’t go.” For her, music is a spiritual act, an … Continue reading »
Episode 182: Chris Benz
It is generally disappointing to meet someone whose work you admire. Or is it? Chris Benz, design chief at Bill Blass, tested this precept when fate put him in a voice-over studio with film-maker Wes Anderson. Benz’s conclusion: Project Runway was a force for good. No, wait: he does make this curiously persuasive assertion, … Continue reading »
Episode 181: Yvonne Rainer and Wendy Perron
Is there a Henry Higgins of movement? We can often tell where people are from by the way they talk, but can we do that from the way they walk? Choreographer Yvonne Rainer says no. Dance writer Wendy Perron says yes. A conversation about the dance world of the sixties, with some amiable disagreement. … Continue reading »
Episode 180: Jonathan Safran Foer, part two
He’s framed a ticket to the World Series game Sandy Koufax did not pitch and a sheet of Freud’s stationery on which the great man did not write. In the second of a two-part episode recorded at JCC Manhattan, Jonathan Safran Foer describes the pleasures of the non-event and the joys of possessing archaeological … Continue reading »
Episode 179: Jonathan Safran Foer, part one
By letting us not only understand but inhabit its characters, does a novel reveal the commonality of human experience or demonstrate our differences? Both, of course, but Jonathan Safran Foer is particularly sympathetic to the former. In the first of a two-part episode recorded at JCC Manhattan, we discuss the joys of intimacy and … Continue reading »
Episode 178: Hallgrímur Helgason
Iceland is a paradise for writers, with its highly literate population, generous government grants and total absence of cockroaches. Unfortunately there are only 330,000 Icelanders, so even if they all buy your book your horizons are limited. Fortunately that’s why the novelist (and print-maker, and translator and more) Hallgrímur Helgason visited America. A conversation at the … Continue reading »
Episode 177: Paul Shaffer
For 33 years, he was David Letterman’s music director and comic sideman, a career that began in Canada with the Toronto production of Godspell, as did those of Gilda Radner, Martin Short, and Andrea Martin. Some production! Some careers! And now what? What do you do when your job ends after three decades? Savvy … Continue reading »