A member of the psychology department at Hunter College, Diana Reiss is an expert in dolphin cognition who has conducted ingenious experiments to demonstrate that these creatures recognize themselves in mirrors: that they are self-aware. She is, incidentally, our first guest to postpone her visit until she returned from a marine mammal conference which, I … Continue reading »
Author Archives: Randy Cohen
Episode 71: John Turturro
Many of us got to like him in Do the Right Thing and got to like him even more as he became part of the rep company of Spike Lee then of the Coen Brothers. And that represents just a few of his more than 60 films. His latest is Fading Gigolo: he wrote it, … Continue reading »
Featured Episode 65: Roddy Doyle
Like many people, I encountered Roddy Doyle through the Barrytown trilogy – The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van—three terrific novels, and later movies, set in the same fictional working class neighborhood of Dublin, novels that do things with dialogue I hadn’t thought possible. His newest, The Guts, revisits Jimmy Rabbitte – founder of The … Continue reading »
Episode 64: Elizabeth Gilbert
Best known for her memoir Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest book is a novel, The Signature of All Things. According to her official website, she lives on the Delaware River, in Frenchtown, New Jersey, information I take as an invitation to drop in. But I’ll call first, so there’s food in the house. And … Continue reading »
Episode 63: Isaac Mizrahi
When he was a ten-year-old Brooklyn yeshiva boy, his father gave him a sewing machine. It’s like The Sword in the Stone, the perfect destiny-calling start for a man who’s distinguished himself as a fashion designer and more. He’s created sets and costumes, directed opera (including the Magic Flute) and appeared in movies and television … Continue reading »
Episode 62: Gail Collins
Journalist Gail Collins ia best known for her column in the New York Times. Rachel Maddow called her “the funniest serious political commentator in America.” I’d perhaps amend that to intentionally funny, lest we forget… I think you know. Her most recent book is As Texas Goes: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American … Continue reading »
Episode 61: Mayor David Dinkins
David Dinkins is the son of a barber and a domestic. After leaving the Marine Corps, he attended Howard University on the GI Bill, graduated cum laude, then earned a law degree while working nights. In 1989 he was elected the 106th mayor of the city of New York. Among his many accomplishments, it was … Continue reading »
Episode 60: Martha Plimpton
She began by working in movies she was too young to attend then later appeared on stage in musicals (Pal Joey) and straight plays (The Coast of Utopia). Now she stars in “Raising Hope” on Fox Television. Also impressive: how she uses her copious free time. The advocacy organization “A Is For…” is an expression … Continue reading »
Episode 59: Alison Bechdel
The number of people who can currently see their lives enacted on the musical stage is, I believe, three. Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys, that scary witch in Wicked—but she might be fictional—and Alison Bechdel, whose graphic memoir, Fun Home, is the basis of the hit show at New York’s Public Theater. She draws, she … Continue reading »
Episode 58: Alan Zweibel
Alan Zweibel enjoyed early success on the first five seasons of Saturday Night Live, often writing for Gilda Radner, with whom he shares the rare ability to be simultaneously funny and sweet. He went on to write some of the smartest shows on television, including Garry Shandling’s. Since then, he’s given us plays and books, … Continue reading »
Episode 57: Sara Paretsky
Sara Paretsky is best known for a series of crime novels featuring the first great woman private eye, V.I. Warshawski. Paretsky is also the founder of Sisters in Crime, an organization that supports women crime writers, as well as a foundation to encourage women in the sciences. Critical Mass, her latest V.I. Warshawski, draws on … Continue reading »
Episode 56: Walter Bernstein
Walter Bernstein was born in Brooklyn in 1919. For the next 94 years he wrote and co-wrote terrific movies for big stars: Fail Safe with Henry Fonda, The Train with Burt Lancaster, The Magnificent Seven with everybody—Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson. The Front, with Woody Allen and Zero Mostel, is … Continue reading »