These principals of the architectural firm WORKac found it challenging to design their own home. The psychological complexity of domestic life? The culmination of years of thought? “The hardest thing about designing our house was that we just haven’t designed a lot of houses.” Produced with the Center for Architecture. Photo: Harry Willks.
The artistic director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company summarizes his aesthetic: “The curtain goes up, twenty minutes happen, the curtain comes down, and it is transformative.” Easy to say, brilliant to achieve. And they do.
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
She burst onto the scene with The Gnostic Gospels – and aren’t you glad there’s a scene onto which a historian of religion can burst? A rare scholar who speaks lucidly to civilians like me, she is the author most recently of Why Religion?. Music from Stephanie Coleman. Continue reading »
In the 1960s, he had a string of hits with the Shondells: “Hanky Panky,” “Crimson and Clover,” “I Think We’re Alone Now” – 23 gold singles, 9 platinum albums, 100 million records sold. Yet his record company simply declined to pay his royalties: $40 million. Tales of music and the mob. Continue reading »
The Senate and the Supreme Court thwart meaningful action on gun violence, but the chair of the epidemiology department at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health asserts that his field offers a way forward. Ignorant despair (mine) versus sophisticated hopefulness (his). Music from Lily Henley and Duncan Wickel. Photo by Michel DiVito. Continue reading »
“I believe architecture can never really be finished,” says this founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, designers of the High Line, the Shed, and the well known so much more. But she is not creating monuments to eternity. “I think of buildings that could be repurposed or reimagined – rescripted later.” A conversation at the … Continue reading »
When she was 13, her father let her skip school to stay home and read in bed. “It was a great paternal moment, too,” she tells the New York Society Library, “to say to your child: I get that this is more important than going to school today.” The making of a reader, the making … Continue reading »
Doing pure is science akin to doing art, says astrophysicist Sarah Pearson: both lack obvious utility; both enable us to see the world in new ways. The first in our women scientists series, produced with Lori Schwarz at KGB’s Red Room and 500 Women Scientists. Music from Miss Maybell and Charlie Judkins. Continue reading »
Alexander the Great was taught by Aristotle; Donald Trump had Roy Cohn. A look at some teacher-student relationships by a Pulitzer-winning historian, director of medical humanities at the NYU School of Medicine. Music from Amiri and Rahiem Taylor. A conversation at NYU Langone Health. Produced with Dr. Ruth Oratz. Continue reading »
Still in his twenties when he prosecuted a war crimes case at the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, he’s come to believe that social justice will not come through courts or politics. To change the world we must first change ourselves, if I can reduce a lifetime’s work to one glib phrase. A conversation … Continue reading »