His research on the neuroscience of aesthetics suggests that people crave the human touch. “If they think something is made by a person, they like it more; if they think it’s made by a machine they don’t like it.” He does not mention Twinkies. Or the late Joan Rivers. Presented with the Viñoly Foundation.
This scholar says, “What made American fashion different is that it was to be wearable, comfortable, practical.” But not on the red carpet at the Oscars, she did not add. We spoke in conjunction with her exhibition Art X Fashion currently at the Museum at FIT.
Dr. Thomas Frieden is the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A specialist in infectious diseases, he has also served as health commissioner of New York City. PERSON: Karel Styblo, the “father of modern TB epidemiology” PLACE: Conference room at the CDC THING: Little paper dipstick, used in a quick, accurate, inexpensive … Continue reading »
Born in Brooklyn, Roz Chast is best known for her cartoons for The New Yorker, many other magazines, and more than a dozen books. We note with pleasure how much she sounds like a Roz Chast cartoon: smart, funny, just a bit fretful, and thoroughly appealing. Maybe that’s because her cartoons have taught us to … Continue reading »
August 9 marks the one-year anniversary of our friend David Rakoff’s death. We commemorate his life with a special two-part episode. Part 1 features his Person and Place; Part 2 his Thing, and a terrific bonus story—what he called, “the meanest thing I ever said about anyone… intentionally.” From Randy: Person Place Thing began as … Continue reading »
August 9 marks the one-year anniversary of our friend David Rakoff’s death. We commemorate his life with a special two-part episode. Part 1 features his Person and Place; Part 2 his Thing, and a terrific bonus story—”what he called, “the meanest thing I ever said about anyone… intentionally.” From Randy: Person Place Thing began as … Continue reading »
The executive director of the advocacy group NETWORK, Sister Simone Campbell is a passionate advocate for social justice whose work is an expression of her religious faith. It is good for one’s development as a person to be reminded that people can arrive at a similar place by very different routes. Randy first heard of … Continue reading »
An actor, writer, and comic, John Fugelsang is the host of pretty much the entire Current TV lineup during its transition to Al-Jazeera. His Off-Broadway solo show, “All The Wrong Reasons,” recounts the unusual courtship of his parents, a Franciscan brother and an ex-nun. For reasons too complicated to explain, John may be the single … Continue reading »
A columnist for The Nation and a professor of political science at Tulane University, Melissa Harris-Perry is particularly astute about gender, race and politics, which she explores in her recent book, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. In addition to writing, teaching, and raising her daughter, in her copious free time she … Continue reading »
A contributor to the New Yorker for fifty years, he is particularly admired for his writing about food and crime, a combination we leave to more subtle minds to untangle. He is the winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor for his collection, Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff. On … Continue reading »
A professor of psychology at Harvard, Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist and a writer on language, mind, and human nature. His most recent book is The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, a title that all but begs some wiseguy interviewer to take a swing at him. He famously defended Larry … Continue reading »
Cartoonist Al Jaffee is the creator of the Mad Magazine Fold-In and Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions. He was 92 when recorded this conversation, the magazine’s longest-running contributor, partly explained by his remark, “Serious people my age are dead.” PERSON: Harvey Kurtzman PLACE: The Muthaiga Country Club, Nairobi, Kenya THING: A MAD fold-in Continue reading »
Historian Eric Foner is particularly admired for his writing on reconstruction. His most recent book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, won pretty much every prize going including the Pulitzer and a—can this be right?—Cy Young Award. Probably a typo. He is our only guest to have written for robots, revising the scripts … Continue reading »
Rachel Dratch isn’t just from Massachusetts, she is the voice of Massachusetts, at least for fans of Saturday Night Live from 1999 to 2006. These days, she appears often on Inside Amy Schumer and Broad City. This episode, recorded in 2013, was posted as a podcast but never broadcasted. Here it is, recut and … Continue reading »