During our first season, I was fortunate to have Annette Gordon-Reed on the show. Born in Livingston, Texas, in 1958, she teaches both law and history at Harvard. Her book The Hemingses of Monticello won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. The day before we were to record, her person, the writer Christopher Hitchens, died after a … Continue reading »
Category Archives: Nonfiction
Episode 79: Ruth Reichl
For years Ruth Reichl worked in disguise, accumulating a bigger wig collection than Diana Ross. Her photo was said to command big money — nothing to do with the Witness Protection Program, everything to do with her power as a restaurant critic: chefs were anxious to know she was at their table. And that’s only … Continue reading »
Episode 74: Annabelle Gurwitch
Annabelle Gurwitch came to broad attention as a comic performer on the TBS television series “Dinner and a Movie.” I believe she played Dinner. Or perhaps Movie. She has since written several books, most recently I See You Made an Effort, a humorous look at turning fifty. PERSON: Robin Shlein PLACE: Camp Blue Star THING: … Continue reading »
Episode 72: Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith
Roberta Smith is the senior art critic for the New York Times; her husband, Jerry Saltz, is the senior art critic for New York magazine. They stride across the art world like colossi or perhaps colusses, depending on your preference—astute, eloquent, wedded colussi. They joined us for a rare joint appearance on stage at 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 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 48: Anna Holmes
Anna Holmes, perhaps best known as the founder of the women’s website Jezebel, was recently named to an elite cadre of columnists for the NY Times Book Review, which, as we understand it, means she is legally empowered to kill any writer whose prose is deemed “overly flabby.” Her own prose is impeccably lean and … Continue reading »
Episode 46: Philip Gourevitch
Philip Gourevitch, a staff writer at the New Yorker, has written about genocide in Rwanda, the National Front in France, arranged marriage in Queens, and James Brown, well, everywhere—each in its way a focus of intense emotion. He reports on harrowing events with lucidity and insight, filling readers with terror but not driving them to … Continue reading »
Episode 43: Susan Orlean
A writer for the New Yorker since 1992, Susan Orlean is particularly admired for her book The Orchid Thief, the basis of the movie Adaptation, in which she became the only New Yorker staffer to be played by Meryl Streep. Her latest book is a biography of the dog actor, Rin Tin Tin, who I … Continue reading »
Episode 40: Alexandra Horowitz
A professor of psychology at Barnard, Alexandra Horowitz is the director of that school’s Dog Cognition Lab. What we particularly admire about her: she is one of a very few scientists who can write about current ideas in her field in a way that a lay audience finds not only comprehensible—dayanu—but intriguing, which she did … Continue reading »
Episode 39: Lopate Brothers
On this episode there are two guests, brothers, an experiment in shared narrative, as they contradict but also deepen one other’s version of youthful events. Leonard Lopate is an institution on New York radio, but he didn’t plan to be. He studied painting with Mark Rothko and worked in advertising, hosting his first radio show … Continue reading »
Episode 38: Jonathan Adler and Simon Doonan
Simon Doonan is the creative ambassador for Barneys and a columnist for Slate. First known as a potter, Jonathan Adler now has 20 stores worldwide offering beautiful things. His guideline: “If your heirs won’t fight over it, we won’t make it.” They are the first married couple to do the show. PERSON: Liberace PLACE: Hot tub … Continue reading »