Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen

In this new kind of interview show, Randy Cohen talks to guests about a person, a place, and a thing they feel strongly about. The result: surprising stories from great talkers. Learn more at http://personplacething.org/

Andrea Patterson 06/28/2025

Andrea Patterson This Obie-winning actor created the role of Helen in the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Memnon. “It is definitely under-utilized. Underappreciated.” Greek mythology in modern theater? That too, but here she refers to the peanut in American cooking. See her in Marcus Garvey Park throughout July. Working. Not just lounging around. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/37201655

David Levering Lewis 06/21/2025

David Levering Lewis Decades ago, he shook hands with W. E. B. Du Bois, born in 1868. It seems impossible, but then again Einstein was a contemporary of Billy the Kid. Lewis went on to write a Pultzer-Prize winning biography of Du Bois. Einstein went on to be Einstein. Presented with the Maysles Documentary Center. Music: Henrique Prince. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/37097485

Amale Andraos, Dan Wood 06/14/2025

Amale Andraos, Dan Wood 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. Music: Rashad Brown. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/37009600

Michael Novak 06/07/2025

Michael Novak 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. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/36900515

Mitch Epstein 05/31/2025

Mitch Epstein He’s worked from Hanoi to Berlin to America’s old-growth forests. “As a photographer, it’s only in getting lost that you move forward.” As a civilian, when I get lost, I pretty much just get lost. Another reason to admire him. Produced with the National Academy of Design. Music: Stephanie Jenkins. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/36798775

Gregory Mosher 05/24/2025

Gregory Mosher He led the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and pretty much created theater at Lincoln Center. “The happiest moments of my life have been in rehearsal rooms.” Well, yeah. In there with him? David Mamet, Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett. Sequentially not simultaneously. Presented with Hunter College. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/36697580

Michael Sparer 05/17/2025

Michael Sparer This lawyer works on health policy at Columbia’s Mailman School: “Public health in a certain sense is about balancing, the rights we have as individuals with the needs of society to preserve, protect, and promote the health of the population.” Not a bad approach to democracy in general. Music: Caitlin Warbelow /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/36601605

Kate DiCamillo 05/10/2025

Kate DiCamillo This children’s book author—Because of Winn-Dixie, The Tiger Rising, The Tale of Despereaux—describes her innate ability: “I have a knack for nothing except being filled with wonder.” I’d dispute that, as would legions of admiring readers. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/36517325

Min Lew 05/03/2025

Min Lew This graphic designer spent her early childhood in Germany. “My father told me, ‘You are Korean, you are a visitor here, and what that means is, you don’t have to fit in.’ For me, that liberated everything.” The power of outsider consciousness. Presented with Base Design. Music: John Sherman. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/36421210

Colleen Hill 04/26/2025

Colleen Hill “We got it from Lauren Bacall,” says this curator. The flu? Certainly not. An Elsa Peretti handbag, one of 700 items from Bacall’s wardrobe donated to the Museum at FIT, where it was featured in Hill’s recent exhibition,Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities. Music: Eléonore Weill, Zoe Guigueno. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/36320970

Robert Klitzman 04/19/2025

Robert Klitzman “The disease, the people believed, was caused by sorcery and could be cured by sorcery,” says this bioethicist. By “the people” he does not allude to RFK Jr. but to a stone-age tribe in New Guinea. Potato/Potahto. Produced with Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies. Music: Rich Jenkins. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/36230455

Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich 04/12/2025

Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich Their play Here There Are Blueberries is built around an actual photo album assembled at Auschwitz of the ordinary daily life of the perpetrators. Following a run at the McCarter Theatre, the play is now touring nationally (if you’re reading this early in 2025, not in, oh, 2026 in exile on the Martian penal colony). /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/36109240

Emmanuel Lachaud 04/05/2025

Emmanuel Lachaud This historian, in CCNY’s Black Studies Department, says, “If I want to have a good writing day, I take the train an hour and fifteen minutes to somewhere I love, the quietest place in New York.” Silence and thought. Music: Birsa Chatterjee, saxophone; Raul Reyes, bass; Victor Gould, piano. (Not silent, much appreciated.) /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/36018515

Frederica von Stade 03/29/2025

Frederica von Stade After fifty years as a mezzo-soprano, she still embraces this advice from her first teacher: “Sing as though it comes from the bottom of your heart, because that’s what it’s about.” Her most recent recording is And Crimson Roses Once Again Be Fair. She says it is her last. I hope not. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/35918560

Nancy Cantor 03/22/2025

Nancy Cantor The new president of Hunter College is a champion of “social infrastructure,” describing it as “A public good. Everybody uses it, nobody owns it.” Libraries, schools, parks, or, in a decent society, healthcare. That’s nostalgia! Or hope. Music: Ryan Keberle, Chris Swan, Christopher Panchame, Yuka Kameda. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/35818970

Zalmen Mlotek and Steven Skybell 03/15/2025

Zalmen Mlotek and Steven Skybell “Isaac Bashevis Singer called my mother the Sherlock Holmes of Yiddish songs,” says Zalmen. His family heritage and Steven’s splendid singing were big factors in the triumph of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. Presented by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/35706265

Charles Busch 03/08/2025

Charles Busch “My life was a bit like the plot of Auntie Mame,” says this actor, writer, and drag legend. He’s got stories about Linda Lavin, Christopher Isherwood, Lily Tomlin, Angela Landsbury, Vivien Leigh, Marlene Dietrich. Plus, he sings. Accompanist: Jono Mainelli. Produced with 54 Below. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/35585800

Peter Fong 03/02/2025

Peter Fong He led an expedition down Mongolia’s Selenge River, described in his book Rowing to Baikal. “To me the river is like a god, a god that I can be in conversation with. I feel like it’s alive. I don’t always understand it, but I don’t understand God either.” A conversation at the Explorers Club. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/35497910

Ann Patchett 02/23/2025

Ann Patchett In addition to being a much-admired writer, she owns Parnassus Books, in Nashville. “Because I own a bookstore, I get a copy of just about every book that comes out. It’s like being pelted to death with books.” Like that Shirley Jackson story but more ironic. The author of Bel Canto, on friendship, fathers, writing, and reading. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/35393110

Andy Breckman 02/15/2025

Andy Breckman This movie and TV writer—he created Monk—loves his local public radio station in Jersey City. “If you tune into WFMU, and you don’t like what you hear, just wait five minutes: you’ll hear something much worse.” Love expresses itself perversely, but it’s love. Music: Billygoat—Michelle Segre, Jennifer Sirey, Kat Lewis. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/35293775

Jelani Cobb 02/08/2025

Jelani Cobb Dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a staff writer for The New Yorker, he says, “When people ask what I think is the foundational institution of democracy, I always say: 'the public library.'” Enjoy it while we’ve got it. And what’s left of our democracy. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/35202750

Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson 02/01/2025

Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson To be a great architect—or painter or poet or almost anything—do you need a great patron? “Certainly that helps, but then you have to bring the talent and vision and invention,” she says. Oh, well, then, never mind. We spoke at the Louis Armstrong Center, a building they designed. Produced with Open House New York. Music: Valerie and Ben Turner. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/35108430

Norman Ornstein 01/25/2025

Norman Ornstein This political scientist sees a crisis of legitimacy. “When 90% of Americans believe there ought to be universal background checks on guns, and nothing happens, you begin to wonder if your vote matters.” Happily, he has ways to make our democracy more democratic. Unhappily, they won’t be enacted. We’re all pessimists now. (All = me.) Produced with the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan. Music: Pete Rushefsky, Lisa Gutkin. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/35004675

Vishaan Chakrabarti 01/18/2025

Vishaan Chakrabarti This architect, celebrated for repurposing the Domino Sugar Refinery, says that his young colleagues are eager to address the great issues of the day, “as opposed to designing spaceships in the sand built by slaves.” If that’s not the title of his next book, fire the editor. Produced with the Center for Architecture. Music: Mamie Minch. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/34905945

Betsy Barlow Rogers 01/11/2025

Betsy Barlow Rogers “I live overlooking Central Park, and I’m blessed at this stage in life to know that heaven is at my doorstep.” One reason it’s heavenly is that, in the eighties, as its administrator, she led the effort to restore it to its current glory. “It’s a wonderful feeling,” she adds. “For all New Yorkers,” I add, in my thank-you note. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/34815410

Michael Roth 01/04/2025

Michael Roth When he was a student at Wesleyan University, he worked in the kitchen; today he’s Wesleyan’s president. “When I walk into the kitchen, although I’m the old guy who used to work there, it’s like I’m the monarch coming in with his entourage. Even if I’m by myself, I feel like they’re looking at me suspiciously.” Uneasy lies the head that wields the mop. Or used to. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/34718915

Kate Burton 12/14/2024

Kate Burton This terrific actor is admired for her work in Grey’s Anatomy and Hedda Gabler—range!—so I was sure that she seldom has heard a discouraging word. I was wrong. “Oh, please, are you kidding? I could do a dramatic reading of all my bad reviews.” And she’d be brilliant in it! Music: Hubby Jenkins. Produced with Red Bull Theater. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/34443295

Juan Carlos Pagan 12/07/2024

Juan Carlos Pagan He’s done graphic design for Nike, Apple, and the Denver Nuggets, and is happy to confer with clients. Up to a point. “What you can get is design by committee, which to me is the most terrible thing.” (“Short of design by belligerent, knife-wielding committee,” he did not add.) He spoke from Spain, courtesy of the Type Directors Club. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/34326840

Lea DeLaria 11/30/2024

Lea DeLaria She’s a witty jazz singer, an astute comedian, an admired actor (Orange Is the New Black), and she has an economic policy: “Support your local dyke bar. Go. Spend a little bit of money. Have some fun.” She has my vote, and she’s not even running for anything. Presented with 54 Below. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/34208345

Colum McCann 11/17/2024

Colum McCann The author of Apeirogon and American Mother advocates the radical act of talking to our adversaries: “We do not need to love each other, we do not even need to like each other—although we hope that we could—but we absolutely need to understand each other.” Produced with the American Irish Historical Society. Music: Joseph Charles. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/33958682

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen

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