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/

Brian Kelley 11/15/2025

Brian Kelley We tweaked our format to Tree Tree Tree for this arboreal photographer, who specializes in the immense and the ancient—2,000 years old, 3,000 years old—many of which he’s archived at the . The big and the beautiful. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/39043945

Ron Brown, Arcell Cabuag 11/08/2025

Ron Brown, Arcell Cabuag Brown, the founder of Evidence, a dance company, says, “You’ll see yourself on stage.” I hope he’s speaking figuratively. Cabuag, its associate artistic director agrees. Presumably. How else has the company flourished for forty years? A conversation at the Billie Holiday Theatre, where they’ll perform on November 14 and 15. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/38959360

Santo Loquasto 11/01/2025

Santo Loquasto This set and costume designer worked on 80 Broadway shows, 30 films, several operas, and innumerable dance works. Here’s a tip he gleaned collaborating with Paul Taylor: “Give a man 17 chairs and see what he comes up with.” Good advice for any part of life. Presented with the Paul Taylor Dance Company. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/38872760

Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto 10/25/2025

Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto For decades after graduating, these architects avoided Cooper Union. “We would detour three or four blocks or else the PTSD would kick in.” Apparently it used to be like The Paper Chase or Whiplash but with less compassion. Presented with The National Academy of Design. Music: Karl Schwarz. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/38777570

Anthony Wood 10/18/2025

Anthony Wood This preservationist, a wily veteran of decades of urban campaigns, is happy in his work: “I’ve never regretted being involved in saving a landmark. I’ve only regretted the ones I couldn’t save.” I envy his serenity. I regret nearly everything. Presented with the New York Preservation Archive Project. Music: Adrian Untermyer. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/38630530

Will Power 10/11/2025

Will Power When this playwright’s grandfather faced a tough decision, “He sought the advice of Paul Robeson.” Of course he did. Who wouldn’t? And it all worked out fine. Fine-ish. A writer, his family, his community. Presented with the Classical Theatre of Harlem. Music: Emery Mason, Melissa Mosley. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/38549750

Nilka Martell 10/04/2025

Nilka Martell She and her neighbors—untrained, uncredentialed—revived the Bronx River and are taking on the hideous Cross Bronx Expressway. “We’re just a group of Bronxites with ambitious ideas.” Presented with the Architectural League, in conjunction with the exhibition Cross Bronx/Living Legend at the Bronx River Art Center. Music: Jeremy Bosch, Román Lajara. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/38465180

Steve Clay and M. C. Kinniburgh 09/28/2025

Steve Clay and M. C. Kinniburgh “The least interesting thing about a book is its contents, assert the curators of the recent Grolier Club exhibition After Words: Visual and Experimental Poetry in Little Magazines and Small Presses, 1960-2025. Now my head hurts. Seldom have I felt older or enjoyed a conversation more. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/38381285

Luca Vignelli 09/20/2025

Luca Vignelli In 1972, his parents, Massimo and Lella, designed a map of the New York subway system. Many people hated it. I loved it. (I have one framed on my living room wall.) The MTA soon withdrew it. Now it’s back, slightly revised. Good news in bleak times. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/38292125

Janis Siegel 09/13/2025

Janis Siegel As a member of Manhattan Transfer, she won ten Grammy awards, but “I was not going to be a singer at all, actually; I was going to be a nurse.” Medicine’s loss, music’s gain. Guitar: Sean Harkness. Presented with The Village Trip. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/38207145

Jamie Bernstein 09/06/2025

Jamie Bernstein Her father, Leonard Bernstein, thought “that if he could write a good enough song, maybe he could stop war.” Not insane, aspiring. “It’s ridiculously idealistic, but that was his impetus.” Tales of a famous father. Music: Amy Burton, accompanied by John Musto. Presented with , whose annual festival begins September 19. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/38113590

Jonathan Capehart 07/26/2025

Jonathan Capehart He’s a member of The Washington Post’s editorial board, a commentator on the PBS NewsHour, anchor of The Weekend on MSNBC, author of Yet Here I Am. He is liberal in his politics, conservative in his dress. “Absolutely. I love a good, wild outfit, on someone else.” /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/37562325

Bobby Sanabria 07/19/2025

Bobby Sanabria When this drummer was a kid, his father introduced him to an array of music, from Tito Puente to Dobie Gray. “He bought himself a La-Z-Boy chair. He would sit there after dinner, smoke a cigarette, and zone out listening to music.” Bad for the lungs, great for the soul. The making of a musician. Presented with the Bronx Music Hall. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/37466025

Katty Kay 07/12/2025

Katty Kay She’s a special correspondent for BBC Studios, a regular contributor to MSNBC, and co-host, with Anthony Scaramucci, of the podcast The Rest Is Politics. “People call journalists curious; I think it’s just nosiness.” A higher form of nosiness! /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/37384340

Jonathan Brent 07/05/2025

Jonathan Brent The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research makes many of the 24 million items in its archive available online, but there’s an “electric moment of actually touching a document,” says its executive director. “My first was when Lenin’s party card was put in my hand.” (Patrons are urged not to touch the documents. This is not some sort of scholarly petting zoo.) Music: Jardena Gertler-Jaffe, Bethany Pietroniro. /episode/index/show/personplacething/id/37288765

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

Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen

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