Person Place Thing With Randy Cohen

Lifelong friends, these writers grew up on the same block. His newest book is Brooklyn Crime Novel; she is developing the Imitation of Life Musical with John Legend and Liesl Tommy.. Presented with The New York Women's Foundation: advancing economic, gender, and racial justice for women and families.

A friend of his wife gave his novel Empire Falls to Ivanka Trump. Her response: “This is a book about poor people. Why would I want to read a book about poor people?” Some bad reviews are better than good reviews. Presented with the Center for Fiction and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.

This poet, president of the Mellon foundation, quotes June Jordan on the question activists should ask: “Where is the love? What are we moving toward, not just what are we fighting against?” Poetry, politics, and why your Thanksgiving dinner should include lasagna. Made Eritrean style.

The president and CEO of the Hudson River Park Trust offers a too-modest explanation of its popularity: “I think there’s a universal urge that people have to see and connect with water.” Melville writes something similar at the start of Moby-Dick. Different ending, though.

The founder of Paylocity, he is a partner in the Wayfarer Foundation, whose mission is to “advance humankind spiritually toward a future peaceful world civilization.” Dauntingly ambitious. My mission this weekend is to clean my oven, and I won't. Presented with the New York Baha’i Center.

“The best future for the United States belongs to people who can appreciate both the Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” says Manhattan's borough historian and professor emeritus at Rutgers. “And leaders who’ve actually read both,” he did not add.

Early in his career, the conductor of the National Children’s Chorus interviewed for a job with Sister Stella Maria Enright. “She said, ‘Where did you park?’ And I said, ‘Right in front.’ And she said, ‘There is never parking in front. That is a sign from the holy spirit.’” She was kidding. Kind of. He got the job.

A former writer and performer for Saturday Night Live, he says that each episode was written in one night, “and by night I mean eight, nine PM, until three, four in the morning.” A former U.S. Senator from Minnesota, he does not say how tax laws are written.

Following in her father’s footsteps, the head of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services says, “I had a chance to see first hand someone who worked for New York City government.” She’s second-generation! The latest in our Commissioners Series—how government governs—produced with the Department of Records and Information Services. Music: Jefferson Hamer.

Through her many projects, this landscape architect has learned a lot—about nature, about human behavior, about their intersection. Her hope for the future: “Can we just make better mistakes? Can we not make the really really dumb mistakes?” Setting achievable goals. Produced with Open House New York. Music: Adi Horodniceanu.

He’s just concluded six-years as conductor of the New York Youth Symphony. As a youth himself, he was taken to Disney Concert Hall. “They asked me what it would feel like if you got to conduct here, and I cried immediately.” Tears of Joy. Presumably. Or some trauma with a little mermaid. 

He knows his pandemics, of course. What's more, the recently retired head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases can identify many birds just by their calls, “whether it’s a Carolina wren, a rufous-sided towhee, or a white-breasted nuthatch.” I believe he can do this blindfolded! Which isn’t any harder than eyes-open, but still.

This esteemed musician tells great stories, but they might not be entirely true. “I got to give it a little something. You got to put a little Tabasco on your food.” Presented with the Neal Rosenthal Group. Music: Henrique Prince and Friends (EH Walker, AR Ferguson, Hubby Jenkins) of the Ebony Hillbillies.

He was born into a clan of antiquarian book dealers but avoided entering the family business. Barely. He's now president of Swann Galleries and an authority on vintage posters. Presented with Poster House. Music: Jake Shulman-Ment and Raffi Boden.

This human-rights lawyer, a professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, was reluctant to embrace her Irish heritage. “I was never particularly interested in that identity because I had so many run-ins with the church.” She’s come around. Music: Cleek Schrey.

In 1958, with Hamilton Holmes, she desegregated the University of Georgia and went on to a distinguished career in journalism. Her early inspiration? Brenda Starr. “I read about her in the comic strips in my grandmother’s newspaper; she read three newspapers a day.”

She leads the Public Design Commission, which must approve anything built on city land—statue, historic marker, playground. How to contend with conflicting parties, often angry, sometimes shouting? “As long as dialogue is alive and well maintained, I feel like anybody can come to a good solution.” Presented with the Van Alen Institute. Music: Henrique Prince, E. H. Walker, A. R. Ferguson, and Hubby Jenkins, of the Ebony Hillbillies.

His Broadway debut, in M. Butterfly, won every award going except the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. Fair enough: there is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics. He renewed everyone’s admiration with Law & Order: SVU, and that’s not the half of it, or even the quarter, but why be precise? It’s not as if there’s a Nobel at stake. Produced with Materials for the Arts. Music: Hubby Jenkins. 

I stumbled upon the short videos this Scottish comedian posts online and was immediately won over by her conversation between C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien: she plays both of them. What comic does C. S. Lewis? Smart, dark, funny: the Triple Crown.

This terrific comic actor started early: “At five-years-old, I used to sing ‘You Make Me Feel So Young,’ and it got a laugh, and I didn’t know why.” She’s learned, on TV (Only Murders in the Building), on Broadway (Hairspray), and off (the Yiddish Fidler).