Oct 29, 2016

We - OK, I - look askance at those who claim to need an emotional support animal to board an airplane, but we don't mock those who take prozac. What's the difference? Patricia Marx, a staff writer at the New Yorker, has travelled with a support pig (research, not therapy), and had much to say about this question when we...

Oct 22, 2016

Her "Brain Pickings" ranges across the past and present, the arts and sciences, steering her cohort to unexpected delights. In our conversation at the Brooklyn Historical Society, she talks about a nineteenth century astronomer, a twentieth century elm tree, and a twenty-first century blight: people who walk down...

Oct 14, 2016

After creating the TV series Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, he did something radical: left TV, came back east, and returned to writing prose, to the delight of the gazillion readers of The Borowitz Report. In this episode, taped at JCC Manhattan, he riffs on Donald Trump, ponders why Cleveland produces great comics and bad...

Oct 7, 2016

This sly anthropologist of WASP ways is much admired for his plays The Dining Room, Love Letters, Sylvia, and more. We talked at the Flea Theater about fathers and sons, students and teachers, and most emotion-charged of all: dogs versus cats. Drama is conflict. Plus music from Duncan Wickel and Lily Henley who got...