May 21, 2022

When this improv artist—he created Freestyle Love Supreme with Lin-Manuel Miranda—received a guitar from his wife, he was eager to play at bedtime for their two young daughters. “They were like, ‘Could you stop? Could you just cuddle?’” The ups and downs, but mostly ups, of a performer’s life.

May 14, 2022

Esteemed as both a scholar and an activist, she’s spent nearly ninety years working for social justice, if you count her first few years, and I do: when she was four, she had a clear (and unpopular) position on the Soviet-Finnish war. She’s since revised it. Continuous rethinking—the mark of the true intellectual.

May 7, 2022

This heroic Brandeis professor explains how sexual-harassment law derives from civil-rights law: “There was the sense that, OK, now we’ve tackled one area of equality, we’ve prevailed to some extent, let’s build on it.” One right leads to another. Or used to. In ancient days. (Sigh.) Plus, the difference...

Apr 30, 2022

No first glimpse of a building was more exhilarating to me than his 1975 Best Products facade in Houston, designed with his firm, SITE. And he did it the old-fashioned way: “I’m probably the last architect on earth who still draws by hand.” Ideas and how they get that way, presented with the National Academy of...

Apr 23, 2022

Pairing a concert pianist with a stage magician means merging distinct performance traditions and can include tensions as well as triumphs. Perhaps that’s why their act is sometimes billed as Magic versus Music—a joke that is not entirely a joke. But what a show! Presented with Ralph Farris of the quartet Ethel.