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Person Place Thing
Fridays, 10:30 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.

Hosted by former New York Times Ethicist Columnist Randy Cohen, PPT features guests who talk about a person, a place and a thing they find meaningful. Randy pulls out the most interesting details from columnists to musicians, architects and ballerinas including Rosanne Cash, E. Jean Carroll and Gene Kohn. The results: surprising stories from great talkers.

To learn more about this program, visit presonplacething.org.

  • Conductor Ian Niederhoffer says “Music has the unique power to transport its audiences to a time that no longer exists.”
  • Writer David Leonhardt of “The Morning” newsletter for “The New York Times” and author of “Ours Was the Shining Future” admires A. Philip Randolph, who personified this idea: “Collective action around labor and workers is the most powerful vehicle for changing this country.”
  • Journalist Joan Kron has covered plastic surgery for decades: “I believe everybody is free to do what they want with their body.” Incidentally, she’s just turned 96 and looks fabulous.
  • Former Manhattan borough historian Michael Miscione admires the enormously accomplished, nearly forgotten, 19th century New Yorker, Andrew H. Green: “He is often compared to Robert Moses. In a favorable way.” Miscione also talks to us about his high school and an alligator.
  • As a young actor Peter Riegert (Local Hero, Crossing Delancey, Animal House) played Goldberg in The Birthday Party, overseen by Harold Pinter himself. One speech was particularly opaque. “I had no idea what it meant, but to say these words was to be Isaac Stern on the violin.” Learning to trust the writer
  • Interior designer Kia Weatherspoon has worked on many low-income housing projects. Sometimes her clients resist: “You’re making it too nice for these people; these people will tear it up.” Bringing good design to “these people.”
  • Israeli-American architect Eran Chen likes buildings, of course, but it’s the spaces between buildings that he loves. “It’s a blur between public and private, it’s a stage, it’s sort of an in-between territory, a threshold to the city, a place of in-between.”
  • Some architects want their buildings to endure unchanged forever, but partners Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi welcome eventual repurposing. “Hopefully, our La Brea Museum, 100 years from now, will be appropriated by somebody else.” Weiss and Manfredi talk to us about Romaldo Giurgola, La Brea Tar Pits and a Roman paving stonean.
  • As a kid, mezzo soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano sang in a church choir. Its implicit purpose: “To bring joy to people, and bring comfort to people, and help people feel what they need to feel.” Not a bad approach to art or, for that matter, life.
  • Although utopia has not arrived, racial segregation has faded significantly since the reopening of the Apollo Theater in 1934, so is the place still needed? Absolutely, declares its Director of New Works, playwright Kelley Girod: “The Apollo will always be necessary as long as we have stories to tell.”