randycohen48.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

I prefer "Mump" but it's kind of potato/potahto, nazi/nutsy.

submitted 4 hours ago • 0 comments

For 30 years, writer Andy Breckman—he created Monk—has done a show on his local public radio station, @wfmu.bsky.social in Jersey City. “I’d be embarrassed to tell you how important it is to me.” Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Speaking at @wfmu.bsky.social, TV writer Andy Breckman musters a powerful, if not entirely convincing, defense of that embarrassing Nicole Kidman video that runs before the feature at AMC Theaters. Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Andy Breckman loves @wfmu.bsky.social: “If you don’t like what you hear, just wait five minutes; you’ll hear something much worse.” In a good way. Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Surprisingly (to gloomy me) good turnout in Union Square for Not My President's Day Protest. Curiously, not a single cop in sight, even on the march down Broadway, and (unsurprisingly) everyone acted with civility. Heartening!

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Jelani Cobb @jelaniya.bsky.social, dean of @ColumbiaJournalism.bsky.social became a serious amateur photographer. “I found the allure of starting something I knew nothing about.” The joys of (overcoming) ignorance. Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Jelani Cobb @jelaniya.bsky.social, dean of @ColumbiaJournalism.bsky.social assess the task of training a new generation of journalists: “extremely difficult, and extremely necessary.” Hear why: personplacething.org

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Jelani Cobb @jelaniya.bsky.social, dean of @ColumbiaJournalism.bsky.social, on how it all began: “We were talking about the origin story of a character. Mine would involve the day that my mother took me into the library to get my first library card.” Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson talk to Open House New York at the Louis Armstrong Center, a building they designed. Architects in their natural habitat. Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

“He practiced into his eighties and kept on making masterpieces.” Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson tell Open House New York about Mimar Sinan, the greatest architect you’ve never heard of. Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

I prefer to think that this usage means: "What would Norm Ornstein do?"

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

“A constitution only works if you have the norms that support it,” says @NormOrnstein.bsky.social at JCC Manhattan. We’re doomed, say I at 3:00 AM. He's (slightly) less disheartened. Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 24 days ago • 1 comment

“This election was a backlash against expertise,” @NormOrnstein.bsky.social tells JCC Manhattan. The triumph of ignorance. Listen and weep: personplacething.org

submitted 25 days ago • 2 comments

Any five-year-old knows that vaccines prevent childhood illnesses. “There’s five chronologically, and there’s five otherwise,” @NormOrnstein.bsky.social tells JCC Manhattan. Listen through your tears: personplacething.org

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

“It is a thing of beauty that is beyond visual beauty,” says Vishaan Chakrabarti @vishaan.bsky.social. The Mona Lisa? The Grand Canyon? His Airstream Trailer! Hear why: personplacething.org

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

It was a treat to share a stage with Vishaan Chakrabarti at the Center for Architecture. (NB: @personplace134.bsky.social is not us and can't be blamed for my personal failings. As, in a compassionate universe, neither can I.)

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

Architect Vishaan Chakrabarti @vishaan.bsky.social says, “It’s one of the things that differentiates us a species.” Electing convicted felons to the presidency? That too, but hear his: personplacething.org

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

In the eighties, Betsy Barlow Rogers helped restore Central Park to glory. “The brass badge that says Park Administrator on it, I’m very proud of that.” As she should be! Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

“You’ll never hear me say a lot of good things about Tom Hoving, because he really brought graffiti—let ‘em smash away!—he didn’t have the right attitude.” Rare (and apt) snark from a founder of the Central Park Conservancy. Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 39 days ago • 0 comments

Some of us have a favorite book or ball team. Betsy Barlow Rogers, a founder of the Central Park Conservancy, has a favorite bridge. “The queen of all the bridges in the park!” Hear which: personplacething.org

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

Wesleyan’s president, Michael Roth, studies Freud and Hegel. Here’s what ties all three together: “Everything worth celebrating is an achievement that happened over time. It is not given to us from the divine, and it’s not natural.” Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 45 days ago • 0 comments

As a Wesleyan undergrad, Michael Roth worked in the kitchen. “A long term atheist, I decided we were all going to say grace before we ate.” Today he’s university president. God’s hand? Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 46 days ago • 0 comments

Michael Roth, president, Wesleyan, finds a deeply tragic, deeply Jewish, view of life in Freud and Hegel: “You might be able to make things a little better, but you could always make them a lot worse.” My mishpacha! Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

I fear I am not in my perfect mind. —epigraph for Donald Trump's complete medical records, when he publishes them, and he never will.

submitted 57 days ago • 0 comments

Th’ abuse of greatness is when it disjoins Remorse from power. And, if truth be told, He is the sort of man who cheats at golf, And does so even when he plays alone. —Shakespeare’s assessment

submitted 59 days ago • 0 comments

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers, Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage, Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation. —to Shakespeare, cruelty; to Trump, policy.

submitted 61 days ago • 0 comments

Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee. Corruption wins not more than honesty. —Shakespeare's (ignored) advice for Clarence Thomas and Justin Baldoni

submitted 62 days ago • 0 comments

The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue! He shall name thee ambassador to Greece. Assuming you can find it on a map. Or not. —Shakespeare on presidential appointments

submitted 63 days ago • 0 comments

After 12 years writing The Ethicist for the Times, I created Person Place Thing. Do follow for info on upcoming live shows (at the Explorers Club! There's a stuffed polar bear.)and podcasts (Norman Ornstein! Not stuffed.). And visit personplacething.org

submitted 64 days ago • 0 comments

You’d think Kate Burton never gets a bad review, but she tells @RedBullTheater: “I could do a dramatic reading of all my bad reviews.” And she’d be brilliant in it. Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 66 days ago • 0 comments

Actor Kate Burton cherishes Chekhov, she tells Red Bull Theater: “He’s the most extraordinary writer in teaching you how to act.” Plus, great stories about her father. Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 67 days ago • 0 comments

Actor Kate Burton reminds Red Bull Theater that Chekhov is funny. The trick: “He has cataclysmic events and ordinary events side by side.” Like “Titanic,” she did not add. Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

Transportation folks, consider a year-end donation to World Bicycle Relief, a well conceived and executed effort to change lives in poor rural communities. Or mimic craven tech CEOs and give a million to Trump’s inauguration. Either way. bit.ly/4flaovO

submitted 70 days ago • 0 comments

Alluding to Yeats, The Second Coming, natch: The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

submitted 71 days ago • 0 comments

An expectant father, graphic designer Juan Carlos Pagan now notices baby products: “I have new admiration for the people designing these things for such gentle creatures.” Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 73 days ago • 0 comments

His work is not strictly visual, graphic designer Juan Carlos Pagan tells the Type Directors Club: “Building narrative is important.” Hear how; hear why: personplacething.org

submitted 74 days ago • 0 comments

Graphic designer Juan Carlos Pagan admires something in New York, he tells the Type Directors Club: “They did a nice job with the west side bike path.” I'm not so sure. A courteous disagreement. Listen: personplacething.org

submitted 75 days ago • 0 comments

Rereading or reviewing something I produced years ago is often mortifying, but this isn't so bad. Thanks, Gersh.

submitted 81 days ago • 0 comments

She played Big Boo on Orange is the New Black. “I learned a lot of things on that set,” Lea DeLaria tells 54 Below, “but the biggest thing is: I never, ever, want to go to prison. Ever!” Hear why: personplacething.org

submitted 81 days ago • 0 comments

Although the particular drugs required would vary, as the ghost of Carlos Castaneda can confirm.

submitted 82 days ago • 0 comments

Comic, singer, actor Lea DeLaria has some indelible show business memories: “I burst into tears in front of Carol Burnett.” The good kind of tears. Here how: personplacething.org

submitted 82 days ago • 0 comments

Join us an episode of Person Place Thing at the Louis Armstrong Center with Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson, the architects who designed it. Tomorrow—Tuesday—evening. www.eventbrite.com/e/person-pla...

submitted 83 days ago • 0 comments

"Woke" is this moment's "politically correct," a vaguely anti-liberal slur with no actual meaning, slightly less rigorous than "stinky."

submitted 88 days ago • 0 comments

Dr. Johnson refuted the idea that we should finish every book we begin: "You may as well resolve that whatever men you happen to get acquainted with, you are to keep them for life. A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?"

submitted 88 days ago • 0 comments