Point of Learning

Sophie Brickman focuses on the intersection of parenting and technology in her book Baby, Unplugged: One Mother’s Search for Balance, Reason, and Sanity in the Digital Age (HarperOne, 2021), which we’ll be discussing on this episode. Brickman is a writer, reporter and editor based in New York City. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Saveur, The Sa...

I believe this conversation with Paula Roy from July 2017 is well worth revisiting in this moment where book-banning seems to be edging out baseball as the national pastime here in the Home of the Free, and too many legislators and governors have convinced themselves that they know more about education than professional educators do.

The Very Reverend Ward B. Ewing is former Dean and President of The General Theological Seminary in New York City. Dr. Ewing has met in and with Alcoholics Anonymous groups as a non-alcoholic for more than four decades, also serving as Trustee and Chair of the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous for the U.S. and Canada. In addition to the book that grows out of that experience, Twelve St...

A January 2022 survey conducted with over 3600 teachers who belong to the National Education Association found that 90% believe teacher burnout is a serious issue. Fifty-five percent indicated that they are more likely to leave or retire from education sooner than planned because of the pandemic, almost double the number saying the same in July 2020. As I thought about a classic episode of Point o...

Bill Siemering is a radio visionary. Sixty years ago, he was hired to transform WBFO from a student-run college radio club into a professional station. Because of the experiments in radio that he led at WBFO throughout the 1960s, Siemering was invited to serve on the first board of what would become National Public Radio.  He was also invited to write the original mission statement of NPR. Siemeri...

Originally podcast in December 2017 as the holiday special for the first season of Point of Learning, this 75-minute version of the Dickens tale was recorded before a live audience at First Baptist Church in Westfield, NJ.

Assistant professor and head of the photography program at the State University of New York at Buffalo, John Opera has exhibited his critically acclaimed photographs for over two decades in dozens of galleries, from New York to LA, from Mexico City to Basel, Switzerland. His work has been featured in numerous reviews, articles, and other publications, from ArtForum to The New Yorker.

Point of Learning presents a special double episode: 1) a philosophy professor who in August 2021 became the unofficial liaison for Afghan students at the American University of Central Asia (AUCA) in Kyrgyzstan amid the chaotic U.S. withdrawal, and 2) an Afghan grad student who earned two degrees at AUCA.

This bonus episode is a departure from my usual format in several ways. First, I answer more questions than I ask. Second, I’m the guest. Third, I didn’t really make the show—or at least, not the way I usually do! Courtesy of the Pingry Politics Podcast, this show features me doing a brief overview of some key points I consider critical to civil discourse (respectful conversation about topics of s...

Dr. Sarah EJ Bowman is Director of the High-Throughput Crystallization Screening Center at the Hauptman-Woodward Institute in Buffalo, New York. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the U.S., Sarah’s lab has been studying key components that make up the novel coronavirus. At the Crystallization Center in Buffalo, crucial non-infectious elements of the virus are coaxed into crystals that can help rese...

A very special version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, set in Frank Lloyd Wright’s magnificent Graycliff Estate (Derby, New York)

JoAnn Falletta is a Grammy Award-winning artist who has been compared to some of the greatest conductors of the 20th century—legends like Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter, Leopold Stokowski, and (one of her former teachers at Juilliard) Leonard Bernstein. In this episode we talk about why everyone should study music, how to get more women and people of color on the podium, the advantages of knowing...

Dr. Errick L. Greene is Superintendent of Jackson (MS) Public Schools. My conversation with him on 11 August 2020 afforded the rich opportunity to produce three episodes in one: a look at some of the complications of starting the school year in the time of COVID-19; select reflections on public leadership in Mississippi at a moment of increasing awareness of systemic racism in the U.S.; and a mast...