ThoughtCast®

https://youtu.be/Pz_x6HZ37u8?rel=0 Back when I worked for WNYC TV, I went to Bridgehampton, Long Island to cover an art opening at the Dan Flavin Art Institute , overseen by Dia Center for the Arts . It’s a haunting place, filled with the florescent tubes that made Flavin famous. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Note: This interview was broadcast on WGBH radio’s “Arts and Ideas.” Author Megan Marshall has written well-received biographies of Elizabeth Bishop and Margaret Fuller. But before these books, she wrote about the three Peabody sisters – Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia – who were key players in the founding of the Transcendentalist movement in the early to mid 19th century...

The dinosaurs return to the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.

Note: The WGBH sister stations WCAI and WNAN broadcast this interview, and it also received a 5 star review on PRX! Former poet laureate Robert Pinsky tackles King David of the Bible – the shepherd, poet, warrior and adulterer – in his “Life of David.” Is David a legend? A real, flesh and blood warrior who killed Goliath, and united the 12 Jewish tribes into one nation? Rob...

Note : this piece was broadcast on NJN (New Jersey Public Radio), New Hampshire Public Radio and WMUB, an NPR station in Oxford, Ohio. It was also podcast on KXCI.org, in Tucson. What does the word rock mean? Simple enough question. But how did the term originate? Where — and why? These questions are bit more difficult to answer! Tune in for a quick romp through the origins of the word &#821...

Buffalo Dance From the secret Kiva past collapse they stomp and sing the story

On a beautiful spring day in the mid 1990s, I meandered the streets of Red Hook, when it was still a rundown Brooklyn neighborhood. I met its first art gallery owner, and the two longshoremen who ventured inside. This is one of my favorite stories for WNYC TV, the PBS station I worked for in Manhattan. (This station too is now history.) Let me know what you think! Click here (2:30 minutes) to list...

Note: this interview was broadcast twice on WGBH radio in Boston. It has also aired on WCAI/WNAN, WNED, KXOT and KYOU. The controversial Harvard Law professor, author and celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz talks with ThoughtCast about his book “Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways”, as well as his views on the Israeli-Palestinian-Hezbollah conflict, torture, human rights and our &#821...

Note : this interview was broadcast on the WGBH public radio affiliate WCAI, on the Cape and Islands! In this ThoughtCast interview, science writer Jim Holt takes us on a jaunty tour of being and nothingness, existence and emptiness, quantum tunneling and the uncertainty principle . The author of Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes , Holt lends his wit to a dissec...

KCRW’s Michael Silverblatt , the host of the literary talk show Bookworm , speaks with Jenny Attiyeh at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books .  Silverblatt is the real thing — an authentic, genuinely interested interviewer who reads not only the latest book his guest has come to discuss, but the writer’s entire body of work. Less concerned with wooing an audience than in commu...

https://youtu.be/cIkG1q6c628?rel=0 Chanticleer , for those who’ve been lucky enough to attend its concerts already know, is a delightful all-male classical vocal ensemble. It’s sold over a million albums is an audience favorite. Highly versatile, the group performs a diverse repertoire, ranging from Renaissance music to gospel to new music to jazz. It’s all fabulous, as you will...

John McCain’s final battle – this time with an aggressive form of brain cancer – is now over, and the debates over his legacy have yet to begin in earnest. Instead, we are awash in adulatory news coverage, which highlights McCain the icon, but obscures the man. Perhaps his performance in a pivotal New Hampshire Presidential Primary Debate , held in January 2000, just weeks before...

John McCain , the maverick Republican Senator from Arizona, was diagnosed with brain cancer a year ago now, so there’s not much time left for this remarkably resilient politician to take a final stand. Will McCain live long enough to vote for — or against — Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee? He did vote to confirm Neil Gorsuch, but will he return to the...

Note: this mini-documentary, which was broadcast in 1996 on WNYC TV, a public television station in New York City, charts the creation of Les Enfants Terribles , a dance opera by the composer Philip Glass and the choreographer Susan Marshall. Over the course of three months, Jenny Attiyeh saw this work of art, based on the novel by French Surrealist Jean Cocteau , take shape. The story of Les Enfa...

I’ve decided to re-post this ThoughtCast program from July 1, 2009 because my friend Lydia Ratcliff died yesterday, February 14th, 2018. The New York Times has written an obituary of her that I think is worth reading. She fought COPD for over a decade, so she could remain involved in the life of her Andover farm, her friends, and the ideas and preoccupations which sustained her. Note: this a...

The remarkable rise of Donald Trump, fueled in large part by his determination to keep immigrants out of his Greatening America, has caused many to re-examine the key concerns of the controversial political scientist Samuel Huntington. His writings on immigration and American national identity seem today to be sad prophecies of what has come to pass. In light of last year’s headlines — extre...

The press barely noticed former New Hampshire Senator Bob Smith’s bid for the presidency in 2000, so entranced were they over the newly candid Arizona Senator John McCain as he crisscrossed Bob Smith’s state in the “Straight Talk Express.” But McCain fever was quickly quenched by the more conventional conservatism of Texas Governor George W. Bush once the race headed south....

Now that we’re faced with Al Gore’s Inconvenient Sequel , it is tempting to ask, again: What if he’d actually won the Presidential election back in 2000? Remember when the century turned, the chads clung and hung, Florida was in Republican hands, and the Supreme Court ended up deciding the race in favor of the fortunate son of a former president? How many wayward chads would it h...

https://youtu.be/YJ0_Uo9Hywk?rel=0 So let’s say you have leukemia. You have relapsed. What can art therapy do for you? Here at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, young cancer patients struggle with their treatment. But they also have an outlet, a safe place to express themselves. This “WNYC Cultural Minute” was broadcast on the public TV station WNYC in the late 1990s, before it...

The inimitable Tom Hoving discusses art forgeries, and how to spot them, on ThoughtCast! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkZ3RX1f9HQ?rel=0 Tom Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, speaks with Jenny Attiyeh (reporting for WNYC TV, now off the air) about his book – and his career – spotting, and yes, falling for fakes. False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-T...

Note: this interview has been picked up by the public radio station WGBH, in Boston, and its sister stations WCAI and WNAN . Sadly, Bob died in March of 2017. This interview was quoted in The New York Times obituary . The venerable New York Review of Books was launched amidst a newspaper strike in the winter of 1963, and has continued unabated ever since. Devoted to intensive and nuanced coverage...

When I interviewed Paul Pascarella, back in the 90s, I confess he was kind of a friend. Which made following him around with a camera in his Arroyo Seco studio a lot smoother than usual. It’s not easy to gain this access, to watch an artist at work, especially if you’re trying to record each idea as it hits the canvas. The act is extremely revealing. Perhaps this is why Paul doesn&#821...

Andres Serrano: Works 1983-93 opened at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in Soho in early 1995. It was a mid-career retrospective, and I went there to interview the controversial artist for the PBS station WNYC TV. His infamous “Piss Christ”, among other ecclesiastical subjects, was prominently featured, as well as images of Ku Klux Klan members, and dead bodies photographed in a mor...

Arianna Huffington, the author, journalist and founder of The Huffington Post, spoke with Jenny Attiyeh at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books .  This interview was broadcast on WNYE, a public television station in New York City. Today she is a media mogul, one of Forbes’ 100 most influential people. But back in 1999, when I had the chance to interview her, Huffington was merely a media...

The  comedian, writer and performer Sandra Tsing Loh speaks with Jenny Attiyeh at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books about If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now , her first novel. It tells the story of a frustrated couple, Bronwyn and Paul, who live in a shabby Los Angeles suburb, far from the Hollywood glamor they secretly long for. Dissatisfied with the fraying Bohemian chic that th...