Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen Randy Cohen

“I had dreams of playing basketball then going to law school and doing what Perry Mason did.” Those dreams came true. The Knicks. Harvard Law. The Brooklyn DA’s office. And now he teaches at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies, a co-producer of this episode. (I had dreams that I could fly. I can’t.)

The gender balance in her profession is disheartening, she says, “It has one of the smallest percentages of women. I mean the ratio is astounding.” U.S. Senator? Catholic priest? Not quite that bad. She is a magician. But things are improving. Produced with KGB Bar’s Red Room. Music: Teddy Horangic with Leonid Morozov

They spent much of their professional lives as public defenders in the Bronx, working in an unjust system, and its flaws persist. Discouraged? Nah. “If you’re trying to solve a problem you can solve in your lifetime, you’re thinking too small.”

Poet, theologian, host of the On Being Studios podcast Poetry Unbound, he has a favorite pencil but is not a fanatic: “I use anything to get the idea down. I have written with pens and pencils; I have written on the back of sick bags on airplanes.” Computers. Cellphones. No crayon, but he’s not above it. Produced with Columbia University’s School of Nursing. Music: Jefferson Hamer.

The president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is proud that it is a treasure for the entire city and maybe even prouder of its ties to its local community: “The neighborhood is deep into us, and we’re deep into the neighborhood.” Like roots. Or vines. Or some other sort of metaphoric floral something. Music: Craig Harris

Music offers more than aesthetic pleasure, asserts this conductor: “Music has the power to transport its audiences to a time that no longer exists.” A gentler time, without covid or attack drones or Elon Musk. He’s founded a chamber orchestra, Parlando, on that belief.