The 7th Avenue Project: Thinking Persons' Radio

REMEMBERING COMEDIAN GARRY SHANDLING WITH PAUL PROVENZA There are a lot of comedians whose work I’m partial to, but I have a special place in my pantheon for Garry Shandling. He was funny, un...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/142482372160

GRAVITY WAVES EXPLAINED BY PHYSICIST ANTHONY AGUIRRE If the news coverage of recently discovered gravitational waves left you with lingering questions, you’ve come to the right place. Theoret...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/142482943915

Gwendolyn Mok may have flunked her first Juilliard audition at the age of 5, but that was just a speed bump en route to a distinguished recording and concert career. Gwen sees herself as a kind o...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/140049966695

GEORGE YANCY: PHILOSOPHIZING WHILE BLACK “As a black male in the United States,” says George Yancy, “to do philosophy in the abstract would be to deny the reality of my own existence.” ...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/135232640045

MOLECULAR BIOLOGIST KEVIN ESVELT: GENE DRIVES, CRISPR CRITTERS & EVOLUTIONARY SCULPTING It’s one thing to genetically modify an organism in the lab. It’s another thing entirely to spread th...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/133880450325

COMIC BOOK HERO AND SENSITIVE F*** DEAN HASPIEL If you’re going to tell cool stories in comic books, it helps to have had a colorful life and interesting friends. Dean Haspiel has had both. H...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/131182473730

JONATHAN GOTTSCHALL: WHY MEN FIGHT AND WHY WE LIKE TO WATCH Jonathan Gottschall’s career as a college English prof was wearing thin, and he was desperate to do something completely different....

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/130579381885

JONATHAN AMES: ADVENTURES OF A TV SHOWRUNNER “I was an obscure novelist and then I was given the keys to this production, and I had to learn on the spot.” And learn he did, helming HBO’s ...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/130019197185

IS MOST SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH WRONG? PSYCHOLOGIST MIKE FRANK ON THE “REPRODUCIBILITY CRISIS” It’s been called the “decline effect,” “the proteus phenomenon,” and “the reproducibil...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/129573409475

SETH STOUGHTON ON THE MYTHS AND REALITIES OF POLICING Cop shows and tough-on-crime rhetoric often depict a world so brutish that police have no choice but to play rough and kick butt, but Seth ...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/128694615550

HUANG RUO: A COMPOSER’S JOURNEY Huang Ruo’s career wasn’t his to choose. His fortune-teller grandfather and composer father did that for him, and at the age of 12 he was packed off to a d...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/127518349190

ANIL ANANTHASWAMY: WHAT CAN NEUROSCIENCE TELL US ABOUT THE SELF? People suffering from Cotard’s Syndrome think they’re dead. Victims of body integrity identity disorder believe their own li...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/127416139175

COMPOSERS AT CABRILLO: HANNAH LASH, MIZZY MAZZOLI, NICO MUHLY The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music brings together some of the best and brightest composers working today. I spoke to thre...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/126853835490

FILMMAKER JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: BREAKING THE SILENCE ON GENOCIDE Viewers of Joshua Oppenheimer’s jaw-dropping documentary The Act of Killing, about the men who conducted Indonesia’s genocidal...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/126469778005

WHY THE CIVIL WAR ISN’T OVER: DAVID BLIGHT AND TONY HORWITZ No sooner had the nation finished celebrating the sesquicentennial of the Civil War’s end this past spring than the Charleston ma...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/124510533465

HISTORIAN ALLYSON HOBBS ON THE HISTORY OF RACIAL PASSING The recent case of Rachel Dolezal – the “black” activist outed as white – may have seemed novel, but she’s actually part of an...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/123913154110

SARA SOLOVITCH: A HISTORY AND MEMOIR OF STAGE FRIGHT “If there is an awful, horrible malady in the world,” Mark Twain wrote, “it is stage fright.” Twain says he experienced the conditio...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/122206923605

ASTRONOMER ROBERT KIRSHNER: SUPERNOVAS, DARK ENERGY AND THE FATE OF THE UNIVERSE Robert Kirshner got his start in astronomy just as its “heroic age” was ending. It wasn’t so much about lo...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/119391009290

WRITER-ILLUSTRATOR SYDNEY PADUA: BABBAGE, LOVELACE AND THE FIRST COMPUTER A century before the first electronic computers, there was the Analytical Engine, a giant, coal-powered mechanical brai...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/119217528945

BIOPHYSICIST JEREMY ENGLAND: A NEW THEORY OF LIFE We know life is made of molecules, but how did those molecules come together in the first place? Was it more than a series of rare and highly i...

https://7thavenueproject.com/post/118064180870