The 7th Avenue Project: Thinking Persons' Radio

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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, unsparing, compassionate, psychologically acute and epistemologically astute all at once, an uneasy combination of entertainer and truth-seeker. When I learned of his untimely death on March 24, like many fans I felt bereaved, and I sought out someone to talk to who loved his work as much as I do: Paul Provenza. Paul is a comedian and a sort of comedy curator, chronicler and catalyst, and he was responsible for one of Garry's more memorable public appearances, which I was fortunate enough to attend thanks to Paul. We talked about Garry the person and the performer – and the complicated relationship thereof.

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Our previous 7th Ave Project interviews with Paul Provenza:

With photographer Dan Dion, discussing their book Satiristas: Comedians, Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians

On The Green Room, his Showtime comedy series

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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. Theoretical physicist Anthony Aguirre, our go-to guy on all things general relativistic, provides some great insight into the details and subtleties that popular accounts ignored or glossed over.

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Gwendolyn Mok: Pianist and Musical Medium

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 of medium, doing her best to channel the spirit and intentions of composers such as Brahms, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, and particularly Ravel. Her brand of originalism extends to playing historic pianos like those the composers themselves knew and wrote for, and Gwen demonstrated with some exquisite renditions on an 1868 Erard and 1871 Streicher as we talked about her life as a student, performer and teacher. Also discussed: her school days with Yo Yo Ma, apprenticing with Ravel’s last living understudy, performing with Astor Piazzolla, driving the Silk Road in a 1940 Chevy, making mistakes in concert, and the best place to listen to a piano. 

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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.” George grew up in a tough North Philadelphia housing project, where young men were far more likely to end up in early graves or jail than in academia. He beat the odds and now enjoys the status of a tenured professor at a major university, but he hasn't forgotten where he came from, or the racial realities that made his story so unlikely. George and I talked about his beginnings, becoming a philosopher and using his style of "down to earth" philosophizing to limn the structure of blackness, whiteness and lived experience in a racialized society.

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George recently completed a series of interviews with fellow scholars on race in The New York Times’ The Stone blog. Check it out here.

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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 those modifications in the wild, altering whole populations or even species. A new technology, the "CRISPR gene drive," promises to do just that, giving human beings an unprecedented ability to fine-tune the natural world and steer evolution down new paths. Malaria-resistant mosquitoes? Lyme-blocking mice? Agricultural pests who’ve lost their taste for crops? Those are just a few of the applications floated so far, but the possibilities are endless. I talked to molecular biologist and “evolutionary sculptor” Kevin Esvelt, who first proposed the CRISPR gene drive, about its potential, its perils and steps to ensure that we use our new powers wisely. 

Topics covered include:

The CRISPR revolution: fast, cheap gene editing

Gene drives: CRISPR on auto-pilot

Using gene drives to fight disease and suppress pests

Safeguards, controls and oversight

More evo-sculpting: Kevin’s PACE system, harnessing viral evolution to create novel biomolecules

Personally, I find the implications of gene drives to be head-spinning. Imagine self-propagating genes that spread inexorably even when they offer no selective advantage – even when they’re maladaptive! Of course, like a too-virulent pathogen, really maladaptive CRISPR drives might put themselves out of business by killing off their hosts, and selective pressures would favor mutations that disable the drive, but still...

Note that I spoke to Kevin several weeks before the news that a team at UC Irvine had actually designed a CRISPR-based gene drive for engineering anti-malarial mosquitoes, but this interview provides great background for understanding the announcement.

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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. His dad was a writer, occasional street vigilante and confidante of Marilyn Monroe. Mom's pals included Shelly Winters and the young Bobby De Niro, who was one of Dean's babysitters. Dean worked with Harvey Pekar and Jonathan Ames on their respective graphic novels, and won an Emmy for his title work on Jonathan's HBO sitcom Bored to Death. He was also the inspiration for Ray the cartoonist, played on BTD by Zack Galifianakis. We talked about all of the above, plus Dean's beginnings as a comic artist, his love of superheroes and his own hero complex, his residencies at the Yaddo artist colony, and his latest comic memoir, Beef with Tomato.

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Additional 7th Avenue Project interviews of interest:

Harvey Pekar on The Quitter and Jonathan Ames on The Alcoholic, graphic novels drawn by Dean.

Jonathan Ames on Bored to Death and his latest sitcom, Blunt Talk.

Cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco. 

Max Brooks (son of Mel Brooks) on comics and his most recent graphic novel, The Harlem Hellfighters.

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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. So in his late 30s he left the classroom for the cage, taking up mixed martial arts and training for an amateur bout. It was more than a mid-life escapade. Jonathan had some unresolved issues around bullying in his youth, and wanted to better understand the relationship between violence and masculinity, including his own. We talked about male aggression, ritual combat, MMA and Jonathan's book The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch, as well as his ill-fated stint as a literary scholar with an evolutionary bent.

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Other 7th Avenue Project shows of interest:

2012 interview with Jonathan on his book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make us Human

Our recent conversation with fighter/writer/singer/raconteur Eugene S. Robinson.

Neuroscientist/baboon expert Robert Sapolsky describing how even some of the most aggressive males on earth can learn to get along.

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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 Bored to Death for three hilarious seasons and now Blunt Talk on Starz. Jonathan Ames describes the delights and terrors of television auteur-dom, the dubious distinction of being TV's first showrunner to go Full Monty, his friendship with Jason Schwartzman and the comedic excellence of Patrick Stewart. Also, Jonathan displays his flair for euphemism as he recounts a deleted, too-hot-for-HBO Bored to Death scene involving Zack Galifiniakis, Olympia Dukakis a bathtub and a scary cave.

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Also of interest: two of our previous interviews with Jonathan:

In 2009, we discussed his graphic novel, The Alcoholic

Also in 2009, I included a segment with Jonathan on this Anti-Valentine’s Day show

Blunt Talk, like all of Jonathan’s work, is packed with allusions to works he loves and that have influenced him. In episode 7, he has Walter Blunt quote the late Jack Gilbert – surely the only time this poet’s poet has gotten a mention in a sitcom. If you don’t know Jack, here’s a sample:

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Is Most Scientific Research Wrong? Psychologist Mike Frank on the "Reproducibility Crisis"

It’s been called the “decline effect,” “the proteus phenomenon,” and “the reproducibility crisis”: the startling realization that a lot of seemingly solid scientific research doesn’t pan out under repeated testing. The latest blow to scientific confidence comes from the Reproducibility Project, which attempted to replicate 100 published psychology studies and found that, when the experiments were repeated, half or more failed to uphold the original findings. So is it time to start doubting the credibility of research in general? Stanford University psychologist and Reproducibility Project participant Mike Frank joined us to explain what the results really mean, misconceptions about statistical rigor in science, the various ways experimenters blunder and sometimes delude themselves, and the gradual, cumulative nature of scientific progress. 

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Also of interest: our 2011 interview on unconscious bias and decision making with psychologist Brian Nosek, leader of the Reproducibility Project.  

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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 Stoughton says we’ve been misled. The former cop turned law professor and policing expert contends that civility, a cool head and patience are far more effective in fighting crime and reducing risks to the public and police than the warrior mentality getting so much emphasis these days in popular culture and some police departments.

Seth and I talked about the psychology of police-civilian confrontations, alternatives to deadly force, and some recent cases where things went famously wrong, including the Walter Scott shooting, the Sandra Bland arrest and the McKinney pool party.

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Videos of some of the incidents discussed:

The McKinney, Texas pool party. (June 5, 2015).

The shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina (April 4, 2015).

The arrest of Sandra Bland in Waller County, Texas (July 13, 2015). Bland died in jail three days later of an apparent suicide.

The shooting of Kajieme Powell in St. Louis, Missouri (August 19, 2014).

Related reading: Seth Stoughton on common misconceptions about policing.

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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 distant music conservatory in Shanghai as his mother wept. Sad as that may sound, it all worked out remarkably well. Huang Ruo’s path eventually took him from China to the U.S., to Oberlin and Julliard, and today it’s hard to imagine him as anything other than the prolific and exuberant composer he’s become.

His work draws on all the music he heard growing up in China and in the years since – from ancient ritual chants and folk songs to classical, rock and pop (both Chinese and Western) – to create something that feels integral, vibrant and new. He’s also a wonderful singer, as you’ll hear in this very musical interview.

I met Huang Ruo when he was in town for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and getting to know him and his work was a highlight of the festival for me. Here are some of the things we talked about as we listened to selections from his incredibly varied oeuvre:

The Taoist “ghost wedding” that provided some of his earliest musical memories

The Chinese folk-rock movement of the ‘80s

Teaming Western instruments with Chinese ones such as pipa and sheng

“Dimensionalism”: his method of composition, which often begins with an abstract visual image

Getting beyond east-west fusion to something more essential

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[7thave]

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 limbs don't belong to them, and schizophrenics feel their thoughts aren’t their own. By chipping away at our sense of a unified, stable identity, these and other mental conditions hint at how selfhood might be assembled in the first place. Is the self a product of specific neural mechanisms, or perhaps a psycho-social construct? What exactly is a self, anyway? Does it ever go entirely away – in, say, the end stages of Alzheimer’s or the “ego-death” of religious ecstasy? Science writer Anil Ananthaswamy considers the evidence from neuroscience along with theories of the self from psychology, philosophy and spiritual traditions such as Buddhism, in his new book The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self.

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Also of interest: our previous interview with Anil Ananthaswamy on his book The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth’s Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe.

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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 three from this year's lineup as we listened to some of their pieces. Harpist/composer Hannah Lash confided her love of tuned percussion and hidden structure. Missy Mazzoli discussed her River Rouge Transfiguration – inspired by the iconic Ford auto plant–and Vespers for a New Dark Age: secular music with sacred sources. Nico Muhly reflected on cartoon travelogues and Disneyfied gamelan in his piece Wish You Were Here and his “technical exercise with a heart of gold,” Étude #3 featuring violist Nadia Sirota.

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[7thave]

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 anti-communist purges in 1965, might understandably have concluded that it was an impossible act to follow. Yet its sequel may be even more accomplished and affecting. While The Act of Killing gave us a portrait of mass murderers refracted through their own anamorphic imaginations, The Look of Silence performs a kind of perspectival correction by introducing the victims’ POV missing from the earlier film (and from public discourse in Indonesia). We follow Adi Rukun, whose brother was one of the massacred, as he confronts the killers and dares to speak the truth. That Adi happens to be an optometrist who prescribes corrective lenses even as he restores moral clarity, is just one of many metaphorical harmonies that make The Look of Silence such a rich and resonant creation.

Joshua and I talked about the making of the movie, its visual and sonic poetry, how violence distorts the psyche, the possibility of reconciliation, and the resolve that kept him working during years of difficult filmmaking. Josh is uncommonly thoughtful and eloquent on these questions, and this interview is well worth a listen whether you’ve seen the films or not.

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Listen to our 2013 interview with Joshua Oppenheimer on The Act of Killing.

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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 massacre and confederate flag fracas reminded us that the past isn’t past and the conflicts at the heart of the war still smolder. Historian David Blight has been pointing that out for years in books such as Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. David says that America dropped the ball when it set aside Reconstruction and set about reconstructing memory itself, embracing some convenient myths and turning its back on civil rights and African Americans in the process. We talked about a legacy of lost opportunities and broken promises, willful forgetting and whitewashed history.

In part 2 of the show, Pulitzer prizewinning writer Tony Horwitz on confederate nostalgia, the “Lost Cause” tradition and Civil War revisionism. Tony explored the ways in which the war is remembered and misremembered in his 1998 bestseller Confederates in the Attic and again in a recent essay, How the South Lost the War but Won the Narrative.

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Also of interest: Our 2011 interview with Tony Horwitz, discussing his book Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War.

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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 old tradition of racial passing in this country. How long has passing been going on and how has it changed over the years? What's it tell us about racial categories and color lines? Why are we so fascinated with passing stories? I spoke with historian Allyson Hobbs about her book A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life.

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[7thave]

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 condition only once as a fledgling public speaker, but many others haven’t been so lucky, as Sara Solovitch’s new book reminds us. Horowitz and Olivier had to be dragged bodily from their dressing rooms, fighting every inch of the way. Michael Gambon was twice hospitalized from the stress. And countless would-be performers have had careers interrupted or cut short when their jitters became too much.

Sara herself abandoned piano at 19 after years of serious study; chronic stage fright had made every concert and competition a panicky, sweat-soaked mini-hell. She became a successful journalist, raised a family, and life was good. But there was still a nagging sense of unfinished business with the piano, and 30 years after running away, she took it up again, resolved to face her fear and maybe brave the stage again. She tells the story in Playing Scared: A History and Memoir of Stage Fright. We talked about Sara’s on-again, off-again affair with the piano, fear of failure, perfectionism and the culture of classical performance, the psychology of stage fright and some useful coping techniques (for a longer list, see Sara’s 12 Ways To Tame Stage Fright).

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