Jeffrey Gurock is the author of a great new comprehensive biography of the premier voice of New York sports from the 1940s through the 1990s. The book is Marty Glickman, The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend. I loved the book and our podcast discussion. It's a sweet, sweet, bittersweet biography.  Romania, the Bronx and Brooklyn, the example set by Hank Greenberg and by Sandy Koufax, track and football in high school and college, quotas limiting the number of Jews in certain colleges, the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the Jews who were precipitously excluded from the competition, Americ ..read more

Elizabeth Lesser discussed on my Podcast the founding of Omega Institute - internationally recognized for its wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change workshops and conferences - as well her beautiful and inspiring books about finding protection and blessings in the broken moments of our lives; enjoying the passage of time; realizing what we have in life; appreciating every moment we are alive - Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow - and about being present to each moment; being who you are, answering the call of your soul, authenticity; unconditional love; learning t ..read more

Elizabeth Lesser discussed on my Podcast the founding of Omega Institute - internationally recognized for its wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change workshops and conferences - as well her beautiful and inspiring books about finding protection and blessings in the broken moments of our lives; enjoying the passage of time; realizing what we have in life; appreciating every moment we are alive - Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow - and about being present to each moment; being who you are, answering the call of your soul, authenticity; unconditional love; learning t ..read more

I enjoyed talking with Amy Shearn and Hannah Oberman-Breindel this summer when they were in the Artist-in-Residence writing program at Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, and even more so on our recent podcast discussion of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, which is considered to be one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century.  I had not previously read any Virginia Woolf and I had not studied literary modernism. Despite being uninitiated, I was struck by the way Woolf captured the human condition and, in a realistic way, the unstructured non-linear thought processes ..read more

On an Upper Byrdcliffe Road walk in Woodstock this past summer, I noted to my friends, Perry Beekman and David Gordon, the recent death of Robert Gottlieb, the most acclaimed book editor of the last 50+ years. I’ve previously mentioned on the podcast, Gottlieb’s really great memoir, Avid Reader. David noted that writer Cormac McCarthy had also then recently died. David expressed enthusiasm for McCarthy’s great works over the years. I had read McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece, The Road, many years prior and I still get a chill in my bones when I think about it. I asked David whethe ..read more

Steph Kent, co-founder, with her husband Logan Smalley, of the Call Me Ishmael project joined me to discuss Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell, the book I have recommended more than any other over the last few years.  Hamnet is a work of fiction, but it’s based in part on certain core facts on which O’Farrell builds this beautiful, devastatingly sad story, albeit with a sweet ending, of the impact of Hamnet’s death on his family, and its relationship to the writing of Hamlet. The book is a master class in the use of detail to tell a story, and the production of Hamlet produces a beautiful, poeti ..read more

My friend Tony Wolf and I discussed “Tales From The Wolf”, Tony’s memoir about his years living in Greenpoint, and including a compilation of his  New York Times “food cartoon” features, his superhero stories, a moving 9/11 tribute, and Trump era political cartoons. “Tales From The Wolf” can be purchased here. Tony is a cartoonist, an actor (including on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), a singer, film director, and illustrator. He’s essentially a storyteller, a journalist at heart. Tony’s website. We discussed Tony’s cartooning journey from the time he was a young child, his cartoonist role mo ..read more

Our discussion about Erica Obey’s mystery novel, the Brooklyn North Murder, turned into a discussion of The Typology of Detective Fiction, by Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, and literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov, a discussion about AI bots, their invasion into the publishing industry, plagiarism charges, and what it means for a book to be ghost written. We discussed Mountweazels, the dark web, The Chronicles of Narnia, early 19th century English aristocrat, publisher and linguist, Lady Charlotte Guest, locked-room murder mysteries, plotters and pantsers, and Erica’s “chaotic” writing ..read more

Tom pulls no punches in his new book as he vividly and colorfully, and also convincingly, describes our cyber security vulnerabilities. As he explains, we are living on the razor’s edge between prosperity and devastation; the possibility of a digital Pearl Harbor, of a geopolitical D-day, of a technological and geopolitical tsunami, and of systemic vulnerabilities, including to our entire financial system, with the risk of a financial meltdown and economic annihilation, and also, among other things, vulnerability to the world’s food supply. He refers to unprecedented threats and describes the ..read more

Carol and I recently attended a lovely dinner party hosted by Abigail Sturges and other supporters of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. On its website, the Guild describes itself as “a vibrant center for arts and crafts in the beautiful and unique rural community of Woodstock, New York, while preserving the historic and natural environment of one of the earliest utopian arts colonies in America.”  Carol and I live in the Woodstock Byrdcliffe community and the beauty abounds whichever way you turn. I had the good fortune of being seated next to Katherine McKenna at Abigail's dinner party. Ka ..read more