Person, Place, Thing with Randy Cohen: Alan Klein & Alexander Neubauer
Randy Cohen's live radio show records an episode with the curators of the Grolier Club's Irish Literary Revival exhibition, exploring books as artifacts of nationhood.
Why we picked this
Randy Cohen's format — conversations structured around a person, a place, and a thing rather than a direct biography — consistently produces unexpected angles of entry into a subject. With curators rather than authors, the objects take center stage.
Person, Place, Thing is Randy Cohen’s long-running interview format based on a simple premise: people speak most revealingly when they’re talking about something outside themselves. Each episode structures a conversation around a person, a place, and a thing the guest cares about, rather than the guest’s own biography. The format consistently produces more unexpected and more honest conversations than standard author Q&As.
For this live recording, Cohen interviews Alan Klein and Alexander Neubauer, the curators of the Grolier Club’s current exhibition Risings: The Irish Literary Revival and the Making of a Nation — approximately 150 objects tracing how a literary movement became inseparable from the political imagination of a country fighting for independence. The exhibition runs through July 25, 2026.
The event is free and open to the public, with registration through Eventbrite (Grolier Club members register separately through the club website). It runs one hour in the Club’s first-floor gallery.