92NY Talks

92NY

The 92nd Street Y, New York has harnessed the power of arts and ideas to enrich, enlighten and change lives, and the power of community to repair the world for 150 years. This podcast features many of the fascinating people and conversations from our stage.

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31 episodes
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English

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May 29 · 55 min
Conversations with Tyler: Tyler Cowen with Special Guest Craig Newmark
Join renowned economist Tyler Cowen for a live taping of his hit podcast Conversations with Tyler, featuring special guest Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies. Together, they'll explore trust, cybersecurity, and the building blocks of resilient civic institutions. Newmark has become a deeply consequential civic leader of the internet age. Best known for creating Craigslist—a platform celebrated for its radical simplicity and user-first ethos—he has spent the last two decades supporting philanthropy that strengthens democracy. His work spans cybersecurity ("cyber civil defense"), veterans and military families, trustworthy journalism, and combating misinformation. In an era of growing polarization and distrust, Newmark's approach is guided by one pragmatic question: what actually works? Returning to the stage at 92NY after two sold-out programs, Cowen will talk with Newmark about the pivotal choices behind Craigslist and the lessons he has drawn from years of public-interest work, exploring how to safeguard civic trust and apply solutions-driven principles in today's digital world.
May 23 · 57 min
Adam Phillips with Jamieson Webster: The Life You Want
Adam Phillips, the foremost psychoanalytic writer of our time, joins renowned psychoanalyst and critic Jamieson Webster for a conversation about necessity, desire, and reimagining our lives — and Phillips' new book, The Life You Want. What do we really want from our lives — and what gets in the way? In The Life You Want, the beloved psychoanalyst and essayist Adam Phillips turns his attention to that deceptively simple question with curiosity, wit, and intellectual imagination. Phillips has long been a rare figure: a thinker who writes about desire, ambition, boredom, freedom, and frustration in ways that feel less like instruction and more like permission — to think differently, to be kinder to ourselves, to stay curious about our own contradictions. In The Life You Want, he asks what it might mean to stop chasing the lives we think we're supposed to want, and instead pay closer attention to the lives we're actually living. Whether you're deeply interested in psychoanalysis or simply curious about how to live with honesty and imagination, join Phillips and Webster as they explore the personal and political dimensions of want, need, and pleasure — and how they can determine the course of our lives.
May 15 · 58 min
From The Archives: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Alan Alda — Science and Communication
What does it mean to be a true communicator? Two of the best, Academy Award-nominated actor Alan Alda and astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson discuss Alda's book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? It's a guide to improving the way we relate to each other using improv games, storytelling, acting, empathy, science and our own innate abilities.
May 1 · 1 hr 1 min
The World of Fake Values: Garry Kasparov with Bret Stephens
Few public intellectuals have anticipated the shape of the present moment with such prescience as Garry Kasparov. In a major live conversation, Kasparov joins Bret Stephens to discuss his bracing new book, The World of Fake Values: Ukraine Under Fire, A.I. Amok, and the Putinization of America Under Donald Trump. A former world chess champion who gave up the game at the height of his power to confront Vladimir Putin's authoritarian rise, Kasparov has spent decades thinking about how democracies fail – and how they might be saved. Drawing on fresh reporting, recent essays, and conversations with thinkers ranging from A.I. researchers to Ukrainian dissidents, he argues that today's political chaos follows a grim internal logic: the hollowing out of democratic values, the weaponization of technology, and the normalization of authoritarian tactics in plain sight. In conversation with New York Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens, Kasparov examines why Ukraine matters to Americans, what artificial intelligence reveals about human judgment, and whether a democratic majority can still reclaim moral and political ground. Urgent, clear-eyed, and deeply informed, this is a conversation about power, values, and what comes next.
April 24 · 53 min
Marc Shaiman with Nathan Lane: Never Mind the Happy — Showbiz Stories from a Sore Winner
Award-winning composer and co-lyricist Marc Shaiman (Hairspray, Sister Act, Smash and many others) joins fellow Tony Award winner Nathan Lane for a look behind the curtain of life on Broadway, in Hollywood and on Television, with a conversation about Shaiman's new memoir, Never Mind the Happy: Showbiz Stories from a Sore Winner. Emerging from community theater in his teens, sparking a decades-long collaboration with Bette Midler in the '70s, surviving the AIDS crisis of the '80s and bursting into Hollywood and Broadway glory, Marc Shaiman has spent 50 years making some of the most beloved musicals and film scores of our era. Hilarious and deeply human, Shaiman's story is a tribute to the power of music and the pull of the spotlight. Join him with his longtime pal Nathan Lane — a decades-long musical friendship — for a candid, uproariously fun evening of backstage stories from a shared life in show business, on and offstage.
April 17 · 58 min
Maggie Haberman and Alex Burns with Jeff Greenfield: American Politics 2026
Pulitzer Prize-winning The New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman and Politico's Alex Burns return with moderator Jeff Greenfield for an illuminating conversation about Donald Trump and what lies on the horizon of American politics ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. How far will Donald Trump go to crack down on immigration? Are fissures beginning to show in the MAGA coalition? Will Democrats find their footing to push back against Trump's reshaping of the American order? The coming midterm elections stand to be supremely consequential — and for the eighth time on our stage, 92NY favorites Maggie Haberman and Alex Burns return with political analyst Jeff Greenfield to offer unparalleled insight into this new era. Covering the arc of Trump's rise for over a decade, Haberman and Burns shed new light on our political history in real time. Don't miss this dynamic duo in their sixth appearance with Jeff Greenfield at 92NY — a conversation about a crucial moment in America, what it means for the balance of power in Washington, and the political forces that will determine our future. They will also discuss the high stakes war with Iran, American divisions, and what's next.
April 10 · 54 min
92NY's Goodbye to Starz's Outlander
Join the stars of Outlander — Sam Heughan, Sophie Skelton, Richard Rankin, John Bell, David Berry, plus executive producers Maril Davis and Matthew B. Roberts — for a conversation about the eagerly-awaited eight and final season of Starz's smash hit series, including clips from the show. Captivating fans for more than a decade with an iconic, time-travelling love story based on the internationally-bestselling books by Diana Gabaldon, Outlander is a perennial 92NY favorite — but all great things must come to end. In the final season, the Frasers must grapple with questions of time, fate, and prophecy — and whether they can finally alter history. A visit from the cast and creators of Outlander is a cause for celebration. Hear Heughan, Skelton, Rankin, Bell, Berry, Davis, and Roberts as they discuss the remarkable arc of their series, the making of the emotional final season, stories from behind the scenes, and much more.
March 20 · 55 min
Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Lynton and Joshua Steiner in Conversation: From Mistakes to Meaning
Join Michael Lynton, former CEO of Sony Entertainment, and Joshua Steiner, former US Treasury Department Chief of Staff, for a conversation with Malcolm Gladwell about transforming failure into discovery — and Lynton and Steiner's new book, From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn't Own You. We all make mistakes. Longtime friends Michael Lynton and Joshua Steiner made mistakes that shaped their careers and lives, but it wasn't until the isolation of the pandemic that they began to open up to each other about them. When Lynton was the CEO of Sony Entertainment, he greenlit the film that led to the infamous North Korean hack; meanwhile, a private diary Steiner had kept as Chief of Staff at the Treasury Department became a focal point in the Clinton Whitewater scandal. As their conversations deepened and they searched for a book to guide their exploration, they decided to write one themselves. From Mistakes to Meaning themselves is an examination of their own stories and with candid interviews with influential figures such as Joanna Coles and Malcolm Gladwell — unveiling the hidden dimensions of mistakes and the universal struggle to move beyond them. In a candid conversation about how our personalities drive mistakes and how mistakes shape our lives, hear Gladwell, Lynton and Steiner discuss the difference between failures and mistakes, the stages of mistakes, and how it's possible to break the patterns that lead to misunderstandings and shame — turning mistakes into portals for personal growth.
March 13 · 1 hr 12 min
The Novels of Toni Morrison and Language as Liberation: Kevin Young, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Sasha Bonét, and Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison helped Americans of all races see themselves with radical clarity in modern classics like Sula and Beloved. Her lectures on American literature and racial imagination, now available for the first time, have never been more necessary. Join The New Yorker's poetry editor Kevin Young, novelist Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, writer Sasha Bonét, and poet Reginald Dwayne Betts for a conversation that breaks open the taboos about race in American literature — and a celebration of her new collection, Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon. Drawing a direct line from the Black bodies that built the nation to the Black characters that many of the country's canonical white writers imagined in their work, Morrison's lectures are an antidote to fear and intellectual repression at a time when discussion about race in American literature has become fraught and muted — revealing that liberation is possible through language. In a celebration of the book's launch — and the reissue of her classic oeuvre — don't miss this group of distinguished novelists, poets, and scholars as they step inside the classroom with Morrison to revel in her singular brilliance — cracking the code of America's deepest fears, longings, and hopes for collective liberation.
March 6 · 16 min
Michael Douglas with TCM's Alicia Malone: Wall Street (1987)
Michael Douglas embodied the ruthless extremes of 1980s capitalism with his Oscar-winning portrayal of investor Gordon Gekko, the coldly calculating corporate raider who takes eager young stockbroker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) under his wing. "There's no nobility in poverty anymore," Bud tells his working-class dad (real-life father Martin Sheen), before embarking on a series of ethical compromises in the pursuit of quick wealth, adding an art-savvy interior designer (Daryl Hannah) to his portfolio along the way. Writer-director Oliver Stone was inspired by his own father, a longtime Wall St. broker, and several real-world financiers when he delivered this sharply critical cautionary tale, which photographs the rarified air of lower Manhattan in amber-tinted, smoke-stained hues. But the film's enduring image is that of Douglas's steely-eyed Gekko, who hungrily consumes businesses — as well as his friends and rivals — like platefuls of blood-red steak tartare.
February 27 · 56 min
Governor Josh Shapiro with Gayle King: Where We Keep the Light
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro joins us for a conversation about the intersection of public service, personal faith, and Jewish values — and his new memoir, Where We Keep the Light: Stories from a Life of Service. From an early age, Josh Shapiro learned and practiced the power of showing up, listening, and working to make peoples' lives a little better. And as Governor of Pennsylvania, he's delivered. Reflecting on what he's learned by knocking on doors, serving his community, and tackling the tough issues we face, Where We Keep the Light is Shapiro's testament to how the Jewish values instilled in him as a young man have shaped his life and career in public service. In a candid conversation celebrating the book's launch, hear Shapiro discuss his political, spiritual, and personal journey — how he's combatting political violence and hate in Pennsylvania, why we need leaders who are willing to bring people together and deliver results, why he believes there's more that unites us than divides us as Americans, his take on the future of the Democratic Party, and much more.

Showing 21–31 of 31 episodes