00:50] NARVAEZ: Song of the Emperor and Variations on a Spanish Tune
[07:20] BACH: Prelude (from Cello Suite No.1)
[10:25] D. SCARLATTI: Sonata in A Major, K.322
[13:41] WEISS: Allegretto
[17:10] SOR: Minuet in A Major, Op. 11, No. 6
[21:16] TANSMAN: “Berceuse d’Orient;” “Mazurka”
[28:29] CRESPO: “Norteña”
[31:58] TCHAIKOVSKY: “Mazurka,” from Album for the Young
[34:19] TORROBA: Sonatina
[48:10] VILLA-LOBOS: Prelude No. 1
[54:19] Encores

Recorded March 10, 1980 at 92nd Street Y.

Andrés Segovia: Solo Guitar Recital at 92Y, 1980

Recorded March 31, 1983 at 92nd Street Y.

Italo Calvino reading from Invisible Cities, Mr. Palomar and other collections | 92Y Readings

Recorded November 6, 1954 at 92nd Street Y.

Wallace Stevens: “It Must Give Pleasure”

Pablo Neruda's First Reading in the U.S.

In this episode of 92NY Talks, join renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson when he discusses his new book Starry Messenger with Gayle King. In Starry Messenger, Tyson steps back and looks at life from an astral vantage point, inspiring a deeper sense of unity for life on Earth. He reveals his inspiration for the book — an array of brilliant and beautiful truths that apply to us all, informed and enlightened by his special knowledge of our place in the universe. The conversation was recorded on October 19th, 2022 in front of a live audience at The 92nd Street Y, New York.

Neil deGrasse Tyson in Conversation with Gayle King: Starry Messenger

Christopher Hitchens sits down with Salman Rushdie to discuss Hitchens’ searing memoir, Hitch 22, that lays bare the many contradictions in his life and affirms his conviction that all personal is also political. This was recorded June 8, 2010 at 92nd Street Y.

Christopher Hitchens with Salman Rushdie: 92Y Talks Podcast Episode 3

Renowned British ethologist, Richard Dawkins, discusses science and religion with physicist and World Science Festival co-founder Brian Greene. Recorded September 24, 2013 at 92nd Street Y.

Richard Dawkins with Brian Greene: 92Y Talks Episode 4

Elizabeth Bowen was often in America, teaching and lecturing, in the 1950s and 1960s, and was a regular at the 92nd Street Y, where she was treated like the undoubted star she was then, a major writer on a level with George Eliot, Jane Austen, Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf. For readers familiar with the edgy, dark, intense modernity of those novels, Bowen’s voice in this recording will come as a shock. She sounds old-school posh, in the Anglo-Irish tradition, with grandly archaic upper-crust intonations. The effect is compounded by a stately rate of speech, evidently a technique for controlling her pronounced stammer while lecturing. But quite often the stammer intrudes, catching her on a wildly rolling “r” or a sibilant “s.” Stylish, measured composure is drastically subverted from within, which is also what is going on in her novels, and relates to what she is saying about fiction in these talks.

In this 1954 talk, The Problems of Contemporary Literature, she pursues the pressures on the contemporary writer, of whom it’s demanded that “he” (as she mostly says) must be “of  his time.” But the essential condition for creating fiction is that one should be unconscious and intuitive, like a child playing. The current demand that writers should “express” the state of the world they live in—be a “mouthpiece for their generation”—forces them to be “self-conscious.” Shakespeare, she maintains, stood in a “totally unconscious” relation to his age. Now there are thousands of people in a state of disturbed, “semi-confused” consciousness—especially in big cities like New York—not knowing how to deal with the “stupefying” advance “of technical things, of scientific things,” feeling “obliterated” as individuals. They look to the writer to express their incoherent state of mind. But the writer must be able to be free from that sense of obligation, to be “primarily original, unaccommodating,” an “advance-guard” for the unknown future.

Elizabeth Bowen - The Problems of Contemporary Literature

In this episode of 92NY talks, join American astrophysicist, bestselling author, and science icon Neil deGrasse Tyson with journalist and author Fareed Zakaria as they revisit his very first book, Merlin’s Tour of the Universe. This new, updated and revised edition takes his readers on an entertaining and edifying journey, answering questions big and small with authentic science.
 
The conversation was recorded on January 5th, 2025, at The 92nd Street Y, New York.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Merlin’s Tour of the Universe

On October 26, 2014, 92Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center celebrated Dylan Thomas’s centenary by turning Kaufmann Concert Hall into a studio for a reading of Under Milk Wood broadcast live on BBC Radio Wales. The Poetry Center presented the premiere of this “play for voices” on May 14, 1953 with Thomas himself leading the cast. Starting in 2015, May 14 will be known as Dylan Day - http://www.literaturewales.org/dylan-day/ - an annual celebration of the poet’s life and work.

Michael Sheen, who directed the centenary reading and led a cast of all Welsh actors (Kate Burton, Karl Johnson, Mark Lewis Jones, Francine Morgan and Matthew Aubrey), said “it’s a real honor and an absolute thrill to be able to perform Under Milk Wood in this very special year and on the stage that it first found its voice. The live radio broadcast is an opportunity to celebrate him and his work in both New York—a city that became so important to Dylan—and, at the same time, in Wales, his inspiration and home.”

View 92Y’s Dylan Thomas in America—A Centennial Exhibition.
http://www.92y.org/Unterberg-Poetry-Center/Events/Dylan-Thomas.aspx

Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood: BBC Radio Wales Reading at 92Y

Screen favorite Alan Rickman directs and stars in a new period film about Louis XIV, co-starring Oscar winner Kate Winslet. In this episode of 92Y Talks, he discusses A Little Chaos with Reel Pieces moderator Annette Insdorf. The conversation was recorded on June 18, 2015 in front of a live audience at New York's 92nd Street Y.

Alan Rickman with Annette Insdorf: 92Y Talks Episode 48

Join acclaimed comedian and New York Times-bestselling author Zarna Garg for a special conversation with Ira Glass (This American Life) about her new Hulu stand-up special, Practical People Win.

The conversation was recorded on July 18th, 2025, at The 92nd Street Y, New York.

Zarna Garg with Ira Glass: Practical People Win

Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris and Scott Ellis with Tracy Smith: Art

Join the stars and producers of Hulu’s new limited series, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox — Knox herself, who is an executive producer; star Grace Van Patten; creator and executive producer KJ Steinberg; and executive producers Monica Lewinsky and Warren Littlefield — for a special conversation.

The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox

In a moment when campus culture wars dominate headlines and government is putting enormous pressure on universities to change, two titans of American academia meet for a rare public conversation at 92NY.

Lawrence H. Summers, President Emeritus of Harvard University and former US Treasury Secretary, and Lee C. Bollinger, President Emeritus of Columbia University and one of the nation’s leading First Amendment scholars, take on a question that cuts to the heart of American intellectual life: When the conservative media and federal authorities say that elite universities have been captured by a progressive ideology that is destroying higher education, are they right, or are universities still essential engines of free inquiry and democratic renewal in which a wide-range of perspectives and viewpoints can be expressed, explored and critically examined? The stakes could not be higher: Billions of dollars in federal funding; the future of some of America’s oldest and most important institutions; and the character of our country’s leadership for generations to come. Is American higher education at risk?

Summers raises concerns that universities may have become too one-sided in their thinking and are risking public trust, while Bollinger believes such claims have been overstated and that universities continue to reflect a broad range of ideas.

Moderated by Robert Costa of CBS News and CBS Sunday Morning, this event launches the new season of 92NY’s Dialogue Project, a series dedicated to modeling civil, incisive public debate at a time when it is urgently needed.

Don’t miss this chance to witness two of the sharpest minds in higher education wrestle with a question that will shape the future of intellectual life in this country.

Universities in the Crosshairs: Larry Summers and Lee Bollinger with Robert Costa

The Atlantic’s Thomas Chatterton Williams joins #1 New York Times-bestselling social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (The Anxious Generation) for a searching conversation about the evolution, paradoxes, and taboos of American social justice movements in the years since 2020 — and Williams’ bracing new book, Summer of Our Discontent.

In this sharp and unsettling work, Thomas Chatterton Williams — among the most incisive social critics of his generation — examines a culture transformed by the upheavals of the pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the rise of punitive social media. He traces how well-intentioned movements reshaped journalism, education, the arts, policing, and even the language we use to make sense of the world — often in ways that have unintentionally frayed the shared civic fabric that once held us together.

In this reading and conversation, Williams and Haidt — two of today’s most fearless and provocative thinkers — wrestle with the aftershocks of the summer of 2020, the threats to liberalism from both left and right, and what renewal might require.

“Mass insanity broke out among America’s elites in the summer of 2020, with devastating consequences for America’s knowledge-creating institutions. Thomas Chatterton Williams is one of the few intellectuals who stood firm and made the case with great courage for liberal values and the free exchange of ideas.” — Jonathan Haidt

“Thomas Chatterton Williams uses a fiercely probing intelligence, instinctively dissatisfied with absolutist explanations, to explore without ideological blindfolds what happened in one momentous summer.” — Adam Gopnik

Summer of Our Discontent: Thomas Chatterton Williams with Jonathan Haidt

The Booker prize-winning author of Atonement and Saturday joins us for the launch of his audacious new novel — a genre-bending, time-traveling tour de force.

For decades, Ian McEwan's novels have probed the depths of the human heart, creating unforgettable and utterly relatable characters of extraordinary moral complexity, caught in the crosscurrents of memory, history, and desire.

His new novel, What We Can Know, begins at a dinner party in 2014 with the recitation of a love poem among friends and follows to 2119, in the wake of a catastrophic nuclear accident, as a lonely scholar and researcher chases the ghost of that poem. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem’s discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about the world he thought he knew. It is at once a love story and a literary detective story, reclaiming the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, imagining a future world where all is not quite lost.

In a special reading and conversation with The New Yorker's editor David Remnick, hear McEwan discuss the genesis of the new novel, his creation of a new kind of speculative literary fiction, why we will never stop longing for the literature of the past even as we reach inexorably toward the future, and much more. The conversation will air on The New Yorker Radio Hour.

Ian McEwan in Conversation with David Remnick: What We Can Know

Join #1 New York Times-bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell discuss his latest book, Revenge of the Tipping Point; a fresh look at his breakthrough book, The Tipping Point.

In 1996, Malcolm Gladwell published a piece in The New Yorker that became the seed of The Tipping Point. Twenty-five years after the book’s publication, it remains a global phenomenon — blending social science, history, pop culture, and business to look at how a single event can spark a movement, a social phenomenon, or an epidemic. In Revenge of the Tipping Point, Gladwell draws on fresh case studies to rethink and expand on his original ideas about how trends are born, catch on, and spread. Why in the late 1980s and early ’90s did Los Angeles become the bank robbery capital of the world? What is the Magic Third and what does it have to do with racial equity? How did COVID and the opioid crisis become so devastating?

Hear Gladwell discuss these questions and more — The New Yorker’s crucial early support of Gladwell’s writing, the enormous impact of The Tipping Point, what Gladwell has learned since its publication, and what social epidemics can teach us about the future.

Malcolm Gladwell in Conversation with Benjamin Naddaff-Hafrey: Revenge of the Tipping Point

Join former US attorneys Joyce Vance and Preet Bharara for a conversation and special live podcast taping of Stay Tuned with Preet, about history, the law, and what it will take to save our democracy — and Vance’s first book, Giving Up Is Unforgivable.

“We’re in this together.” For the past two years, Joyce Vance has signed off posts on her the chart-topping Substack Civil Discourse with these four words as she’s guided readers through a continued erosion of democratic norms. Now, in Giving Up Is Unforgivable, she reaffirms that we’re in this together with a clarion call to action — putting our current crisis in historical context and sketching out a vision for where we go next. Hopeful, even as she acknowledges the daunting challenges that lie ahead, Vance is the constitutional law professor you never knew you needed, explaining the legal context, political history, and the practical reasons that the rule of law still matters.

In a conversation between two brilliant legal thinkers and major figures in US law, hear Vance’s political manifesto for our moment — an empowering conversation about taking action in your community, rallying for a new era of civic engagement, and finding hope when we need it most.

“The most frequent question I get, from frustrated citizens worried about our democracy, is this: What can I do? In Giving Up Is Unforgivable, Joyce answers that question with actual action items. She inspires as she informs and offers pragmatic advice even as she waxes poetic about all that America is and can be. This is a shining tutorial and a reminder that we the people still have the power.” — Preet Bharara



Joyce Vance in Conversation with Preet Bharara: Giving Up Is Unforgivable

Legendary filmmaker and writer John Waters joins us for a reading and conversation spanning the arc of his remarkable career, in celebration of the new reissue of his classic early screenplays, with The New Yorker’s Michael Schulman.

From the shocking Pink Flamingos, which established him as a household name and set a new bar for cinematic filth, to Hairspray, the sweetly triumphant story of a dance-crazy teen in 1960s Baltimore — later adapted into a smash hit Tony Award-winning musical — John Waters’ films redefined the art of trash in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and in the process blew open the doors of modern independent film. And as his early screenplays attest, Waters has long been more than filmmaker — he is a towering literary filth artist, a writer of radical and subversive wit; in other words, an intellectual in reverse.

In this reading and conversation covering Waters’ earliest days as a filmmaker in Baltimore to his status as the auteur king of exploitation films made for art theaters, we celebrate the entire arc of Waters’ singular career, to honor the reissue of six of Waters’ early screenplays — Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, Flamingos Forever, and Hairspray.

The John Waters Screenplays: A Reading and Conversation with The New Yorker’s Michael Schulman

Go behind the scenes of two iconic roles — and the wild ride in between — as Michael J. Fox joins longtime collaborator and co-author Nelle Fortenberry to discuss their new book, Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum.

In the early months of 1985, Michael J. Fox did the impossible: starring in Family Ties by day, and filming Back to the Future by night. These two leading roles established him as a towering talent — Family Ties’ Reagan-loving, tie-wearing teenager Alex P. Keaton defined a generation of TV viewers with his quick wit and conservative swagger, while Back to the Future’s Marty McFly became a cinematic archetype: instantly recognizable, charismatic, and endlessly enduring in popular culture.

The result was a time-bending stretch of work that would define Fox’s career. Told with all of Michael J. Fox’s warmth, wit and self-awareness, Future Boy is the untold story of that unprecedented time — and of the creative energy, ambition, and joy that fueled both projects. Don’t miss this special conversation with Fox and Fortenberry as they revisit those extraordinary months and share insights and reflections on an unforgettable moment in entertainment history.

Michael J. Fox and Nelle Fortenberry with Donny Deutsch: Future Boy

Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic Robin Givhan joins Monica L. Miller, professor and co-curator of Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the Costume Institute exhibition now on view at The Met, for a conversation about the crossroads of fashion, culture, identity, and art — and the life of the great designer Virgil Abloh, as told in Givhan’s new biography, Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh.

The first Black designer to serve as artistic director of Louis Vuitton in the brand’s 164-year history, Virgil Abloh’s appointment as head of menswear in 2018 shocked the fashion industry. Blurring the lines between luxury and streetwear, Abloh embodied a new way forward for his industry — and in her spellbinding new biography, Givhan shows that Abloh’s story is the story of a revolution in fashion and culture, a story that upends a century’s worth of ideas about race, class, creativity, and taste.

Hear Givhan tell that story — from his early career as an architect to his complex relationship with mentor Kanye West to his meteoric rise and tragic death at 41 of a rare form of cancer — honoring the legacy of a singular creative force whose influence is still rippling through American culture.

“Robin’s look into the life and work of the late, great, Virgil Abloh is thoughtful, intelligent, honest, and masterfully crafted. Virgil’s freethinking and influence on the possibilities of what creativity can be was a tour de force.” — Marc Jacobs

Robin Givhan and Monica L. Miller: The Genius of Virgil Abloh

Friends of the great Anthony Bourdain gather for a celebratory reading and conversation spanning the worlds of literature, food, and travel, in honor of Bourdain’s restless creative spirit — and launching The Anthony Bourdain Reader: New, Classic, and Rediscovered Writing.

Legendary chef, television host, and writer Anthony Bourdain was a trailblazer who changed the way we thought about food, culture, and ourselves. A larger-than-life thinker, maker, and traveler who was always greater than the sum of his parts, no aspect of his identity was more important to him than that of a writer. The Anthony Bourdain Reader is the definitive, career-spanning collection of that writing, assembled for the first time.

In a celebration of his singular impact on American literature, food, and culture, join us for an intimate gathering of Bourdain’s friends: chef and memoirist Gabrielle Hamilton; Patrick Radden Keefe, fellow traveler and chronicler of culture; legendary food editor and collaborator Ruth Reichl; Kimberly Witherspoon, his agent and the book’s editor; and Laurie Woolever, his assistant, confidante, and biographer.

From the kitchen to family life, from TV to travel through places like Vietnam, Buenos Aires, and Paris, from his teenage travel diaries to his unfinished novel, discover Anthony Bourdain behind the scenes, as you’ve never known him before, from the people who knew him best.

Anthony Bourdain as a Writer: An Intimate Gathering of Bourdain’s Friends Read His Work

Salman Rushdie, longtime friend of 92NY’s storied literary community, returns to our stage for a reading and conversation with Daniel Kehlmann about The Eleventh Hour — a supremely inventive new collection about survival, death, and what comes into focus at the proverbial eleventh hour of life.

Awarded the Best of Booker for his seminal debut, Midnight’s Children — honoring it as the most accomplished novel to ever receive the prestigious literary prize — Salman Rushdie has been probing the depths of identity, history, and mortality to stunning effect for 45 years. In The Eleventh Hour, he turns his extraordinary imagination to life’s final act with a quintet of stories that span the three countries in which he has made his work — India, England, and America.

Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? Do we spend our “eleventh hour” in serenity or in rage? Spanning private tragedy, national calamity, political parable, and simmering mystery, Rushdie’s new stories further cement him as one of the boldest writers of our time.

Join the internationally renowned, award-winning author for an unforgettable evening of reading and conversation in celebration of survival, freedom of expression, his new collection, and his extraordinary contributions to world literature.

Salman Rushdie with Daniel Kehlmann: The Eleventh Hour

Join Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis for a riveting conversation about their explosive new book, Injustice.

With unparalleled access to sources inside both the Trump and Biden administrations, they pull back the curtain on the Department of Justice — an institution meant to be above politics, yet shaken to its core by fear, dysfunction, and partisan warfare.

Leonnig and Davis take us inside the DOJ during and after Trump’s presidency: how it was weaponized against political enemies, how long-serving employees were driven out, and how the department faltered in responding to the January 6 insurrection. They’ll also examine the cautious approach of Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose reluctance to act decisively allowed critical investigations to languish — missteps with lasting consequences for the rule of law.

This is a rare chance to hear two of the country’s most respected investigative journalists discuss what they uncovered, what it means for American democracy today, and why the stakes in 2025 could not be higher.

Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis with Nicolle Wallace: Injustice

In this episode of 92Y Talks, astrophysicist, cosmologist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses black holes and other cosmic quandaries. The conversation, moderated by NPR science correspondent Robert Krulwich for the Giants of Science series, was recorded in front of a live audience on February 1, 2007 at New York's 92nd Street Y.

Neil deGrasse Tyson with Robert Krulwich: 92Y Talks Episode 64

His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, joins Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein for a wide-ranging conversation on aspects of faith and morality. The conversation was recorded on January 30, 2018 in front of a live audience at New York's 92nd Street Y.

Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, and Rabbi Peter Rubinstein on Faith and Morality

John Cheever reading one of his most famous stories, “The Swimmer” at 92nd Street Y on December 19, 1977. “The story was made into a film some of you may have seen,” Cheever remarked before he began to read. “It still runs on late-night television. I know because people always call me and say, ‘Hey, you’re in the movies!’ It’s usually about half past 11. . . . Here again the story has had an international success, and the various interpretations have always interested me. It’s very popular in Russia, for example, where there are almost no swimming pools and where almost nobody swims.” 

Learn more about 92Y's Virtual Poetry Center: http://www.92Y.org/VPC

John Cheever: "The Swimmer" | 92Y Readings

http://www.92Y.org/VPC - Actor James Earl Jones reads passages from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself."

Recorded October 21, 1973 at 92nd Street Y

James Earl Jones reads Walt Whitman | 92Y Readings

http://www.92Y.org/VPC - Poet Anne Carson and collaborators perform two works: Cassandra Float Can and a sonnet sequence.

Recorded March 26, 2008 at 92nd Street Y

Anne Carson: "Cassandra Float Can" and sonnet sequence | 92Y Readings

Mary Oliver reads from A Thousand Mornings, Oct 15, 2012 at 92nd Street Y.

Mary Oliver reads from A Thousand Mornings | Oct 15, 2012 at 92nd Street Y

Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses his new book, Letters from an Astrophysicist, with Radiolab host Robert Krulwich. Every year, Tyson receives thousands of letters from people across the globe who have sought him out in search of answers to questions about science, faith, philosophy, life and, of course, Pluto. His replies are by turns wise, funny and mind-blowing. The conversation was recorded on October 11, 2019 in front of a live audience at New York's 92nd Street Y.

Neil deGrasse Tyson with Robert Krulwich: Letters from an Astrophysicist

J. D. McClatchy introduces John Ashbery: “[his] poems reach for themselves and for their readers through vagrant sympathy and a kind of immediate contact. They wander back to their sources of power, then sidle up to us. We recognize their accent as our own, but hear, too, the finer accommodation of speech to that vision.”  Ashbery reads from Three Poems and A Wave.

Recorded November 21, 1983 at 92nd Street Y.

John Ashbery: Three Poems and A Wave | 92Y Readings

Dylan Thomas’s play Under Milk Wood had its premiere on the stage of 92Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall on May 14, 1953. This recording of the evening features Thomas himself reading a number of roles, 1st Voice and Reverend Eli Jenkins, among them.

Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood

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