When confusion reigns, where do you turn? We are strangers to ourselves in these moments, unfocused and unclear. I often turn to the piano, or other musical instruments to get at and get out what's going on inside. More even than writing, composing music allows thoughts and feelings to flow through me unencumbered (or, at least, less encumbered than the more rational reasoned way I sometimes feel I have to write, or talk.) In this episode, I play some piano and talk through some ideas about how ...
Jun 28, 2022•43 min•Season 2Ep. 4
What makes us love a musician? The connection with a performer and their music is not unlike other loves probably, a slightly inexplicable alchemy that hits us hard, right off the bat. Seeing a long line of people waiting mid-morning for the best seats for the Phoebe Bridgers benefit concert in Prospect Park last week, I was curious: why do these folks love her so much they’d wait all day in the hot sun to get as close as possible? So I asked. I’d never even heard of the 27-year-old indie phenom...
Jun 21, 2022•17 min•Season 2Ep. 3
My interaction with the young band Moxie is a direct result of saying 'yes.' "Can a band stay with us a couple of nights?" my son Eli asked a couple weeks back and--based on my love of strangers, especially meeting them in my house--I didn't skip a beat. "Yes," I said. And so it was that I found myself in my kitchen with four of the most lovely dynamic clear-headed young people ever, the Brattleboro, VT-based members of the fast-rising Moxie the Band, in the early days of their Summer 2022 East ...
Jun 13, 2022•37 min•Season 2Ep. 2
When I sat down to write about Dani Markham, the first thing I did was look up "cool." Even though it was the first word that came to mind when I thought to describe her, I guess I don't really know why, or what 'cool' really means... Obviously, like all words, 'cool' is subjective. But what came up from psychologists who study perceptions of human behavior were qualities like 'attitude and behavior seen as uniquely their own" and "accepting who you are, showing up authentically, being kind to e...
Oct 18, 2021•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 1
For this episode, I sat down naked at the piano. Sometimes, it is only through music and rhythm that I am able to get at what I'm REALLY thinking and feeling, what I want to express. Sometimes, often, words don't work. I so like to express my naked thoughts and ideas. And I like to hear other people's. People often can see that in my eyes, in my body language. They tell me things, sometimes things they haven't told anybody else. I often wonder what that is, why people feel they can say things to...
Jun 29, 2021•18 min
Trust is an interesting thing. To talk to someone, to engage with them, is to offer them a sort of trust. When I first talked to Jason Naradzay a few years back, it was to interview him for a piece I was writing in support of Musicambia, a nonprofit music education organization he had been involved with during his time served at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. He was out of Sing Sing and applying the therapeutic skills he'd learned inside the prison to help those still there. He knew firsthand ...
Jun 17, 2021•50 min
I knew that Jamee Jurecki and Leonissa Morris were to be my pals back when I first encountered them in December of 2017. As we stood there in front of the long mirrors of the communal bathroom at the Posh Hostel in South Beach, brushing our teeth and hair, preparing to hit the town, it was very clear. We had come to Miami on our own, adventurous ladies staying at a low-cost high-style hostel by the beach during the city's fabulous Art Basel show, and we were definitely gonna be able to hang toge...
Nov 23, 2020•1 hr 4 min
On Facebook the other day, someone posed the question, "what career did you dream of having when you were a kid?" I didn't skip a beat. "A singer!" I responded. My sister and I spent countless hours singing into a tape recorder (yes, a tape recorder, with cassette tapes whose plastic film we often had to detangle and re-roll with a pen. I am that old.) There was something about the freedom of belting out one's more melodramatic emotions full on with a fake microphone in the mirror that was truly...
Oct 07, 2020•55 min
I first met Nora Fish in a little cafe named Parco, in Park Slope. She had a beautiful German Shepherd named Annika and an adorable pug named Tootsie. As she reminds me during this podcast, she and I "were constantly complimenting each other's boots!" I have always admired Nora's style, from the great knit ponchos she makes herself to the gorgeous knit sweaters she has made for her dog, my dog and so many others, including those four-legged creatures she so lovingly invites to stay with her when...
Oct 02, 2020•35 min
When James Yang came to my kids' school to talk about his illustrated children's book back in 2013, I was immediately struck by its powerful simplicity. I had just started volunteering at a school where kids didn't get to meet authors like my kids did, and I invited James to join. We reminisced during this podcast about that day, about how the kids swarmed around him as he showed them on a big piece of butcher paper taped to the wall how to make the simple shapes and designs of the robots and pl...
Sep 30, 2020•53 min
It was quite the coup to get one of my teenagers to come on to the podcast. After all, they are independent humans with ideas of their own about how to live life, and doing my bidding often takes low priority, as it should be. Over the years, I humiliated them bi-weekly with my Fearless Parenting column in the Brooklyn Paper, subjected them to a few awkward photo/video shoots for newspaper and TV and regularly interrupt family outings by...yes, talking to strangers (at one point stopping to give...
Sep 30, 2020•25 min
When I first met the lovely Emily Sause a few years back, she was 'head of community' for a stunning Manhattan co-working space called The Assemblage. It was part of her job to be welcoming, but she seemed to go above and beyond with her bright-eyed enthusiasm. While I didn't end up joining the super-cool workspace, I did manage to come for a couple of events, including Emily's 'vocal toning' workshop, which was one of the more relaxing deeply meditative hours of my life. We got together a numbe...
Sep 29, 2020•33 min
I met Roberto at Cafe Martin in Park Slope. He was a mathematician/philosopher working there between gigs. A song had come on and I asked a question about it, and he said how popular it was with the French kids. He said it with a bit of a scoff. He sounded French but...”where are you from?” I asked before I guessed. “I’m Italian,” he said. He grew up in Monaco though. Maybe I learned that then, or later, that relationship between his Italian roots and growing up in France. It read on his face, t...
Sep 27, 2020•11 min
When I run out of coffee, I am always glad because it means I can take a walk over to Java Joe. For so many years, I have been going to this little shop on 8th Street, in Park Slope, to buy their deliciously strong Black Magic espresso beans. The shop is adorable, run by a lovely frank Irish lady, and besides the INCREDIBLE mint malted milk balls (a holiday gift staple) I always have a good chat. In this episode, I went in for beans and a new mug (I have too many, but always want a new one when ...
Sep 26, 2020•26 min
In this episode, I head to the beach to drum, and I talk a bit about how we learn to trust ourselves and others. It's not easy. I often use the metaphor of music, and work with people, including homeless men, to try to get at thoughts about connection, and trust and flexibility through drumming together. What we can create together, quickly, us strangers, with a little music, is nothing short of magic. Have a drum or something to hit your hands on to make rhythm with me at the beginning. Listen ...
Sep 24, 2020•22 min
What I loved about Samir LanGus from the first time I saw him was how comfortably he seemed to mix cultures seamlessly and stylishly. As a Moroccan musician steeped in the classically spiritual Gnawa music of his homeland, he is always sporting American fashions like his favored Adidas jackets or running pants along with more traditional Moroccan garb. The look is representative of Samir's extremely nimble balance of traditional and modern, which has shown up in the collaborations he has forged ...
Sep 23, 2020•22 min
I'm "friends" on Facebook with a lot of people I've never met. Maybe we have mutual friends, maybe they read something of mine or listened to my podcast, maybe I heard them play somewhere. Neither Chris Rael nor I remember exactly how we became "friends," though we have a long list of friends in common, mostly musicians (since he is one.) Even though we've never met, I reached out to Chris recently after a post of his caught my eye, and asked if he would be on my podcast to discuss it. In it he ...
Sep 22, 2020•33 min
I try not to take advantage of my friendship with veteran psychoanalyst Mubasher Naseer. After all, he is clearly easy to talk to, listens well and has many years' experience helping people sort out relationships and other of life's strains and stresses with his sage advice. Since we met, roughly six years ago, Mubasher is always a good person to chat with about what's happening in the world and what people are feeling, including he and I. It is nice to hear what a mental health professional fee...
Sep 20, 2020•48 min
Since meeting jazz pianist James Carney seven or so years ago in a little bar in Park Slope, I have sat many times in various venues to see and hear him tickle the ivories, his fingers flying fast across the keys masterfully to create rhythms that resound in the soul. It was a pleasure to sit with him again and hear a few of these sounds, this time in his new PianoWorks studio in Brooklyn's cool Industry City complex. While musical performances came to a halt during Covid, James decided to expan...
Sep 19, 2020•25 min
It is fitting that in our chat, in her sumptuous living quarters in the Fort Greene area of Brooklyn, stylist/creative director Hilary Robertson would quote Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn . She waved her hand this way and that with her usual English dramatic flair, and the crisp striped fabric of the full-length dress shirt she wore shifted slightly. "'Truth is Beauty, and Beauty Truth' or something like that," she said, eyes up toward the soaring brownstone parlor ceiling as she rendered the perfe...
Sep 18, 2020•1 hr
I first met Saskia Layden (now Saskia Layden Kaya) when she was teaching yoga to children at Still Waters in a Storm, a storefront after-school program in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. Her smile and laugh lit up the room, and the children gathered around her, all over her, like puppies. I knew immediately I needed her to teach the kids in my own program for InspireCorps, at PS81, and when she did...I was blown away. She had no doubts, not a single qualm it seemed. She knew exactly what the k...
Sep 17, 2020•43 min
It is fitting that I am posting this episode of Talking to Strangers late at night, as that's when I met today's guest, jazz guitarist Andy Bianco. We met at Korzo, a Park Slope restaurant and bar, during one of the late great Konceptions Music Series shows put on by pianist James Carney and his wife Heidi Bayer. He wasn't playing that night, but I would hear him on a number of subsequent occasions, both in bars and in my house, where he began to teach my son. As much as I try, with this podcast...
Sep 16, 2020•42 min
Believing in yourself can be a hard thing. With Stanley Mills' sure smile and easy laugh, and his gentle prodding, it seems easier. Stanley has been a personal trainer for over 20 years, though his body seems to defy that that's even possible! It is his physique that is physically impressive, but it is his amazing positivity that really drives one forward. I can hear his voice in my head sometimes, "You can do it Steph..." Everyone in my family except my oldest son has used Stanley as a trainer ...
Sep 14, 2020•6 min
When you buy a house and decide to gut renovate it, you are suddenly in contact with a lot of strangers you have to learn to trust. Last November, I hired upstate contractor Andy Kane from Peak Builders, and he began to work on the fixer-upper we'd purchased in Elka Park, NY. It has been 10 months since then, and there have been an amazing cast of characters Andy has brought in do the plumbing and electrical, to tile the bathrooms, fix the roof, deliver the wood, to paint and help him with all t...
Sep 14, 2020•20 min
It's funny to remember back nearly four decades ago to a time and place, to a 50s diner in Tucson, Arizona in the 80s. That young girl in the too-tight Laverne shirt making shakes behind the ice cream counter was me, Steph Saull. I found this recording I made talking about that time (and digressing, of course, onto other seemingly related topics) and I thought it was fascinating how I seem to recall details then that I'm not even sure about now, a little more than a year later. I posit theories ...
Sep 13, 2020•17 min
Discovering a fabulous musician you've never heard of at a club, alone in a foreign city is...well, it is an amazing, life-affirming highly connected experience, one I wholeheartedly recommend. Rolling through recordings on my phone, searching for a podcast for Day 4 of my 30-day lead-up to 50, I happened upon a performance I'd recorded at the Sunset Sunside Jazz Club in Paris back in May of 2017. I'd gone on vacation with my mom and sisters, but no one else felt like going out, so I headed out ...
Sep 12, 2020•15 min
Trying to title this podcast, I was uncharacteristically at a loss for words. It's hard to put Alex in a box. He said he would go into one, but only if he knew who he was in there with...Ha. This is why Alex and I have become great friends and confidants over the last five years, ever since we met on the lunchroom balcony of the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY a place seekers like us go to...well, find. In addition to whatever we learned in our workshops, Alex and I found each other. He smiled ...
Sep 10, 2020•52 min
There is definitely something about the cadence of someone's voice. At the crowded poolside bar at the Raleigh Hotel in Miami Beach, on a gorgeous night when the Art Basel art fair had taken over the city, Per Adolfsen's urgent yet mellifluous Danish tone broke through the din. There had been some drinks consumed, surely, that fueled his passionate outcries, but it was obvious from the moment my friend Miok and I met him that Mr. Adolfsen was a force. Honesty is always powerful. The same tone sh...
Sep 09, 2020•49 min
I am always amazed at the power of instantaneous connection. The moment I met Joelle Provost at a diner in Brooklyn Heights is a perfect example. A wide-eyed young artist/art teacher, she struck me right away as a powerful force, one I wanted to get to know. I shortly thereafter visited her on the wide porch of the Ditmas Park Victorian she was living in with other artists to view her work, and I knew my instincts were correct: this young woman is gifted with a great vision, and the power to cha...
Aug 31, 2020•44 min
When we sat down together recently at an outdoor cafe on my corner, in Park Slope, I liked Giles Clement immediately. Though he might use one as a photographer, it was clear from his comment about the waitress that in conversation he had no filter. Just my style. I was told weeks ago by my friend Maggie to call Giles. Maggie is the owner of the Krooked Cafe in Tannersville near my new house in the Catskill Mountains of New York, and she is a special human, mother to all. When she left me a messa...
Aug 04, 2020•43 min
