It has been a while since Bwog writers Pierce Stanley and Lucy Tang called to session a recent incarnation of the Bwog Book Club.  For those short of memory or perhaps for whom the summer has worn on maybe a bit too long, the Bwog Book Club kicked off several weeks ago with a reading […]

Bwog tipster Sara Vogel informs us that Robert Thurman, professor of Buddhist studies and relative of all sorts of famous people, is this week’s New York Times Magazine “Questions For…” interviewee. In the interview, Thurman talks about why the Dalai Lama never comes over to hang out anymore, totally disses Slavoj Zizek, and also at […]

Bwog freelancer Stephanie Quan isn’t a classical music buff, but she got interested in virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell when she heard about this experiment in a D.C. metro station. Eight months later, she snagged a phone interview with the Strad-playing celebrity, and quizzed him on childhood habits and favorite dead people. Bwog: Hi.   Joshua […]

Bwog correspondent and masthead editor Justin Vlasits spoke to Robert Maschio, CC ’88 and The Todd on Scrubs, about “The Todd Song”, the Writers’ Guild strike, his days at Columbia and In Rainbows. Let’s start with the big news of the day.  You’re debuting “The Todd Song” on your website and it seems to be […]

He’s the guy who wanted to bring Gilchrist back to Columbia, and the only presidential campaign communications director you might also run into on College Walk. Bwog correspondent Christopher Morris-Lent was  sat down with his former Lit Hum teacher to chew over free speech, gay rights, and why Mike Gravel is an American hero. Illustration […]

Ever wanted to take Turkish? Now you can, thanks in large part to Professor Etem Erol, whom Bwog correspondent Omar Siddiqi sat down for an interview last week. As I understand it, you weren’t always a Turkish professor, but in business before. Why did you switch into the world of academia? Well, that was another […]

Tune in to Channel 2 later tonight, we suppose. Also spotted near Lerner, a camera crew from Fox News who actually had no idea why they were shooting b-roll of the campus. Bwoggers shoved a Spectator in front of their faces. “Oh. Ok,” the camera guy said.

Before Midlake’s whirlwind European and national tours, Bwog staffer Lucy Tang catches up with drummer McKenzie Smith. While 4th of July usually evokes images of barbeques and beaches, it’s also starting to hold connotations of free music. This year, we have Midlake supporting headliners The New Pornographers as part of River to River’s festival in […]

Because Bwog doesn’t do hot, sandy or constantly-in-existential-danger, Iraq didn’t quite make it into our summer plans. Not so for Matt Sanchez, GS,  who has been blogging out of the war-torn country for the past couple of weeks. What the hell’s gotten into the conservative activist, military man, Spec opinion writer, American studies major and […]

Bwog Music Critic Bryan Mochizuki catches up with former boss Will Welch, CC ’03. Settle in, it’s a long one.  Will Welch isn’t the sort of alumnus you hear about a lot—he doesn’t donate eight figures in scholarship money or own the Pats or herd sheep with Heath Ledger.  But he’s the Deputy Editor of […]

Bwog editor emerita Sara Vogel bumped into Jon Scieszka, one of her childhood heroes, on 112th street and Broadway a few weeks ago. When she found out that the author of The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales, Math Curse, and the Time Warp Trio series got his Master’s at Columbia in the […]

Students for a Democratic Society—that group that shut down Columbia and other Universities across the country in 1968—generated some buzz last week, when about 20 students met in a Kent classroom to hash out plans for their return (sitting in, Bwog found the Young Spartacists particularly entertaining). “The New SDS” even landed the cover of The […]

Earlier this week, Bwog daily editor Jessica Cohen spoke with Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Tulane and official historian for CBS News. The New York Times recently named his book recounting the short-term aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, The Great Deluge, one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year.  Over spring break, Cohen and […]

Bwog presents the third of three CCSC Presidential candidate interviews, with Voice’s Natali Segovia. How is campaigning going? Campaigning is going well. An interesting aspect of it is hearing perspectives of other students. It’s inspiring seeing people mobilized about Student Council that haven’t normally been. What do you mean by that? Certain groups on campus […]

Gary Shteyngart wrote his first successful novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, during his senior year at Oberlin, and again embraced his Russian immigrant status with a second, Absurdistan. Only in his thirties, he’s now an adjunct professor in the MFA Writing Program. Dena Yago tracked him down to chat. So how has your class been this semester? […]