The inspiration for this project came many years ago before podcasts or even the internet existed. One day my Survey of Brit Lit Professor at Tufts University, Sylvan Barnet, a prominent scholar and a warm and engaging teacher with a brilliant mind, asked if he could join me for lunch after his lecture. I eagerly agreed and began to think of all the obvious questions a young English Major would want to ask his favorite professor. As we sat to eat and I leaned in to grill him, Professor Barnet looked right at me and said, “Do you know what I really want to talk about? I want to talk about Zen Art.” My jaw dropped, I sat back and for the next hour, I learned more about Japanese calligraphy and painting then I ever thought I wanted to know. As he spoke, Professor Barnet’s eyes lit up and he became wildly animated about the subject, even more than during his energetic lectures on William Blake or Shakespeare.

To this day, I could not tell you his favorite author or the novel he loved the most, but I can tell you that Professor Barnet was crazy about Zen Art. In fact, he and his life partner William Burto, went on to build one of the finest collections of Japanese calligraphy in the world and upon Barnet’s death in 2016, their collection was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston among other places.

Did you know that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar loves comic books, and that Tom Hanks collects vintage typewriters? I think most of us, even if we are not prominent scholars, famous athletes or movie stars, have that one thing that we really want to talk about—that passion that turns us on and lights us up. On this podcast, I sit down with fascinating people, and we talk about the things that truly matter to them and to all of us.