An Armao On The Brink

Once every semester I invite three students of mine from UAlbany to do a podcast featuring a decidedly younger point of view than mine. This is that chapter and outta the mouths of Zoomers you’l hear about the futility protesting, exhaustion over world events and fear of the future, Tik Tok and even the wonder of torpedo bats. Mirai Abe is an exchange student from Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan, to UAlbany where she studi...

Long-time Albany County, NY Sheriff Craig Apple talks about the innovative programs he’s instituted in his 38-year reign including inmates doing yoga and fostering pets and using empty beds for a homeless shelter. He’s thinking about running for state office to help write laws about bail reform and gun safety that are thought out and smart.Craig Apple, began working in law enforcement in 1987, rose through the ranks, serving as a c...

In this Chapter, Rosemary wanted to talk with leaders of Albany's unusually dynamic theater community about escape and make believe, but Patrick White and Chris Foster, the organizers of a unique Festival of Theater happening this summer, men who don't own a TV and watch plays every night of the week,  say live theater demands engagement, community involvement and public debate of controversy ad issues. You aren't just ...

No pleasant introductions, or quaint toast at the end of this one folks. We may have moved past the brink, and into the abyss, but that's to discuss in later episodes....

Today, three long-term USAID staffers  now retired and free to talk describe their anger over how  the foreign aid  program has been gutted and colleagues maligned, their fear about global suffering and losses that will result ,and their hope for a  come back  ...

Cambodian travel guide Tek Leng grew up in a country devastated by war, genocide, and poverty.  He works now taking tourists through old prisons and mass graves turned into memorials and museums and he preaches a Buddhist mentality about acceptance and letting go of the past so you can face the future.

Tek Leng, 45, was born soon after the end of the Khmer Rouge’s genocide in Cambodia. His, like every family in the country, lost...

Given the current issues in the US and abroad regarding immigration, the Russia-Ukraine war, democracy, and anti-semitism, Katy Meilleur, a nurse scientist who works on drugs for neurological disorders, recently published her father's memoirs. Lev Perlov escaped from Communist Russia with his wife and two daughters in 1973 tricking the KGB and slipping out despite rules meant to thwart Jewish emigrants. The daughter tells us th...

Boomer Jeff Wilkin, Millennial Zach Grady, and Gen Z’er Amar Sayeed tell Rosemary about finding, evaluating, and dumping dates in this age of online hookups, apps, and toxic masculinity. This is the flip side to Dating in the Digital Age from the point of view of women that we aired a while back. The women all had similar views, but men of different generations seem to have very different ideas. Different methods. Different taste. ...

In this chapter Malcolm Nance talks with Rosemary and long-time investment banker Mark Wittman about the dangers in sees coming in the new Trump Regime including civic violence and mutiny in the military and what citizens ought to do about it.

Mark Wittman earned his MBA in finance from NYU and has worked as an investment banker for more than 25 years.  He has provided financing and strategic guidance to consumer products clie...

Mary and Mike both teach civics/social students; Mary in a New York high school and Mike in a Virginia middle school. In this chapter they talk about what their kids don't know that they should, about the foolishness of banning books, about violence and guns in schools, about the threat of vouchers to public education, teaching to the test, and other controversial school issues. Our speaker bios this week are purposefully inco...

Two veteran political journalists Jim Asher and Dale Eisman who have investigated and analyzed Washington power for decades discuss what they saw in watching the Trump Inauguration and what they think it portends. It was a weird day from the guest list to the richest man in the world making a Nazi salute and it's likely to get more weird, they agree.

James Asher, now retired, was a veteran investigative journalist and Puli...

Boomer and Gen Z guests Kris Antonelli and Emily Robbins talk with Rosemary about finding, evaluating, and sometimes dumping dates in this age of online hookups, apps, and toxic masculinity. What’s the bare minimum you should look for in a new guy and what is the worst date of all time? Emily Robbins, from Ravena, NY, is a sophomore at UAlbany, majoring in communication and minoring in journalism. She loves tennis and running in h...

Mokhtar Alibrahim fled his hometown of Damascus nearly eight years ago, leaving behind family, friends, and the budding career as a journalist he’d just begun other than be conscripted into the Syrian Army of Beshir al-Assad to wage war against fellow countrymen.  He lived in Lebanon, then Jordan, and now Germany despairing he would ever see home again.He learned two new languages English and German, He got his doctor wife out of S...

Two weeks out we continue to look into what the Democratic election losses portend and how Dems ought to be reacting to the drubbing they took. Michele Salcedo, a past president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, talks about why Latino supported Trump and what they may expect in return and Ryan Horstmyer, a lawyer, lobbyist and long-time Democratic activist in ruby-red upstate New York, so he knows about defeats, ...

Steve Greenfield, a New Paltz firefighter and long-time activitist for alternative and third-party candidates explains the self-defeating votes we’ve just seen by working class people and minority men. Democrats need to understand why this happened and act to prevent it — yet again — from costing them an election Steve Greenfield, 63, of New Paltz, is a past member of the New Paltz Board of Education, the current Captain and forme...

On the eve of the 2024 election we talk with retired teacher George Goodwin of Albany who has done Democratic Party work for more than 20 years. This fall he’s been traveling to Pennsylvania and other nearby states drumming up votes for Kamala Harris and he knows a little about how to talk to people with different politics annoyed to see you at their door. He knows how persuasion can work and when it doesn’t. And Rosemary has been ...

Three billionaires, Elon Musk the car and space innovator who owns what used to be Twitter, Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon and another space explorer who owns the Washington Post , and Patrick Soon-Shiong, the doctor who bought the Los Angeles Times six years ago, are in the news because of their influence over the 2024 election. Musk is campaigning for Donald Trump and through X spreading commentary aimed at boosting his candida...

How could deep blue New York vote down a simple declaration that all people should be treated the same under the law in this state? It could happen. Organized opposition to Proposition 1 on the NYS ballot from the Catholic Church and conservative Republicans has been unexpectedly fierce and organized around disinformation and fear mongering. The League of Women Voters, devoted since its founding to educating voters, is fighting bac...