An Armao On The Brink

Native Greg Hamilton remembers growing up on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, long an isolated fishing and farming region on the edge of Virginia but now a focal point of racial inequality, environmental deterioration, and economic decline. Is the future hopeless for coastal areas like the Eastern Shore faced with dwindling  fishing stock, rising ocean waters, and an aging, declining population?  Gr...

Revolutionary War re-enactor Carle Kopecky says 18th century soldiers were fighting for the same thing today’s protestors are: no kings lording it over them. Americans are noticeably less excited by the country’s 250th birthday than they were during the Bicentennial 60 years ago. Is this because we are less patriotic? What do you think would most surprise a  soldier from 1776 looking at modern  Am...

New York Capital District activists Christine Primomo and Darlene Stott talk about the logistical, artistic and political challenges of fighting MAGA with messages plastered on bridges and overpasses. The Visibility Brigade organizers say non-violent protest works and combat the right-wing talking point that only old white women are out in the streets. The best way to combat an administration you...

Historian and feminist Ellie Burhans of Albany has recently taken on a new role demonstrating against and decrying energy and water hogging data centers. One has been proposed for an old convent property in Albany and it is one of nearly 30 such centers proposed in the state of New York despite growing concern over how much resources go into centers to support AI and crypto mining. New York may we...

Journalist Rosemary Armao  checked back in with Albany native and long-time foreign service officer Michelle Dworkin about that rare Ebola  virus rolling through central Africa. Dworkin lost her job with the US Agency for International Development  last year when the Trump administration shut it down. Armao in her  Beyond the Brink podcast this week explores just how much  the Trump administration...

Veteran Ohio political writer Mary Anne Sharkey discusses the massive graft and abuse we are witnessing in the second Trump term and ponders why it seems so hard to stop it. Is making a president’s every action in office unpunishable as the Supreme Court has done a good idea? What do you see as the worst public corruption scandal in the news lately? A. A DOJ slush fund for the president to pay off...

Wall Street banker and public affairs commentator Mark Wittman explains for podcast host Rosemary Armao in layman’s terms how rising prices, disputed interest rates, the price of gold and the strength of the dollar are being affected by war, politics and Donald Trump’s bullying.  Are you limiting how much driving you are doing because of rising gas prices? The most potentially damaging economic pr...

Writer Phyllis Jordan  who grew up in Virginia and long reported on southern politics  considers the implications and consequences of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in a Louisiana case that essentially guts the Voting Rights Act. Do you agree with the Supreme Court majority that racism and discrimination in voting is no longer a problem that requires federal oversight?  What do you foresee the...

Veteran investigative reporter Jim Odato knows the history, controversies and problems of New York's Adirondacks region better than almost anyone, and he talks with podcast host Rosemary Armao about preserving the wild North Country while also building world-class Olympic sports facilities and redeveloping closed prisons in the vast and remote area. James M. Odato is a correspondent and former edi...

Podcast host Rosemary Armao and opinion writer Jay Jaynowitz talk about the sex scandals, misbehaving cabinet members, feuding over who's holier the Pope or the President, and the dark side of the Moon, all of which goes to show how weird and chaotic our world has become.

Algerian newspaper editor Kamel Mansari talks with Podcast Host Rosemary Armao about what he calls America's catastrophic war against Iran. In his view the US has lost power. and influence in the Middle East to China and given up all the good will and respect it earned over decades  in exchange for a foreign policy based on getting oil and other natural resources from weaker nations. Kamel Man...

Rodcast host Rosemary Armao and Opinion Writer Jay Jochnowitz worry about intensifying efforts to discourage voting. That includes send in ICE to practice intimidation in airport before possibly using them at polling places and requiring documents many people don't have to prove citizenship. Also Actor Patrick White also talks about personifying playwright Tennessee Williams in an upcoming one...

Dr. Don Levy, the director of the Siena Research Institute which puts out the prestigious Siena Poll in conjunction with leading news outlets, schools us on how polls are supposed to work, why they sometimes do not, and how hard it is to get people to talk about how they really feel. Dr. Don Levy is director of the Siena Research Institute  which  does important and nationally recognized polling o...

Opinion writer Jay Jochnowitz and Podcast Host Rosemary Armao reigning over their monthly podcast "The Salon" on public affairs talk about lost peace and lost heroes.

Skidmore College pundit Beau Breslin says that while we may not yet be in a Constitutional Crisis, the Constitution is clearly broken, and we are watching Supreme Court rulings dismantle many of the programs and institutions built up over the past 60 years. Beau Breslin is the Joseph C. Palamountain Chair in Government at Skidmore College. He has written three books, including the award-winning A...

You won't be hearing from any women soldiers iin this week's chapter and host Rosemary Armao explains why. Instead she and Jay Jochnowitz marvel at how Trump administration attacks have turned a mediocre broadcaster into a First Amendment martyr.

Media communications expert Stella Roque left behind conventional work and family obligations  a year. ago at age 40 to instead roam through Asia, solo, meeting new people, exploring, and immersing herself in new cultures. and spirituality. She talks with host Rosemary Armao about what she has learned as an American nomad. Stella Roque is an American nomad, having spent the last year traveling acr...

Since the 2024 election, search queries for moving abroad are uup 2,000 percent. Debra Gordon of Virginia talking with podcast host Rosemary Armao is one of the few Americans who to permanently emigrate because of politics. Debra Gordon is a health care communications professional who had specialized in researching and writing about the US health care system and medical issues for clinicians, busi...

In a public discussion on all things politics, opinion writer Jay Jochnowitz and and host Rosemary Armao talk about how seriously (very) we should be taking talk of changing how to vote and who can vote in America. 

After a long career as a journalist and feature writer and 10 years of retirement spent traveling, hiking, knitting and playing the ukulele, Californian Susan Rife started back to law school five weeks ago. Her story is an illustration that new beginnings can come at any point while you’re still breathing. Susan Rife is retired after a 40-year career as a print journalist in California, Kansas and...

Podcast host Rosemary Armao talks with another stand-out activist who’ve gone into action against the Trump administration — Marianna Achlaoug of Albany Indivisible. A state worker, the 28-year-old began resisting authority as a teen with her mother fighting fracking in Schoharie County. She is expert at rousing crowds with chants over a bullhorn. Marianna Achlaoug, 28, is a community organizer an...

Podcast Host Rosemary Armao and newspaper opinion writer Jay Jochnowitz conduct their rambling monthly salon online instead of in person in a chapter that manages to cover ICE in all its forms, amending the Constitution to fix Democracy, Davos, revenge, attacks on the press, and more.

Podcast host Rosemary Armao gets Wall Street banker and analyst Mark Wittman to break down in terms a 5th grader can grasp the potential consequences of all things happening economically from inflation and tariffs to the end of the penny and the sale of new weight loss drugs.

Investigative Reporter and Media Scholar Mark Lee Hunter talks with podcast host Rosemary Armao about what journalists must do to reverse economic, political, and social forces that have damaged legacy media and led to distrust of journalists. He also tells the harrowing story of his wife’s  death and efforts here and abroad to pass right to die laws. Mark Lee Hunter is the principal author of Sto...

UAlbany sophomores Jason Shullenberger and Noon Nori talk with podcast host Rosemary Armao about sex, war, AI, and facing an uncertain future...Jordan Shullenberger from Waterbury, Vt. is studying business (with a journalism minor) at UAlbany. The 20-year-old also plays soccer for his school. Nori is a sophomore at UAbany, majoring in Biology. She loves to write. Journalism acts as a "getaway...