An Armao On The Brink

Military reporter Mike Fabey recently visited Greenland, the Arctic Island President Trump has suggested the US buy or take over to find out why and how hard that might be. He also has thoughts about the changes and new directions in which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is taking the US military. Michael Fabey has reported on military and naval affairs for most of his 30-year journalism career....

Environmentalist and author Anita Sanchez gives lessons in her weekly Substack The Optimistic Activist on how to effectively resist corrupt and incompetent political leadership. She spars with podcast host Rosemary Armao, who sees only doom ahead about why she is hopeful and how optimism is a strategic point of view  that can defeat fascism.   Anita Sanchez’s award-winning books sing the praises o...

Podcast host Rosemary Armao and Times Union Editorial Writer Jay Jochnowitz are abuzz about the latest Epstein File news, including the sketchy ethical behavior of writer Michael Wolff, the outlandish remarks about what is pedophilia by Megyn Kelly, and whether American voters will ever really get to read this controversial set of documents.

It’s hard to see what the Roman Catholic Church finds so threatening about women leaders when Denise Hackert-Stoner of Albany describes her Upper Room Inclusive Catholic Community. She’s been excommunicated from the traditional Church since her ordination and sees little prospect of it dropping its ban on women priests at least in her lifetime despite the massive pedophile priest scandal plaguing...

Albany area native Michelle Dworkin back home after the Trump administration shut down USAID this year ending her foreign service career talks about people dying globally, disasters like Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica unanswered, taxpayer dollars wasted  and national security endangered by the ill-informed closure of that agency. Michelle Dworkin served as a foreign service Officer with the US Agenc...

In another selection from a recent in-person salon with opinion writer Jay Jochnowitz and an audience in Vermont we mourn the continued razing of Gaza, young Republicans reveling in their love of Nazis, disrespect of the military by the Trump regime and contempt for the US Constitution. We are, in short, very sad.

Host Rosemary Armao and Times Union opinion writer Jay Jochnowitz talk at their public salon about loved ones dying, grief, and find the way to remember that life goes on.

Host Rosemary Armao talks with retired teacher and. researcher Laura Bellinger about books, documentaries and other resources that explain America's historically schizoid view on immigrants: We like them to come do our dirty, hard, low-paying jobs but not to actually settle and live here.... Do you approve of the Trump administration's mass deportation and tight quota for legal immigrants into the...

As we hit the two-year anniversary of the terroristic Hamas raid on Israel, the horrific war of Israel on Gaza has been labeled GENOCIDE by the United Nations. Rosemary Armao, host of the podcast Beyond the Brink and Fighting Back pairs with opinion writer Jay Jochnowitz at a community public affairs salon to talk about US support of Israel and increasing world-wide recognition of Palestine as a s...

Host Rosemary Armao and Opinion writer Jay Jochnowitz talk with each other and guests at their monthly public affairs salon about the implications of the Charlie Kirk assassination, Trump's many media lawsuits, and the suspension of comedians Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert  on our American right to speak freely. President Trump maintains that any news critical of him is criminal. Sec of Defense...

In the newest episode of An Armao Beyond the Brink, Rosemary speaks with renowned media lawyer and professor Lucy Dalglish. Dalglish cannot recall a time in American history when threats to a free and independent press were so numerous or potent. She doesn’t even like thinking about the future of media because it’s impossible to ignore the possibility that  Freedom of Thought and Expression  enshr...

Host Rosemary Armao talks with gun-owning son Francisco Liuzzi about the first major political assassination of his lifetime, gun control, and what the Charlie Kirk murder portends for future social unrest and violence. Francisco Liuzzi is a certified fitness professional, home gym design expert, and seasoned fitness entrepreneur based in New York City. A former collegiate and competitive athlete,...

RPI's computing guru Jim Hendler says it's not artificial intelligence we have to worry about -- it's the people using AI that you have to watch out for. And those people. include tech bros after profits and a president out to win political points. Jim Hendler holds the impressive titles of Tetherless World Professor of Computer, Web and Cognitive Sciences at Rensselaer. Polytechnic Institute and...

In this segment coming up you’ll be hearing Rosemary Armao, host of the On the Brink podcast, talking with Albany Times Union opinion columnist Jay Jochnowitz. The two met in Bennington Vermont for a special two-hour podcast before a live audience at the Orchard Club to consider the transformational changes the Trump administration is ushering in including how we think about the law and corruption...

St. Paul had a female traveling companion but we never hear about her; women suffering at all times of their lives from menstrual cramps to menopause are told by untrained doctors that it’s in their heads, and even when mice are the subjects of medical experiments, they are almost always male. Long accustomed to taking a back seat and suffering in silence, women are increasingly speaking up for be...

New York is on the verge of becoming the 11th state plus DC to give citizens suffering from terminal diseases the right to die when and as they choose. Oregon was the first state  25 years ago to grant this right. Religious leaders, champions of the right to life, even some advocates for the disabled worry that such  laws  open the way to abuse, coercion, and worse. It seems never to have occurred...

International lawyer and judicial reforrmer Sally Fleschner who has worked on justice projects in Bosnia, Palestine, Kosovo, and Somalia disagrees with the American Jewish Committee and says the deliberation bombing and starvation of Gazans is genocide. Further more, the US is complicit in that crime against humanity and most Americans are not interested in even seeing (via movies) or hearing the...

Investigative reporter Miranda Spivack who is an expert in government secrecy and use of public documents has written a book about people she calls accidental activists They are regular citizens with no expertise special knowledge of leadership motivated by grief or worry for their community who figure out how to network and mobilize and drag information out of government and corporations to succe...

Veteran NBC broadcaster and author Linda Ellerbee talks with us from Mexico about what  she and our foreign neighbors think of Trump's first three months back in office and none of it is positive. This from a woman Trump once tried to date. So how do you fight back and how do you cope with dictatorship?

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...

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, ro...

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 controve...

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 resul...

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 e...

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...