Kaatscast: the Catskills Podcast

In 1845, a feudal land system that had survived the American Revolution finally met its match in the hills above Andes, New York — and the clash left a county undersheriff dead and hundreds of farmers under arrest. The Anti-Rent War was a massive, organized uprising that had been building since the late 1830s and swept across upstate New York — yet it remains largely unknown outside this region. V...

What did Beethoven's piano actually sound like? At the Catskill Mountain Foundation's Piano Performance Museum in Hunter, New York, you don't have to wonder — you can sit down and play one. Brett Barry visits the museum at the Doctorow Center for the Arts with performing arts director Pam Weisberg and docent Stacey Bowers, who guide him through dozens of historic instruments spanning three centuri...

Every spring, something remarkable happens in the tidal waters of Black Creek in Esopus, New York: tiny, translucent eels — just an inch and a half long and barely the weight of a postage stamp — swim in from the Atlantic Ocean, following a journey that began in the Sargasso Sea nearly a year before. In this episode, guest host Sierra DeVito joins the Hudson River Eel Project at Black Creek Preser...

Kaatscast walks a stretch of the Finger Lakes Trail in Delaware Wild Forest with Heather Houskeeper — herbalist, long-distance hiker, author, and founder of the School of Plant and Place Connection — to talk about foraging, plant medicine, and what it means to truly belong in a landscape. Along the trail, Heather identifies edible and medicinal plants including garlic mustard, jewelweed, and dande...

The Catskill Park's most visited corridor — Kaaterskill Falls and the Kaaterskill Clove area along Route 23A — may be heading for a major management overhaul. In this extra edition, host Brett Barry sits down with Jeff Senterman, Executive Director of the Catskill Center, to dig into a newly released Visitor Use Management report that recommends capping daily visitors at 1,000, implementing timed...

After nearly 30 years wading Catskill streams, Dany Davis has learned that rivers don't just carry water — they carry time, memory, and if you're paying close enough attention, a few life lessons too. Now retiring as Stream Studies Coordinator for the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, Dany is heading home to Alaska, and he sat down with us to reflect on what the streams gave back. On the...

For a hamlet of just a few hundred people, Pine Hill punches well above its weight. This week, Brett Barry visits the Pine Hill Community Center to mark its 25th anniversary — and to find out what it actually takes to keep a place like this alive. The center's origin story is equal parts heartbreak and generosity. In 2000, a tragedy in the community prompted founders Florence and Bernie Hamling to...

Brett Barry visits Anna Plattner and Justin Wexler at their 95-acre forest farm in Cairo, New York, home base of Wild Hudson Valley — an educational organization dedicated to inspiring learning and building connection through shared experiences in nature, history, and wild foods. Justin and Anna trace the origins of Wild Hudson Valley back to 2013, when Justin, freshly burned out from a master's i...

In this episode, host Brett Barry joins Jan Jaffe, board president of Wellington Blueberry LLC, outside the shuttered Wellington Hotel on Main Street in Pine Hill, New York — a 12,000-square-foot, 19th-century landmark and one of the few remaining intact Catskill hotels that survived the era's notorious fires. Jan shares the origin story of this ambitious community-driven project: how roughly 20 n...

Hoppy Quick has been chainsaw carving bears in the Catskills since 1979 — but he'll tell you he's not an artist. He's a spiritual being who found himself through the bear. In this wide-ranging conversation, we visit Hoppy at his home in Samsonville — a converted 1951 school bus, a canvas teepee workshop, a crackling fire ring, and a horse named Ginny — and quickly discover that a conversation abou...

Singer‑songwriter Steve Koester , the creative force behind Two Dark Birds , joins Brett in the Kaatscast studio for a deep, generous conversation about songwriting, place, and the long arc of making music in the Catskills. With the band’s fifth studio album, Dreamers of the Golden Dream, Vol. 1 , arriving February 27, Steve reflects on the evolution of his sound—from full‑band records to quiet, i...

In this episode, we visit Pogliani Select , purveyors of artisanal, estate‑grown olive oils and aged balsamic vinegars sourced directly from small family farms across Italy and Croatia. From the hills of Tuscany and the groves along the Adriatic to a tasting room in the Catskills, we explore how these Old‑World traditions travel across continents — and why the craft behind them matters. This conve...

In this special long‑form conversation, Brett Barry sits down with legendary angler‑writer and publisher Nick Lyons , now 93, whose life has been shaped by water, words, and the Catskills. From a childhood spent catching frogs for pocket money to founding one of the most influential fishing imprints in America, Nick’s story is a rare blend of grit, curiosity, and literary devotion. Recorded in Nic...

New York State Historic Newspapers Project with Chuck Henry Episode Overview Dive into the largest state newspaper archive in the country! Chuck Henry, Project Lead for New York State Historic Newspapers, takes us through this incredible digital repository containing over 1,200 newspaper titles, 1.5 million editions, and more than 15 million pages—all available free of charge. Guest Chuck Henry IT...

Prescribed Fire in the Catskills: Restoring a Lost Tool In this episode, Brett sits down once again with Ryan Trapani , Director of Forest Services at the Catskill Forest Association , to explore the surprising ecological value of prescribed fire in the Northeast. Recorded fireside at the Kaatscast studio, this conversation digs into the science, history, and cultural memory of fire in the Catskil...

In this episode of  Kaatscast , Brett visits  Sleepover Trading Company  in Catskill, New York—a new video rental shop rebuffing the algorithmic grip of streaming platforms by reviving the analog joy of VHS tapes, comic books, and sleepover culture. Owners  Rob Ribar  and  Guido Sanchez  share how their passion for collecting movies, comics, and memorabilia evolved into a retro storefront in the h...

In this episode of Kaatscast , host Brett Barry visits Catskill Collectibles , a unique shop in Catskill, NY, curated by Tom Illari. The shop specializes in Catskills memorabilia, blending new creations with rare vintage items going back to the 19th century. Tom shares his journey from a finance career to running the shop and his lifelong passion for the Catskills, highlighted by his extensive per...

Measuring Snow: Citizen Science in the Catskills Summary:  Winter in the Catskills isn’t just about skiing, sledding, or shoveling. Snowpack plays a critical role in our water resources, local economies, and even global climate regulation. In this episode, Brett Barry speaks with Dr. Marco Tedesco of Columbia University’s Lamont‑Doherty Earth Observatory , about the NASA‑funded  X‑Snow Project  —...

Did you know the Catskill region was once tropical—and south of the equator?! In this episode, Brett Barry visits the Gilboa Museum and Juried History Center to explore one of the oldest fossilized forests on Earth. Education Chair Kristen Wyckoff shares her decades-long passion for paleobotany, the story behind Gilboa’s world-famous Devonian tree stumps, and discoveries unearthed during the Schoh...

🎙️  Neighbors on the Front Lines: Margaretville FD and the Spirit of Catskills Volunteerism Episode Description:  In this episode of  Kaatscast , we head to Margaretville, New York, where volunteer firefighters train for blitz attacks—a high-volume water technique used to knock down fires fast. But this story goes beyond the hose line. It’s about community, commitment, and declining volunteerism n...

In 1985, Bob Steuding published The Last of the Handmade Dams: The Story of the Ashokan Reservoir , a historically rich account of the building of the Ashokan Reservoir—and the lives displaced in its wake. Forty years later, the book remains a cornerstone of Catskills regional history and the inaugural title from Purple Mountain Press . In this episode, we visit Bob and Martha Steuding at their 18...

Ken Posner is an ultrarunner, barefoot hiker, and challenge-seeker whose latest book,  Chasing the Grid , chronicles his quest to summit 35 Catskill high peaks in every month—a challenge known as “The Grid.” That’s 420 climbs, through every season, in pursuit of something deeper than endurance. In this episode, Ken shares how the experience became a spiritual journey, shaped by minimalism, transce...

In this episode, Brett hits the trail with longtime Catskill 3500 Club member (and current president) Michael Bongar for a hike to Southwest Hunter Mountain—one of the club’s required peaks and a rite of passage for aspiring members. Founded in 1962, the Catskill 3500 Club encourages hikers to summit 33 peaks over 3,500 feet—plus four of them again in winter. But it’s more than a checklist. Throug...

🎙  Platte Clove Preserve: A Small Parcel with Big Impact    Presented by Kaatscast: The Catskills Podcast Host Brett Barry visits the Platte Clove Preserve with Jeff Senterman and Kali Bird of the Catskill Center to explore the surprising significance of a newly acquired 3.6-acre parcel. Though small in size, this land plays a vital role in preserving wilderness access, ecological integrity, and t...

Adjacent to the Willowemoc Wild Forest, in the Sullivan Catskills, a 3100-acre parcel once eyed for development is now safeguarded for future generations. In this episode, we chronicle the Open Space Institute’s landmark deal, and potentially the largest acquisition for the Catskills in nearly 25 years. From the quiet negotiations with landowners to the sweeping implications for climate resilience...