Outdoor Cats Podcast

Links to subscribe to the show on: Spotify , Apple Podcasts , YouTube , Overcast , Pocket Casts . Good and bad reviews also appreciated! We brought on school committee member Sue Mailman to discuss the new lawsuit against the Trump Administration. Worcester is a supporting character in the state-wide suit, led by Somerville and Easthampton. WPS, like districts across the state and country, stand t...

We brought on John Keough and Tom Marino from This Week In Worcester to rehash the council’s very deflating meeting Tuesday on the Department of Justice’s pattern and practice investigation into the Worcester Police Department. Short answer: don’t expect to hear too much more about this, and if ever a civilian review board proposal makes its way to the council floor, expect a split vote. The meeti...

“Challenge Convention. Change Our World.” That’s the slogan of Clark University, the hedge f—sorry, college currently refusing to even recognize its new undergraduate student-workers union. As the strike sails over the one-week mark, we sit down with two of its captains, Maile Marguleas and Hadas Brownstein. Help support the striking workers: The SYC Mutual Aid Fund For Strikers and other resource...

Trying something new! What you’re looking at / listening to here is a trial run of O.C. Dispatches: audio news reports in the public radio tradition, but here on this newsletter! Chris and I went down to the strike line at Clark University yesterday (we’ll be putting up a full episode soon). I brought a portable audio interface and a mic with me—a poor man’s approximation of the rig NPR reporters...

Éirinn go Brách, everyone! Hope Parade Day has treated you nicely. Today’s guest is Keith Linhares, who joined us to talk about his bid for the District 1 city council seat! His first run for office, he’ll be taking on former District 1 councilor Tony Economou, an avatar of the sort of entrenched townie politics that keeps the city stuck in the ‘80s. Keith wants to change that! A bunch of great mo...

***First thing’s first : Justice for Mahmoud Khalil Fund and contact page for Congressman Jim McGovern . Good coverage of Khalil’s completely illegal kidnapping and detention in The Nation . Please share any news about local demonstrations in the comments or at billshaner@substack.com and we’ll update here as they come in. **** We talk about Khalil’s horrible situation briefly, then get to the sho...

Today we have on a very special guest: Cayden Davis, a new and exciting candidate for at-large city council. Cayden’s a Main South resident, a public health professional, trans and proud of it! You may have seen him at the mic at City Council recently, letting rip some absolute public comment heaters. Davis came to city politics via the queer coalition that organized in opposition to the transphob...

After months of irregular and asymmetrical city council meetings Joe & Co finally got that which they desired on Tuesday: a quote unquote normal meeting. We go over the dominant themes of this business-as-usual six hour affair, including tax debt labor camps for senior citizens and a grand collusion of the city council and the Church of Scientology, according to a live streamer who wants recall el...

What do '78 San Fran and '25 Worcester have in common? Quite a bit, turns out. We bring on historian Michael Stewart Foley to talk about his book Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables, a history of the Dead Kennedys record by the same name and the context in which that work of art / protest document was birthed: San Francisco, 1978. After the assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, newly sw...

Clip show! We pull out some choice moments from the public comment section of the city council meeting Tuesday. From the hours and hours of impassioned testimony that preceded the council’s very weak move: voting 9-2 to support a symbolic statement of solidarity with the trans community, and also voting 7-4 against an investigation into transphobic comments made by a sitting city councilor. Couldn...

Earlier this week a bit of tremendous news broke: Carolyn Jackson is gone bye bye cya later. For years Jackson has been the primary antagonist in the ongoing St. Vincent saga: nurses trying to make it less brutal for workers and dangerous for patients, the owners doing the opposite. The past year has seen a rash of complaints and grievances about unsafe conditions at the hospital. Jackson, on beha...

After Round Two of the pressure campaign from the queer community to make Candy Mero-Carlson pay for her bigotry, we talk with Josh Croke ( @joshua.croke ), an organizer of the demonstrations and founder of Love Your Labels and many other things. We talk about the council meeting Tuesday and the council’s two affirmative votes on public petitions from the queer community. What they mean and what t...

We bring on District 5 City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj to recap and process the city council’s debate last night over whether to apologize to Thu Nguyen for a rash of bigotry, starting with Candy Mero-Carlson and culminating in a literal Fox News segment. Luckily, the vote was 8-2 to do so, but it doesn’t erase the great shame brought onto Worcester, nor does it show that our old guard councilors real...

Posting a podcast at 2 a.m.—that’s the kind of week it’s been. The episode ends up being more or less a mutual talk therapy session on how to process the profoundly dehumanizing, deceptive and malicious attack that Candy Mero-Carlson and Joe Petty have launched against Thu Nguyen this week. We pick apart their statements, dismantle their thin arguments about attendance, and talk about what to do w...

We bring on Allie Cislo of Worcester Havurah and the multi-faith coalition behind the Gaza ceasefire resolution that the council voted against on Tuesday night. Yes you heard that right they voted 6-5 against the ceasing of firing. A decision explained in full in my post from yesterday, “ A million tiny acts of cowardice. ” Worcester Havurah’s Instagram and website The Multi-Faith Coalition’s stat...

We simply had to bring on Mr. Bad Advice himself Shaun Connolly to go over the mayor and the city manager’s top 10 songs of 2024, recently released to the Worcester Cultural Coalition (?) Instagram page. Joe Petty’s in particular is something else. Since the city said they’d do it then apparently didn’t, Chris put together playlists for each of them: — Joe Petty’s picks — Eric Batista’s picks Oh a...

2024 was a big weird year for Worcester. A long strange trip, you could say. Chris and I go over the big story lines to figure out who won and who lost—and what that means for 2025, which is sure to be longer and stranger. Then we talk music for a bit! Speaking of: Outro music is “Nation” by Home Front . And the Clairo video shot at White Eagle featuring Beyond Wrestling Manning Fireworks by MJ Le...

In which we discuss: the police department’s intimidation tactics at city council this week ( as illustrated in my most recent piece ), the Department of Justice’s meeting at the YWCA Wednesday, the Longest Night Vigil on Thursday. It all culminates in the question: are we prepared to be as disciplined and organized as the police department showed themselves to be? Or are we going to let the same...

In this episode, we talk about what everyone’s talking about: the recent DOJ investigation report detailing sexual abuse, violence and racist patterns of policing at the WPD. We talk about it in a way you might not have heard someone talk about it yet… and we talk about why that is. Then, with that established, we focus on a statement made by Project Priceless, a self-advocacy group of unhoused wo...

Welcome to Outdoor Cats! The latest addition to the Worcester Sucks local media empire , the idea here is simple: weekly broadcasts from a city that punishes you for caring. Today, we talk about mutual aid and community resilience. Are you tired of going to a rally and voting and not feeling like it got you anywhere? There are better ways to make change in your community, and plenty local examples...