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 Story-Based Inquiry: A manual for Investigative Journalists, a standard work in the field, and a dozen other books. He is a media scholar and international media trainer. Hunter is a founding member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network and a founding collaborator of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism. He has won IRE, Society of Professional Journalists, HL Mencken and other awards. He has lived most of his adult life in France.

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" from her S.T.E.M. related work at school.

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. In his work for National Geographic Traveler, the Economist Group, Defense News, Aviation Week, and Janes, he has collected more than two dozen reporting awards, including the prestigious Timothy White Award for journalistic integrity from the Association of Business Information and Media Companies. Few journalists have had as much firsthand experience of America’s naval ships and aircraft and the officers who command them. He is the author of Heavy Metal: The Hard Days and Nights of the Shipyard Workers Who Build America's Supercarriers and of Crashback: The Power Clash Between the US and China in the Pacific. A Philadelphia native, he resides now in Spotsylvania, VA,

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 of unloved plants and animals and of the ignored wild places of the world: dandelions, poison ivy, seaweed, glaciers, and mud puddles. Years of field work and teaching outdoor classes with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation have given her firsthand experience introducing people to the wonders of nature. She is passionate about political activism and is what she describes as a strategic optimist. For the past two years, she has written the Optimistic Activist on Substack 

https://optimisticactivist.substack.com

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 the institution. Women priests demand engagement, charity, compassion, beauty and see themselves as renegades.Denise Hackert-Stoner is an ordained priest in the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, and an active member of the Upper Room Inclusive Catholic Community in Albany, NY. As a presider in this community she prepares and participates in church celebrations, and sacramental occasions. She is also in direct service ministries along with friends at the Upper Room catering to the poor, immigrants and refugees. As a nature photographer, she can often be found out on a trail with her husband Scott, often on her knees or belly, inspecting some tiny living thing. Amazed at the beauty of nature and the Divine Presence in all of it, she records her thoughts in a weekly Substack in essays called Walking on God. She also uses her own and Scott’s images to illustrate music used in liturgies at the Upper Room. You can reach Denise at [email protected], and you can read her Substack at https://denisehackertstoner.substack.com/

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 Agency for International Development for 17 years.  Most recently, she was director of the Program Office in USAID/Colombia where she managed a $1.2 billion portfolio of some 50 projects focused on peace building, counter-narcotics, economic growth, biodiversity conservation, and support for Venezuelan migrants.  Previously, she worked in Honduras on addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America.  She previously was a Congressional Liaison Officer with the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs in USAID/Washington and participated in a Brookings Institution fellowship in Congress.  Other assignments and titles include Deputy Director of the Program Office in USAID/Guatemala, Program Officer for USAID/Afghanistan’s Western Regional Platform in Herat, and Program Officer in USAID/Egypt.  Before USAID, she worked on USAID-funded education and training programs, primarily for students from the West Bank and Gaza. She holds a master’s degree in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University and a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Anthropology from Tufts University.  She is bilingual in English and Spanish, and has knowledge of French, Arabic, and Hebrew.

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.