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, businesses, and consumers. She has more than 30 years of experience, including a decade as a newspaper reporter covering medicine and later as a freelance medical writer. She received a bachelor’s  in English from the University of Virginia and a masters in biomedical writing from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. She has just moved  with her husband  Keith and 5-pound dog, Pinot, from Virginia to Portugal.

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 Florida, where her writing and editing focused on features and the arts. Since retiring in 2016, she has been active in her local branch of the American Association of University Women, where she serves as public policy chair. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, 93-year-old mother, two cats and an Australian shepherd. Before embarking on studies at Purdue Global Law School in January, she spent her free time enjoying the outdoors, reading, knitting, weaving and playing the ukulele. Now she no longer has free time. She studies.

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 and civil rights advocate who believes that in the fight for justice, there can be no peace without accountability. A state worker, she holds degrees from UAlbany  in Communication and Anthropology. Currently serving as Chair of Organizing for Indivisible Albany, she has a track record of turning community opposition into tangible results. Most notably, she served as the lead organizer for the Albany chapter of the Coalition to Stop Avelo, a national grassroots campaign that pressured Avelo to end deportation flights under a contract with Homeland Security. When not drafting mass informational emails for community partners, speaking at rallies or yelling into a bullhorn, you can find her at singing and dance lessons, theater and classic cinema.

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 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