Connections Podcast

This Memorial Day, we hear from two local veterans who served our country during the Vietnam War, and who are now serving Gold Star families in Rochester. The Gold Star Families Memorial Monument honors relatives of fallen service members. Located in White Haven Memorial Park in Pittsford, the monument was dedicated in June 2016. We hear from Barry Culhane and John White about the effort to honor local Gold Star families, and about their experiences serving our country.

Weekend Connections is a collection of some of the most noteworthy moments from the week on Connections with Evan Dawson. This episode includes conversations about: Human trafficking in Western New York; The value of expertise, and why not trusting experts is causing damage in the fight against climate change; The lack of diversity in classical music; Where new college graduates are finding teaching jobs.

Are there some pieces of art that are universally considered great... but you just don't enjoy them? Of course there are. For Evan: most of Picasso's oeuvre. For Megan: The Beatles. Brian Koppelman, co-creator of the hit series Billions, recently asked on social media for examples of great art that people just don't like very much. The answers sparked some heated debate, so we thought we'd recreate that discussion with our guests: Olivia Kim, owner of Olivia Kim Studio-Figure Sculpture David

What are the impacts of gun violence? Writing for Open Mic Rochester , Tianna Manon offered an extensive look at the issue, from family stories to statistical analysis. We asked Tianna to join us and explain what her work uncovered. Our guests: Tianna Manon , editor-in-chief of Open Mic Roc Michele Ashlee , photographer for Open Mic Roc Sirena Cotton, founder of Roc the Peace, who lost her son to gun violence in 2007 Melanie Funchess , director of community engagement for the Mental Health

One of the great Rochester success stories is R Community Bikes, which began in a garage and grew to provide 50,000 bikes to city residents in the past decade. The man behind it is a force of nature: Dan Lill is retired, makes no money from R Community Bikes, and doesn't even ride a bicycle himself. But he's dedicated to rounding up used and damaged bikes, repairing them, and making sure his team of volunteers is ready to provide bikes on the two days per week that the facility is open. The

A conservative writer, Kevin Williamson, recently published a piece for National Review titled "How to Read the Newspaper." It's probably not what you think. Williamson writes that we're in a dangerous time when large swaths of the population reflexively declare any news story they don't like to be "fake news." He puts his fellow conservatives at the top of that list: "It is cheap, it is cowardly, and it is bad citizenship to simply shreik ' fake news!' every time reality forces a hard choice

Parents have raised concerns about gaps in the quality and focus of care related to children's social and emotional health in our region. As a result, the Greater Rochester Health Foundation convened a commission on children's behavioral health. What did they find? We discuss the Crisis in Care report with our guests: Dr. Martin Lustick, M.D., senior vice president and corporate medical director for Excellus BCBS, and co-chair of the Greater Rochester Initiative for Children’s Social and

Astrophysicist Adam Frank is fresh off the March for Science, and he's thinking about a lot of things related to this particular American moment. Why do so many Americans reject real expertise? Is the current administration going to do irrevocable damage in the battle against climate change? And how are scientists improving when it comes to recognizing the signs of intelligent life in the universe? It's always a whirlwind conversation with one of science's great communicators, Adam Frank .

The New York Philharmonic is the nation’s oldest symphony orchestra, but it wasn’t until 2014 that it welcomed its first black principal player. While that fact may seem staggering, recent data paint a bleak picture of the state of diversity in classical music: only 4% of orchestra musicians are either African American or Latino. Organizers of this summer's Gateways Music Festival are committed to improving that percentage. The festival features musicians of African descent and works by African

It's graduation season... so are the local graduates getting local jobs? It's the first in our series of conversations with freshly minted college graduates about their experiences navigating the job market. This week, we focus on the teaching profession. In studio: James Flagler, 2017 graduate of St. John Fisher College, and substitute teacher at School 45 Danielle Maxwell, 2017 graduate of the College at Brockport, and soon-to-be teacher at Bicentennial North in Glendale, Arizona