Rising temperatures, algal blooms, billions (with a B)of tons of food waste and the growing need for renewable energy sources have New York politicians under pressure from environmental groups and voters alike. Prickly hosts Kacie and Andrew chat with Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins about his gubernatorial bid and City & State’s Rebecca Lewis.

Primary season is over and the general election is upon us. So who are the Republicans running to unseat New York's biggest power players? Hosts Kacie and Andrew chat with gubernatorial candidate Marc Molinaro and senate candidate Chele Farley about their touchstone economic proposals, experience, and their motivations for running.

Primary Day in New York has come and gone, and the establishment held out in the big races but the progressive wave had some casualties down ballot. Hosts Andrew Seger and Kacie Candela break down all the major races, from the gubernatorial to the major upsets of most former IDC members.

The New York State Primaries are less than a week away, and the Democratic gubernatorial candidates recently faced off in a debate for the first time. The four Democrats vying to fill New York's Attorney General seat also took to the debate stage to try to convince voters to pick them on September 13. This week, Kacie and Andrew take a look at the candidates' performances and talk with Jeff Coltin, a political reporter with City and State. Tune in to catch up on the issues the candidates are talking about as voters prepare to head to the polls.

Could New York State be the first to move to a Medicare-for-all system? In this episode, hosts Andrew Seger and Kacie Candela look at the New York Health Act, the single-payer proposal that has passed the Assembly four times only to stall in the State Senate. We chat with Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, the bill's sponsor, and Jodi Liu from the RAND corporation, whose study looks at whether single-payer is financially feasible for the state. Hint: Yes, only if everything goes right.

This week, hosts Andrew Seger and Kacie Candela profile the women running for major state offices in New York. Following record-breaking numbers of women starting campaigns across the country, New York has a number of female candidates running for governor, attorney general, senator, and other offices. Listen as we take a deep dive into the issues they're running on, the campaigns they're leading, and the problems they're hoping to change-- we're even joined by gubernatorial candidate Stephanie Miner and attorney general candidate Zephyr Teachout.

Once upon a time, Andrew Cuomo, Sheldon Silver, and Dean Skelos were referred to as the "three men in the room" who held all the power in Albany. Silver and Skelos, along with others in Cuomo's inner circle, have been convicted in trials and retrials this year on federal corruption charges. Prickly hosts Andrew Seger and Kacie Candela break down the most important convictions and the gubernatorial election's most recent campaign finance filing with the help of POLITICO reporters Jimmy Veilkind and Bill Mahoney. We also chat with Chisun Lee from the Brennan Center about money's increasingly hard to track influence on politics.

Where do you think upstate starts? And what do people do with their time if they're not always sitting in a delayed subway car? These are the questions we set out to answer in episode two. Prickly hosts Andrew Seger and Kacie Candela traveled to Kingston, New York to find out the issues people care about outside of New York City. We sat down in a diner and talked with locals about what they'll be thinking about when they head to the polls in the fall. Then we headed over to Faso Friday, a weekly protest outside of Congressional Representative John Faso's office. Tune in to get up to speed with what's happening north of New York City.

Hosts Andrew Seger and Kacie Candela tackle two hot issues unresolved in Albany: legalization of sports betting and recreational marijuana use. Andrew speaks with Fordham University Professor Mark Conrad and Kacie talks to Doug Greene, the Legislative Director of Empire State NORML, an advocacy group that fights for progressive marijuana legislation in New York.

The WFUV newsroom is excited to present Season 2 of Prickly Politics, our local politics podcast where hosts Kacie Candela and Andrew Seger explore the issues and candidates in New York's 2018 elections. Governor Cuomo is running for a third term against challengers from both sides of the aisle, and there are plenty of battleground seats across the state. For more, check out our Twitter (@pricklypodcast) and our website: pricklypolitics.atavist.com.