Talk with Tom McGrath

Few industries have been as devastated by the coronavirus pandemic as the restaurant business. What's that been like for restaurant owners and their staffs -- and how will things change going forward?  In this episode, Tom talks with restaurateur Ellen Yin about the challenges of the last year and what comes next, from menu changes to shifts in employee compensation. Yin's restaurants include Fork, High Street and a. kitchen.

Five years after leaving office, former Philly Mayor Michael Nutter opens up in a freewheeling conversation. Nutter touches on everything from growing up in West Philly to why he loved being mayor to  the quest for racial justice to why he sometimes wishes white people "would do some fucking work." 

(Plus, he offers a few constructive comments on the name of this podcast.)

For three decades Angelo Cataldi has been Philly's sports-fan-in-chief, shaping opinions with his popular morning radio show. In this episode, he talks with Tom about the long-term success of the show, his love of Philly's negativity, his hatred of Andy Reid, and why Cataldi might be close to retiring.

Tom talks with journalist Simon van Zuylen-Wood about the Epoch Times, the right-leaning, Trump-supporting, conspiracy-peddling newspaper that's seen a huge growth in readership over the last four years. He's just written an in-depth look at the paper for the Atlantic.

In the wake of the presidential election, Tom talks with Ed Rendell. The former Pennsylvania governor and Philadelphia mayor weighs in on Joe Biden's decency, Rudy Giuliani's mental problems, his own battle with Parkinson's, and whether or not cities can survive Covid-19.

It's become semi-famous as President-elect Joe Biden's home town and the setting for the TV show The Office, but what's Scranton, Pennsylvania really like?  Tom talks with current Scranton mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti about the city of 77,000 people. They chat about the fact that Scranton is Tom's home town,  its place in Presidential politics, its surprising rise in pop culture, and the difference between Scranton's image as a faded coal mining town and its more upbeat reality.

Where does the movement for racial justice stand in this year of unrest? Tom talks with award-winning journalist Ernest Owens, who discusses the recent killing of Walter Wallace Jr. by Philadelphia police; why white people's empathy doesn't necessarily advance the cause; and what he heard at a recent meeting with Barack Obama.

If you’ve been paying attention to college admissions in recent years, you know one thing for certain: it’s a fraught, out-of-control process that only seems to be growing more competitive and stressful for everyone involved.
 
In this episode, Tom talks with author Jeffrey Selingo about Selingo's new book Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions. Selingo pulls back the curtain on how admissions really works and offers some compelling findings, including:  

How admission is big business and is often more about what a college needs than what a student offers. How today’s colleges are divided between “buyers” and “sellers”—and how families can tell the difference. And why getting into college is both harder—and easier—than ever.

Selingo also offers some special insider tips on how to manage the admissions process successfully. 

Have Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple become so dominant in American life that it's time to break them up? The Justice Department and a recent Congressional report say yes — and so does our guest in this episode, journalist Noam Cohen.

A columnist for Wired and author of the book The Know-It-Alls, Cohen talks about his own journey when it comes to technology — from wide-eyed idealist to clear-eyed skeptic — while arguing that the real problem is the everyone-for-themselves philosophy that underpins the entire industry. The only solution, he says, is to fundamentally rethink the Internet.

"You look at Facebook and You Tube and Twitter today, and it's clear they're just oblivious to the harm they're causing," says Cohen. 

What happens after Donald Trump loses next month's election? Political journalist Sasha Issenberg talks about various scenarios, from Trump challenging the legitimacy of the vote to the fragility of Joe Biden's coalition to the fact that the instant frontrunner in the 2024 GOP primary could be...Donald Trump.