What A Week! Podcast

Episode 115 of What a Week! features Brian DiMattia, host of DiMattia’s Food Fight podcast and one of NEPA’s most active food content creators.

Brian talks about building his platform around local restaurants — including his multi-day review approach that helps small places get noticed — and the realities of growing on social media, from algorithm issues and account problems on TikTok to dealing with negative comments and online hate.

He opens up about more than 11 years of recovery from addiction, family trauma, mental health, and how he’s used fitness, MMA training, and alternative approaches (including stretches and Eastern medicine) to get through recent physical setbacks. The conversation also covers COVID’s impact on restaurants and kids, government overreach, the difference between misinformation and inconvenient truth, and why he pushes for common-sense dialogue across political lines.

It’s part food, part life, and a lot of honest NEPA conversation.

Watch the full episode and share your thoughts below.

#WhatAWeek #BrianDiMattia #FoodFight #NEPAFood #AddictionRecovery #LocalBusiness

Episode 114 of What a Week! features Dwayne McDavitt — longtime NEPA resident, 27-year law enforcement officer, founder of Bikers for Trump in Pennsylvania, and leader of Thunder and Liberty PAC — in a wide-ranging, no-spin conversation.Dwayne shares the story of meeting Donald Trump in Harrisburg in 2016 (the day Prince died), how he built a local Bikers for Trump group focused on community support rather than trouble, and why faith, family, and freedom remain his core principles. He talks about Trump’s early reputation as a builder and generous figure, the media’s later shift, and the importance of family involvement in business and life.The discussion covers PA politics and culture: criticism of modern Democratic policies and figures, support for local Republicans like Rob Bresnahan and Stacy Garrity, education shortfalls in Pennsylvania, welfare and family breakdown issues, Scranton leadership under Mayor Paige Cognetti, energy resources, and opposition to data center expansion. Drawing from his corrections and law enforcement experience, Dwayne discusses trauma and PTSD among first responders and veterans, the impact of fatherless homes, and the need for empathy and accountability.He also touches on voting, election closeness, online attacks, socialism concerns, taxes, immigration, and the value of community service through biker runs and local aid.No filters. Just one man’s perspective on America, Pennsylvania, and the values that hold it together. Watch the full episode and weigh in below. Subscribe and hit the bell for more.#WhatAWeek #DwayneMcDavitt #BikersForTrump #FaithFamilyFreedom #NEPAPolitics #ThunderAndLiberty

In Episode 113 of What A Week!, Joe Sabia of Archbald sits down for a long conversation that starts with a data center in his backyard and ends in a yurt.

He is running for Pennsylvania’s 112th House seat. He says he never planned on it. The project is about four-tenths of a mile from his house. He went to a meeting, got furious, and joined neighbors in a lawsuit. When a council seat opened he put in a résumé — 21 years in the military, two businesses, a bachelor’s from SIU and two master’s degrees from Marywood — and got turned down. So he ran.

The local fight is specific. Kids getting off the bus toward Jermyn on a 45-mph state road. A lawsuit with about eight neighbors now in limbo after a motion to dismiss over “proximity.” Two-hundred-foot setbacks. Council dinners. NDAs. Water, a mine fire, lithium and hydrants that cannot keep up, pump trucks toward Moss Lake. A five-hour tour of the Dunmore landfill — radiation detectors, test wells, methane piped off-site — and his argument that people aim their anger at the nearest name instead of the people who wrote the rules.

Then the conversation leaves the campaign. Dunmore childhood. An alcoholic mother, a workaholic father, grandparents next door and on Chestnut Street. Motocross he was barely allowed to race. A family that told him to join the military and then stopped inviting him home. Rescue-swimmer school. Raising his own kids — travel softball, gymnastics, a stepdaughter finishing an engineering master’s at Penn State — the way nobody raised him. In 2024 he did a psychedelic retreat. He talks about the anger he carried, a vision of his mother, and coming out of it without taking every stranger’s bad day personally.

He closes with what he says a state rep should actually do: listen, post a weekly update from Harrisburg, keep data centers out of residential neighborhoods, and not let seniors get taxed out of the houses they already paid for. He does not sound like a brochure. He sounds like a neighbor who got tired of waiting.

Jessica from the Pennsylvania Coalition for Informed Consent sits down on What A Week! and does not start with a slogan. She starts with a kid who was always sick.

She grew up fully vaccinated. Allergies, sinus infections, a list of antibiotics that made her break out in hives, sinus surgery at ten. Three miscarriages by 25. Pregnant with her oldest, her doctor said get the flu shot or the baby could die — and that was the entire briefing. Her husband, also in healthcare, sat her down with a documentary. They selectively vaccinated: Hib, DTaP, polio. Six to eight doses. She says she regrets it. There was no overnight “change.” There were little things, a child who wasn’t talking, a year waiting on a diagnosis, then autism, a severe speech delay, ADHD. Pediatricians who told her to give Tylenol before the appointment. Practices that kick families out. Parents who used to hide on secret message boards.

Mark and Jessica go from that kitchen-table story into the machinery around it: the 2014 Disneyland measles outbreak and the nationwide push to kill religious exemptions, why PCIC formed in 2015, what COVID dragged into the open, pharma ad dollars on cable news, MTHFR and folic acid in the food supply, school lunches that are Pop-Tarts while kitchens sit empty, a mom who taught middle school for 23 years and watched an autism classroom explode, and two years of pulling her kids into a cyber charter rather than send an autistic son back into that.

Under all of it is the same test: informed consent only counts if you can say no and still keep the pediatrician, the job, and the school.

Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw53ujAi8LA

Pennsylvania Coalition for Informed Consent (PCIC)
PCIC is a volunteer, nonpartisan grassroots group founded in 2015. Jessica is legislative director and a state director. They are not a political party and they are not an “anti-vax” PAC — they say they are neither for nor against vaccination. The mission is to preserve informed consent and transparency in health decisions, including medical procedures, data privacy, food, soil, water, and air, and to hold Pennsylvania legislators to that duty. Chapters, volunteers, and advocates meet legislators in Harrisburg about once a month.

Website: https://informedconsentpa.org
Join / volunteer: https://informedconsentpa.org/join
Email: [email protected]
Donate: https://informedconsentpa.org/donate

#WhatAWeek #PCIC #InformedConsent #Pennsylvania #NEPA #WhatAWeekPodcast

In Episode 111 of What A Week!, Rik Little sits down for a long, looping conversation that starts in Wheaton, Illinois and ends in a Scranton housing fight.

Born in Dallas and raised outside Chicago — Billy Graham’s town, Goldwater signs in the yard, his father on city council and selling Haloid machines before they became Xerox — Rik talks about growing up inside “the rectangle.” TV, Twilight Zone, the feeling of watching his own life from outside his body. He went to school with the Belushis, later picked John Belushi up in a New York cab after John Lennon was shot, and spent the night driving him around the city.

Then NYU film school. First in his class, master’s in 1980, still driving a cab. Lower East Side apartments, burned-out buildings, music recorded on a Pro Walkman, and the synchronicities he still cannot shake.

The second half is Scranton. Broken families, education, the constitution, Lake Scranton history, media that never stops lying, and the eviction that came after a fair-housing process he says was designed so you miss the deadline. Rik does not tidy any of it up. Memory, media, housing, and a city that still will not answer.

Chef Ryan “Von” Smith is back on What A Week! with cousin Marcus Moody. They eat, talk trash, and then go where a chef interview usually will not. This episode is about coming home after you’ve already seen the rest of the world, growing up Black in Scranton, East Side versus West Side, family history that does not make the brochure, and why Von still will not pretend the city is easy just because he built a restaurant here. Next Level Chef is in the mix. So are God, church, slurs, old-school discipline, and the midlife mess of being back.

In Episode 109 of What A Week!, longtime Northeast Pennsylvania family physician Dr. William Dempsey sits down for a wide-ranging conversation on medicine, family, and community.

A University of Scranton grad and board-certified family doctor with more than four decades of experience, Dempsey serves as medical director of The Wright Center’s Clarks Summit practice and chief population health value-based care officer. He’s also a Pennsylvania Medical Society trustee, educator in the family medicine residency, and a physician who’s treated everything from everyday primary care to substance use disorder.

Mark and Dr. Dempsey dig into the realities of practicing medicine in NEPA, the challenges of whole-person care, the opioid crisis, what it means to raise a large family while serving patients, and the deeper questions of faith, purpose, and healing that run through both medicine and life.

Honest, grounded, and full of local insight.A strong episode for anyone who cares about healthcare, family, and Northeast Pennsylvania.

Chris Kelly and I don’t see the world the same way. We’ve been on opposite sides of more than a few issues over the years. That’s exactly why this conversation needed to happen.In a country (and a region) that keeps hardening into tribes, too many people have stopped talking to anyone who doesn’t already agree with them. This episode is a deliberate refusal of that habit.Chris Kelly, longtime columnist and muckraker at the Scranton Times-Tribune, sits down with me to talk about the data center explosion hitting Northeastern Pennsylvania — the land, the power, the water, the noise, the political pressure, and the people who feel like they’re watching their home get auctioned off in real time.We don’t land in the same place on every point. But we do share something more important: a deep concern for this place and the people who actually live here.This episode isn’t about winning an argument. It’s about modeling something that’s becoming rare — two people from different corners of the ideological map sitting down, talking straight, and looking for the ground they still share.Because if we can’t do that, we’re finished.

Shane Repasky is back on What A Week! Podcast for a deep, unfiltered conversation that goes way beyond the surface.The NEPA carpenter who first woke up during COVID returns to unpack the ancient roots of modern control systems — from Mesopotamian deities and the god “El,” to water memory, structured water, toroidal biofields, frequencies, and how technology (including 5G and algorithms) is being used to isolate and manage humanity.Shane and Mark dive into:• How COVID cracked open the door for deeper questioning• Etymology, mystery schools, and the dual nature of reality• Water as memory and the role of light/photons• Biofields, social distancing, and AI identification• Ancient ages, elites, and the long game of control• Why “experts,” education, and institutions condition us away from self-knowledgeThis one gets dense, spiritual, and highly technical at times — but Shane breaks it down in a way that regular people can follow. No politics. No religion. Just raw exploration of what’s been hidden in plain sight for ages.If Episode 97 introduced you to Shane, this is the next level.Watch, listen, and decide for yourself.#WhatAWeekPodcast #ShaneRepasky #TruthSeeking #Awakening #Frequencies #AncientKnowledge #NEPA

On this episode of What A Week! NEPA, Mark talks with Walter Griffith — former Luzerne County Controller, auto mechanic, and government watchdog — about the explosive battle over Ordinance 202611, the sweeping anti-discrimination law passed by the 8-3 Luzerne County Council.Walter explains how this imported boilerplate ordinance (pushed via groups like Action Together) adds expansive "protected classes" like source of income, gender identity, perceived gender expression, weight, height, dreadlocks, and more. It creates a county Human Relations Commission with judge-jury-executioner power, threatening small businesses, landlords, banks, churches, schools, and individual freedoms with complaints, fines, and costly litigation.They cover:The citizen petition drive (1% to postpone, 10% to force a referendum)Massive outside funding in local racesDoxing of petition signers by Councilman Chris Bellows and resulting intimidationHome rule government issues, appointed executives, and lack of accountabilityWhy everyday NEPA residents must get involved to push back against overreachA powerful call to action on local resistance to ideological agendas. If you're in Luzerne County, check Citizens Alliance on Facebook for petition locations or contact Walter.🎙️ Share with anyone who values property rights, free speech, and limited government.#WhatAWeekNEPA #LuzerneCounty #Referendum #GovernmentOverreach