CUNYcast – CUNY Podcasts

A conversation about CUNY's ambitions for the coming years with Rachel Stephenson and Cathy N. Davidson of the new Office of Transformation.

Sidik Fofana, a high school teacher who earned his masters in education at City College, wrote fiction on the side for a decade. He finally got his first book published -- and was awarded a prestigious Whiting Award for Emerging Writers.

Ryan Martin, CUNY's first director of inclusive and adaptive sports, has quickly built a nationally recognized wheelchair basketball program. His focus is on bringing athletes with disabilities to CUNY, but he says it's ultimately not about the game.

Queens College alum Nira Burstein talks about making "Charm Circle," her intensely persona, award-winning documentary about the fractured emotional landscape of her parents' lives in the house in Flushing where Burstein grew up.

An immersive new exhibition at Queensborough Community College's renowned Kupferberg Holocaust Center documents the vastness of the Nazi's system of genocide. The center's Laura Cohen and Cary Lane discuss the exhibit and the emotional toll of creating it.

Nearly six decades after he dropped out, Ciro Scala went back to City College, earned two degrees and started a workshop program to help first-generation college students navigate some of the same kinds of challenges that sidetracked his hopes for a college degree.

Brooklyn College professor emerita Virginia Sánchez Korrol talks about her role as historical consultant for Steven Spielberg's reimagined "West Side Story" and how she helped portray New York's Puerto Rican community of the 1950s with more authenticity and nuance.

Zohra Saed, a distinguished lecturer at Macaulay Honors College, and Mayha Ghouri, a CUNY Law School alumna, have mounted a high-stakes campaign to help an imperiled Afghan writer and his family flee Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

As he prepares to retire after a prodigious career spanning nearly 50 years, a conversation with the founding father of many of CUNY's most innovative and consequential programs of this century.

CUNY's School of Public Health has launched CONVINCE USA, part of a global project to reduce ungrounded fears and misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccines and persuade the resistant that the shot is safe, effective--and necessary to end the pandemic.  Dr. Scott Ratzan talks about the challenges and the strategies.

For Derek Fordjour, an alumnus of Hunter College’s MFA program, the turmoil of 2020 was a canvas for a breakthrough year featuring two critically acclaimed exhibitions. He talks about his life and how he turned his work as a multidisciplinary artist into dazzling and emotional social observation.

A new year conversation with Dr. Bruce Y. Lee of the CUNY School of Public Health on the state of vaccines, the threat of the mutated virus and what the Biden administration needs to do to turn the tide of the pandemic.

Stan Wolfson looks back on his 60-year career as a photographer and photo editor for New York newspapers and, for the past 16 years, for CUNY.

Renowned author Walter Mosley, a City College creative writing alum, is the 2020 recipient of the National Book Foundation's lifetime achievement award. He talks about his life, his work, and the program he helped create at CCNY to open doors for minorities in the publishing industry.

Jessica Harris taught at Queens College for 50 years--and became the country's foremost authority on African American cuisine along the way. The author of a dozen books, she was honored this year with the James Beard Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award. She talks about it all on the CUNYcast.

How Harrison Sheckler, a pianist in the masters program at the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, has brought together hundreds of singers and musicians for virtual performances that are bringing a little joy to this dispiriting year.

CUNY TV's third virtual town hall special on COVID-19 is a conversation on CUNY's transition to distance learning with Executive Vice Chancellor José Luis Cruz, Lehman College Provost Peter Nwosu, the Graduate Center's Cathy N. Davidson and students Sally Zieper and Kalli Siringas.  

In "A Crisis in Motion," CUNY TV's second virtual town hall special on COVID-19, host Mike Gilliam talks with guests including Angie Kamath, University Dean for Continuing Education and Workforce Development, Dr. Bruce Y. Lee of the School of Public Health and students from Baruch, Hunter and the College of Staten Island.

A weekly tracking survey by the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy is revealing important insights about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on New Yorkers--and vice versa. Dr. Scott Ratzan discusses what the results tell us about our collective attitudes, behaviors and beliefs--and how they might inform efforts to fight the spread of this pandemic and maybe help prevent future ones.

Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, CUNY's leading expert on the spread of the coronavirus, talks about the latest: What the last two weeks tells us about the next two and beyond. Why social distancing is so critical right now, how some Asian countries have used it to stop the virus and what we can learn from them. What to make of stories about treatments and vaccines. And more.

Dr. Bruce Y. Lee of the CUNY School of Public Health offers a frank assessment of the state of the emerging pandemic – and some good advice. (March 12, 2020)

Dipika Shrestha and Anuz Thapa left successful media careers in Nepal and came to New York. They've both since earned graduate degrees at CUNY, and for the past two years they've hosted a weekly podcast to help other immigrants navigate life in a new land and make the jump from "survival jobs" to professional careers.

CUNY School of Public Health Dean Ayman El-Mohandes talks about the challenges of tracking the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

A conversation about the causes and consequences of growing rates of depression and anxiety among students, and how CUNY is taking on the issue. Featuring Nicholas Freudenberg of the School of Public Health and Health Policy, Wendy Paulino of the Lehman College counseling center and Lehman student Azeez Amini.

Life have you stressed out? Weary of the endless news cycle? City College philosophy professor has an idea--one that goes back 18 centuries. He's a leader of a modern movement that's popularizing the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism. 

City College/Macaulay student Emilia Decaudin, the first openly transgender member of the New York State Democratic Committee, talks about how she got the state party to change the gender language of its rules. And Jennifer Choi of the News Integrity Initiative at the Newmark School of Journalism discusses a project to advance newsroom diversity and improve coverage of marginalized communities.