Talk of the Town: After Hours

WVBR News Director Jack Donnellan sat down for a second time with author, editor, and publisher Mark Wish. Mark and his wife founded an annual short story anthology, Coolest American Stories, which pushes its contributors to make their fiction as compelling as possible, reminding them that readers crave “unputdownable” storytelling. Mark also served as the Fiction Editor of California Quarterly, was the founding Fiction Editor of New York Stories and a Contributing Editor for Pushcart, and has long been known as the freelance editor who has revised the fiction of once-struggling writers, leading it to land numerous book deals as well as publication in dozens of venues including The Atlantic Monthly, The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Hudson Review, and Best American Short Stories.  His first novel, Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman, compared favorably with Huckleberry Finn by the Los Angeles Times back in 1997, went to a second printing one month after publication. Watch Me Go, his third novel, was published by Putnam and praised by Rebecca Makkai, Daniel Woodrell, Ben Fountain, and Salman Rushdie. More than 125 of Mark's short stories have appeared in print venues such as Best American Short Stories, The Georgia Review, TriQuarterly, American Short Fiction, The Antioch Review, Crazyhorse, The Gettysburg Review, Fiction, The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, Barrelhouse, The Yale Review, The Sun, Paris Transcontinental, and Fiction International, and have won distinctions such as the Tobias Wolff Award, the Kay Cattarulla Award, an Isherwood Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize.  The interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 3:00 PM. Catch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com. Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. wvbr.com/afterhours

In this special episode, recorded ahead of the 2024 Presidential Election, WVBR's News Department sits down with former CNBC Senior Producer Peter Schacknow to discuss how the economy might have an effect on the election. Peter Schacknow served as Senior Producer at CNBC's Breaking News Desk beginning in March 2006, producing breaking news stories for the daytime shows as well as serving as writer and copy editor for CNBC's flagship morning show “Squawk Box.” He also wrote and voiced weekend features for CNBC Radio. Prior to that, Schacknow spent seven years as morning anchor and reporter at Bloomberg Radio, specializing in business news and financial market coverage. While at Bloomberg, Schacknow was nominated as Best Business Anchor by the New York Air Awards, and won an award from the NYS Society of CPAs for his “Tax Smart Now” series. This marks Schacknow's second stint at CNBC: he was an original employee of the network back in 1989, serving as producer and on-air reporter until 1999. His experience also includes time at the CBS, ABC, and UPI Radio Networks, as well as radio stations WOR (New York), WGSM and WLIR (Long Island), and WVBR-FM and WTKO (Ithaca, N.Y). This interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, November 2, 2024 at 3:00 PM. Catch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com. Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. #wvbrfmnews

WVBR News Director Jack Donnellan sat down with Royal D. Colle and Heike Michelsen for an hour-long interview about Beyond Borders: Exploring the History of Cornell's Global Dimensions (Cornell University Press, 2024). Colle and Michelsen, alongside Elaine D. Engst and Corey Ryan Earle, edited the book, which "highlights and celebrates Cornell University's many historical achievements and international activities going back to its founding." Beyond Boarders is a collection of fifty-eight vignettes, penned by authors drawn from different personal backgrounds and academic disciplines. It is a unique and timely representation of the Cornell story. You can purchase it at your favorite local bookstore. Royal D. Colle is Professor Emeritus of Communication at Cornell. He has worked around the world on projects with WHO, the World Bank, FAO, and the Ford Foundation. Heike Michelsen was Director of Programming at Cornell's Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. She was a Senior Research Officer at the International Service for National Agricultural Research. This interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, May 4, 2024 at 3:00 PM. Catch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com. Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. #wvbrfmnews

WVBR News Director Jack Donnellan recently sat down with New York Times Bestselling Author Tim Johnston for the latest episode of our “Authors on Air” series. Tim is the author of the novels DISTANT SONS, DESCENT, THE CURRENT, the story collection IRISH GIRL, and the Young Adult novel NEVER SO GREEN. A New York Times, USA Today, and Indie national bestseller, Descent has been published internationally and optioned for film. Also optioned for film, The Current won the Midland Authors 2020 Adult Fiction Award. The stories of Irish Girl won an O. Henry Prize, the New Letters Award for Writers, and the Gival Press Short Story Award, while the collection itself won the 2009 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. Tim's stories have appeared in New England Review, New Letters, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Double Take, Best Life Magazine, and Narrative Magazine, among others. After earning degrees from the University of Iowa and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Tim made a living for twenty-five years as a carpenter. He is the recipient of the 2015 Iowa Author Award and currently lives in Iowa City, Iowa. This interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, February 10, 2024 at 3:00 PM. Catch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com. Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. wvbr.com/afterhours

WVBR News Director Jack Donnellan sat down with author, editor, and publisher Mark Wish. Mark and his wife recently founded an annual short story anthology, Coolest American Stories, which pushes its contributors to make their fiction as compelling as possible, reminding them that readers crave “unputdownable” storytelling. Mark's latest book, which will be released in January 2024, is Necessary Deeds, published by Regal House Titles. We hear an excerpt from the novel, in which Matt Connell, a former literary agent who's been in prison for four years for a crime of passion—homicide by strangulation after learning his wife slept with a friend—receives an early release to join an FBI undercover investigation of multiple murders in Manhattan. This interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 3:00 PM. Catch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com. Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. wvbr.com/afterhours

WVBR News Director Jack Donnellan sits down with Ralph White alongside DZ Stone, a writer, journalist, and former WVBR staffer, for WVBR News' newest series, Authors on Air. Ralph's book, Getting Out of Saigon, is a political exposé, a refugee saga, a coming-of-age story, and a romance, and it is narrated by the only living person who knows exactly what happened inside that embassy during Saigon's final two weeks when a powerful psychotic and a naïve young expatriate became locked in a test of wills with the lives of 113 refugees at stake. This interview aired live on Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturday, September 9, 2023 at 3:00 PM. Catch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com. Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. wvbr.com/afterhours

WVBR News Directors Andrew Modrowsky and Jack Donnellan interview environmental activist and a pioneer of the “new economy movement", Helena Norberg-Hodge. Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of Local Futures, a non-profit dedicated to renewing ecological and social wellbeing by strengthening local communities and local economies worldwide.  She is also the author of the international best-selling book, Ancient Futures, based on her personal experience of over 40 years living and working as a linguist, filmmaker and activist in Ladakh, on the Tibetan Plateau.  Norberg-Hodge has also been working on a new documentary through Local Futures, called Planet Local: A Quiet Revolution. In addition to that, she has been promoting World Localization Day, which occurs on June 21st, and calls on people to come together to explore the power of localization, and to honor the many initiatives, old and new, that foster ecological economies, thriving communities and healthy local food systems.   This interview, first released on AFTER HOURS, will be broadcasted live on WVBR 93.5 FM in August 2022. Special thanks to Helena Norberg-Hodge for making this episode possible. wvbr.com/afterhours Catch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com. Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 

WVBR News Directors Andrew Modrowsky and Jack Donnellan interview NM State Senator, Cornell alum (and one-time kick returner on the football team) and author Bill O'Neill. O'Neill read from his recent poetry collection The Definition of Empty from University of New Mexico Press, as well as his recent novel Short Session from Red Mountain Press at Buffalo Street Books on June 4th at 2:00 PM. A native of rural Ohio, he was elected to the New Mexico Legislature in 2008 and is now in his second term in the New Mexico State Senate. O'Neill's poems have appeared in numerous literary reviews, both regional and national, and his career has been framed by his work with nonprofits, with a focus on incarcerated juveniles and adults. In 2005, Governor Bill Richardson appointed him Executive Director of the NM Juvenile Parole Board. Named an Emerging Leader in 2016 by the University Of Virginia's Darden School, he credits his early literary inspiration to mentors E.L. Doctorow and V.B. Price.This interview, first released on AFTER HOURS, will be broadcasted live on WVBR 93.5 FM in August 2022. Special thanks to Bill O'Neill and Ben Tanzer for making this episode possible.wvbr.com/afterhoursCatch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 

Andrew Modrowsky discusses the resignation of U.S. Representative Tom Reed (NY-23), Grace Fairchild investigates why the markets are down, and Jack Donnellan breaks down why you might want to reconsider your daily aspirin regimen. We also report on local news from the Ithaca/Tompkins County region, including booster vaccine availability, the Ithaca Summer Concert series, and a new program making TCAT buses free for local youth this summer. This episode features segments that originally aired on WVBR on May 14th and May 21st, our final live news broadcasts of the Spring 2022 season.wvbr.com/afterhoursCatch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 

Introducing new WVBR News Directors Jack Donnellan and Andrew Modrowsky! Join Jack as he provides updates on the goings-on at the station and what to expect from WVBR news in the future.Also, hear WVBR's top-notch reporting team break down the leaked U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case, in which a majority of the Supreme Court privately voted to strike down Roe v. Wade. To break down the massive impact of this draft, Grace Fairchild and Jackie Torres interviewed Cornell Law Professor Sherry Colb, an expert in criminal law and procedure and feminist legal studies. Fairchild, Torres, and outgoing WVBR President Clara Enders also provide their own analysis of the future consequences likely to stem from the Dobbs ruling.wvbr.com/afterhoursCatch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 

On January 11, a lawsuit was filed in federal court in Illinois against 16 major US universities, including Cornell, for antitrust violations. The lawsuit claims that these universities unlawfully collaborate on student aid calculations and fail to truly apply need-blind admissions policies. To gain a better understanding of the history of financial aid price fixing, its impacts on students, and Cornell's place in the case, Jackie Torres and Grace Fairchild interviewed Cornell Law and Economics Professor George Hay, an expert in antitrust law and economics.wvbr.com/afterhoursCatch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Jackie Torres provides an update on the Saturday 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Haiti, Izzy Frabotta breaks down the IPCC Climate Report, and Grace Fairchild gives an editorial on what seems to be the end of the Andrew Cuomo saga.This episode contains reports from the Saturday, August 14 live Talk of the Town show on 93.5 FM. wvbr.com/afterhoursCatch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Music written, recorded and produced by Rain. Find them here. 

What does life in Ithaca look like in spring of 2021? The news departments at WICB and WVBR teamed up to catalogue the changes and challenges of the new normal. Find more from the WICB News Department here. wvbr.com/afterhoursCatch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Music written, recorded and produced by Rain. Find them here. 

With segments from the April 3rd radio broadcast, this episode asks Dr. Christine Balance, Cornell PMA and Asian American Studies professor, about the rise in violence against Asian Americans in the US. Later, we visit with Cornell Law Professor John Blume about the legal procedures and norms behind the Derek Chauvin trial. Segments by Izzy Frabotta, Jade Ovadia, and Grace Fairchild. Catch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Music written, recorded and produced by Rain. Find them here. 

From the March 20th Talk of the Town show, we have an interview with small business owner Deirdre Kurzweil about her landlord experience in the Ithaca Commons, and an interview with Erin Scannell, whose emotional support bunny, Finn, is the Instagram and Cornell famous @BigRedBun.  Thanks to Clara Enders and Jade Ovadia for their help with this episode. wvbr.com/afterhoursCatch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Music written, recorded and produced by Rain. Find them here. 

With segments from the December 12th radio show, Cornell Professors Colleen Carey, John Blume, and Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer share their insight on vaccine distribution, the death penalty, and DACA, respectively.Reporters: Izzy Frabotta, Jade Ovadia, Grace Fairchildwvbr.com/afterhoursCatch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Music written, recorded and produced by Rain. Find them here. 

wvbr.com/afterhoursCatch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com.Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Music written, recorded and produced by Rain. Find them here. 

wvbr.com/afterhoursCatch the full Talk of the Town radio show on Saturdays at 3p on WVBR 93.5 FM or at wvbr.com. Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Music written, recorded and produced by Rain. Find them here. 

Catch our full Talk of the Town show on Saturdays at 3p EST on WVBR 93.5 FM, or on wvbr.com. wvbr.com/afterhoursFollow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Music written, recorded and produced by Rain. Find them here. 

With highlights from the October 17th radio episode of Talk of the Town, this week's After Hours brings you stories on a Tompkins County police forum, an interview with New York State Senate candidate Leslie Danks Burke, and a wrap up of this year's Nobel Prize winners.  Thanks to Clara Enders, Christopher Morales, and Izzy Frabotta for great reports this week.  wvbr.com/afterhours Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  Music written, recorded and produced by Rain. Find them here. 

With segments from our October 10th radio episode of Talk of the Town, this week we have reports from Christopher Morales, Grace Fairchild, Izzy Frabotta, and Clara Enders.  wvbr.com/afterhours Follow us on social media! @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  Music written, recorded and produced by Rain. Find them here. 

New WVBR Reporters Izzy Frabotta, Clara Enders, Christopher Morales, and Charlie Mollin contribute stories on coronavirus containment, voting in Tompkins County, Cornell's Student Assembly elections, and de-densified AppleFest. WVBR News is back this fall, and we're bringing you the stories you Itha-Can't get anywhere else! Listen live to Talk of the Town on WVBR 93.5 FM on Saturdays at 3p for our complete show!  Follow @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. wvbr.com/news

Live music and bars were two early casualties of this year's pandemic, and WVBR News has talked with the people bringing both back to the Finger Lakes Wine Trail this summer. Supernatural Lake right on the shores of Cayuga Lake in Interlaken is the brainchild of New York sommelier Caleb Ganzer. They're offering lakeside dining, wines by the glass, morning coffee service, and starting next week, Sunday brunch. But a little more unusual for a lakeside spot is that they're doing live music in collaboration with The Smith Opera House in Geneva, and the performers are playing on the dock! We talked to Susan Monagan, executive director of The Smith, which had to shut down their music series in late winter. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook: @WVBRFMNews. Music written, recorded and produced by Rain. Find them here. 

This week's episode features segments from Danny Alvarado-Gómez on Cornell students' anti-racism work, as well as a report from Clara Enders on what to expect from federal COVID relief negotiations and NYS unemployment extensions. Both segments were featured on our July 31st broadcast of Talk of the Town.  Follow us on social media for news updates! We're @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.    Background music by Zeeky Beats. 

WVBR News interviewed Joe Zesski, Program Manager for the Northeast ADA Center, about what schools should remember about the Americans with Disabilities Act when they bring students back to the classroom for the upcoming semester. The takeaway? Civil rights laws, including the ADA, still apply— even in the midst of a pandemic.    You'll find a transcript of this interview at wvbr.com/news.    Follow us on social media for news updates! We're @WVBRFMNews on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.    Background music by Zeeky Beats. 

Welcome to Talk of the Town: After Hours from WVBR News! Questions, comments, or tips? Email us at news@wvbr.com.  Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @WVBRFMNews.  Music written, recorded and produced by Rain. Find them here.