Podcasts about Hudson River

In this heartfelt and hilarious episode of the Opie Radio podcast, Opie dives into an emotional weekend celebrating his daughter's 13th birthday, complete with a creative phone reveal inside a balloon! He reflects on the bittersweet reality of raising two teenagers and the fleeting nature of childhood. Opie also tackles the absurdity of dumping radioactive waste in the Hudson River, rants about the woes of shopping at Rite Aid, and shares a wild childhood story of snowball-throwing mischief that ended in a memorable beatdown. From subway surfing tragedies to bird app annoyances and a 95-year-old's wheelchair rampage, this episode is a rollercoaster of laughs, nostalgia, and real talk. Tune in for Opie's signature blend of humor and raw honesty, plus a shoutout to his loyal listeners and a nod to the haters. Don't miss it—grab your coffee and join the Opie Squad!

Brad Zerbo and Zak “RedPill78” Paine dig into New York's controversial plan to extend Manhattan into the Hudson River, exploring the history of landfill expansion, crumbling infrastructure, and the politics of housing in the city. From Typhoid Mary's exile to North Brother Island to gas leaks and collapsing Bronx buildings, they connect past public health crises with today's urban decay. The discussion shifts to revelations that Israel is paying U.S. influencers $7,000 per post, raising alarms about foreign lobbying, AIPAC's outsized role, and bipartisan corruption in Congress. They debate dual citizenship, foreign aid packages, and Trump's push to end endless giveaways, tying it back to Bob Menendez's scandals and broader questions of loyalty. The episode also touches on Trump's 20-point Gaza peace plan, AI-driven memes targeting Democrats, and the FBI-led crackdown in Memphis. Blending history, current events, and sharp humor, Brad and Zak expose how propaganda, money, and power intersect, from Manhattan's shoreline to the Middle East.

Day one of the federal government shutdown, with hundreds of thousands of federal workers on furlough, White House preparing for layoffs, some government services suspended and both parties blaming the other. We will hear from the Vice President JD Vance, Congressional leaders, and some rank-and-file Members of Congress explaining the situation to their constituents; Health care is one of the key issues in the shutdown. Democrats say Republicans are refusing to extend help to keep millions from seeing insurance costs skyrocket. Republicans say Democrats want to give health care to illegal immigrants. We will talk to Newsweek Politics Reporter Daniel Gooding about his 'fact check' article (20); Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) talks about help his state is providing to those hurt by the federal government shutdown; Trump Administration says $18 billion for two big infrastructure projects in New York, for a commuter train tunnel under the Hudson River and Second Avenue subway line, is being withheld to investigate what the Transportation Department calls “discriminatory, unconstitutional contracting processes” involving Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI); a nominee for a seat on the National Labor Relations Board who is currently chief labor counsel for Boeing gets tough questions at a Senate confirmation hearing by a Republican Senator about a Boeing union contract dispute; Federalist Society preview of the Supreme Court case challenging President Donald Trump authority to impose global reciprocal tariffs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Decades in the making, the Hudson River Tunnel Project is adding two railway tunnels between New Jersey and New York to serve Amtrak and New Jersey Transit riders. These tunnels will increase rail capacity and add critical redundancy to the network. To learn about this project, we're talking with Thomas Prendergast, CEO of the Gateway

On Monday night, September 22, poets and artists gathered at the Fish Market in Troy for a poetry reading featuring some of the writers whose poems were selected to be part of the exhibit. This week, Thom Francis introduces us to poets Tim Maloney and Pam Jacobson, whose poems “The Claw Machine” and “Tree Snag” inspired artists to create work. The host for the evening, Dan Wilcox, begins with the definition of ekphrastic art. —— Poetic License is an annual collaboration between local poets and visual artists, where words and images create bold new connections. On Monday night, September 22, some of the writers whose poems were selected to be part of the exhibit were invited to share their work at the Fish Market in Troy. Today, you'll hear from Tim Maloney, who read his poem “The Claw Machine” that inspired a photograph by yours truly. He then shared another piece titled “Rushing Water.” Next up to the mic is Pam Jacobson, whose poem “Tree Snag” had three artists interpretations. Pam then read her poem ”Dear Tree.” The 2025 edition of Poetic License exhibit is moving across the Hudson River to the Honest Weight Food Co-op in Albany. The show opens on Friday, October 3, and will run through November 16. For more information on Poetic License, to read poems, and to view art, go to poeticlicensealbany.com.

Co-hosts Kathy Kruger and Jonah Triebwasser interviews Christa Hines about the great work of Hudson River Housing.

On October 26, 1825, the fate of New York City – and the entire United States – changed with the opening of the Erie Canal, a manmade waterway that connected the Hudson River to Lake Erie.It was the most significant engineering project of its time, linking the ocean to the nation's interior -- a 363-mile route from Albany to Lake Erie. Without even knowing where the Erie Canal is on a map of New York state, you could probably guess its course because of a row of cities which developed and prospered, almost in a westward line – including Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.In some cases, these were modest-sized places like Schenectady or Rome that benefited financially from canal construction; in others, such as Syracuse (which was founded in the year 1820), the canal was chiefly responsible for its existence.However, it was also one of the most critical events in New York City's history, even though the entrance to the canal is approximately 150 miles north of New York Harbor. It essentially became the canal's gateway for freight traveling to any place inside the country or out to the world. As a result, New Yorkers quickly took advantage of the opportunities the canal offered.Today, we're celebrating the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Erie Canal by going straight to the source – in a conversation with Derrick Pratt, the Director of Education and Public Programs at the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse, New York.Visit our website for more images and other tales from New York City history. This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Gannon. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Join host Bela Musits and Captain Mike Malekoff as they continue their multi-day sailing journey up the United States East Coast aboard Mike's Hunter 44 Deck Salon. In this episode, they share the details of their passage from Half Moon Bay Marina in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, to Shadows Marina in Poughkeepsie, NY — a scenic and eventful run on the historic Hudson River.This episode is part of a special series recorded during the relocation of Mike's boat from Brunswick, Georgia, all the way to Burlington, Vermont. With each leg, Bela and Mike bring listeners along for the ride, sharing real-time observations, navigational decisions, and the beauty (and occasional challenges) of cruising one of America's most storied waterways.Highlights from this episode include:Smooth sailing with a tailwind – Thanks to excellent passage planning and favorable conditions, the crew maintained an impressive seven-knot average speed for much of the 30-mile leg.Tidal assist – Strategic timing with the tide gave them a strong push upriver, making for one of the fastest runs of the trip so far.Weather blessings – Consistently great weather has been a highlight of this relocation voyage, allowing for comfortable and efficient travel.Debris challenges – Heavy rains upriver had flushed a surprising number of logs and floating debris into the Hudson. Bela and Mike share how they stayed alert, maneuvered around hazards, and avoided damage.River life and scenery – From shoreline views to passing landmarks, the Hudson River continues to offer a stunning backdrop for their sailing adventure.Why this episode is a must-listen for sailors and cruisers: If you're planning to cruise the Hudson River, or considering an extended relocation trip on the Intracoastal Waterway and connected inland rivers, this episode offers valuable insights. From understanding how to leverage tides for better speed, to dealing with unexpected navigational hazards like floating logs, Bela and Mike provide firsthand knowledge that's both relatable and useful.Key takeaways for boaters:Plan your departure times to align with favorable tides — the boost in speed and fuel efficiency is worth the effort.After heavy rains, expect more debris in the river and stay vigilant, especially at higher speeds.Even short legs can be some of the most scenic and memorable parts of a voyage — don't rush through them without taking time to enjoy the surroundings.About the hosts:Bela Musits – A lifelong sailor, Bela is passionate about sharing real-world cruising experiences. As host of the Sailing and Cruising the East Coast of the United States Podcast, he brings listeners aboard for authentic stories and practical advice.Mike Malekoff – Owner of the Hunter 44 Deck Salon featured in this journey. Mike brings extensive sailing experience and a knack for detailed trip planning, ensuring each passage is both safe and efficient.Whether you're an experienced sailor, an aspiring cruiser, or simply someone who loves the romance of life on the water, this episode offers a front-row seat to an unforgettable day on the Hudson River.Keywords for SEO: Hudson River sailing, Half Moon Bay Marina, Shadows Marina Poughkeepsie, cruising the Hudson, Hunter 44 Deck Salon, East Coast sailing podcast, tide-assisted sailing, boating trip planning, Hudson River boating hazards, sailing relocation trip, Brunswick GA to Burlington VT, Intracoastal Waterway cruising, liveaboard sailing stories.Subscribe & Follow: Don't miss upcoming episodes as Bela and Mike continue their journey north! Subscribe to Sailing and Cruising the East Coast of the United States on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform.Thanks for Listening!If you enjoyed this episode, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast — it helps more sailors and dreamers discover the show. Have a sailing story or technical tip you'd like to share? Reach out via email at sailingtheeast@gmail.com

Holtec says no wastewater releases imminent A federal judge ruled on Wednesday (Sept. 24) that the state overstepped its authority when it passed a law to prevent the company decommissioning Indian Point from discharging radioactive wastewater into the Hudson River. The Save the Hudson act was passed in August 2023 to prevent Holtec International from discharging water containing tritium as it decommissions the shuttered nuclear power plant near Peekskill. Holtec sued in April 2024, arguing that the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 gives the federal government the "exclusive right to regulate the discharge of radioactive materials from nuclear power plants." The company also argued in its lawsuit that the discharges would be far below the federal government's limits for tritium in wastewater, and that Indian Point routinely made similar discharges during the 50 years the plant operated. Judge Kenneth Karas in White Plains agreed, ruling Wednesday that Holtec was within its rights and had assured compliance with federal regulations. New York Attorney General Letitia James has not yet announced whether she will appeal the decision. But Holtec officials said Thursday (Sept. 25), during a meeting of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board (DOB), that the company is not planning any discharges in the near term, and that they would discuss the issue with local stakeholders at a meeting next month. Even if the company decides to release wastewater into the Hudson, it needs to give the state a minimum 30-day notice. "Everyone is still digesting this," said state Sen. Peter Harckham, one of the Save the Hudson act's sponsors. "We don't know what the attorney general will do. I think we all need to wait and let the process play out, however it's going to play out in the courts." Holtec also said on Thursday that it is not considering reopening Indian Point - despite a recent article in Politico in which Kelly Trice, the company's president, said that it would be possible. The company estimates that rebuilding the reactors would cost $8 billion to $10 billion and take four years. Its estimate was prepared because the federal Department of Energy is "asking everyone that has a closed or decommissioned site," said Patrick O'Brien, a Holtec official. "The question we always get asked is, 'Is it possible to potentially rebuild Indian Point?' " he said at the DOB meeting. "Our goal is to answer the question once and for all publicly and just say yes, but if the political will exists." If Holtec did try to reopen Indian Point, it would face numerous hurdles. First, as part of the shutdown agreement, any plans to again create nuclear energy at the site must be unanimously approved by the Village of Buchanan, the Town of Cortlandt, Westchester County, New York State and the Hendrick Hudson School District. At the DOB meeting, Susan Spear, Westchester's commissioner of emergency services, read a statement from County Executive Ken Jenkins in which he declared that the county "will not agree to support and will oppose any application for nuclear reactors at the Indian Point site." According to Jenkins, "We need to just move on." Holtec would also face logistical hurdles. The company's estimate for reopening is based on essentially rebuilding the current plant, despite the fact that the reactors have been shut down and dismantled. "We would use existing equipment and add reconstituted parts," said O'Brien. "There's still good equipment there. For now we're continuing down a path of decommissioning." As the design of Indian Point was found, near the end of its lifecycle, to be in violation of the Clean Water Act, any new nuclear at Indian Point wouldn't be able to draw water from the Hudson. Holtec is in the final stages of attempting to restart the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan, which initially shut down in 2022, by the end of the year. If it succeeds, it will be the first time a shuttered nuclear power plant has been restarted in the Un...

Drama on a MondayFirst,  a look at this day in History.Then, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, starring Bennett Kilpack,  originally broadcast September 22, 1949, 76 years ago, The Yellow Talon Murder Case. Murder stalks a large estate along the Hudson River, fifty miles north of the city. The killer is apparently a bird of enormous size.Followed by Barrie Craig Confidential Investigator starring William Gargan, originally broadcast September 22, 1953, 72 years ago, Kitchen Comes with Knives.  Murderers may have their difficulties, but they do have one advantage over the rest of us. Their work may be killing, but it's not they who get killed.  Then, Romance, originally broadcast September 22, 1956, 69 years ago, The Law and Miss Deborah starring Alice Backes. The story of the first woman allowed to practice the law in Maryland colony. Romantic complications and a death in a tavern follow. Followed by Suspense, originally broadcast September 22, 1957, 68 years ago, Shadow on the Wall starring Jackie Kelk.  A slightly mad man kills his brother and buries the body behind the fireplace of a house that's being built. The results are diabolical. Finally. Lum and Abner, originally broadcast September 22, 1942, 83 years ago, Is Sloane a He or a She?  Lum has purchased a bottle of perfume for the new school teacher, whom he hasn't yet met. Thanks to Richard G for supporting our podcast by using the Buy Me a Coffee function at http://classicradio.streamFind the Family Fallout Shelter Booklet Here: https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/the_family_fallout_shelter_1959.pdfhttps://wardomatic.blogspot.com/2006/11/fallout-shelter-handbook-1962.html

Welcome to Episode 188 of Inside The Line: The Catskill Mountains Podcast! Tonight on the show, Tad hijacks the mic to interrogate Stash about his epic backpacking trip in New Hampshire. We're also gossiping about the Adirondacks manhunt, the state drought that just won't quit, and trying to decide if the Hudson River's new green-slime counts as a health drink or a horror movie. Make sure to subscribe on your favorite platform, share the show, donate if you feel like it… or just keep tuning in. I'm just grateful you're here. And as always... VOLUNTEER!!!!Links for the Podcast: https://linktr.ee/ISLCatskillsPodcast, Donate a coffee to support the show! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ITLCatskills, Like to be a sponsor or monthly supporter of the show? Go here! - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ITLCatskills/membershipThanks to the sponsors of the show: Outdoor chronicles photography - https://www.outdoorchroniclesphotography.com/, Trailbound Project - https://www.trailboundproject.com/, Camp Catskill - https://campcatskill.co/, Another Summit - https://www.guardianrevival.org/programs/another-summitLinks: Jackson Petition, NYNJTC Trail-a-thon, One Mile Challenge, Manhunt in Adirondacks, NY drought, Hudson River AlgaeVolunteer Opportunities: Trailhead stewards for 3500 Club -https://www.catskill3500club.org/trailhead-stewardship, Catskills Trail Crew - https://www.nynjtc.org/trailcrew/catskills-trail-crew, NYNJTC Volunteering - https://www.nynjtc.org/catskills, Catskill Center - https://catskillcenter.org/, Catskill Mountain Club - https://catskillmountainclub.org/about-us/, Catskill Mountainkeeper - https://www.catskillmountainkeeper.org/ Post Hike Brews and Bites - Beyond the Flames#NH #hikeNH #4000k #48ers #pemi #hike #hikethehudson #hudsonvalleyhiking #NYC #history #husdonvalley #hikingNY #kaaterskill #bluehole #catskillhiking #visitcatskills #catskillstrails #catskillmountains #3500 #catskills #catskillpark #catskillshiker #catskillmountainsnewyork #hiking #catskill3500club #catskill3500 #hikethecatskills #hikehudson

Riverkeeper has been monitoring the harmful algal bloom (HAB) situation in the Hudson River and collecting data. Concerns are for the health and safety of people, pets, and wildlife. ‌‍‌Riverkeeper's Science Director Dr. Shannon Roback ‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‌‌‍‍‌spoke with Sina Basila Hickey about the situation for Hudson Mohawk Magazine. More information at Riverkeeper.org

Today, on the Hudson Mohawk Magazine: First, we hear from Dr. Shannon Roback ‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‌of Riverkeeper about the harmful algae bloom in the Hudson River. Then, Mark Dunlea reports on the weekly honk and wave protest in West Sand Lake weekly. Later on, Garrett McCarey gets the scoop on what's happening at Mount Ida, including the event"An Evening over the Falls." After that, Nancy Klepsch interviews Philip Good about poetry for her series Take 5. Finally, we honor Meghan Marohn's love and deep appreciation of this environment here at the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers as she sets out by rowboat to explore the unique area at the start of the Erie Canal.

Set sail with Bela Musits and Mike Malekoff in this exciting new episode of Sailing and Cruising the East Coast of the United States. In Episode 150, our co-hosts recount their memorable voyage from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, to Croton-on-Hudson, New York, aboard Mike's Hunter 44 Deck Salon sailboat. This leg of their multi-day journey brings them through the iconic New York Harbor, under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and into the scenic, tide-influenced waters of the Hudson River.In This Episode:Departure from Atlantic Highlands Marina at first light.Crossing New York Harbor and entering the Hudson River through the Narrows.The impact of tides and currents on their progress upriver.Passing under major bridges including the Verrazzano-Narrows and George Washington.Sailing past the skyline of Manhattan and navigating busy shipping lanes.Dealing with barge traffic and negotiating safe passage.Arrival at Half Moon Bay Marina in Croton-on-Hudson after a 50-nautical-mile journey.Highlights & Reflections: Bela and Mike share firsthand insights into trip planning, navigation decisions, and the challenges of timing tides correctly. They discuss why wind, tide, and commercial traffic can make or break a day on the water—especially on the Hudson River. Mike, who sails less frequently, offers a fresh perspective on the adventure, while Bela—an experienced sailor—explains the importance of strategic route planning and situational awareness.You'll hear how they handled strong currents, spotted landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and the Palisades, and maintained safe passage through one of the busiest and most historic waterways in the United States. Bela reflects on how a calm day with minimal wind provided an ideal opportunity to motor efficiently while soaking in the scenery.Why This Episode Matters: If you're planning to cruise up the Hudson River or pass through New York Harbor by sailboat or powerboat, this episode is packed with real-world insights. Bela and Mike's conversation touches on navigation strategies, safe anchoring, and their experiences at marinas along the route. This episode is a great resource for novice and seasoned cruisers alike.Keywords for SEO and Discoverability: Hudson River sailing, New York Harbor sailing, cruising the East Coast, Hunter 44 Deck Salon, ICW sailing, sailing podcast, East Coast sailing tips, Sandy Hook sailboats, Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, George Washington Bridge sailing, Half Moon Bay Marina, Croton-on-Hudson, nautical podcast, sailing in New Jersey, New York boating.Follow Along: This episode is part of a larger series chronicling Bela and Mike's relocation of the Hunter 44 Deck Salon from Brunswick, Georgia, to Burlington, Vermont. Make sure to check out earlier and future episodes for a full look at their multi-week cruise up the U.S. East Coast.Listen Now and Join the Journey! Whether you're an aspiring cruiser, armchair sailor, or experienced mariner, Episode 150 delivers a blend of nautical insight and on-the-water storytelling. Set your course for this informative and entertaining episode of Sailing and Cruising the East Coast of the United States.

Discovery comes as Riverkeeper launches monitoring tool On Sept. 10, the environmental group Riverkeeper launched a water quality portal with an interactive map that shows where it's safe to swim and fish in the Hudson River. It also indicates where sewage is more likely to overflow during heavy rains, the location of concentrated animal feeding operations (a frequent source of pollution) and the presence of bacteria that can form harmful algal blooms that are dangerous to people and pets. The timing, unfortunately, was perfect. Two days later, the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies in Millbrook announced that it had documented the largest harmful algal bloom (HAB) in at least 40 years of monitoring, stretching across the river from Kingston to Staatsburg. The discovery comes at the tail-end of a busy summer for blooms, with similar (although smaller) ones occurring elsewhere, including Beacon's Long Dock Park in August. Earlier this summer, Putnam County shut down 14 beaches due to blooms. "The algal bloom points out both the importance of having historic data" to monitor conditions and consider responses, said Tracy Brown, president of Riverkeeper, which is based in Ossining and Kingston. The nonprofit will soon update its portal to show the effects of climate change on the river. Pollution and stormwater run-off can cause HABs, but Chris Solomon of the Cary Institute, one of the researchers who discovered the large bloom, said its origins are not clear. He said it's likely that drought and warm water were involved, as they were in the creation of an HAB that appeared in Beacon's Melzingah Reservoir during the hot, dry summer of 2021. Both of those factors are likely to become more common in the Hudson Valley. "Increasing water temperatures, air temperatures and droughts are the things that are triggering the algal blooms we're seeing now," said Brown. "Climate change is here, and it's unfolding in real time." The surface area of the HAB near Kingston isn't its only notable feature, said Solomon. Blooms usually only form in slack water, so it's unusual to see one stretch out across the free-flowing river instead of hugging the shore. And the bloom is unusually wide and deep. "Anywhere we looked in the water column, the algae was quite dense," said Solomon. Satellite imagery taken earlier this week showed that the bloom has continued to grow. HABs can cause skin irritation, gastrointestinal symptoms and, in more potent cases, neurological damage and death. Riverkeeper partners with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to collect data for its portal, but NOAA, like many federal science agencies, has been targeted by the Trump administration for cuts. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) secured $250,000 to launch the portal, but Brown expects there may not be more funds coming. Earlier versions of the portal highlighted that "the open Hudson tends to be cleaner than a lot of the tributary rivers and streams," said Brown. "That flies in the face of people's assumptions. They think, 'Oh, this beautiful little stream going through my local duck pond is going to be nice to swim in as opposed to the big, nasty Hudson.' People were swimming in Rondout Creek in Kingston because they thought it would be cleaner than Kingston Point Beach, on the Hudson." The Riverkeeper portal is one of several new monitoring tools. This past summer, Bard College unveiled an air monitoring site and the Open Space Institute debuted maps that track how much carbon America's forests are sequestering. Riverkeeper's online portal is at data.riverkeeper.org. To report a Harmful Algal Bloom, see bit.ly/HABform or email HABsinfo@dec.ny.gov. The state also maintains a map of HABs at tinyurl.com/nys-hab-map.

The Wednesday (Sept. 10) meeting of the Cold Spring Village Board opened on a somber note. "Today we had a political assassination [of Charlie Kirk] and another school shooting [in Colorado]," said Mayor Kathleen Foley. "I'd like a moment of silence for everyone we've lost to gun violence." The mayor also asked that everyone remember those who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001. Trustee Laura Bozzi introduced the Flood Resilience Reconnaissance Study submitted to the village in June by Fuss and O'Neill, an engineering firm. The study focuses on the Back Brook watershed, the 160-acre drainage area that sends stormwater from as far upstream as Bull Hill to culverts beneath Fair Street before it empties into the Hudson River. The Fair Street drain collapsed during a severe storm in July 2023. The study recommends improvements to the upstream drainage system, which dates to the late 19th century. Bozzi said that once feedback is received from Nelsonville, Haldane, state parks and other partners, a strategy and timeline will be developed. The board accepted the low bid of $60,098 from PCC Contracting of Schenectady to repair damage to the pedestrian tunnel from the 2023 flooding. Six bids were received; the highest was $177,180. The contractor will inject material into the tunnel walls to make them watertight, and doors will be added later so it can be closed off during flooding. Superintendent of Water and Sewer Matt Krug is investigating why the fecal coliform count in treated wastewater entering the Hudson River from the sewage treatment plant exceeded limits set by the state. Kroog also said that, with less than two inches of rain in August, the reservoirs have fallen to 80 percent capacity. The village will establish its fourth public electric-vehicle charging station at McConville Park. Central Hudson will pay 90 percent of the cost, and the village the remainder, about $3,000. The units will be paid for with a state grant. The Highway Department began installing sidewalk ramps at key intersections that will be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The board voted to increase the hourly wage for school crossing guards from $15.50 to $20 an hour. The village is short one guard but had no response to its advertisements. The Planning Board has scheduled a public hearing for Sept. 25 regarding an application for a change of use from retail to bakery at 37 Main St., adjacent to the pedestrian tunnel. As it did last year, the board authorized the Police Department to suspend on-street parking all day on Fair Street and Northern Avenue on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and to divert traffic as needed through November. CSPD handled 123 calls in August, including 18 traffic stops that resulted in 10 tickets. There were also 27 assists to other first responders, nine alarms, six vehicle crashes, five suspicious incidents, three noise complaints, two domestic incidents, and incidents of burglary, harassment, person in crisis and a dispute. Cold Spring Fire Co. volunteers answered 17 calls in August, including six activated alarms, four medical assists, two brush fires and calls for a mountain rescue, mutual aid to Garrison Fire Co., Metro-North elevator rescue, outdoor smoke investigation and propane odor. CSFC was one of four Putnam County fire departments to take part in the first training session at the county's new $1.6 million Fire & EMS Training Center in Kent.

Alex Kolker is a coastal scientist with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.During the Covid-19 lockdown, while others baked sourdough bread, Alex was studying satellite images of the Mississippi River Delta. As an oceanographer, geologist, and climate scientist, he is interested in how the Louisiana coastline loses land, and also how it builds that land back. As he examined the images, Alex noticed a channel connecting the Mississippi River to Breton Sound and Quarantine Bay. Over the course of about a year, he says, the tiny cut had widened into a veritable river. Neptune Pass, as it's called, carried more than four times as much water as New York's Hudson River.That water contained sediment, which was building land. Alex started noticing islands forming in Quarantine Bay. This rapid land-building process was the opposite of what's happening in much of Louisiana, which has lost 2,000 square miles in the past century.After listening to Alex's interview, stay tuned for a bonus preview of our conversation with Prasanta Subudhi, a professor of plant genetics at Louisiana State University.Prasanta grew up near India's Bay of Bengal, in a village surrounded by rice fields. From a young age, the crop fascinated him. He considered careers in medicine and engineering, but rejected them both in favor of rice genetics.Prasanta came to the United States to do research at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. In 2001 he joined the faculty at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Here, he's been trying to answer a big question: How do we keep growing rice and feeding a hungry world even as the climate changes?Thanks for listening to A Peace of My Mind's podcast. For photos, videos, and additional content, visit our website and follow us on Instagram.

Learn more at TheCityLife.org

In August we performed a live taping of the show from a theater perched on the edge of Manhattan, overlooking the Hudson River, overshadowed by the wide open night sky. Three stories about voids. One about a fish that screams into the night – and the mystery of its counterpart that doesn't. Another about a group of women who gazed at the night sky and taught us just how vast the universe is, and a third about a man who talk to aliens – and the people who tell him he's putting human civilization at risk by doing so. Finally, we turn back to Earth with the help of a reading from Samantha Harvey's hit novel Orbital (https://zpr.io/RNi4sY2JVKxK) performed by the artist, actor and podcast host Helga Davis (https://zpr.io/TKGuzzDFnVjN). What does it mean to stand on the edge of a void, and what happens when you scream into it, or choose not to?This episode was originally produced and developed in front of a live audience by Little Island, Producing Artistic Director Zack Winokur, Executive Director Laura Clement. Special thanks to our voice actors Davidé Borella, Jim Pirri, Armando Riesco, and Brian Wiles with casting by Dann Fink. And Anna von Mertens, author of Attention Is Discovery: The Life and Legacy of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt (https://zpr.io/j7ZYKX8wSCYL).EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Lulu Miller, Matt Kielty and Latif NasserProduced by - Pat Walters and Matt Kieltywith help from - Jessica Yung, Maria Paz Gutierrez and Rebecca RandOriginal music from - Mantra PercussionSound design contributed by - Matt Kielty and Jeremy Bloomwith mixing help from - Jeremy BloomFact-checking by - Diane Kelly and Natalie Middletonand Edited by  - Pat WaltersEPISODE CITATIONS:Books - Attention Is Discovery: The Life and Legacy of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt (https://zpr.io/j7ZYKX8wSCYL) by Anna von MertensSignup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Floating in the middle of the Hudson River, Bannerman's Castle is more than just a decaying ruin — it's a monument to eccentric dreams, fiery disasters, and whispered hauntings. Built as an armory by Francis Bannerman VI, the castle's strange history includes massive explosions, accidents, and claims of paranormal activity that still draw visitors and investigators alike.In this episode of Is This Real?, we trace the castle's past, uncover the stories that made it legendary, and ask: are the ruins of Bannerman's Castle truly haunted?

Today, on the Hudson Mohawk Magazine, First, we hear from Jamaica Miles of All of Us speak with Angelo “Justice” Maddox in their latest segment of the Black August series focusing on training. Then, Mark Dunlea speaks with Jason Webley of the Flotsam River Circus to talk about the group's work and upcoming shows in cities along the length of the Erie Canal and the Hudson River. Later on, retired National Weather Service meteorologist Hugh Johnson joins us to discuss Hurricane Erin, this month's erratic weather and what to expect from it this week. After that, we hear from Dierdre about her family's immigration story as part of the weekly segment Everybody Moves. Finally, EMPAC music curator Amadeus Julian Regucera joins us to discuss the TOPOS Music Festival taking place on August 28th, 29th, and 30th. Co-hosts: Lennox Apudo and Sean Bernyk.

Coinciding with the 200th Anniversary of the opening of the Erie Canal, Flotsam River Circus will be traveling the entire length of the canal and the Hudson River, giving performances in dozens of towns from Buffalo to New York City. Flotsam is a troupe of musicians, circus performers, and puppeteers who travel on a ramshackle raft giving free performances in waterfront towns. Our goal is to bring some magic and whimsy to the world while helping communities engage with their waterways. Flotsam Captain Jason Webley talks to Mark Dunlea for Hudson Mohawk Magazine. Aug 27 - AMSTERDAM - Riverlink Park - 6:30 pm Aug 28 - SCHENECTADY - Gateway Landing Park - 6:30 pm Aug 29 - WATERFORD - Lock 2 Park - 6:30 pm Aug 30 - RENSSELAER - Riverfront Park 6:30 pm Aug 31 - CAPITAL DISTRICT - Location TBA - 6:30 pm

Today I'm talking to economic historian Judge Glock, Director of Research at the Manhattan Institute. Judge works on a lot of topics: if you enjoy this episode, I'd encourage you to read some of his work on housing markets and the Environmental Protection Agency. But I cornered him today to talk about civil service reform.Since the 1990s, over 20 red and blue states have made radical changes to how they hire and fire government employees — changes that would be completely outside the Overton window at the federal level. A paper by Judge and Renu Mukherjee lists four reforms made by states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia: * At-will employment for state workers* The elimination of collective bargaining agreements* Giving managers much more discretion to hire* Giving managers much more discretion in how they pay employeesJudge finds decent evidence that the reforms have improved the effectiveness of state governments, and little evidence of the politicization that federal reformers fear. Meanwhile, in Washington, managers can't see applicants' resumes, keyword searches determine who gets hired, and firing a bad performer can take years. But almost none of these ideas are on the table in Washington.Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood for his judicious transcript edits and fact-checking, and to Katerina Barton for audio edits.Judge, you have a paper out about lessons for civil service reform from the states. Since the ‘90s, red and blue states have made big changes to how they hire and fire people. Walk through those changes for me.I was born and grew up in Washington DC, heard a lot about civil service throughout my childhood, and began to research it as an adult. But I knew almost nothing about the state civil service systems. When I began working in the states — mainly across the Sunbelt, including in Texas, Kansas, Arizona — I was surprised to learn that their civil service systems were reformed to an absolutely radical extent relative to anything proposed at the federal level, let alone implemented.Starting in the 1990s, several states went to complete at-will employment. That means there were no official civil service protections for any state employees. Some managers were authorized to hire people off the street, just like you could in the private sector. A manager meets someone in a coffee shop, they say, "I'm looking for exactly your role. Why don't you come on board?" At the federal level, with its stultified hiring process, it seemed absurd to even suggest something like that.You had states that got rid of any collective bargaining agreements with their public employee unions. You also had states that did a lot more broadbanding [creating wider pay bands] for employee pay: a lot more discretion for managers to reward or penalize their employees depending on their performance.These major reforms in these states were, from the perspective of DC, incredibly radical. Literally nobody at the federal level proposes anything approximating what has been in place for decades in the states. That should be more commonly known, and should infiltrate the debate on civil service reform in DC.Even though the evidence is not absolutely airtight, on the whole these reforms have been positive. A lot of the evidence is surveys asking managers and operators in these states how they think it works. They've generally been positive. We know these states operate pretty well: Places like Texas, Florida, and Arizona rank well on state capacity metrics in terms of cost of government, time for permitting, and other issues.Finally, to me the most surprising thing is the dog that didn't bark. The argument in the federal government against civil service reform is, “If you do this, we will open up the gates of hell and return to the 19th-century patronage system, where spoilsmen come and go depending on elected officials, and the government is overrun with political appointees who don't care about the civil service.” That has simply not happened. We have very few reports of any concrete examples of politicization at the state level. In surveys, state employees and managers can almost never remember any example of political preferences influencing hiring or firing.One of the surveys you cited asked, “Can you think of a time someone said that they thought that the political preferences were a factor in civil service hiring?” and it was something like 5%.It was in that 5-10% range. I don't think you'd find a dissimilar number of people who would say that even in an official civil service system. Politics is not completely excluded even from a formal civil service system.A few weeks ago, you and I talked to our mutual friend, Don Moynihan, who's a scholar of public administration. He's more skeptical about the evidence that civil service reform would be positive at the federal level.One of your points is, “We don't have strong negative evidence from the states. Productivity didn't crater in states that moved to an at-will employment system.” We do have strong evidence that collective bargaining in the public sector is bad for productivity.What I think you and Don would agree on is that we could use more evidence on the hiring and firing side than the surveys that we have. Is that a fair assessment?Yes, I think that's correct. As you mentioned, the evidence on collective bargaining is pretty close to universal: it raises costs, reduces the efficiency of government, and has few to no positive upsides.On hiring and firing, I mentioned a few studies. There's a 2013 study that looks at HR managers in six states and finds very little evidence of politicization, and managers generally prefer the new system. There was a dissertation that surveyed several employees and managers in civil service reform and non-reform states. Across the board, the at-will employment states said they had better hiring retention, productivity, and so forth. And there's a 2002 study that looked specifically at Texas, Florida, and Georgia after their reforms, and found almost universal approbation inside the civil service itself for these reforms.These are not randomized control trials. But I think that generally positive evidence should point us directionally where we should go on civil service reform. If we loosen restrictions on discipline and firing, decentralize hiring and so forth — we probably get some productivity benefits from it. We can also know, with some amount of confidence, that the sky is not going to fall, which I think is a very important baseline assumption. The civil service system will continue on and probably be fairly close to what it is today, in terms of its political influence, if you have decentralized hiring and at-will employment.As you point out, a lot of these reforms that have happened in 20-odd states since the ‘90s would be totally outside the Overton window at the federal level. Why is it so easy for Georgia to make a bipartisan move in the ‘90s to at-will employment, when you couldn't raise the topic at the federal level?It's a good question. I think in the 1990s, a lot of people thought a combination of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act — which was the Carter-era act that somewhat attempted to do what these states hoped to do in the 1990s — and the Clinton-era Reinventing Government Initiative, would accomplish the same ends. That didn't happen.That was an era when civil service reform was much more bipartisan. In Georgia, it was a Democratic governor, Zell Miller, who pushed it. In a lot of these other states, they got buy-in from both sides. The recent era of state reform took place after the 2010 Republican wave in the states. Since that wave, the reform impetus for civil service has been much more Republican. That has meant it's been a lot harder to get buy-in from both sides at the federal level, which will be necessary to overcome a filibuster.I think people know it has to be very bipartisan. We're just past the point, at least at the moment, where it can be bipartisan at the federal level. But there are areas where there's a fair amount of overlap between the two sides on what needs to happen, at least in the upper reaches of the civil service.It was interesting to me just how bipartisan civil service reform has been at various times. You talked about the Civil Service Reform Act, which passed Congress in 1978. President Carter tells Congress that the civil service system:“Has become a bureaucratic maze which neglects merit, tolerates poor performance, permits abuse of legitimate employee rights, and mires every personnel action in red tape, delay, and confusion.”That's a Democratic president saying that. It's striking to me that the civil service was not the polarized topic that it is today.Absolutely. Carter was a big civil service reformer in Georgia before those even larger 1990s reforms. He campaigned on civil service reform and thought it was essential to the success of his presidency. But I think you are seeing little sprouts of potential bipartisanship today, like the Chance to Compete Act at the end of 2024, and some of the reforms Obama did to the hiring process. There's options for bipartisanship at the federal level, even if it can't approach what the states have done.I want to walk through the federal hiring process. Let's say you're looking to hire in some federal agency — you pick the agency — and I graduated college recently, and I want to go into the civil service. Tell me about trying to hire somebody like me. What's your first step?It's interesting you bring up the college graduate, because that is one recent reform: President Trump put out an executive order trying to counsel agencies to remove the college degree requirement for job postings. This happened in a lot of states first, like Maryland, and that's also been bipartisan. This requirement for a college degree — which was used as a very unfortunate proxy for ability at a lot of these jobs — is now being removed. It's not across the whole federal government. There's still job postings that require higher education degrees, but that's something that's changed.To your question, let's say the Department of Transportation. That's one of the more bipartisan ones, when you look at surveys of federal civil servants. Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, they tend to be a little more Republican. Health and Human Services and some other agencies tend to be pretty Democrat. Transportation is somewhere in the middle.As a manager, you try to craft a job description and posting to go up on the USA Jobs website, which is where all federal job postings go. When they created it back in 1996, that was supposedly a massive reform to federal hiring: this website where people could submit their resumes. Then, people submit their resumes and answer questions about their qualifications for the job.One of the slightly different aspects from the private sector is that those applications usually go to an HR specialist first. The specialist reviews everything and starts to rank people into different categories, based on a lot of weird things. It's supposed to be “knowledge, skills, and abilities” — your KSAs, or competencies. To some extent, this is a big step up from historical practice. You had, frankly, an absurd civil service exam, where people had to fill out questions about, say, General Grant or about US Code Title 42, or whatever it was, and then submit it. Someone rated the civil service exam, and then the top three test-takers were eligible for the job.We have this newer, better system, where we rank on knowledge, skills, and abilities, and HR puts put people into different categories. One of the awkward ways they do this is by merely scanning the resumes and applications for keywords. If it's a computer job, make sure you say the word “computer” somewhere in your resume. Make sure you say “manager” if it's a managerial job.Just to be clear, this is entirely literal. There's a keyword search, and folks who don't pass that search are dinged.Yes. I've always wondered, how common is this? It's sometimes hard to know what happens in the black box in these federal HR departments. I saw an HR official recently say, "If I'm not allowed to do keyword searches, I'm going to take 15 years to overlook all the applications, so I've got to do keyword searches." If they don't have the keywords, into the circular file it goes, as they used to say: into the garbage can.Then they start ranking people on their abilities into, often, three different categories. That is also very literal. If you put in the little word bubble, "I am an exceptional manager," you get pushed on into the next level of the competition. If you say, "I'm pretty good, but I'm not the best," into the circular file you go.I've gotten jaded about this, but it really is shocking. We ask candidates for a self-assessment, and if they just rank themselves 10/10 on everything, no matter how ludicrous, that improves their odds of being hired.That's going to immensely improve your odds. Similar to the keyword search, there's been pushback on this in recent years, and I'm definitely not going to say it's universal anymore. It's rarer than it used to be. But it's still a very common process.The historical civil service system used to operate on a rule of three. In places like New York, it still operates like that. The top three candidates on the evaluation system get presented to the manager, and the manager has to approve one of them for the position.Thanks partially to reforms by the Obama administration in 2010, they have this category rating system where the best qualified or the very qualified get put into a big bucket together [instead of only including the top three]. Those are the people that the person doing the hiring gets to see, evaluate, and decide who he wants to hire.There are some restrictions on that. If a veteran outranks everybody else, you've got to pick the veteran [typically known as Veterans' Preference]. That was an issue in some of the state civil service reforms, too. The states said, “We're just going to encourage a veterans' preference. We don't need a formalized system to say they get X number of points and have to be in Y category. We're just going to say, ‘Try to hire veterans.'” That's possible without the formal system, despite what some opponents of reform may claim.One of the particular problems here is just the nature of the people doing the hiring. Sometimes you just need good managers to encourage HR departments to look at a broader set of qualifications. But one of the bigger problems is that they keep the HR evaluation system divorced from the manager who is doing the hiring. David Shulkin, who was the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), wrote a great book, It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Serve Your Country. He was a healthcare exec, and the VA is mainly a healthcare agency. He would tell people, "You should work for me," they would send their applications into the HR void, and he'd never see them again. They would get blocked at some point in this HR evaluation process, and he'd be sent people with no healthcare experience, because for whatever reason they did well in the ranking.One of the very base-level reforms should be, “How can we more clearly integrate the hiring manager with the evaluation process?” To some extent, the bipartisan Chance to Compete Act tries to do this. They said, “You should have subject matter experts who are part of crafting the description of the job, are part of evaluating, and so forth.” But there's still a long road to go.Does that firewall — where the person who wants to hire doesn't get to look at the process until the end — exist originally because of concerns about cronyism?One of the interesting things about the civil service is its raison d'être — its reason for being — was supposedly a single, clear purpose: to prevent politicized hiring and patronage. That goes back to the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883. But it's always been a little strange that you have all of these very complex rules about every step of the process — from hiring to firing to promotion, and everything in between — to prevent political influence. We could just focus on preventing political influence, and not regulate every step of the process on the off-chance that without a clear regulation, political influence could creep in. This division [between hiring manager and applicants] is part of that general concern. There are areas where I've heard HR specialists say, "We declare that a manager is a subject matter expert, and we bring them into the process early on, we can do that." But still the division is pretty stark, and it's based on this excessive concern about patronage.One point you flag is that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is the body that thinks about personnel in the federal government, has a 300-page regulatory document for agencies on how you have to hire. There's a remarkable amount of process.Yes, but even that is a big change from the Federal Personnel Manual, which was the 10,000-page document that we shredded in the 1990s. In the ‘90s, OPM gave the agencies what's called “delegated examining authorities.” This says, “You, agency, have power to decide who to hire, we're not going to do the central supervision anymore. But, but, but: here's the 300-page document that dictates exactly how you have to carry out that hiring.”So we have some decentralization, allowing managers more authority to control their own departments. But this two-level oversight — a local HR department that's ultimately being overseen by the OPM — also leads to a lot of slip ‘twixt cup and lip, in terms of how something gets implemented. If you're in the agency and you're concerned about the OPM overseeing your process, you're likely to be much more careful than you would like to be. “Yes, it's delegated to me, but ultimately, I know I have to answer to OPM about this process. I'm just going to color within the lines.”I often cite Texas, which has no central HR office. Each agency decides how it wants to hire. In a lot of these reform states, if there is a central personnel office, it's an information clearinghouse or reservoir of models. “You can use us, the central HR office, as a resource if you want us to help you post the job, evaluate it, or help manage your processes, but you don't have to.” That's the goal we should be striving for in a lot of the federal reforms. Just make OPM a resource for the managers in the individual departments to do their thing or go independent.Let's say I somehow get through the hiring process. You offer me a job at the Department of Transportation. What are you paying me?This is one of the more stultified aspects of the federal civil service system. OPM has another multi-hundred-page handbook called the Handbook of Occupational Groups and Families. Inside that, you've got 49 different “groups and families,” like “Clerical occupations.” Inside those 49 groups are a series of jobs, sometimes dozens, like “Computer Operator.” Inside those, they have independent documents — often themselves dozens of pages long — detailing classes of positions. Then you as a manager have to evaluate these nine factors, which can each give points to each position, which decides how you get slotted into this weird Government Schedule (GS) system [the federal payscale].Again, this is actually an improvement. Before, you used to have the Civil Service Commission, which went around staring very closely at someone over their typewriter and saying, "No, I think you should be a GS-12, not a GS-11, because someone over in the Department of Defense who does your same job is a GS-12." Now this is delegated to agencies, but again, the agencies have to listen to the OPM on how to classify and set their jobs into this 15-stage GS-classification system, each stage of which has 10 steps which determine your pay, and those steps are determined mainly by your seniority. It's a formalized step-by-step system, overwhelmingly based on just how long you've sat at your desk.Let's be optimistic about my performance as a civil servant. Say that over my first three years, I'm just hitting it out of the park. Can you give me a raise? What can you do to keep me in my role?Not too much. For most people, the within-step increases — those 10 steps inside each GS-level — is just set by seniority. Now there are all these quality step increases you can get, but they're very rare and they have to be documented. So you could hypothetically pay someone more, but it's going to be tough. In general, the managers just prefer to stick to seniority, because not sticking to it garners a lot of complaints. Like so much else, the goal is, "We don't want someone rewarding an official because they happen to share their political preferences." The result of that concern is basically nobody can get rewarded at all, which is very unfortunate.We do have examples in state and federal government of what's known as broadbanding, where you have very broad pay scales, and the manager can decide where to slot someone. Say you're a computer operator, which can mean someone who knows what an Excel spreadsheet is, or someone who's programming the most advanced AI systems. As a manager in South Carolina or Florida, you have a lot of discretion to say, "I can set you 50% above the market rate of what this job technically would go for, if I think you're doing a great job."That's very rare at the federal level. They've done broadbanding at the Government Accountability Office, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The China Lake Experiment out in California gave managers a lot more discretion to reward scientists. But that's definitely the exception. In general, it's a step-wise, seniority-based system.What if you want to bring me into the Senior Executive Service (SES)? Theoretically, that sits at the top of the General Service scale. Can't you bump me up in there and pay me what you owe me?I could hypothetically bring you in as a senior executive servant. The SES was created in the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The idea was, “We're going to have this elite cadre of about 8,000 individuals at the top of the federal government, whose employment will be higher-risk and higher-reward. They might be fired, and we're going to give them higher pay to compensate for that.”Almost immediately, that did not work out. Congress was outraged at the higher pay given to the top officials and capped it. Ever since, how much the SES can get paid has been tightly controlled. As in most of the rest of the federal government, where they establish these performance pay incentives or bonuses — which do exist — they spread them like peanut butter over the whole service. To forestall complaints, everyone gets a little bit every two or three years.That's basically what happened to the SES. Their annual pay is capped at the vice president's salary, which is a cap for a lot of people in the federal government. For most of your GS and other executive scales, the cap is Congress's salary. [NB: This is no longer exactly true, since Congress froze its own salaries in 2009. The cap for GS (currently about $195k) is now above congressional salaries ($174k).]One of the big problems with pay in the federal government is pay compression. Across civil service systems, the highest-skilled people tend to be paid much less than the private sector, and the lowest-skilled people tend to get paid much more. The political science reason for that is pretty simple: the median voter in America still decides what seems reasonable. To the median voter, the average salary of a janitor looks low, and the average salary of a scientist looks way too high. Hence this tendency to pay compression. Your average federal employee is probably overpaid relative to the private sector, because the lowest-skilled employees are paid up to 40% higher than the private sector equivalent. The highest-paid employees, the post-graduate skilled professionals, are paid less. That makes it hard to recruit the top performers, but it also swells the wage budget in a way that makes it difficult to talk about reform.There's a lot of interest in this administration in making it easier to recruit talent and get rid of under-performers. There have been aggressive pushes to limit collective bargaining in the public sector. That should theoretically make it easier to recruit, but it also increases the precariousness of civil service roles. We've seen huge firings in the civil service over the last six months.Classically, the explicit trade-off of working in the federal government was, “Your pay is going to be capped, but you have this job for life. It's impossible to get rid of you.” You trade some lifetime earnings for stability. In a world where the stability is gone, but pay is still capped, isn't the net effect to drive talent away from the civil service?I think it's a concern now. On one level it should be ameliorated, because those who are most concerned with stability of employment do tend to be lower performers. If you have people who are leaving the federal service because all they want is stability, and they're not getting that anymore, that may not be a net loss. As someone who came out of academia and knows the wonder of effective lifetime annuities, there can be very high performers who like that stability who therefore take a lower salary. Without the ability to bump that pay up more, it's going to be an issue.I do know that, internally, the Trump administration has made some signs they're open to reforms in the top tiers of the SES and other parts of the federal government. They would be willing to have people get paid more at that level to compensate for the increased risks since the Trump administration came in. But when you look at the reductions in force (RIFs) that have happened under Trump, they are overwhelmingly among probationary employees, the lower-level employees.With some exceptions. If you've been promoted recently, you can get reclassified as probationary, so some high-performers got lumped in.Absolutely. The issue has been exacerbated precisely because the RIF regulations that are in place have made the firings particularly damaging. If you had a more streamlined RIF system — which they do have in many states, where seniority is not the main determinant of who gets laid off — these RIFs could be removing the lower-performing civil servants and keeping the higher-performing ones, and giving them some amount of confidence in their tenure.Unfortunately, the combination of large-scale removals with the existing RIF regs, which are very stringent, has demoralized some of the upper levels of the federal government. I share that concern. But I might add, it is interesting, if you look at the federal government's own figures on the total civil service workforce, they have gone down significantly since Trump came in office, but I think less than 100,000 still, in the most recent numbers that I've seen. I'm not sure how much to trust those, versus some of these other numbers where people have said 150,000, 200,000.Whether the Trump administration or a future administration can remove large numbers of people from the civil service should be somewhat divorced from the general conversation on civil service reform. The main debate about whether or not Trump can do this centers around how much power the appropriators in Congress have to determine the total amount of spending in particular agencies on their workforce. It does not depend necessarily on, "If we're going to remove people — whether for general layoffs, or reductions in force, or because of particular performance issues — how can we go about doing that?" My last-ditch hope to maintain a bipartisan possibility of civil service reform is to bracket, “How much power does the president have to remove or limit the workforce in general?” from “How can he go about hiring and firing, et cetera?”I think making it easier for the president to identify and remove poor performers is a tool that any future administration would like to have.We had this conversation sparked again with the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. But that was a position Congress set up to be appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and removable by the President. It's a separate issue from civil service at large. Everyone said, “We want the president to be able to hire and fire the commissioner.” Maybe firing the commissioner was a bad decision, but that's the situation today.Attentive listeners to Statecraft know I'm pretty critical, like you are, of the regulations that say you have to go in order of seniority. In mass layoffs, you're required to fire a lot of the young, talented people.But let's talk about individual firings. I've been a terrible civil servant, a nightmarish employee from day one. You want to discipline, remove, suspend, or fire me. What are your options?Anybody who has worked in the civil service knows it's hard to fire bad performers. Whatever their political valence, whatever they feel about the civil service system, they have horror stories about a person who just couldn't be removed.In the early 2010s, a spate of stories came out about air traffic controllers sleeping on the job. Then-transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, made a big public announcement: "I'm going to fire these three guys." After these big announcements, it turned out he was only able to remove one of them. One retired, and another had their firing reduced to a suspension.You had another horrific story where a man was joking on the phone with friends when a plane crashed into a helicopter and killed nine people over the Hudson River. National outcry. They said, "We're going to fire this guy." In the end, after going through the process, he only got a suspension. Everyone agrees it's too hard.The basic story is, you have two ways to fire someone. Chapter 75, the old way, is often considered the realm of misconduct: You've stolen something from the office, punched your colleague in the face during a dispute about the coffee, something illegal or just straight-out wrong. We get you under Chapter 75.The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act added Chapter 43, which is supposed to be the performance-based system to remove someone. As with so much of that Civil Service Reform Act, the people who passed it thought this might be the beginning of an entirely different system.In the end, lots of federal managers say there's not a huge difference between the two. Some use 75, some use 43. If you use 43, you have to document very clearly what the person did wrong. You have to put them on a performance improvement plan. If they failed a performance improvement plan after a certain amount of time, they can respond to any claims about what they did wrong. Then, they can take that process up to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and claim that they were incorrectly fired, or that the processes weren't carried out appropriately. Then, if they want to, they can say, “Nah, I don't like the order I got,” and take it up to federal courts and complain there. Right now, the MSPB doesn't have a full quorum, which is complicating some of the recent removal disputes.You have this incredibly difficult process, unlike the private sector, where your boss looks at you and says, "I don't like how you're giving me the stink-eye today. Out you go." One could say that's good or bad, but, on the whole, I think the model should be closer to the private sector. We should trust managers to do their job without excessive oversight and process. That's clearly about as far from the realm of possibility as the current system, under which the estimate is 6-12 months to fire a very bad performer. The number of people who win at the Merit Systems Protection Board is still 20-30%.This goes into another issue, which is unionization. If you're part of a collective bargaining agreement — most of the regular federal civil service is — first, you have to go with this independent, union-based arbitration and grievance procedure. You're about 50/50 to win on those if your boss tries to remove you.So if I'm in the union, we go through that arbitration grievance system. If you win and I'm fired, I can take it to the Merit Systems Protection Board. If you win again, I can still take it to the federal courts.You can file different sorts of claims at each part. On Chapter 43, the MSPB is supposed to be about the process, not the evidence, and you just have to show it was followed. On 75, the manager has to show by preponderance of the evidence that the employee is harming the agency. Then there are different standards for what you take to the courts, and different standards according to each collective bargaining agreement for the grievance procedure when someone is disciplined. It's a very complicated, abstruse, and procedure-heavy process that makes it very difficult to remove people, which is why the involuntary separation rate at the federal government and most state governments is many multiples lower than the private sector.So, you would love to get me off your team because I'm abysmal. But you have no stomach for going through this whole process and I'm going to fight it. I'm ornery and contrarian and will drag this fight out. In practice, what do managers in the federal government do with their poor performers?I always heard about this growing up. There's the windowless office in the basement without a phone, or now an internet connection. You place someone down there, hope they get the message, and sooner or later they leave. But for plenty of people in America, that's the dream job. You just get to sit and nobody bothers you for eight hours. You punch in at 9 and punch out at 5, and that's your day. "Great. I'll collect that salary for another 10 years." But generally you just try to make life unpleasant for that person.Public sector collective bargaining in the US is new. I tend to think of it as just how the civil service works. But until about 50 years ago, there was no collective bargaining in the public sector.At the state level, it started with Wisconsin at the end of the 1950s. There were famous local government reforms beginning with the Little Wagner Act [signed in 1958] in New York City. Senator Robert Wagner had created the National Labor Relations Board. His son Robert F. Wagner Jr., mayor of New York, created the first US collective bargaining system at the local level in the ‘60s. In ‘62, John F. Kennedy issued an executive order which said, "We're going to deal officially with public sector unions,” but it was all informal and non-statutory.It wasn't until Title VII of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act that unions had a formal, statutory role in our federal service system. This is shockingly new. To some extent, that was the great loss to many civil service reformers in ‘78. They wanted to get through a lot of these other big reforms about hiring and firing, but they gave up on the unions to try to get those. Some people think that exception swallowed the rest of the rules. The union power that was garnered in ‘78 overcame the other reforms people hoped to accomplish. Soon, you had the majority of the federal workforce subject to collective bargaining.But that's changing now too. Part of that Civil Service Reform Act said, “If your position is in a national security-related position, the president can determine it's not subject to collective bargaining.” Trump and the OPM have basically said, “Most positions in the federal government are national security-related, and therefore we're going to declare them off-limits to collective bargaining.” Some people say that sounds absurd. But 60% of the civilian civil service workforce is the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Homeland Security. I am not someone who tries to go too easy on this crowd. I think there's a heck of a lot that needs to be reformed. But it's also worth remembering that the majority of the civil service workforce are in these three agencies that Republicans tend to like a lot.Now, whether people like Veterans Affairs is more of an open question. We have some particular laws there about opening up processes after the scandals in the 2010s about waiting lists and hospitals. You had veterans hospitals saying, "We're meeting these standards for getting veterans in the door for these waiting lists." But they were straight-up lying about those standards. Many people who were on these lists waiting for months to see a doctor died in the interim, some from causes that could have been treated had they seen a VA doctor. That led to Congress doing big reforms in the VA in 2014 and 2017, precisely because everyone realized this is a problem.So, Trump has put out these executive orders stopping collective bargaining in all of these agencies that touch national security. Some of those, like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seem like a tough sell. I guess that, if you want to dig a mine and the Chinese are trying to dig their own mine and we want the mine to go quickly without the EPA pettifogging it, maybe. But the core ones are pretty solid. So far the courts have upheld the executive order to go in place. So collective bargaining there could be reformed.But in the rest of the government, there are these very extreme, long collective bargaining agreements between agencies and their unions. I've hit on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as one that's had pretty extensive bargaining with its union. When we created the TSA to supervise airport security, a lot of people said, "We need a crème de la crème to supervise airports after 9/11. We want to keep this out of union hands, because we know unions are going to make it difficult to move people around." The Obama administration said, "Nope, we're going to negotiate with the union." Now you have these huge negotiations with the unions about parking spots, hours of employment, uniforms, and everything under the sun. That makes it hard for managers in the TSA to decide when people should go where or what they should do.One thing we've talked about on Statecraft in past episodes — for instance, with John Kamensky, who was a pivotal figure in the Clinton-Gore reforms — was this relationship between government employees and “Beltway Bandits”: the contractors who do jobs you might think of as civil service jobs. One critique of that ‘90s Clinton-Gore push, “Reinventing Government,” was that although they shrank the size of the civil service on paper, the number of contractors employed by the federal government ballooned to fill that void. They did not meaningfully reduce the total number of people being paid by the federal government. Talk to me about the relationship between the civil service reform that you'd like to see and this army of folks who are not formally employees.Every government service is a combination of public employees and inputs, and private employees and inputs. There's never a single thing the government does — federal, state, or local — that doesn't involve inputs from the private sector. That could be as simple as the uniforms for the janitors. Even if you have a publicly employed janitor, who buys the mop? You're not manufacturing the mops.I understand the critique that the excessive focus on full-time employees in the 1990s led to contracting out some positions that could be done directly by the government. But I think that misses how much of the government can and should be contracted out. The basic Office of Management and Budget (OMB) statute [OMB Circular No. A-76] defining what is an essential government duty should still be the dividing line. What does the government have to do, because that is the public overseeing a process? Versus, what can the private sector just do itself?I always cite Stephen Goldsmith, the old mayor of Indianapolis. He proposed what he called the Yellow Pages test. If you open the Yellow Pages [phone directory] and three businesses do that business, the government should not be in that business. There's three garbage haulers out there. Instead of having a formal government garbage-hauling department, just contract out the garbage.With the internet, you should have a lot more opportunities to contract stuff out. I think that is generally good, and we should not have the federal government going about a lot of the day-to-day procedural things that don't require public input. What a lot of people didn't recognize is how much pressure that's going to put on government contracting officers at the federal level. Last time I checked there were 40,000 contracting officers. They have a lot of power. In the most recent year for which we have data, there were $750 billion in federal contracts. This is a substantial part of our economy. If you total state and local, we're talking almost 10% of our whole economy goes through government contracts. This is mind-boggling. In the public policy world, we should all be spending about 10% of our time thinking about contracting.One of the things I think everyone recognized is that contractors should have more authority. Some of the reform that happened with people like [Steven] Kelman — who was the Office of Federal Procurement Policy head in the ‘90s under Clinton — was, "We need to give these people more authority to just take a credit card and go buy a sheaf of paper if that's what they need. And we need more authority to get contract bids out appropriately.”The same message that animates civil service reform should animate these contracting discussions. The goal should be setting clear goals that you want — for either a civil servant or a contractor — and then giving that person the discretion to meet them. If you make the civil service more stultified, or make pay compression more extreme, you're going to have to contract more stuff out.People talk about the General Schedule [pay scale], but we haven't talked about the Federal Wage Schedule system at all, which is the blue-collar system that encompasses about 200,000 federal employees. Pay compression means those guys get paid really well. That means some managers rightfully think, "I'd like to have full-time supervision over some role, but I would rather contract it out, because I can get it a heck of a lot cheaper."There's a continuous relationship: If we make the civil service more stultified, we're going to push contracting out into more areas where maybe it wouldn't be appropriate. But a lot of things are always going to be appropriate to contract out. That means we need to give contracting officers and the people overseeing contracts a lot of discretion to carry out their missions, and not a lot of oversight from the Government Accountability Office or the courts about their bids, just like we shouldn't give OPM excess input into the civil service hiring process.This is a theme I keep harping on, on Statecraft. It's counterintuitive from a reformer's perspective, but it's true: if you want these processes to function better, you're going to have to stop nitpicking. You're going to have to ease up on the throttle and let people make their own decisions, even when sometimes you're not going to agree with them.This is a tension that's obviously happening in this administration. You've seen some clear interest in decentralization, and you've seen some centralization. In both the contract and the civil service sphere, the goal for the central agencies should be giving as many options as possible to the local managers, making sure they don't go extremely off the rails, but then giving those local managers and contracting officials the ability to make their own choices. The General Services Administration (GSA) under this administration is doing a lot of government-wide acquisition contracts. “We establish a contract for the whole government in the GSA. Usually you, the local manager, are not required to use that contract if you want computer services or whatever, but it's an option for you.”OPM should take a similar role. "Here's the system we have set up. You can take that and use it as you want. It's here for you, but it doesn't have to be used, because you might have some very particular hiring decisions to make.” Just like there shouldn't be one contracting decision that decides how we buy both a sheaf of computer paper and an aircraft carrier, there shouldn't be one hiring and firing process for a janitor and a nuclear physicist. That can't be a centralized process, because the very nature of human life is that there's an infinitude of possibilities that you need to allow for, and that means some amount of decentralization.I had an argument online recently about New York City's “buy local” requirement for certain procurement contracts. When they want to build these big public toilets in New York City, they have to source all the toilet parts from within the state, even if they're $200,000 cheaper in Portland, Oregon.I think it's crazy to ask procurement and contracting to solve all your policy problems. Procurement can't be about keeping a healthy local toilet parts industry. You just need to procure the toilet.This is another area where you see similar overlap in some of the civil service and contracting issues. A lot of cities have residency requirements for many of their positions. If you work for the city, you have to live inside the city. In New York, that means you've got a lot of police officers living on Staten Island, or right on the line of the north side of the Bronx, where they're inches away from Westchester. That drives up costs, and limits your population of potential employees.One of the most amazing things to me about the Biden Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was that it encouraged contracting officers to use residency requirements: “You should try to localize your hiring and contracting into certain areas.” On a national level, that cancels out. If both Wyoming and Wisconsin use residency requirements, the net effect is not more people hired from one of those states! So often, people expect the civil service and contracting to solve all of our ills and to point the way forward for the rest of the economy on discrimination, hiring, pay, et cetera. That just leads to, by definition, government being a lot more expensive than the private sector.Over the next three and a half years, what would you like to see the administration do on civil service reform that they haven't already taken up?I think some of the broad-scale layoffs, which seem to be slowing down, were counterproductive. I do think that their ability to achieve their ends was limited by the nature of the reduction-in-force regulations, which made them more counterproductive than they had to be. That's the situation they inherited. But that didn't mean you had to lay off a lot of people without considering the particular jobs they were doing now.And hiring quite a few of them back.Yeah. There are also debates obviously, within the administration, between DOGE and Russ Vought [director of the OMB] and some others on this. Some things, like the Schedule Policy/Career — which is the revival of Schedule F in the first Trump administration — are largely a step in the right direction. Counter to some of the critics, it says, “You can remove someone if they're in a policymaking position, just like if they were completely at-will. But you still have to hire from the typical civil service system.” So, for those concerned about politicization, that doesn't undermine that, because they can't just pick someone from the party system to put in there. I think that's good.They recently had a suitability requirement rule that I think moved in the right direction. That says, “If someone's not suitable for the workforce, there are other ways to remove them besides the typical procedures.” The ideal system is going to require some congressional input: it's to have a decentralization of hiring authority to individual managers. Which means the OPM — now under Scott Kupor, who has finally been confirmed — saying, "The OPM is here to assist you, federal managers. Make sure you stay within the broad lanes of what the administration's trying to accomplish. But once we give you your general goals, we're going to trust you to do that, including hiring.”I've mentioned it a few times, but part of the Chance to Compete Act — which was mentioned in one of Trump's Day One executive orders, people forget about this — was saying, “Implement the Chance to Compete Act to the maximum extent of the law.” Bring more subject-matter expertise into the hiring process, allow more discretion for managers and input into the hiring process. I think carrying that bipartisan reform out is going to be a big step, but it's going to take a lot more work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

12 - Dom has another bone to pick with The Inquirer as a columnist questions why the city of Philadelphia has three statues of the fictional ‘Rocky' when he is a Trump supporter. Is it a beacon for Trump or more so for Philadelphia? 1210 - How did other world leaders visiting the White House feel about Trump? 1215 - Side - words or phrases you can't stand 1220 - Your calls. 1230 - Legendary journalist and author Bill O'Reilly joins us today. Why does Bill consider Putin one of the most evil people in the history of the world? Why does Bill think he's lost control of himself? Is Bill “anti-Philadelphia”? Why did Trump decide to send the National Guard and more police into D.C.? How big of a deterrent is this to criminal juveniles? Bill details why he is taking a much needed vacation, and think about how the Mets can beat the Phillies. 1250 - How big is it for Ukraine to get safety guarantees in this deal with a potential deal with Russia? Your calls. 1 - Award-winning investigative journalist, Pulitzer finalist, and attorney Gerald Posner joins us again today. Why has Gerald involved himself in a criminal investigation as to whether or not D.C. is fabricating its crime statistics. How have police records been tampered with in the last 15 or so years? Why are “active investigations” a big problem with reporting stats? Why is carjacking so much more prevalent in the capital compared to other cities across the country? How will the lack of safety affect the economy? What else has Gerald's eye right now? 115 - Gavin Newsome is going after Scott Presler online? Why is he suddenly becoming a keyboard warrior? 120 - RFK Jr. and the CDC are at odds with the American Academy of Pediatrics on the effectiveness and use of the COVID-19 vaccine. Who will parents side with? Can Gavin Newsom be the new Trump with his mimicry? 135 - Your calls. Is this new vaccine debate similar to having chicken pox parties back in the day? 150 - Will Trump get into heaven? Your calls. 2 - Ann Marie Muldoon joins us today as we revisit the story of Lincoln High School setting up 40 trailers to accommodate new students. Why are they resorting to outdoor trailers? Because an influx of migrants have moved into the neighborhood and overwhelmed the local social services. What has Ann Marie seen on the ground as a medical professional? How pivotal is Northeast Philly in electing a new DA? 210 - Some weiner audio? 215 - Dom's Money Melody! 220 - Returning to The Inquirer reporter calling out the number of Rocky statues in the city. 230 - Director of the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute Jacob Olidort joins us from “the wrong side” of the Hudson River. What is the mental space between Putin and Zelenskyy looking like as Trump serves as the negotiator between the two of them? Does Europe feel this war is a European issue or something the sovereign states have to handle? What are some of Jacob's predictions as to when we can get peace? 250 - The Lightning Round!

2 - Ann Marie Muldoon joins us today as we revisit the story of Lincoln High School setting up 40 trailers to accommodate new students. Why are they resorting to outdoor trailers? Because an influx of migrants have moved into the neighborhood and overwhelmed the local social services. What has Ann Marie seen on the ground as a medical professional? How pivotal is Northeast Philly in electing a new DA? 210 - Some weiner audio? 215 - Dom's Money Melody! 220 - Returning to The Inquirer reporter calling out the number of Rocky statues in the city. 230 - Director of the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute Jacob Olidort joins us from “the wrong side” of the Hudson River. What is the mental space between Putin and Zelenskyy looking like as Trump serves as the negotiator between the two of them? Does Europe feel this war is a European issue or something the sovereign states have to handle? What are some of Jacob's predictions as to when we can get peace? 250 - The Lightning Round!

Story #1: In 'Quick Takes,' Will and The Crew dig into the absurdity of the political and cultural moment. First, Taylor Swift appears on her boyfriend's podcast, breaking the internet. And Will still doesn't understand how she became this generation's Elvis. Plus, Zohran Mamdani shows his elitist colors, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's tone deaf racial claim about President Donald Trump, and Sen. Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) imaginary friends are exposed by John Oliver. Story #2: Former Chief Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, Julian Epstein joins Will to break down the major ideological shift underway in the Democratic Party. Why are Democrats leaning harder into woke identity politics, open borders, and unsustainable spending despite voters clearly rejecting it? Will and Julian also debate whether the Democratic establishment is still in control, and if the American center is officially up for grabs. Story #3: Will sits down with Bill Brown, Patricia Parry, and James Dowdell ahead of the annual New York City Navy SEAL Swim across the Hudson River: a 3-mile tribute to America's fallen heroes. They share what motivates them, what the swim represents, and why remembering the cost of freedom and their loved ones are more important than ever. Subscribe to 'Will Cain Country' on YouTube here: Watch Will Cain Country! Follow Will on X: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some of the most breathtaking and best views in NYC aren't from the top of an observation deck.While those views are epic, there are some amazing views that aren't only free, but give you a unique slice of all that New York City has to offer.

Angelika Graswald was accused of killing her fiancé during a 2015 kayaking trip on the Hudson River. Prosecutors argued that she wanted out of the relationship, so she intentionally removed the kayak's drain plug, which contributed to its subsequent capsizing and her fiancé's drowning. Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the case of Angelika Graswald. She made numerous incriminating statements, even going so far as to say she wanted her fiancé dead. The trial came down to the prosecution's theory against the defense's testing of the theories and the possibilities of how things may have happened that day.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationAn Emash Digital production See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Brad Lowe dives into the story of Jesus calming the storm from Mark 4:35-41. He draws parallels between the biblical narrative and our personal storms, emphasizing that fear doesn't mean a lack of faith but highlights where faith needs to grow. Brad shares the inspiring story of Captain Sully's emergency landing on the Hudson River, illustrating the power of calm and trust in the face of adversity. He encourages listeners to trust in Jesus' presence during life's storms, reminding us that if Jesus promises to take us to the other side, the storm is not the final chapter. The episode concludes with a heartfelt prayer for those facing their own challenges.Follow the show here: https://www.instagram.com/thetgitpod/Checkout the new Hopecast website:https://thehopecastnetwork.com/Buy Merch here:https://www.bonfire.com/store/the-hopecast-network-swag/This show is brought to you by The Hopecast Networkhttps://www.instagram.com/hopecastnetwork/

The looming end of a federal rental assistance program has New York housing officials scrambling to find alternative aid to prevent thousands from becoming homeless. Meanwhile, the NYPD will launch its “Q-teams” in Queens on Monday, targeting quality-of-life issues like abandoned cars, illegal mopeds, and noise complaints. And a PhD student from New Hampshire completes a full-length paddle down the Hudson River, arriving in the city Sunday after testing water quality along the way.

This week, we dive into Cruising (1980), William Friedkin's controversial thriller about an undercover cop hunting a serial killer in New York City's vibrant late-'70s LGBTQ nightclub scene. Inspired by the chilling Bag Murders—where dismembered bodies were discovered in garbage bags floating in the Hudson River—this film is as unsettling as it is unforgettable. Were we blown away that this film even exists? Did it scare Cyndi to death? Join us to find out. 

Musk's Tesla diner disappoints. Trump makes it easier for cities to imprison homeless people. A scientist believes an alien ship may be approaching Earth. Palestinian statehood is a plaything for Western powers. And Chili the Chihuahua is saved from the Hudson River.    https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/29/climate/trump-epa-endangerment-finding?cid=ios_app    https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/tesla-diner-elon-musk-review-1235394091/   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/24/trump-homelessness-executive-order   https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14947305/Harvard-scientist-hostile-alien-craft-strike-Earth-avi-loeb.html   https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/2/why-is-trump-moving-nuclear-submarines-after-spat-with-medvedev   https://truthout.org/articles/palestinian-statehood-is-not-a-political-bargaining-chip/   https://w42st.com/post/miracle-on-hudson-2-kayak-rescue-dog-chili/   https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/nyregion/blackstone-executive-wesley-lepatner-killed-nyc-shooting.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/01/trump-fires-erika-mcentarfer-labor-statistics

Governor Hochul says she's welcoming Texas Democrats who departed their state to protest a Republican redistricting plan. Meanwhile, the Delacorte Theater in Central Park reopens this week following an 18-month, multi-million dollar renovation. Plus, the latest episode of Terrestrials, a podcast from Radiolab, explores the surprising ecosystem of the Hudson River with a focus on one unexpected resident: crabs. Producer and music director Alan Goffinski joins us to talk about it.

It's 1996. A truck load of toxic chemicals just exploded in a tunnel under the Hudson River and the only one who can save us is Sylvester Stallone. We're talking DAYLIGHT, recently released (and un-released??) on 4K UHD from our best friends at Kino Lorber. Plus announcements, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, confessions, and more! Find us on Instagram!

Tianna Kennedy is co-owner and operator of Star Route Farm. She has lived in Tucson, the Bay Area, Nottingham, and Brooklyn. For over a decade, she has been farming in the Catskills, which now serves as her home base. Tianna is also part of the crew of Apollonia, a 64-foot steel-hulled schooner retrofitted for sail freight on the Hudson River. She contributes to cargo operations and deck work as the vessel transports goods between upriver farms and downriver markets using wind and recycled vegetable oil.

Marsha P. Johnson is THE icon of the LGBTQ+ movement and a mother of the fight for trans rights. Today, you can buy T-shirts emblazoned with her face or walk through a park named in her honor. Now, hear from Marsha in her own words on a new limited series, Afterlives: Marsha P. Johnson. Host Raquel Willis brings Marsha’s story to life through rare archival interviews and intimate conversations with queer elders, friends, and historians. Legend says she threw the first brick at the Stonewall riots, setting off the modern movement for queer rights. Immortalized by Andy Warhol and known as “The Saint of Christopher Street,” Marsha was also unhoused, surviving through sex work, navigating violence, and resisting with joy. More than 30 years after her still-unsolved death in the Hudson River, Marsha’s voice resounds louder than ever. As trans rights face renewed threats, Afterlives celebrates Marsha’s story and reflects on her enduring power as a trans ancestor. Listen to Afterlives wherever you get your podcasts. All episodes are out now!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Architectural historian William Hennessey has a new book called Along the Hudson: Walking Manhattan's Western Waterfront which traces the ups-and-downs of development along Manhattan's western waterfront.

In this unforgettable episode of The Safety Guru, we're joined by Dave Sanderson, a survivor of US Airways Flight 1549, widely known as The Miracle on the Hudson. Dave takes us behind the scenes of that extraordinary day in 2009, when the plane crash-landed into the freezing Hudson River and every passenger made it out alive. He shares what it truly means to step up under pressure and help others stay safe in urgent, high-stakes situations. Through his gripping firsthand account, Dave shares life-saving safety lessons and emphasizes the power of clear communication, leading with intention, and practical strategies for managing your mind under pressure. He explains why casual leads to casualty, emphasizing that pattern recognition, quick decision-making, situational awareness, and decisive action can make all the difference when every second counts. Tune in to gain powerful lessons learned from the Miracle on the Hudson and pivotal insights that extend far beyond the cabin of an aircraft. About the Guest: Dave Sanderson is a nationally recognized leadership speaker, accomplished author, and inspirational survivor of what is known as "The Miracle on the Hudson." As the last passenger off US Airways Flight 1549, which had to ditch into the river, he took the lessons he learned from that profound experience in the frigid water and emerged from the wreckage with a mission to encourage others to do the right thing and share coping skills to address any adversity they may face. Named one of Inc.com's Top 100 Leadership speakers, Dave travels the world to share his inspirational leadership lessons and has raised over $14.8M USD for the American Red Cross over the last ten years through his talks. For more information: https://davesandersonspeaks.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gateway Program is a $16 billion project to build new tunnels under the Hudson River to improve service for Amtrak and NJ Transit trains. But as the project prepares to break ground, they have uncovered some mysterious — and some historically illuminating — obstacles, including a totally unaccounted for staircase to nowhere, pig bones from the Meatpacking District's meatpacking days, and a bevy of wires, cables, and other infrastructure dreamed up by the engineers of yesteryear. Stephen Nessen, transit reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, talks about the discoveries, and how Gateway crews will have to work around these buried treasures from the past.

This is the evening All Local for July, 23 2025.

Marsha spent the final days of her life surrounded by people who loved her. When she was struggling with an oncoming breakdown, a friend escaped with her to a cottage on the beach. Her final Pride was filled with love and appreciation as she marched down the streets with her fellow revolutionary, Sylvia Rivera. Just days later, though, Marsha’s body was found in the Hudson River. The police immediately declared it a suicide, but friends and family refused to accept that and organized for further investigation. We take you inside the efforts to find out what really happened and bring you to the beautiful and epic memorials that celebrated her life.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Henry Hudson. We don't know too much about his life prior to becoming a captain for the Muscovy Company of England. In his life he would tale 4 voyages looking to reach the east coast of Asia. 3 of those 4 voyages would start out going east only to run into ice. 2 of those voyages would discover some very cool things in the western world that would take his name (Hudson River, Hudson River Valley, Hudson Strait, Hudson Bay). Interestingly enough, all of his even numbered voyages had some degree of mutiny. The first mutiny-lite forced him to find a new country to sail for. His 4th and final voyage would return to England without him aboard. We don't know exactly what happened. What we know for sure is there is no way of knowing how or where Henry Hudson took his final breath. That mystery still lives on today. Join us as we get Historically High on Henry Hudson. Support the show

This is the 4pm All-Local on Tuesday, July 15.

Hey there friends and weirdos! This week the Weird Crew looks into the history of a mysterious island that sits ominously in the middle of the Hudson River. How was a castle constructed on this island, what was it used for, and is the place haunted? Does a terrifying ghost ship piloted by goblin creatures trawl the river for potential victims? Could the ruins of the castle be used for an amazing advertising campaign? We discuss all this and much more!

The body of Mary Rogers, known by many New Yorkers as the “beautiful cigar girl,” was found in the Hudson River in July 1841. There was evidence she had been beaten before she died, but over a century later, her death remains unsolved.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the death of Mary Rogers. Both theories and suspects abound in this case. Some newspapers at the time even named people as Mary's killer. There are supposed deathbed confessions, and the theories range from wild to semi-plausible. Even Edgar Allen Poe is rumored to have been involved, and he did write a story based on Mary's death.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationAn Emash Digital productionSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jimmy Failla is working on some top-secret television magic, so we flashed the radio signal over the Hudson River and Jersey Joe Concha answered the call to guest host Fox Across America. Joe gives his state on why the Democratic Party is so discombobulated right now. He's then joined by former GOP National Spokesperson Elizabeth Pipko, who praises President Trump for showing restraint with Iran, while also being ready to strike if he feels their nuclear capabilities pose an urgent threat to Americans. Former Acting ICE Director Jonathan Fahey sheds light on the alarming spike in assaults against ICE agents as they attempt to arrest illegal migrants. Fox News Overnight Anchor and News Correspondent Ashley Strohmier reacts to “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg's incredulous comparison of how women are treated in Iran vs. the United States. PLUS, host of Outkick's “Tomi Lahren is Fearless” Tomi Lahren checks in to try and diagnose the Democratic Party's main issues. [00:00:00] Democrats still have no clear direction [00:20:30] Elizabeth Pipko [00:40:03] Hostin reflects on her viral Kamala Harris question [00:58:50] Jonathan Fahey [01:17:25] Ashley Strohmier [01:35:30] Tomi Lahren Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We speak with a bridge painter on the George Washington Bridge. What's it like to maintain the historic structure, sometimes dangling 600 feet above the Hudson River. Even hearing about the “fear of heights test” he had to take will send shivers down your spine.

When 46-year-old Vincent Viafore disappeared while kayaking on the Hudson River with his fiancée, 35-year-old Angelika Graswald, it was initially believed to be a tragic accident. However, Angelika's story and behaviour soon raised troubling questions about what really happened.---Narration – Anonymous HostResearch & writing – Milly RasoCreative direction – Milly RasoProduction & music – Mike MigasAudio editing – Anthony TelferSign up for Casefile Premium:Apple PremiumSpotify PremiumPatreonFor all credits and sources, please visit https://casefilepodcast.com/case-321-vincent-viafore Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Thursday's Mark Levin Show, a devastating helicopter crash in the Hudson River claimed the lives of all six aboard: three children, their parents, and the pilot. In a separate incident at Reagan National Airport, two planes collided when a taxiing jet clipped the wing of a stationary aircraft carrying several congressmen. These events underscore a troubling pattern of recent aviation mishaps. Additionally, a new mandate requires all individuals illegally present in the U.S. to register, a policy facing pushback from the left, who argue it's unjust. Critics on the left accuse Trump of lawlessness, while U.S. District Judges, like Judge Indira Talwani, challenge his actions, raising questions about their own grasp of legal principles. Afterward, in June 2024, Levin expressed concerns about President Biden's mental sharpness, highlighting cognitive decline as a significant problem. How could the media observe Biden's behavior and only now claim there was a cover-up? The authors of these Biden-focused books are the same media figures who concealed this issue. Also, The SAVE Act will stop illegals from voting without identification and registration. It is very important and good that it was passed, proving that Trump kept his promise to the American people. The Tax cuts are just as important as the SAVE Act as it will help the economy improve. Hakeem Jeffries claims that Republicans are trying to destroy the economy. He stated that Trump is cutting part of Medicaid which will take away health benefits to millions of people. The Medicaid program has been used and abused by people who are Illegal and should not be here in the first place, and people committing fraud by using the names of their dead relatives to get benefits or income. Another example would be Elon Musk and DOGE discovering millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on unemployment claims for fake people, stopping them once and for all.  Elon Musk and DOGE continue to find ways to clean the swamp, and exposing the failures that the Biden administration left us. Then, Iran's latest move seems to be an interim nuclear deal—a familiar tactic to buy more time while engaging in strategic delay. The message should be clear: no nuclear weapons means no nuclear weapons. An interim agreement is unnecessary, assuming that's what's being proposed. Barak Ravid's take is always worth examining, but the stance here should be firm: reject interim deals outright. Lastly, Gov. Ron DeSantis calls in to discuss the Florida House legislature. The Florida Senate is collaborating constructively to maintain the state's success, while the Florida House is veering liberal, pushing bills to undo tort reform, enrich trial lawyers, and “de-wokify” universities. The House's actions diverge from Florida's conservative agenda. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices