Correct me if I'm Norm

Norm sits down with Richard Marr, a Rhinebeck-based artist and Merrill Lynch financial advisor whose two careers have more in common than you might think. Richard's paintings are spare, reverent studies of water and light that grew out of his deep engagement with environmental issues, which also drives his investment work and his membership in the Citizens' Climate Lobby, where he helps lobby Congress for climate solutions each year in Washington. They chat about the OVO Gallery he and his wife Carol ran in South Orange; how a visit to Dia Beacon set them on the path to Rhinebeck; kayaking the Hudson with a sail attached; the ESG investing movement and why Republicans helped kill the acronym; his Antioch College work-study years and the greaser friends he grew up clamming with in Bellport, Long Island; a deep dive into Tai Chi and the influence of John Cage and Alan Watts; and his current show Near and Far at Type Gallery in Millbrook. Richard also previews a new performance piece built around interviews about the Hudson River, with proceeds going to Riverkeeper. Throughout, he returns to a single conviction: that art, like a long-term investment, is not finished until someone else receives it. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Norm sits with Dana Polan, the Martin Scorsese Professor and Chair of the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at NYU Tisch. The chat ranges across a lifetime of thinking seriously about American film. Dana grew up in New York and Westchester, did his doctorate in France, and was later knighted by the French Ministry of Culture as a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts. He explains how cinema studies emerged from English departments in the 70s, why USC made its production students take film history (and why they usually came back grateful), and how a young teaching assistant named Martin Scorsese could remember individual shots from films he'd seen years earlier. Dana explains the difference between a movie and a film, with Spielberg's own quote about Close Encounters as a starting point. Dana lays out the case for Scorsese as artist and Lucas as entertainer, the 80s backlash of hard-bodied masculinity in Die Hard and Rambo, the femme fatale in Double Indemnity and The Killers, and the way recent films like Barbie and Everything Everywhere All At Once try to have it every way at once. He makes the case for The Florida Project and the first Die Hard, pushes back gently on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as accidental pedagogy, and explains why Strangers on a Train was the film that made him realize movies were made on purpose, shot by shot. Dana is currently co-writing Hoboken to Hollywood: The American Places of Frank Sinatra with Chuck Granata for Reaktion Books' Reverb series, and he shares stories from his Sinatra odysseys, including a tour of the Twin Palms bachelor pad in Palm Springs and a sobering evening in Las Vegas watching Sinatra's grandson perform in a no-gambling lounge. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Norm welcomes singer-songwriter Terence Boylan, who lives just down the road in Rhinebeck. Boona shows up with homemade margaritas and a lifetime of stories. He talks about the night he and his buddy stole a 1961 Corvette and drove from Buffalo to Greenwich Village at 15 to find Bob Dylan, and ended up lighting Dylan's cigarette outside the Gaslight. The next afternoon they were swapping songs at Izzy Young's Folklore Center. He played the New Folks Concert at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival on the same bill as Bob Dylan, Tom Rush, and Ian and Sylvia, hugged Joan Baez through her stage fright, and loaned Dylan his harmonica. He talks about getting signed to MGM at 17 by walking into the A and R office unannounced with his guitar, recording his first album Alias Boona with Bard classmates Donald Fagen and Walter Becker before they were Steely Dan, and the comedy and music album Playback under the name Appletree Theatre that John Lennon named one of his favorite records of the year. There are stories about his older brother John, who put together the band that backed Linda Ronstadt and went on to become the Eagles, and was just inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame. There are stories from Albert Grossman's kitchen with George Harrison and Paul Butterfield, hanging out at Adolph's near Bard with Dylan and Bobby Neuwirth, a David Geffen contract with more zeros than he had ever seen, and the chance turn that landed him in the house on River Road. Plus some songwriting advice from the muse, a new EP in progress, an invitation to tour Japan, and three Boylan songs: Who Do I Think I Am, Tell Me, and County Fair. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Norm sits with Elliott Malkin, a parrot lover, artist (Graffiti for Butterflies), writer, podcaster, comb-over aficionado, and father who has taught cool shit at Bard, NYU, and Columbia and done cool shit for Google and so many others. Elliott takes Norm from a Chicago suburb bordering the famously targeted town of Skokie to a Brooklyn-to-Rhinebeck COVID migration that, like a lot in his life, he came to understand only later as part of a much bigger wave. They get into Lose Your Religion in Five Easy Steps, his genealogical art project tracing his family's path from a Hasidic ancestor to unaffiliated descendant, his stints at the New York Times and Google designing the productivity software you stare at all day, and what it was like to walk away from corporate tech this fall after nine years. Elliott also opens up about being diagnosed with autism at fifty, the relief of finally getting dialed down from eleven to eight, and raising kids in a neurodivergence-friendly household. Figuring out what's next, he's volunteering with Rhinebeck's College Connect, writing short stories nobody has read yet, and quietly working out what an artist becomes when he's not making art anymore. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

his week's guests are husband and wife: one helps youth who are just starting in life and the other helps those who are further along life's path. One is boss of his own company and the other is boss of Rhinebeck Rotary. Norm welcomes Erika and Mark Murphy. Mark is the founder of Grip Tape (griptape.org), a nonprofit that helps teenagers find purpose and agency by handing them the keys. No application, no gatekeeper, no adult telling them what to learn. Just a 10-week challenge, a small pot of funding, and a champion who believes in them. He explains how a former Delaware Secretary of Education ended up rebuilding learning from scratch with 10 teenagers in 2015, and what happens when a 16-year-old in Montrose, Colorado decides to 3D print his own fly fishing reel. Nearly 5,000 young people across all 50 states later, the model just launched in India. Erika is a 25-year veteran teacher and school administrator turned in-home caregiver and end-of-life doula, currently certifying through INELDA. She tells the story of her Aunt Joan, the Manhattan delivered to the nursing home, and why she calls holding someone's hand as they pass the most intimate moment of her life. She also runs the Rhinebeck Rotary Club, where she got drafted by Gary Bassett over a coat drive. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Norm sits down with Alex Hannaford, a London-born, dual U.S.-U.K. citizen journalist who covers America for foreign publications and whose writing has taken him from the death rows of Texas to the pubs of east London. Rhinebeck's own, Hannaford traces his path into journalism through a gap year teaching sailing and an internship at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, where he found his voice as a features writer. The conversation moves from pub culture and Indian food to the weight of capital punishment, including Hannaford's firsthand account of witnessing an execution in Oklahoma amid growing controversy over lethal injection drugs and the systemic failures, racial bias and inadequate legal representation, that plague the system. He also discusses making the animated documentary "The Last 40 Miles," which follows the transfer of a condemned man from Texas death row to Huntsville. Closer to home, Hannaford talks about volunteering on Thames RNLI lifeboats, launching a youth sailing program in the Rhinebeck-Kingston area through Culture Connect and the Hudson River Maritime Museum, and his book "Lost in Austin," a ground-level look at how climate, explosive growth, and cost-of-living pressures have transformed one of America's fastest-changing cities. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

This week's guest is coming up on her 25 year anniverary at the helm of one of my favorite restaurants, Gigi Trattoria, which she co-founded in 2001. She's a dietician/ entrepreneur an absolute delight: Laura Pensiero. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Norm welcomes back Monique Segarra, a Bard Center for Environmental Policy professor just returned from Oaxaca, to share a mezcal from a small-batch palenque as they dig into agave's long growth cycles, industrial production, and what sustainability actually means for Oaxacan producers. Segarra, who has spent a decade doing field-based work with graduate students in the region, discusses water management, payments for ecosystem services, and community-run conservation businesses that support local livelihoods. She describes Zapotec communal land governance and one northern mountain community's collectively owned enterprises, including sustainable logging, a sawmill, furniture factory, community bank, and social programs. The conversation connects to New York's Catskills watershed agreement, WAC's voluntary whole-farm planning, and trust-building organizations, alongside personal family stories. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Norm sits down with Rhinebeck's own Jaime Ransome, an educator, former adjunct professor, gallery manager, and one of the most compelling curators working in the Hudson Valley today. They talk family, feminism, and a life in the art world. Jaime explains her middle name (Ernestina), shares stories about her grandparents, and traces the through-line connecting spirituality, the moon, and feminist thinking, including what her mother taught her about consent and sex ed. She talks about her parents, author Lesa Cline-Ransome and James E. Ransome, and makes the case for fiction as a vehicle for deeper truth. Jaime defines Afrofuturism, recommends Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, and reflects on curating an Afrofuturism show in Newburgh. She discusses her exhibition "Weird Sisters" at Dutchess Community College's Mildred Washington Gallery, and points listeners to "Crazy" at Bow Gallery in Beacon. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

In this episode of 'Correct Me If I'm Norm,' host Norm sits down with author Emma Tourtelot to discuss her latest book, 'No One, You Know.' They delve into Emma's book tour experiences, the inspiration behind her mother-daughter narrative, her creative process, and the role of grief and consciousness explored in her novel. Emma also shares stories from her past as a sex and relationship columnist and her current role as a middle school librarian. Tune in for an engaging conversation full of insights into writing, family dynamics, and personal anecdotes. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Norm sits down with the one and only Misty Decker - singer, mother of two, tireless booster of Rhinebeck schools, beer aficionado, COBOL evangelist, and mainframe modernization expert known as "Darth Misty the Mainframe Sith." They kick things off with a cocktail recipe from Cooper's Daughter distillery, then dive into Misty's journey from math major to her current role at Kyndryl, where she consults on mainframe modernization. The conversation covers the complexities and human dynamics of the field, why mainframe systems still matter across industries, and how AI is changing the modernization game. Misty also shares her passion for singing with the Capella Festiva Chamber Choir. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Norm talks with Dave Leonard, Rhinebeck-based podcast host of 'Hudson Valley Unleashed,' DJ, business owner, dedicated family man, and truly amazing friend who just ran his first NYC Marathon. Dave traces his path from college radio at Denison through creating the 'Unleashed' format and building his own DJ business. The conversation gets personal as Dave opens up about surviving a near-fatal car accident, his path to sobriety, and what keeps him passionate about music after all these years. He also shares what he's working on now with his podcast and the community events he's committed to supporting. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org