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Norm's guest is a dad, a tennis enthusiast, a prolific painter, and an owner of the wonderful Rhinebeck Artist's Shop stores, Mr. Doug Shippee. Doug tells Norm about driving to New York with $400 and his best friend, sheetrocking a ceiling with no idea which side was up, and working at the legendary David Davis art supply store during the heyday of downtown art stores. Doug remembers a $650 Williamsburg loft above a sweatshop, meeting his wife Lynn with a "Hey, Staten Island," and his "dark years" hauling mattresses in a Montgomery Ward warehouse. He also talks about why the real problem-solving in painting happens with the brush in hand, his very creative family, becoming a grandpa, and the 52-year-old shop at the end of Market Street. See his work at douglasshippee.com. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

rom Manhattan, Kansas to Manhattan, NYC, and now Rhinebeck, this week's guests have been pursuing their dreams, one in designing the "scientific workplace" & the other as a designer turned painter: Camille Warmington and Paul Wilhelms. They met in architecture school at K-State and reconnected decades later over coffee (which turned into a margarita) in Houston. Norm talks with them about labs built so still that electron microscopes can see atoms, and about Camille's "stitch-like" paintings inspired by her mother's needlepoint and the garden she's constantly weeding. There is also the farmhouse they designed for family in Hamden, their own Hütte 2 going up in Milan, and the Golden Rock cocktail they reverse-engineered from The Corner in Tivoli. See Camille's work at camillewarmington.com. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits with artist, curator, and arts administrator: founder of WomensWork.Art, a past board member of the National Association of Women Artists, and an incredibly thoughtful creative soul who works in asemic writing, Nansi Lent. Norm and Nansi talk through what asemic writing actually is (non-semantic, illegible-on-purpose mark-making with roots in Dada and a global following since the '60s and '90s), and how Nansi backed into it in 2018 through journaling before "discovering" she'd invented her own visual vocabulary of scrolls and sigils. She talks about her wildly busy fall: 19 new pieces on fragile Japanese tea and gampi paper for a show at Cornell Creative Center for the Arts timed to Kingston Arts Week, ten pieces at Bank Street Newburgh, her annual Art Studio Views open house over Labor Day weekend, and a solo show, "A Thread of Longing," opening in October at BAU that spans five decades of her work. Along the way: her early career as a documentary and darkroom photographer printing for Martha Swope, a formative (and brutal) run through Ivan Karp's gallery world, a rocky stint in an MFA program at SUNY New Paltz, adopting her two children as a single woman, and how she met her husband while stalling in a laundromat on the Upper West Side. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits down with bestselling presidential historian Alexis Coe, author of You Never Forget Your First, a New York Times history columnist, and Substack writer, for a wide-ranging conversation. Alexis talks about her path from NYPL curator to public historian, her move to the Hudson Valley during the pandemic, and what it was like testifying before Congress on JFK records alongside conspiracy theorists and a very unhappy Nancy Mace. She digs into George Washington's complicated legacy around emancipation, the myth-making of early presidential biography, and gives a preview of her forthcoming book on young JFK. Plus: a study/marry/kill round with Karoline Leavitt, Beto O'Rourke, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Pete Buttigieg. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits down with Carla Melucci Ardito, a self-taught healer who's spent over 40 years studying trauma, emotion, and the body. They dig into her "dysfunction scale," the difference between real emotion and reactive frustration, how unresolved grief gets passed down through families (and even genetics), and why apologies only heal when they're truly felt. Along the way: her son's move to Paris for a PhD at the Sorbonne, her side gig fronting Brooklyn Bossa Nova, and an impromptu aria from Verdi's Falstaff. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits down with Rhinebeck artist William T. Ayton, known professionally as William T., to talk about his shift from traditional painting and ink drawing to AI-generated art. Ayton walks through how he prompts and edits images using Leonardo AI and defends the medium against critics who dismiss it as "AI slop." He discusses his augmented reality installation New Babel, a ten story virtual Tower of Babel built for Union Square Park to mark The New School's centennial, and a possible upcoming show at Tsinghua University in Beijing tied to a journal published by Leonardo, the arts and science organization run by his wife, Diana Ayton-Shenker. They trace Ayton's path from a working class upbringing in England, through art school in Edinburgh and years teaching English in Madrid, where he met Diana, to the move upstate to Rhinebeck twenty five years ago, where he raised three children and now works out of a home studio. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits down with historian Gerry Protheroe — a Welsh-born, NYU-affiliated professor and longtime private school teacher — for a conversation that ranges from his working-class childhood in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales,to experiencing the impact of the 1966 Aberfan disaster as a child, to his path through Jesus College, Oxford and eventually to New York City. Protheroe, author of The Crisis of Security: Global Politics from the End of the Cold War to the Present, weighs in on Brexit's economic toll, NATO's fragility under Trump, the fallout from the Iran conflict, and echoes of the Vietnam-era counterinsurgency debates in today's foreign policy. Along the way: Manhattans, Manchester United, dual citizenship debates, and a surprise Churchill impression. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits down with Cathy and Roy Naor, the couple behind Rhinebeck's Aba's Falafel, just two months after they sold the business to a cousin. Roy talks about his path from Israeli Air Force fighter pilot training to squadron commander to captain at El Al, and the private jet charter company he now manages remotely from Rhinebeck. Cathy traces her own route from Austin, Texas to a philosophy of mind PhD she never finished to a farmers market falafel stand that became a full restaurant. They talk through how they went vegan, the environmental change Roy has watched firsthand over decades of transatlantic flights and Cozumel dives, raising kids in Rhinebeck, becoming grandparents, and how the town has responded to them as Israelis living in the Hudson Valley. Vide now available HERE Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits down with campaign strategist John Rossi, the operative behind Debbie Hecht's landslide win in the Rhinebeck Town Supervisor Democratic primary. Rossi walks through the mechanics of a winning local campaign: his "three Ms" of money, messaging, and mobilization, why door-knocking beats social media every time, and the numbers that told his team early on they had a landslide on their hands. He addresses the more contentious parts of the race too, including the doxing controversy and Republicans who switched parties to vote in the primary, and gives credit to The Daily Catch for driving turnout. Rossi also traces his own path into politics, from a hazing scandal that pushed him onto a Long Island school board to his move to the Hudson Valley and his growing track record running campaigns for women candidates including Cara Gary and Lisa Cole. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm sits down with Bob Wyant, the Town of Rhinebeck's highway superintendent, for a wide-ranging chat. Bob talks through the mechanics of the job: a seven-man crew, a budget he can't touch without town board approval, and so much more. He walks through his favorite and least favorite roads in town, including Old Post Road, which traces back to a 1700s mail route to Albany, and Stone Church Road, which he says is just too long to love. Norm also gets Bob talking about his family. The Wyants have been in Rhinebeck since 1850, and the road he lives on is named after them after he rejected the town's original pick. He traces his family back through a Civil War ancestor buried in Rhinebeck Cemetery to German roots that got Americanized along the way. Bob also talks about digging up a 300-year-old millstone by accident while running an excavator, losing his first election and calling it one of the best things that ever happened to him, and his second career as a competitive karaoke singer with a soft spot for David Allan Coe and Elvis. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm welcomes his Rhinebeck neighbor Father Jeffrey Maurer, pastor of Good Shepherd in Rhinebeck and St. Christopher's in Red Hook, for a conversation about faith and vocation. Maurer traces his German and Irish Catholic roots to 1880s Kingston, his eight years of seminary formation between Manhattan College and priestly studies, and the moment as a teenager when he first grasped the Eucharist as more than symbol. He talks about writing sermons, presiding over deaths and baptisms, and why he thinks busyness does more damage to faith than outright sin. The conversation also covers Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic roots of cities like Los Angeles and St. Augustine, Florida, and Dorothy Day's farm up in Tivoli. Along the way, Maurer explains why he recently sat for the AP U.S. History Regents exam at a Kingston high school, in longhand, with a cigar waiting for him afterward. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm welcomes sisters Patty Hill and Susie Hendren for a chat that starts with Yuengling and ends with astrology. The two, raised between Brooklyn and Long Island with Scottish, Italian, and Irish roots, trace a musical education that runs from seeing The Beatles at Forest Hills Stadium as young girls to Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, and the New York Dolls scene at Max's Kansas City. Susie fronted a gothic rock band called Tribes of the Moon in the 1970s and 80s, with Patty as its most devoted fan. They talk about their father's uncanny survival of seven near-death experiences, a genuinely spooky haunted house on Long Island, their shared interest in tarot and astrology, and how they ended up settling in the Rhinebeck area decades ago. Along the way, they discuss their daughter and niece, Leslie Hill, well known around town, and reflect on how Rhinebeck and Rhinecliff have changed since they first arrived. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

Norm welcomes Sue Sie, a longtime Rhinecliff resident who arrived via an ex-husband, a Bard professor's house, and a lot of determination. She stayed; he did not. That was 1989, and she has been one of the most quietly essential figures in the local environmental landscape ever since. Sue is an architect by training. She designed Gigi Trattoria, Terrapin, and Gabby's, among others, but has not practiced in about 20 years. These days she channels her energy into Dirty Gaia (dirtygaia.org), the environmental education nonprofit she founded to reconnect people with the natural world. The conversation covers the organization's seed library at Morton Library, this summer's Farm and Garden Ramble expanding into Red Hook, the upcoming Threshfest, and her ongoing work with Pollinate HV to promote native plants and protect at-risk pollinators. They also get into: how to save tomato seeds (ferment, rinse, dry), the Berkeley Hot Composting method, the bokashi fermentation technique for composting meat and cheese, the appalling self-regulatory framework for pesticide testing, and why the American lawn is an ecological wasteland. Sue is also a diver, certified in murky New Jersey Atlantic waters and polished in Bonaire, and a devoted cook who dreams in dishes and makes a mean Swiss chard with chickpeas and fennel. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]

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 [email protected]

Norm is joined by Dr. Greg Tumolo of Rhinebeck Animal Hospital, a born-and-raised Rhinebecker who followed his father into veterinary medicine and never really left, except for 15 years in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he went to vet school, skied as much as possible, and eventually realized he wanted to come home. The cover the practical to the philosophical: how Dr. Tumolo thinks about euthanasia as a gift rather than a burden; why he got certified in animal acupuncture; the corporate consolidation sweeping through the veterinary industry; his 25-foot sailboat Blue Mae (named for his daughters' middle names) at Norrie Point; and a famous patient: Rockefeller the owl, plucked from the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and brought to Rhinebeck Animal Hospital for X-rays. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to [email protected]