Correct me if I'm Norm

Bard, Boona, and Bob Dylan: An Evening With Terence Boylan

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

Liza Donnelly on Women, Humor, and The New Yorker

Norm sits down with longtime New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly for a conversation about her more than four decades in cartooning. Liza talks about tracing James Thurber cartoons as a kid in Watergate-era Washington, the two years she spent submitting to The New Yorker before Lee Lorenz bought her first drawing in 1979, and her parallel life as a digital live-drawing journalist for CBS News, CNN, and The New Yorker, covering everything from the Oscar red carpet to the second E. Jean Carroll trial. She also gets into Cartooning for Peace, her research for Funny Ladies and Very Funny Ladies, and her new documentary Women Laughing, co-directed with Kathleen Hughes. For upcoming screenings check https://www.womenlaughingfilm.com/screenings [https://www.womenlaughingfilm.com/screenings] Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

From Chicago to Brooklyn to Google to a Rhinebeck Front Porch: The Elliott Malkin Story

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

David Scheer on the ACA, Scuba Diving, and Sibling Diplomacy

Norm chats with David Scheer, a long-time pro in healthcare and employer health plan implementation and management, an analytical mastermind and conversational gem. As a senior consultant at Willis Towers Watson, David spends his days helping enormous employers untangle the financial and strategic mess of providing health benefits to tens of thousands of workers, and he makes the whole thing genuinely fun to listen to. He and Norm get into why healthcare costs are climbing faster than they have in twenty years, what the Affordable Care Act really did, why the lapse of expanded subsidies is about to hit everyone in the wallet, and the curious tale of how his firm quietly bought naming rights to the Sears Tower. Off the clock, David talks scuba diving, his ever-growing Brooklyn wine fridge, the perfect fish taco, and life as kid brother to RFR's own producer extraordinaire Jen Hammoud. Produced by Norm Magnusson, Jennifer Hammoud, and Matty Rosenberg @ radiofreerhinecliff.org Send comments to comments@radiofreerhinecliff.org

Erika and Mark Murphy of Rhinebeck: Helping Kids Take the Wheel and Helping Elders Let Go

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