TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 1
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST Episode 1 “The Island at the Center of the World”: with Russell Shorto, Author, Historian, and Journalist. Before there was a Hart Island, even before there was a New York City, there was, “The Island at the Center of the World”. Join us as we explore the epic story of Dutch […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 6
Episode 6 “Forgotten Ellis island”: with Lorie Conway. The lost story of the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital saved tens of thousands of lives, as immigrants flooded onto Ellis Island over a century ago. It was here that the germs of the world converged. The hospital was both welcoming and foreboding to those too sick to […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 8
Episode 8 “Inside Rikers: Stories From the World’s Largest Penal Colony”: with Jennifer Wynn, Professor, City University of New York. Wynn teaches a writing class to male inmates at Rikers Prison, as part of a rehabilitation program known as Fresh Start, and is the editor of Rikers Review, an illustrated magazine featuring short stories, profiles, […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 9
Episode 9 “A Pickpockets Tale”: with Timothy J. Gilfoyle, Professor, Loyola University. In George Appo’s world, child pickpockets swarmed the crowded streets, addicts drifted in furtive opium dens, and expert swindlers worked the lucrative green-goods game. On a good night, Appo made as much as a skilled laborer made in a year. Bad nights left […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 10
Episode 10 “Damnation Island”: with Stacy Horn, Author. Purchased by the city in 1828, the island soon harbored an almshouse, an insane asylum, a hospital, a prison and a workhouse along its narrow two-mile strip. Heating and ventilation were nonexistent, disease ran rampant. Over the next 100 years, mayhem ensued, with wrongly admitted patients, death […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 14
Episode 14 “The Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire”: with Hasia Diner, Professor New York University. As historian Robert Hughes notes, “The Tenth Ward of Lower Manhattan—the Lower East Side—had by the 1890’s, the highest concentration of people in the world: 344,000 people packed into one square mile, or nine square yards each, including street and […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 26
Episode 26 “Ghosts of St Vincents”: with Tom Eubanks. Founded in 1849 to care for indigent immigrants in Greenwich Village, St. Vincent’s Hospital was sold in 2010 to create multi-million-dollar homes. In its 161 years of existence, the legendary institution treated survivors of the Titanic, tended to victims of both World Trade Center attacks, and […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 28
Episode 28 “Louisa Van Slyke”: with Author Gail Jarrow. The ship lurched in the heavy North Atlantic swell, its bow plunging deep in the troughs as it pitched sharply, its seasick passengers crammed into its small hold. The young lady, dressed simply, was just another anonymous face in the crowded ship. She kept to herself, […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 29
Episode 29 “Hebrew Free Burial Society”: with Amy Koplow, Executive Director. While many of the young women and men who perished in the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire could be identified, many could not. As unclaimed or identified deaths, according to New York City policy, bodies were traditionally shipped to the City Morgue at Bellevue […]
TALKING HART ISLAND PODCAST EPISODE 33
Episode 33 “Angels of Mercy”: with William Seraile, Professor Emeritus, Lehman College, City University of New York. The Colored Orphan Asylum was founded, in New York City in 1836, as the nation’s first orphanage for African American children. The agency weathered three wars, two major financial panics, a devastating fire during the 1863 Draft Riots […]