Liseo, Hardigg ’90 Share WESU Connection Spanning 3 Decades

For two hours every Saturday—and any early morning or late night shift available—Middletown resident Franco Liseo fills the airwaves of WESU 88.1 FM, with Italian music. His specialty is the sounds from the ’60s and ’70s; "Love songs," he says. "When I left Italy, I left with the music”—and he's been doing this for 30 years. The Saturday show is special; he broadcasts with a co-host, Lucilla Caminito, the daughter of a childhood friend, who Skypes in from Melilli. These shows feature contemporary music that Caminito chooses and sends to Liseo (whose DJ name is "Francaccio") via the internet, YouTube,…

"The title character is, of course, a Wesleyan graduate," says author Heidi Mastrogiovanni ’79, of her debut comic novel, Lala Pettibone's Act Two (Amberjack Publishing, 2017). The novelist herself is also a comic actor, an animal welfare advocate and a screenwriter—and her second novel, sequel Lala Pettibone: Standing Room Only, will be available in August. To celebrate, she and a fellow Amberjack author—with similarly titled books, both with a reference to a second act—visited bookstores and venues across the country to talk about the writer's life and the ways in which a book written by a female is perceived, welcomed and marketed. In…

The Broadway cast recording of the Tony Award–winning musical Dear Evan Hansen earned a Grammy nomination for Best Musical Theater Album on Nov. 28. Produced with Atlantic Record’s President of A&R (artists and repertoire) Pete Ganbarg ’88, along with music supervisor and orchestrator Alex Lacamoire, creators Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and Broadway producer Stacey Mindich, the album had debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 when it came out last February. (more…)

In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni. Recent Wesleyan News WNPR's Where We Live: "A Life with Food Allergies and Intolerances" Associate Dean for Student Academic Resources Laura Patey is a guest on the show to talk about how Wesleyan works with and supports students and other community members with food allergies. Patey comes in around 40 minutes. 2. The Middletown Press: "Colleague Picks Up Mantle of Late Wesleyan Professor's 20-Year Book Project on South African Hometown Under Apartheid" Professor of History, Emeritus Richard Elphick completed an unfinished book by his late colleague,…

On Dec. 4, This Podcast Has Fleas, a partnership between WNYC Studios and kids’ television veterans Adam Peltzman ’96 and Koyalee Chanda ’96, joined that studio’s roster of innovative audio programming and signaled its foray into children’s podcasting. This Podcast Has Fleas is six-episode scripted comedy series about a dog, Waffles (Emily Lynne), and a cat, Jones (Jay Pharoah), who live in the same house, each hosting their own competing podcasts. Additional household pets are a goldfish played by Alec Baldwin and a gerbil played by Eugene Mirman. Chanda and Peltzman, whose television credits include Blue’s Clues, Wallykazam! and the…

This year the list of Grammy nominations includes work by Gail Marowitz ’81. Founder of The Visual Strategist, a company devoted to designing for music, Marowitz is not a first-timer on the coveted list. Her work has garnered her three nominations in the Best Recording Package category, with a win in 2006. Now in the running is Marowitz’s work on Jonathan Coulton’s Solid State. Marowitz, who claims “a misspent youth, looking at albums in record stores” and sends e-mails under the name “childorock,” says that her fascination with album covers began when she was 6 and her older brother brought…

Laura R. Walker ’79, P’21, president and CEO of New York Public Radio (NYPR), has an agenda: She wants at least half of the podcasts produced to be hosted or co-hosted by women. "We're making progress," she reported at Werk It 2017, an annual festival she helped to create in 2015 to give women the tools they need to become creative forces in podcasting. Walker came up with the idea after she’d read a report on this new medium and discovered that of the top 100 podcasts on iTunes, only 20 percent were hosted or co-hosted by a woman. "Podcasting…

Bobbito Garcia ’88 and DJ Stretch Armstrong are back broadcasting—just like they were in the ’90s. Except: It’s not student radio WKCR at Columbia University; it’s National Public Radio. It’s not in the 1 until 5 a.m. timeslot; it’s an audio-on-demand podcast. And the guests are not the as-yet-undiscovered hip-hop artists. In What’s Good with Stretch and Bobbito, the listener will find Garcia and Armstrong offering smart, lively conversation with trendsetters and cultural icons ranging from Chance The Rapper, to activists Linda Sarsour, to Stevie Wonder. (“The standout interview of my career,” says Garcia, “with the legend of legends.”) (more…)

Writing in a New York Times opinion piece, Joseph J. Fins ’82, M.D., The E. William Davis, Jr., M.D., Professor of Medical Ethics and the chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medicine, describes the startling case of a young woman thought to be in a vegetative state but later able to communicate through the movement of one eye. In “Brain Injury and the Civil Right We Don’t Think About," Fins says that many seemingly vegetative individuals are misdiagnosed and suffer a loss of personhood and civil rights when they do have some conscious awareness and are,…

On Sept.12 (check local listings), Public Broadcasting Service’s Frontline will broadcast Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, a new documentary by Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Life Itself) that tells the story of the only U.S. bank to be criminally charged in connection with the 2008 financial crisis. That bank is Abacus Federal Savings Bank, located in New York City’s Chinatown and founded in 1984 by Thomas Sung, an immigration lawyer and an immigrant himself, who saw the need for this within the insular community. Sung and his wife are the parents of four daughters—three lawyers and one medical doctor—including two affiliated with…

Laura Walker ’79, P'21, president and CEO of New York Public Radio, was named to Crain’s Most Powerful Women list for 2017. “Presiding over the largest public radio station group in the U.S., Laura Walker reaches 26 million listeners every month through the eight stations in her WNYC portfolio,” Crain’s Matthew Flamm wrote. “Dependent on grants and listener contributions—Walker has grown revenue by 68% over the past decade—WNYC has the freedom to explore sensitive issues on air and on demand.” (more…)

This March, Jon Berk ’72 began selling off his collection of comicbooks and comic art. It is no ordinary collection: The Jon Berk Art and Comic Collection, as it is known, consists of more than 18,000 items that span the history of comics in America. And it is no ordinary sale—ComicConnect is handing the sale, with the auction preview at the Metropolis Gallery in New York City until June 2nd, with online auctions offered in five sessions from June 12 though 16. Asked how he began collecting comics, Berk notes that "collecting" is much different from "reading and acquiring," which is…

Liseo, Hardigg ’90 Share WESU Connection Spanning 3 Decades

Mastrogiovanni ’79, Lala Pettibone and the Writing While Female Tour

Ganbarg ’88 Co-Produces Another Grammy Nominee with Dear Evan Hansen

Wesleyan in the News

Chanda ’96, Peltzman ’96 Podcast With WNYC Studios Has Fleas

Artist/Designer Marowitz ’81 Rocks A Grammy Nomination with Best Recording Package

WNYC’s Walker ’79 P’21 at Werk It: ‘Lean In to Podcasting’

Garcia ’88 Joins NPR with Weekly Podcast: What’s Good with Stretch and Bobbito

Fins ’82 on Civil Rights for Those With Brain Injuries: NYT Op-Ed

Sung ’90 Reflects on Fighting Injustice in New Documentary

Walker ’79, P’21, WNYC CEO, Named to Crain’s Most Powerful Women List

Berk ’72 Puts Rare Comic and Art Collection Up for Auction