Whitlockville: A Katonah Podcast Knopke, Johnson, Becker

There's a mystery in Katonah and we bring on private investigator Brian Willingham to help us untangle the web of mystery wrapped in an enigma enveloped in a shroud of stupidity as to who sent me a Valentine's Day card from "Dave Becker." We have always wanted to do a local serial-like investigative deep dive on the pod and well, this definitely wasn't that....

We talk to Dr Bertin about children’s social and emotional struggles during the pandemic. Ahead of that terrific interview, Dave, Craig and I talk about shoveling snow, the best places to sled in the area and how I didn’t get the CEO role at Amazon despite not having any qualifications or even applying for the role.

Because I've never been more bored, we're back for one last 2020 podcast with resident tv watcher extraordinaire Jeremy Nevins joining us to talk about what we should be watching on tv. We ask the question: if Katonah were a tv show, what show would we be. We also talk about one of Dave's chickens dying while he's conveniently away and how I should dispose of it (perhaps with a Viking Funeral on Todd's Pond).

We talk with Lynn Garofolo about teaching 5th grade fully virtually across multiple klsd elementary schools, how desperate she must have been for content to have invited us “in” to speak to her class about the podcast and what grade she gave us for our interview of her. At the beginning of the pod, well, we got to talking about colonoscopies, snow storm survival kits, break dancing in the Olympics and Weird Al (again).

An interview with Katonah Halloween star Creepy Pete, also known as Peter Linz, a true star of the stage, screen and as a puppeteer, hand. We discuss Peter’s amazing 29 year career as a puppeteer on Sesame Street, his performance as Walter in The Muppets, his stint as an original cast member in Avenue Q and how much candy he gives out during Halloween. At the top of the pod, Craig and I talk about reimagining the game Clue for Covid times, while doing one of our fun deep dives on the origin of the game. Finally, we scroll through the top 10 albums of Rolling Stone’s Top 500 album list. Sadly, none of the artists are from Katonah.

We have a great conversation with Ed Baum, Editor-In-Chief of The Record-Review.  We discuss the history of the paper, the need for local journalism, journalism under fire and whether or not The Record-Review would want to buy our podcast (after listening to the rest of the podcast, I'm guessing no).  Our banter at the beginning of the pod includes way too much Weird Al Yankovic (best not to ask why) and I finally unmute Craig after leaving him hanging for the last couple of episodes.