Note: The first episode shown during the First Quarter 2026 was a rerun of #335 on December 22, 2025.
Episode #1040: Rearview Mirror
First Broadcast: 12/29/25
The year 2025 is almost up, and we spent this episode going over some of the various topics Free New York covered in that time, starting with the death of former President Jimmy Carter way back in December of 2024 (yes, it was a different year, I know, don't @ me). We also talked about the death of director David Lynch; President Trump's war of words with an Episcopal bishop; the price of eggs; the chaos of Trump's tariffs; the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live; a baffling tribute to James Bond at the Oscars; the Trump administration's open hostility towards anyone who isn't from here (however you want to define it); technology that makes a dubbed movie look like it's not dubbed; Trump's speculations on how he could run for a third term (spoiler alert: he can't); Eric Adams' doomed re-election campaign for mayor; a union victory for striking workers at the Alamo Drafthouse; and the seeming trend of electoral victories around the world going to whoever opposes Trump the most (which, hopefully, bodes well for 2026), for starters! And we're still not done! Tune in for the second half of our round-up next week... if there is a next week...
Episode #1041: A Cracker Barrrel and an IHOP
First Broadcast: 1/5/26
Free New York continues its wrap-up of 2025 with our recap of the second half of the year in this episode, starting with President Trump's anticlimactic military parade on June 14, which was thankfully outnumbered by all the "No Kings" protestors around the country on the same day. We continue with Trump's bombing of Iran; Zohran Mamdani's victory in the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City; Andrew Cuomo's refusal to take "no" for an answer as he continued his own mayoral campaign after losing the primary; the summer movies of 2025 that we liked (and disliked); Cuomo's really bad proposal to make New Yorkers even more rent burdened than they already are; an in-depth look at the movie Caught Stealing and the late 1990s environment it depicted; the horrors of A.I. podcasting; the end of Mayor Eric Adams' re-election campaign, and the time one of his campaign workers handed a reporter an envelope full of money hidden inside a bag of potato chips; the demise of Morgenstern's Finest Ice Cream Parlor and many other businesses that have come and gone in the city; the startling statistic that 42% of respondents to a particular survey did not know that POTATO CHIPS were made of POTATOES; the "No Kings" protests of October 18, which surpassed the number of people who turned out for the protests in June; Zohran Mamdani's unequivocal victory in the mayoral election, and right-wing meltdowns in response to it; how A.I. is more abysmal than even the lowest-level employees at the simplest tasks; and how the new citizenship test--along with so many other things--seems designed to reduce the number of new citizens we have in this country, and probably for the most racist of reasons. Quite a year, wasn't it? The only question is whether 2026 will have me reaching for antacid more or less often than the year that just ended, and I don't want to make any predictions, but maybe I should invest in calcium futures now...