Earlier this year, the consumer advocate, public-interest lawyer, and (still controversial) former presidential candidate Ralph Nader turned ninety years old. In this Berkshire Argus Podcast conversation, we discuss the American Museum of Tort Law that he established in his hometown of Winsted, Connecticut, his faith in the jury system, and his bel…

In this episode of the Berkshire Argus podcast, Bill Shein speaks with Matt Tannenbaum, proprietor—since 1976—of The Bookstore in Lenox, Massachusetts, and subject of the 2022 documentary, “Hello, Bookstore.” Tannenbaum recalls learning the book trade as a stock boy at the storied Gotham Book Mart in midtown Manhattan and working for a book distrib…

There’s no discussion of the economic future of the southern Berkshires that doesn’t have the cost and availability of housing at its center. Trends well underway in the last decade were accelerated by the COVID19 pandemic: The cost of houses to buy or rent has skyrocketed, fueled by an increase in properties acquired by part-time residents and oth…

Is it possible to have a thoughtful, constructive conversation about important issues, including politics, in a social media comment thread? About any issue? In 2016, Jon Rosen, fresh off his Ph.D. studies in philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, started a Facebook discussion group called Fair Game, where members engage in conversa…

When residents of Great Barrington, Massachusetts learned that a movie theater central to their community’s cultural life and a key component of their downtown economy might close for good, they quickly organized to find a way to save it. In just a few months, volunteers formed a nonprofit, raised $800,000, and purchased the theater. They’re now ma…

When news headlines refer to “the Housatonic River clean-up,” some assume that the GE-funded and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-approved remediation work will remove all PCB contamination and return the river to a safe, healthy state. But as Bob Jones, chair of the Select Board in the Town of Lee, Massachusetts, explains in this podcast…

With available and affordable housing remaining a top regional and national issue, last week I had a wide-ranging conversation with Patrick White, a member of the Stockbridge Select Board. White was recently re-elected overwhelmingly to his second three-year term on the board, where he has made housing proposals central. More than half of the homes…