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Northeast Notebook Live
WAMC’s Northeast Notebook Live brings listeners inside the conversations of the region. Each day, the hour-long show airing online and on-air will feature a deep dive into an issue that matters most, as well as analysis of the headlines and additional interviews with newsmakers and journalists to provide a broad overlook of what matters most. The show will feature reporting by WAMC journalists, and highlight the vital work local journalists do to inform their communities. Northeast Notebook Live will regularly feature reporting by the Albany Times Union, the Berkshire Eagle, and the Adirondack Explorer thanks to a formal partnership with WAMC that’s meant to explore the region’s news with breadth, depth and context.

Northeast Notebook 10/20/26: Rising heating oil costs, Massachusetts rail expansion and retail cannabis

WAMC Northeast Public Radio | By Sam Dingman
Published October 20, 2026 at 5:30 PM EDT
Ron Fonda's woodstove
Molly Anderson
Ron Fonda's woodstove

With fuel prices skyrocketing just as Northeast homeowners are having to heat their homes, some are turning to an old-fashioned heat source: wood.

Also this hour...

  • After a racist video circulates at an upstate New York high school, the administration's response draws scrutiny.
  • A company seeking a permit to test howitzers in the Adirondack Park faces a setback.
  • As the legal sagas at Levon Helm Studios drag on, the calendar of upcoming shows is essentially empty.
  • Officials in Massachusetts are celebrating new funding for a long-awaited rail line that will make it easier to commute between the Commonwealth and upstate New York.
  • But elsewhere in the Commonwealth, retail cannabis dispensaries are warily watching polls on a ballot question that would eliminate them.

All that and more on this October 20th edition of "Northeast Notebook."
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Sam Dingman
Sam Dingman is WAMC’s Hudson/Catskill Bureau Chief. Previously, he was co-host and reporter at “The Show” on KJZZ, Phoenix’s NPR station. Prior to KJZZ, Dingman was the creator and host of the acclaimed podcast “Family Ghosts,” which has been hailed as a critic’s choice by NPR, the LA Times and the New York Times. Dingman also co-hosted the BlueWire original series “The Rumor,” which was featured in the Washington Post and New York Magazine, and was a Webby honoree for Best Podcast Writing. He was story editor for Lemonada Media’s Signal Award-winning series “Pack One Bag,” writer and showrunner for John Stamos’s Webby-winning podcast “The Grand Scheme: Snatching Sinatra,” editor of Karina Longworth’s “You Must Remember This,” and a producer for WNYC’s Peabody-winning “On the Media.” He is a four-time winner of the Moth Grand and Story Slams, and has created, written, hosted, produced and edited podcasts for The Atlantic, Audible Originals, Gilded Audio, Gimlet Media, Lincoln Center, Panoply Media, Paramount Pictures, Pushkin Industries, Spotify, Slate, Stitcher, and Wondery.
See stories by Sam Dingman