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(Airs 03/13/26 @ 3 p.m. & 03/15/26 @ 6 p.m.) The Media Project is an inside look at media coverage of current events with former Times Union Editor, current Upstate American, Substack columnist Rex Smith, Judy Patrick, former Editor of The Daily Gazette and former Vice President for Editorial Development for the New York Press Association, and Barbara Lombardo, Adjunct Professor at the University at Albany and former Editor of The Saratogian. On this week’s Media Project, Rex, Judy and Barbara talk about coverage of the war in Iran, whether the police blotter is still useful to communities, and much more.

On Sunday night, Match 22, the strange planet Uranus will float to the left of the crescent Moon. Here’s where the fun begins. Uranus is green because its atmosphere has lots of methane, which absorbs the sun’s red light but reflects the green and blue to our eyes.Grab those binoculars you haven’t used in years and sweep them leftward of the Moon until you see a little green star. Since actual stars are never green, you’ll know you’ve found the seventh planet.

Playlist as aired on March 21st, 2026

Kudzu, originally native to Japan, is known as "the vine that ate the South." The federal government began paying farmers $8 an acre in the 1930s to plant it across the south because it was touted to revitalize the soil. It actually worked, but ultimately kudzu grew out of control, spreading nearly a foot a day and rooting wherever it touched. Along with its super-high growth rate, it had no natural enemies in the region. The government only stopped paying farmers to grow kudzu in 1953 and the Department of Agriculture finally declared it to be a weed in 1970.

Microplastics are pretty much everywhere on Earth. They have been found in ocean water, wildlife, and even in the human body. Ocean currents carry these tiny fragments far from where they are produced, meaning even remote places are not immune to plastic pollution.

(Airs 03/20/26 @ 10 p.m.) The Legislative Gazette is a weekly program about New York State Government and politics. On this week’s Gazette: There’s an effort underway in Albany to close a sex trafficking loophole, we’ll learn more about the birth of New York state, and The Adirondack Park Agency is another step closer to moving its headquarters.

Henry David Thoreau is a lot of things: a father of nature writing in 19th century America; a radical thinker who challenged societal norms; the subject of homework assignments for bored 21st century high school students.The transcendentalist’s legacy is the subject of a new three-part documentary. We’ll speak with the filmmakers behind the project.

Best-Selling Author Anna Quindlen’s latest novel, ‘More Than Enough,’ centers on Polly Goodman, a high-school English teacher whose closest confidants are the women in her book club. When the group jokingly gives Polly a DNA ancestry test, the results uncover an unexpected family connection that raises new questions about her past.

Mining tailings are the waste byproduct of mining, consisting of ground rock, water, and processing chemicals that remain after extracting valuable minerals. They have been disposed of for thousands of years, but the industrial mining in the late 19th and 20th centuries is responsible for most of what occupies large, engineered dams. Estimates are that there are over 8,000 active and inactive tailings facilities storing nearly 220 billion cubic meters of material. They pose many environmental dangers, some catastrophic in nature.

In sci-fi movies, a nerdy scientist might transport himself to another dimension. In popular fiction, to qualify as another dimension means a realm must be something beyond the four dimensions of everyday reality, and thus be totally inaccessible, like public restrooms in New York. But might they really exist?