Andrea Bernstein appears in the following:
Apparently EVERYONE Does it Better!
Monday, August 24, 2009
Veteran foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, T.R. Reid traveled the world to compare the health care systems of rich democracies to the United States. He ...
Welcome to New York. Enjoy the Oysters
Thursday, August 20, 2009
New York City is the former oyster capitol of the world. There was a time when New York Harbor had over 350 square miles of oyster beds, half of the world supply. Street-side oyster vendors were as popular as hot dog carts are today. Local oysters were a delicious treat, they cleaned the waterways and they bolstered aquatic wildlife. But oysters have since disappeared from New York Harbor, mostly because of human intervention. Now, there are new efforts to reintroduce them in Jamaica Bay.
Mark Kurlansky, the author of The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, and Jeffrey Levinton, distinguished professor of ecology and evolution at SUNY Stony Brook, visit The Brian Lehrer Show to talk about the history of oysters in New York Harbor, and plans to reintroduce them.
Listen to the whole show:
Andrea Bernstein: Let's start with a history. I'm very intrigued by this idea of oysters being sold like hot dogs.
Mark Kurlansky: Well, oysters are an animal that lives in brackish water, which is water that's saltier than fresh water but not as salty as the sea. Estuaries of rivers, places where fresh water dumps into sea water are the ideal climate. New Yorkers too easily forget that the five boroughs of New York City are at the magnificent estuary of the Hudson River and the estuary used to be full of oysters.
That means the East River and the Hudson and out in the harbor around Staten Island and Liberty Island and Ellis Island, which used to be called Big and Little Oyster Island. The coast of the Bronx, back when the Bronx had a non-industrial coast, and the Brooklyn coast into Queens and Jamaica...it was all full of oysters. There was this tremendous natural resource that was identified with New York so that, for centuries, if somebody said they were going to New York City, the typical response was 'Enjoy the oysters!' They were sold everywhere.
Bernstein: Until when?
Kurlansky: Until 1927 when the last bed was closed. A process began in the 1880's when they started understanding about germs. There were chronic epidemics in New York history and they never really understood the cause of them. Everybody sort of assumed that it must be caused by foreigners and immigration and poverty. Then they started understanding what really caused things like cholera and developed the ability to trace them. They kept tracing them to oyster beds. One by one, with each disease outbreak, a bed was closed. The last bed, which was in Raritan Bay between Staten Island and New Jersey, was closed in 1927. Then it was over.
Egyptian President to White House Today
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
From "The Hammer" to The Hustle
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Testing the First Amendment Online
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Dancing with the Stars with Andy Borowitz
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Elderly on Health Care Reform
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Political Effects of the Health Care Debate
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Schools Gear up for Swine Flu Season
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Monitoring Afghan Elections
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
How Do You Spell Recovery?
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Supreme Court Steps In
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Translating the Health Care Debate
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Improving Troops' Mental Resiliency
Monday, August 17, 2009
Bronx Tops in Poverty and Unemployment, 14th in Stimulus
Monday, August 10, 2009
Bronx Tops in Poverty and Unemployment, 14th in Stimulus
Monday, August 10, 2009
New York, NY —
Under the federal stimulus bill, areas suffering economic distress are supposed to get the most help. But while Bronx County has the highest unemployment and the most poverty in New York, 13 other counties are getting more stimulus funding per capita. That’s according to the ...
Velib? Ici?
Monday, August 03, 2009
If you've been to Paris, or Rio, or Barcelona, you might have noticed denizens swiping cards, getting bikes, and tooling merrily through the streets until they leave their bike where they're going. A Zipcar, but for bikes, and no reservation necessary. Such systems have long been the apple of Transportation ...
NYC Welcomes Paris-Style Bike Share
Monday, August 03, 2009
New York, NY —
New York City Transportation officials are looking at bringing a Paris-style bike share system to New York, and for the next three Saturdays, New Yorkers will have a chance to try it out.
In Paris, Montreal, and Barcelona, residents and tourists alike can swipe a card, ...
Millions of Passengers Manage to Find the AirTrain
Saturday, August 01, 2009
New York, NY —
Now that it's August and summer travel season is kicking into high gear, more and more people are taking the AirTrain. It connects JFK airport to the New York City subway system and the Long Island railroad. As WNYC’s Andrea Bernstein reports, five years after ...
Deciphering the AirTrain
Friday, July 31, 2009
As July slips into August and summer travel season kicks into high gear, more and more passengers are taking the AirTrain. It connects JFK airport to the New York City subway system and the Long Island railroad. Five years after its inception, the AirTrain has drawn five million passengers a year, despite confusing signage, insufficient information, and a bumpy transfer into New York’s transit system.
It starts, or maybe doesn’t, when you get off the plane.
Bernstein: "The AirTrain."
Passenger: "I don’t know what it is."
At the Delta airlines terminal at JFK, information is hard to come by.
Woman: "I’d take the AirTrain but I don’t know anything about it. I don’t think they do a good job of getting out the information. Where is the information about the AirTrain?"
That the AirTrain exists at all is a bit of a political miracle. About 15 years ago, Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to kill it because it didn’t meet his vision – a non-stop train from the airport to Manhattan. But Governor George Pataki pushed it through. The result is essentially a shuttle from JFK that links passengers to the New York City subway system and the Long Island railroad.
The trains are clean, the seats are wide, the views are cool. This speechwriter from Los Angeles, was pleasantly surprised.
Man: "It was very easy. Not a problem. And I’m very bad at public transportation."
It’s also WAY cheaper than the other options.
Man: "I think it’s great. It’s either this or pay $45 for a cab to Manhattan and back."
But to get on it – you have to study up, like this PhD from Estonia, traveling with five friends.
Estonians: "To Manhattan? Brooklyn, Queens no."
The problem? There are two possibilities: They can connect to the A train at Howard Beach, or the E, J, or Long Island Railroad at Jamaica.
Bernstein: "Did you figure it out?"
Estonians: "No, we didn’t figure it out…but we will."
And after a few more minutes, they do.
Estonians: "Jamaica train! Ja, Jamaica!"
Signage is both art and science. Ask Sue Labouvie is the head of the design firm Studio L’Image. She’s working on a project in San Francisco to use signs to help people transfer from one transit system to another. So I asked her to evaluate the signage at the JFK AirTrain. She has a mantra.
Labouvie: "Integrated. I can’t help but stress the word integrated, so people feel even though they have to go on different modes, they feel they can find their way and its going to be a smooth transparent thing."
As we take the escalator up to the AirTrain platform, we’re disgorged into minimalist space with the feeling of an empty art gallery.
Labouvie: "This is an area, that I even being in signage, I am always confused."