What A Week!

Become a Paid Subscriber: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/what-a-week-podcast/subscribe What A Week! is a weekly podcast recorded in Northeastern Pennsylvania focusing on local, national, and personal topics with a wide range of guests.

What A Week! is a society podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 71 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts What A Week!, a society show with 71 episodes published.

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  What A Week!

  Ep. 112: Jessica from PCIC – Informed Consent, School Exemptions & the Fight in Harrisburg

  Sep 18, 20262h 3m

  Jessica from the Pennsylvania Coalition for Informed Consent sits down on What A Week! and does not start with a slogan. She starts with a kid who was always sick. She grew up fully vaccinated. Allergies, sinus infections, a list of antibiotics that made her break out in hives, sinus surgery at ten. Three miscarriages by 25. Pregnant with her oldest, her doctor said get the flu shot or the baby could die — and that was the entire briefing. Her husband, also in healthcare, sat her down with a documentary. They selectively vaccinated: Hib, DTaP, polio. Six to eight doses. She says she regrets it. There was no overnight “change.” There were little things, a child who wasn’t talking, a year waiting on a diagnosis, then autism, a severe speech delay, ADHD. Pediatricians who told her to give Tylenol before the appointment. Practices that kick families out. Parents who used to hide on secret message boards. Mark and Jessica go from that kitchen-table story into the machinery around it: the 2014 Disneyland measles outbreak and the nationwide push to kill religious exemptions, why PCIC formed in 2015, what COVID dragged into the open, pharma ad dollars on cable news, MTHFR and folic acid in the food supply, school lunches that are Pop-Tarts while kitchens sit empty, a mom who taught middle school for 23 years and watched an autism classroom explode, and two years of pulling her kids into a cyber charter rather than send an autistic son back into that. Under all of it is the same test: informed consent only counts if you can say no and still keep the pediatrician, the job, and the school. Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw53ujAi8LA Pennsylvania Coalition for Informed Consent (PCIC) PCIC is a volunteer, nonpartisan grassroots group founded in 2015. Jessica is legislative director and a state director. They are not a political party and they are not an “anti-vax” PAC — they say they are neither for nor against vaccination. The mission is to preserve informed consent and transparency in health decisions, including medical procedures, data privacy, food, soil, water, and air, and to hold Pennsylvania legislators to that duty. Chapters, volunteers, and advocates meet legislators in Harrisburg about once a month. Website: https://informedconsentpa.org Join / volunteer: https://informedconsentpa.org/join Email: InformedConsent2015@gmail.com Donate: https://informedconsentpa.org/donate #WhatAWeek #PCIC #InformedConsent #Pennsylvania #NEPA #WhatAWeekPodcast

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  Episode #111

  Ep. 111: Rik Little – Xerox, Belushi, NYU Film, Eviction & Why Scranton Feels Broken

  Sep 11, 20262h 53mS2

  In Episode 111 of What A Week! , Rik Little sits down for a long, looping conversation that starts in Wheaton, Illinois and ends in a Scranton housing fight. Born in Dallas and raised outside Chicago — Billy Graham’s town, Goldwater signs in the yard, his father on city council and selling Haloid machines before they became Xerox — Rik talks about growing up inside “the rectangle.” TV, Twilight Zone, the feeling of watching his own life from outside his body. He went to school with the Belushis, later picked John Belushi up in a New York cab after John Lennon was shot, and spent the night driving him around the city. Then NYU film school. First in his class, master’s in 1980, still driving a cab. Lower East Side apartments, burned-out buildings, music recorded on a Pro Walkman, and the synchronicities he still cannot shake. The second half is Scranton. Broken families, education, the constitution, Lake Scranton history, media that never stops lying, and the eviction that came after a fair-housing process he says was designed so you miss the deadline. Rik does not tidy any of it up. Memory, media, housing, and a city that still will not answer.

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  Episode #110

  Ep. 110: Chef Von & Marcus Moody – Coming Home, Food, Race in Scranton, and No Filter

  Aug 31, 20263h 2mS2

  Chef Ryan “Von” Smith is back on What A Week! with cousin Marcus Moody. They eat, talk trash, and then go where a chef interview usually will not. This episode is about coming home after you’ve already seen the rest of the world, growing up Black in Scranton, East Side versus West Side, family history that does not make the brochure, and why Von still will not pretend the city is easy just because he built a restaurant here. Next Level Chef is in the mix. So are God, church, slurs, old-school discipline, and the midlife mess of being back.

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  Episode #109

  Ep. 109: Dr. William Dempsey– Family Medicine, Faith, Fatherhood & Healing NEPA from the Front Lines

  Aug 14, 20261h 52mS2

  In Episode 109 of What A Week!, longtime Northeast Pennsylvania family physician Dr. William Dempsey sits down for a wide-ranging conversation on medicine, family, and community. A University of Scranton grad and board-certified family doctor with more than four decades of experience, Dempsey serves as medical director of The Wright Center’s Clarks Summit practice and chief population health value-based care officer. He’s also a Pennsylvania Medical Society trustee, educator in the family medicine residency, and a physician who’s treated everything from everyday primary care to substance use disorder. Mark and Dr. Dempsey dig into the realities of practicing medicine in NEPA, the challenges of whole-person care, the opioid crisis, what it means to raise a large family while serving patients, and the deeper questions of faith, purpose, and healing that run through both medicine and life. Honest, grounded, and full of local insight.A strong episode for anyone who cares about healthcare, family, and Northeast Pennsylvania.

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  Episode #108

  Ep. 108: Across the Aisle in Scranton – Chris Kelly on Data Centers & Common Ground

  Jul 31, 20262h 38mS2

  Chris Kelly and I don’t see the world the same way. We’ve been on opposite sides of more than a few issues over the years. That’s exactly why this conversation needed to happen.In a country (and a region) that keeps hardening into tribes, too many people have stopped talking to anyone who doesn’t already agree with them. This episode is a deliberate refusal of that habit.Chris Kelly, longtime columnist and muckraker at the Scranton Times-Tribune, sits down with me to talk about the data center explosion hitting Northeastern Pennsylvania — the land, the power, the water, the noise, the political pressure, and the people who feel like they’re watching their home get auctioned off in real time.We don’t land in the same place on every point. But we do share something more important: a deep concern for this place and the people who actually live here.This episode isn’t about winning an argument. It’s about modeling something that’s becoming rare — two people from different corners of the ideological map sitting down, talking straight, and looking for the ground they still share.Because if we can’t do that, we’re finished.

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