The Brian Lehrer Show

On the Brian Lehrer Show, NYC Department of Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty discussed this winter's abundant snow and ice, and his department's work to keep the streets clear and the garbage from piling up. Doherty acknowledged that the priority has shifted from snow removal to trash pickup, and cited Brooklyn and Eastern Queens as particular areas of focus, with crews being shifted from other parts of the city to get waste removal back on schedule by the end of the week. As for Alternate Side Parking, Doherty said that the decision to suspend ASP for much of the week meant that workers who would normally be issuing tickets could be used for cleanup. That said, he had a clear message to those who are parked in Monday and Tuesday spots: "They better start thinking about how they are going to dig out their cars."   In the studio: @NYCSanitation Commissioner John Doherty. pic.twitter.com/Z4hw9w1ySZ — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) February 20, 2014 "From the curb out is our responsibility" says Doherty about those slushy corners. Home and store owners responsible for their sidewalks. — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) February 20, 2014 Anyone else's block look like this? pic.twitter.com/0Zr0vmBmhq — Jody Avirgan (@jodyavirgan) February 19, 2014   @BrianLehrer @jodyavirgan if you look at that pic how are the sanitation workers supposed to get that garbage no path to walk thru there!? — john g (@Primo0311) February 19, 2014 @BrianLehrer yes. Why didn't we get notice that they were finally coming to pick up recycling last Sunday? We could have dug it out! — Ainslie Binder (@ainslieann) February 20, 2014 // Post by Brian Lehrer.

New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney is calling for a 'Sandy Bill of Rights' to bring transparency to recovery and aid programs. He discusses his recently-introduced legislation as well as his 'Bill of Rights' tour stopping in some of the hardest hit areas in New Jersey.

WNYC reporter Ilya Marritz explains why some people's Con Ed bills are much higher than they were at this time last year, and what the frigid temperatures have to do with it. // Post by Brian Lehrer.

New Jersey Public Radio reporter Matt Katz and managing editor, Nancy Solomon cover the latest in the investigations into the lane closures in Fort Lee as the Bridgegate scandal is now in its sixth week.

Do you say, "Where are you from?" or "Where do you live?" or "What's your church?" Deborah Fallows, correspondent for The Atlantic, talks about the regional differences in the greetings we give, and what they say about us.   We asked listeners: What conversational clues do you use to find out useful information about people you’ve just met? What do WNYC listeners ask a new acquaintance right after they say hello? A Sampling of Those Second Questions  Staten Island Suggested by John “Where’d your parents come from?” Manhattan Suggested by Leanne “Are you from New York originally?” Yonkers Suggested by John “What do you use, Mac or PC?” John is a software programmer, and says that’s a trick question – you’re supposed to respond Linux! San Diego Suggested by Alba “What do you do?” This refers to your hobbies, not your profession. And our own Anna Sale, who is from West Virginia, said the question for any outsider encountered in her home state was always a perplexed “why are you here?” 

Dr. Eli J Finkel, professor of psychology and professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University discusses his piece in The New York Times which argues marriage today isn't better or worse than ever before - it's both. He also explains the widening gap between marriages that succeed and marriages that fail.

Mara Liasson, NPR national politics correspondent, discusses the latest news out of Washington, previews the 2014 races to watch, and calculates how Democrats and Republicans are going to position themselves on immigration, inequality, and more.

Every year, the Brian Lehrer Show interviews the filmmakers behind the Oscar-nominated full-length documentaries. We've compiled all five of them in one podcast for listening and download above. Here's a guide if you want to skip ahead: 1) Cutie and the Boxer 2) The Square (starts at 19:20) 3) 20 Feet from Stardom (starts at 49:50) 4) Dirty Wars (starts at 1:07:15) 5) The Act of Killing (starts at 1:31:30) And below, stream each individual interview, alongside the film's trailer. Cutie and the Boxer   The Square   Dirty Wars   The Act of Killing   20 Feet from Stardom

Long hours, a little bit of moral ambiguity, and Excel spreadsheets -- always Excel spreadsheets. Kevin Roose, New York Magazine columnist and author of Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits, reports on the new generation of Wall Streeters - the bankers who were recruited after the 2008 crash - and how the industry's morals have changed since the financial collapse.   Excerpt: Two Chapters from Kevin Roose's Young Money Chapter 1 Arjun Khan straightened his tie, brushed a lint ball off the charcoal gray suit he'd bought for $179 at Lord and Taylor to wear to his high school graduation, gave his hair a final pat, inspected his teeth for food in the bathroom mirror, and bounded out the door of his apartment and into the elevator of his downtown high-rise. A confident, bright-eyed twenty-two-year-old with an aquiline nose and a slight belly paunch, Arjun was on his way to his first day of work as a mergers and acquisitions analyst at Citigroup. His neck muscles were tense and his stomach was turning over, but those were just surface nerves. Mostly, he was filled with the flinty resolve of the newly emboldened. After thousands of hours of preparation, dozens of interviews and expertly crafted e-mails, and one extremely lucky break, he had finally become a junior investment banker at a major Wall Street firm — the job he'd been chasing for years. Nine months earlier, Arjun's plans had been derailed by the financial crisis. The Queens-born son of a data engineer father and a social worker mother who had both emigrated from India to New York as young professionals, he headed into the fall of his senior year with a prestigious job offer at one of the best banks on Wall Street: Lehman Brothers. Arjun felt lucky to have gotten Lehman's attention in the first place. He attended Fordham University, a Jesuit school in the Bronx that, while strong academically, wasn't among Wall Street's so-called target schools, a group that generally included the Ivies, plus schools like Stanford, New York University, Duke, and the University of Chicago. That meant he had to work harder to get his foot in the door — joining the Finance Society at Fordham, attending lectures at Columbia Business School, spending his free time watching CNBC to pick up the cadence of the investor class. And his strategy worked. He secured a junior-year internship at Lehman, and he did well enough that at the end of the summer, he was offered a fulltime job beginning after his graduation. His recruiter told him, sotto voce, that he had been the only Fordham student to get an offer from Lehman that year. During Arjun's internship, things began to go south. Ever since the Bear Stearns collapse earlier that year, industry watchers had been speculating that Lehman would be the next bank to fail. The firm's stock price had tumbled, thousands of workers had gotten laid off, and one well-regarded hedge fund manager jolted Wall Street that summer by proclaiming that Lehman wasn't properly accounting for its real estate investments. Still, Arjun assumed that Lehman would be fine. He was wrong, of course. In September 2008, while Arjun was starting his senior year at Fordham, Lehman filed for bankruptcy. (Most of its U.S. operations were bought several weeks later by Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of the large British firm.) The same day, Merrill Lynch, which had also been pummeled by the housing collapse, announced it was selling itself to Bank of America for $50 billion. AIG, an insurer weighed down by towering piles of credit default swaps, had to be given a massive $182 billion bailout, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last freestanding American investment banks, turned themselves into bank holding companies in order to give themselves better access to the Federal Reserve's emergency lending window. Congress passed a $700 billion bailout package that gave a lifeline to banks and kept the markets afloat, and the entire coun

Brian Greene, co-founder of the World Science Festival and professor of mathematics and physics at Columbia University, talks about his new website, WorldScienceU, which is attempting to bring science education to the masses.

David Carr, media columnist and culture reporter for the New York Times, discusses Comcast's acquisition of Time Warner Cable and what it means for regular t.v. watchers, for cord cutters, and for the industry.  

Today's show is guest-hosted by WNYC's Anna Sale. Find out more about Anna here. Inside Climate News is investigating the effect of fracking on air quality in some parts of Texas. Reporter Lisa Song details the pollution and health problems of residents in the area. Plus: Kevin Roose, New York Magazine columnist and author of “Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits,” reports on the new faces of Wall Street, plus science education is coming to the masses via the Internet.

Lisa Song, reporter for Inside Climate News, discusses her team's investigative reporting on the connection between toxic air pollution and people getting sick around fracking sites in Texas.

A call-in segment with your descriptions of a warm day (remember those?) on this chilly Monday. Tell us about a really warm memory. Remember that feeling of taking your shoes off and walking barefoot on fresh green grass? Remember how it smells on the beach, that mixture of sunscreen and salty air? Tell us what a grill sounds like on the 4th of July. Let’s remember a warmer time. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Describe what it feels, sounds and smells like when it's actually hot out. // Post by Brian Lehrer.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, gives an update on the UFT's positions on teacher contract negotiations, charter schools and weather-related school closings.