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Trippin' on the Shoestring Podcast

Ep 16: “I Have Space in My Life”: Remembering the era of COVID spending with Michael Hanson and Lin Gen

Valley residents discuss the impact of government spending during the early Covid-19 pandemic, who was left out of that spending, and how locals organized around it.


As a follow up to our written series, The Long March 2020, editor Brian Zayatz speaks with Hadley musician Michael Hanson about the ways stimulus checks and expanded unemployment impacted both of their lives in 2020 and 2021. In the second part of the episode, Zayatz speaks with Lin Gen, an organizer with the Franklin County People’s Fund, which helped redistribute stimulus checks to those who were excluded from eligibility. Unfortunately, audio from Carolina Peña, a fellow organizer at the People’s Fund, was lost to technical difficulties.

Listen to the episode on Apple, Spotify, and Spreaker. Find our podcast page on Castbox, Deezer, Podchaser, or JioSavvn.


The Shoestring is an independent local news outlet serving Western Massachusetts. In our podcast Trippin’ on the Shoestring, we discuss recently published articles and happenings about the region.

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