Ben Nadeff-Haffrey
speaker
1,009 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 6 Aug
Ben Nadeff-Haffrey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Figure out a new story we can tell that makes this whole place make sense again.
That remembers all of it and everyone.
And so now in closing, let me share with you just one last excellent Staten Island fact.
One day, decades after Woody Guthrie died, his daughter Nora got a call.
It was her father's manager.
This Land is Your Land is basically the unofficial national anthem.
Nora discovered that her dad had written it soon after he first arrived in New York in 1940.
That is the crucial lyric, the very first couplet.
This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York Island.
But looking at that page of his notebook, Nora realized that's not the line he originally wrote.
The most crucial part of the first draft of probably the most famous song in American history goes from California to the Staten Island.
And then he crossed it out and wrote another version, the one we all know.
Word of this got out in the 1990s, around the time of secession.
Staten Islanders, they love a petition and hate being forgotten.
And honestly, who doesn't?
So since the New York State Legislature decided they weren't going to let Staten Island go its own way, I think it's the least we can do to put them back in the songs.
I asked my friend Sam Lewis in Nashville to record it for us.
The Staten Island Problem is written and reported by me, Ben Nadeff-Haffrey.
It was produced by Lucy Sullivan with Nina Byrd-Lawrence.
Our editor is Karen Shikurji.
Showing 241–260 of 1,009 · page 13 of 51
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