The Fabulous 413

Today is about gathering together and enjoying what the season has to give. For the United Way of Hampshire and Franklin Counties, that means gathering on a slope and tackling the powder at Berkshire east. Ski United is a multifaceted fundraiser for all that the organization does and we’ll chat with executive Director Geoff Naunheim, committee member John Ebbets about the power of community in winter. We’ll also bring folx together in Amherst in song. Calm and Candlelight is an event hosted by South Church in Amherst based on practices and chants in the style of the monks from Taizé, France and we’ll speak with Rev. Dr. Susan Cartmell and Director of Music Marilyn Brayne about the centering practice of communal singing especially in these out challenged times. And to get ready for the massive spectacle of the superb owl, Three generations of football loving Belmontes headed out this weekend to wish the pats a good journey and a good game in San Francisco, so we’ll eavesdrop as the torch of the new patriots correspondent of the past handing off to the one of the future.

Next Sunday, the Super Bowl pits the Patriots and Seahawks against each other. Perhaps even more important is that this year's halftime show will feature global superstar Bad Bunny. We speak with Clark University Professor Juan Pablo Rivera and NEPM News Editor Elizabeth Roman about the cultural significance of this occasion to the greater Hispanic community, and where you can delve even deeper into these ideas on Saturday at 33 Hawley in Northampton And next week in South Hadley, folx have a chance to get an inside glimpse into the rock world of the early 90’s. The Royal We is an intense new memoir from Faith no more and Imperial Teen member Roddy Bottum that looks at the assemblies of both bands, the scenes they came from, and the impact of his coming out towards the height of the AIDS crisis. We speak with the author before you can meet him in person at Odyssey Bookshop on Monday. Plus at Tip Top Wine Shop in Easthampton, Lauren Clark and Miranda Brown brave the cold weather and former soviet bloc to help us discover the native Georgian grape Saperavi for this week’s wine Thunderdome.

We encourage you to engage your programming chops with the Global Game Jam happening at Hampshire College. Game developers of all experience levels and ages will gather in Amherst to create games over the course of 48hrs, starting on Friday Jan. 30th, and being presented on Sunday Feb 1st. We speak with organizer Violet Henriques about the appeal of this sort of creation, and how to get involved. Then we’ll head off to Hatfield to one of the few estate wineries in the northeast who are keeping even their grapes local. Black Birch Vineyard truly leans into the fact that wine is a local farm product through their many vintages, and even in the ways they maintain their fields. Owners Michelle Kersbergen and Ian Modesto speak with us about bringing wine to western mass and some of the agricultural challenge such a venture presents. Plus our weekly chat with congressman Jim McGovern addresses the very dangerous situations in the US of increasing violent confrontations, not just ICE, and not just against elected officials, but on a global stage as well, and highlights the need for balance in the results of the upcoming midterm elections.

We head to Northampton where this year’s annual Ice Sculpting Event is taking on a contemplative tinge with the community coming together to celebrate the life of one of the artists whose absence will be felt among the produced work. Dave Rothstein was a lover of all things winter and especially where the cold season and art intersected and we’ll chat with Park Hill Orchard's Russel Braen and others about the beautiful legacy he left behind. Speaking of art on one’s own terms, we’ll also see how the DIY scene and local beloved venues are intersecting as well. Genderqueer noisepunk outfit Film And Gender are wrapping up an 8 date tour with a late night show at the Iron Horse, and we’ll talk about their new member, the intersection of community and politics, and the nuances of punk and diy scenes before you can see their electrifying set on Jan 31st. And Word Nerd Emily Brewster senior editor at Merriam Webster helps us navigate a little improvised vocabulary repair as we bring three very similar phrases concerning construction under our lexicographical microscope.

Today is all about learning. For those beginning life’s journey, we look at a local television show that’s given them a platform to challenge themselves and each other and bring the whole community together in the process. As Schools Match Wits is western Mass. grown and sustained, and has been highlighting the knowledge excellence of students in the area for 65 years. We’ll chat with executive producer Tony Dunne and host Beth Ward about the new documentary highlighting the show’s legacy in the region and beyond. Plus let you know how you can see the directors cut in a showing at our studios. And there’s also ways that all of us can learn to change the world. The Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership offers free education classes to the public so that we all can learn how better to fight the good fight for ourselves and the world we’d like to see those changes in. We speak with board member and teacher Amihan Matias about the school’s founding and her upcoming class “And Still We Rise” which focuses on BIPOC women and genderqueer folx and discover more about shifts in the ways we frame leadership that can benefit everyone.

Today amidst the snow, we give you two places in where you can learn new ways to interact with art in ways you may not have before For instance, it's not often that you get a chance to hear certain Bach works on the instruments that he originally composed them for. A new recording seeks to remedy that with modern sensibilities. The Bach Dialogues joins keyboardist of many tempers Christopher O'Riley with cellist Matt Haimovich to pair a viola di gamba with a clavichord to get as close to the original sounds of the works as possible and we speak with the pianist and former NPR host about the collaboration and interpretation. And in Greenfield, a film festival is putting the cameras in the hands of the people. Greenfield Community Television brings back its annual film festival for a sixth year, challenging filmmakers to see just how fast creativity can move.Lights! Camera! Greenfield!, the two-week film sprint and festival, kicks off on February 9th, and we speak with GCTV station manager Bella Levavi about last year's films and how they can help you to make your own.

Today is all about preparation, because we don’t know if you heard, but rumor has it that snow is a’comin’. So we bend the ear of local weather enthusiast Dave Hayes the Weather nut, to find out what this storm might entail, how much snow we’re expecting, and other meteorological phenomena that may descend upon us over the next few days. Plus we get to show you a new way to get his updates! Live music Friday brings the beat heads to bear as Unagi joins us in studio. The Dj, beatmaker and producer has created collaborations across the US, although his roots are right here in Western Mass and we’ll hear what the crowds are in store for at his show at JJ’s Tavern in Florence on Saturday Night. And the Wine Thunderdome returns to its origins and the soil as we head to the basement of State Street Fruit Store Deli Wine and Spirits to explore two red blends from the Americas with high elevations and nuanced terroirs.

Today is a bit chilly. Especially in Westfield where the community is coming together to support a local organization by jumping into incredibly cold water. The Amelia Park Children’s Museum’s Penguin Plunge happens this Saturday at Hampton Pond State Park, raising funds for the operation and growth of the facility, of which we get a tour from director Diane Chambers to see why folx are freezin’ for a reason. It’s also in the songs inspired by the growing of the light. On a Winter’s Night is a concert that brings 4 acclaimed songwriters together on one stage at the Hope Center for the Arts this evening, one of which will join us in Studio. Patty Larkin has been making insightful gossamer folk through 14 albums and myriad collaborations throughout her career and makes a stop with us for a rare Live Music Thursday. And our weekly chat with congressman Jim McGovern covers his constant concern about the operations of ICE, the ongoing Greenland debaucle, the president at Davos, and the importance of standing up and getting into good trouble right now

It is all about clean starts in this new year. In the case of education, that means sources of connection that can create long-lasting change in the lives and evolution of young students. Vilenti Tulloch is a local educator who not only is CEO of Academic Leadership Association, but has recently published a book about that work titled Engage to Excel: Building Trust, Belonging, and Success in the Middle School Years, and we’ll speak with him about the book and its respective release event this weekend at White Lion, and about the importance of those formative Middle School years. Then we’ll clean up our diets with healthy local food from our favorite local farms. Nourish Wellness Cafe has spent the past decade serving healthy local vegetarian and vegan creations to the community of western mass and this year sees them expand with a new location in the Eastworks building. We’ll talk with owner Casey Flaherty and partner Kyle Steinberg about moving into a new market and the importance of organic and local food to them and the area. And lastly we’ll clean up our language a bit as we speak with Word Nerd Emily Brewster, senior editor at Merriam-Webster about a tricky quirk of the English language that involves adjectival phrases, possession, and contractions.

It’s cold. And after a full weekend of snowfall we can’t help but think of our neighbors in the winter who are facing heat insecurity So we’ll chat with newly minted Ex. Dir of Community Action Pioneer Valley, Lev Ben Ezra, about their Eat up for Heat up fundraiser, which has a full week of local restaurants donating to the Claire Higgins Fund for Community Resilience. We hear more about who’s participating, the ongoing need in the face of unstable federal support and more. We’ll also have a look at the broader reach of American history from a whole other continent. Clark University Professor Ousmane Power-Greene joins us from Liberia to talk about the connections of the pioneer valley to the cross oceanic migrations that helped found the nation, and recent efforts to preserve, restore, and broadcast more of that history for an intercontinental edition of the Power of History. And is a galaxy naked without stars? Mr. Universe, Kainaat Studios and Hampshire College’s Salman Hameed talks with us about the first ever instance of a galaxy found without stellar trappings, and about an important shift in the trekkie-verse in an exploration of its latest show, Starfleet Academy.

A full weekend indeed. There’s a brand new theater company bringing a much lauded play to Easthampton for their first production ever. Heartbeat theater will perform the nuanced exploration of family, insight, and mental illness to the stage of City Space and we’ll talk with actor Kimberly Gaughan and director Jason Rose-Langston about both performance and process. We’ll also meet the president of our friendly local Ice Hockey team just a few blocks from our studio. The Springfield Thunderbirds are the latest in a long line of AHL hockey teams to call western mass home and we’ll sit with President Nate Costa to hear how the team and organization does much more than score goals to engage with and create community including a MLK matinee game this monday And live Music Friday brings in a boston group who have been honing their sound through under grad, to graduate school and now across new england and beyond. Almost Olive’s core songwriting duo of Jacqui Armbruster and Karl Henry make music that remains folx based, but sonicly agnostic and we’ll give you a taste of what they’ll perform tonight in North Adams at studio 9

Today, we celebrate the struggles of the past and present and top it off with art, because art is why we endure. Let’s make a sandwich of it and start with the struggle of the past, because it is Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s actual birthday today, and the rights he pursued in his life loom large right now. Starting today, there’s a whole week of activities happening throughout the city to honor those ideals he pursued. We’ll speak with MLK Family Services president Shannon Rudder about this long lasting celebration. Then we’ll head to Amherst where we’re putting cameras in the imagination of our littles at the Eric Carle Museum. Saturday sees the official opening of the exhibit Click, which looks at the ways photography has been used in children’s books for over 100 years. We’ll explore this new exhibit and learn about their amazing film festival for bigger and littler kids with curation staffer Isobel Ruiz And our first McGoverning of 2026 with congressman Jim McGovern only has a few topics to cover, like the enduring overreach of the executive Branch, especially with regards to ICE, and what options that leaves his branch of legislature, the mounting pressures of Venezuela, Iran, and Greenland, his crusade against hunger and more.

Today is about laughter, and changes in language, and how the history of each is important to us as a nation as well. We’ve got one last best of word list for 2025 to address before we can fully commit ourselves to 2026 with word nerd Emily Brewster, as we look at the most democratic nomination and choosings of the American Dialect Society. At Smith College, a history professor is offering a course this year that is part examination, part exploration, and part memoir. Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor is teaching a class on the work of her father, titled "Richard Pryor’s America", which looks at his life, innovations, influence, and her memories with him. The course precedes an forthcoming book that tackles the same. We speak with the historian and author about her personal journey to teaching this class, and the repercussions of that voyage intersecting with a certain notorious and important word.

We’re bringing color to the drab days of winter in New England with tulips, music, and aliens. The history of aliens and our curiosity about their possibility is a colorful one and we’ll speak with Mr. Universe, Kainaat Studios and Hampshire College’s Salman Hameed, about the ties between the conjectures of the late Erich von Däniken and the Apple+ tv show: Pluribus. The Springfield Symphony Orchestra is preparing to honor the memory of MLK Jr, and get folx to dance in their aisles. The program Let’s Groove Tonight brings the sounds of Detroit and Philly soul to their stage as conductor William Waldrop, soloist Cherise Coaches, and SSO president Heather Caissey Roberts show us how the orchestra gets down. And In Granby a young couple is bringing beauty to the season through a plethora of tulips. Bramble and Blooms is a brand new micro farm and flower CSA that are bringing more color to this the most bleached of seasons and we’ll speak with Lyle and Ryan Williams about the budding of this new business.

We’re back from vacation, and into more movies and books! We chat with local author and professor of creative writing at Emerson College Margot Douaihy about the brand new book in her Sister Holiday series that gets released tomorrow. Divine Ruin sees the queer almost-nun with vice and faith in equal measure thrust into the throes of the fentanyl epidemic at her school, and we’ll talk about the series’ beautifully flawed heroine, the power of faith, the mystery genre and much more before you can meet the author herself at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley on Tuesday, Jan 13th. Then it’s off to Turners falls where at the Shea Theater we got much insight to one of last year’s most intricate spectacles. Dennis Berardi, founder of the special effects company Mr. X, is the driving force behind the special effects not just of Frankenstein, but a great number of other movies and tv shows and an important part of Guillermo del Toro’s creative team. We speak with him about his history in the field, his work with del Toro especially with this rework of the Shelley classic, the nuances of making a movie look amazing, and the connections to local filmmaker and producer Bob Krzykowski that bring him to the area.

Celebrations everywhere as we careen into the last days of the year where all the holidays are all overlapping with each other. And as such, we’ll hear about the ways you can observe and connect with community for one of the newest of the season’s holidays: Kwanzaa. This year the Kwanzaa collective is already in the midst of their many celebrations and we’ll hear about the holiday’s origins, it’s lessons, and it’s importance in a land where holidays that center african diasporic community are actively being targeted. We’ll find out where the western mass Kwanzaa celebrations are happening with Ayanna Crawford and Dr. Amilcar Shabazz. Plus we’ll introduce you to not one, not two, but THREE of the acts you can catch on the very last day of the year at Northampton’s First Night Celebrations, with the synthy post rock plurality of Teen Driver, the combined forces of the jangly 90’s rock influenced Couchboy, and the straightforward rock of Daniel Hales of Frost Heaves and Hales to bring even more music into our studios.

The holidays blaze bright as we stumble into the last days of 2025. If holiday music is on your menu, we’ll show you how heading west can fill your ears with seasonal cheer. The Boston Pops are presenting a brass based holiday pops concert at Tanglewood, and the event is just a small part of a move for the grounds to host concerts year round. We’ll chat with principal musicians Mike Roylance, and Michael Winters, and Artistic Administrator for Tanglewood Learning Institute Mark Ruleison about the festivities and more. We also continue our survey of the many musicians who are playing at Northampton’s First Night by getting Bunnies into the studio. They may be the only band that includes a sitting city council member, and their sound is a fun, trippy, magnetic amalgam of storytelling and far out effects. Plus our weekly chat with congressman Jim McGovern gets a recap of his recent appearance on BBC World, the attempts to stem the tides of war in Venezuela, possible SNAP restrictions, the grim prospects of health care resolution, and after all that, his hopes for the coming new year.

We’ll start introducing you to some of the amazing performers taking stage at Northampton’s First Night Celebrations. This year over 100 musicians, actors, dancers, and more will delight folx as they ready to ring in the new year, and first on our docket is the East African centered sounds of Zikina, in yet another live music Wednesday to lift up the middle of your week. And although we know that "slop" topped Merriam Webster’s 2025 list and became word of the year, it’s just as interesting to see who was pretty close to the finish line, so we’ll chat with Word Nerd Emily Brewster about this year’s runners up for that distinction. Plus the local musical community has been rocked with the loss of Evelyn Harris, who has been a pillar of vocal music in this area for decades. We’ll talk about our experiences with her and her impact in Western Mass both in performance and practice.

It’s cold outside, but the cows are warm and we’ll head out to Ludlow to explore a farm that’s seen 5 generations of family stewardship. Bud Ellison of Ellison Farm was given a mission in his youth and he’s kept that and his cattle as local as possible, we’ll hear more about his process, and his farm’s ties to family and community. We’ll also meet Ricky McKinnie of the Blind Boys of Alabama, currently the longest tenured member of the band, who’ll talk about the group’s legacy, its advocacy, and its depth before you can see them perform holiday classics at the Hope Center for the Arts this Saturday Dec. 20. Plus just because hanging out with everyone in the holidays is fun for you doesn’t necessarily mean that it is for everyone in your life. So we welcome Janice Chaka, celebrated introvert interpreter, back to our studios to talk about her podcast and give some tips to fellow introverts, and the extroverts that love them, about surviving seasonal gatherings.

2025 is practically in hindsight which means that everyone is making lists. But dictionaries crown a top jewel of lexicon for the year, each using a different method to select the word that reigns supreme. We'll chat with Word Nerd Emily Brewster what her employer, Merriam Webster, has discovered is its top word of the year. We’ll also look forward to February when creatives and justice seekers will converge on UMass Campus. The Black Artistic Freedom Conference is now in its 3rd year and has just opened registration for its day long offerings on Feb 21st. Organizer and founder Imani Wallace joins us to talk about the intersectionality of art and social justice, the evolution and impetus of the Black AF Conference, and what cool things you can win if you’re brave enough to get onstage. And Mr. Universe, Kainaat Studios and Hampshire College’s Salman Hameed, also gets nostalgic as we look back and review some of our favorite moments in Space and exploration from 2025, and a quick reminder of where you can discuss your favorites with others tomorrow.