Forward Radio podcasts

This week on Sustainability Now!, your host, Justin Mog, gets caught up with the great work of Glean Kentucky to rescue excess produce from our broken food system and get it onto the tables of those in need. Our guest today is Jennifer Palmer, the new Executive Director of Glean Kentucky. Jennifer holds a BA in Fine Art and Political Science from Cedar Crest College, an MFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and a BA in Sustainable Agriculture from the Wendell Berry Farming Program of Sterling College. She has over 20 years of experience teaching fine art at various universities and previously served as the Executive Director of a nonprofit organization dedicated to land conservation.

Having transitioned to become an Extension Agent in Jefferson County, Jennifer resides on her farm in Shelby County, where she grows vegetables and flowers and rescues animals in her free time. Passionate about community engagement and fostering resilient local food systems, she brings a unique blend of artistic insight, nonprofit leadership, and sustainable agriculture expertise to her work with communities.

Glean Kentucky rescues fresh excess fruits and vegetables to nourish Kentuckians facing food insecurity. Since its founding in 2010, Glean Kentucky has redirected nearly 3,000,000 pounds of fresh produce through dozens of programs in Central, South Central, and North Central Kentucky. Learn more at https://gleanky.org/

As always, our feature is followed by your community action calendar for the week, so get your calendars out and get ready to take action for sustainability NOW!

Sustainability Now! is hosted by Dr. Justin Mog and airs on Forward Radio, 106.5fm, WFMP-LP Louisville, every Monday at 6pm and repeats Tuesdays at 12am and 10am. Find us at https://forwardradio.org

The music in this podcast is courtesy of the local band Appalatin and is used by permission. Explore their delightful music at https://appalatin.com

On this week's show, we bring you a community conversation about "The Last Decade of Life and How to Spend it Outside of the Hospital." This event on September 30, 2025 at the Filson Historical Society in Old Louisville was presented by the University of Louisville’s Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute in collaboration with the Filson. This Distinguished Lecture Series lecture offered a timely and important exploration of how we can live healthier, disease-free lives. Centered around the concept of healthspan — the portion of life spent in good health, as distinct from total lifespan — the session challenged us to think differently about what it means to pursue health, rather than merely reduce disease risk. Leaders from the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute reflect on their multiyear journey shaping a research agenda that reframes medicine around the foundations of well-being. Drawing from robust scientific evidence, the talk highlights key building blocks of health — including nature, nutrition, and community — and why these require renewed attention in medical research and health systems. The presentation also offers practical insights into what individuals can do now to promote their own healthspan. Local examples, especially in nature-based interventions and the possibilities of diet, help ground these ideas in real-world impact.

The program begins with a brief overview of the history and groundbreaking accomplishments of the Envirome Institute by Dr. Ted Smith. Then we hear from Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar, the Smith & Lucille Gibson Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Environmental Medicine, and Director of the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute at the University of Louisville. A Fellow of the American Heart Association, he is recognized as a pioneer in the field of environmental cardiology. His research explores how oxidative stress from internal and environmental sources contributes to cardiovascular disease. Dr. Bhatnagar leads major initiatives such as the Green Heart Louisville Project and has authored hundreds of scientific publications while mentoring a large research team. Learn more at https://louisville.edu/envirome

On Truth to Power each week, we bring you community conversations like you won't hear anywhere else! Truth to Power airs every Friday at 9pm, Saturday at 11am, and Sunday at 4pm on Louisville's grassroots, community radio station, Forward Radio 106.5fm WFMP and live streams at https://www.forwardradio.org. If you like what you hear, share it with someone, donate to keep us on-air, and get involved as a volunteer!

This week on Sustainability Now!, your host, Justin Mog, gets caught up with the developments across the river at Origin Park with Dennis Schnurbusch II, CEO of River Heritage Conservancy. Tune in to learn more about the plans for Origin Park (https://originpark.org), an evolving new urban riverfront park of 430 acres on the north shore of the Ohio River, in Clarksville, Indiana. This park celebrates and embraces the unpredictable Ohio River and the floods that come from it. Origin Park is already open in limited designated areas to the public.

Discover why the Ohio Riverfront was chosen for the park, and what makes this land so important to reclaim. We discuss the big goals of the park and what visitors will experience at Origin Park 10–15 years from now when the park is fully realized. In addition to an update on where we are right now in the process of developing the park, you’ll learn how you can get involved right now as a visitor, volunteer, or donor.

As always, our feature is followed by your community action calendar for the week, so get your calendars out and get ready to take action for sustainability NOW!

Sustainability Now! is hosted by Dr. Justin Mog and airs on Forward Radio, 106.5fm, WFMP-LP Louisville, every Monday at 6pm and repeats Tuesdays at 12am and 10am. Find us at https://forwardradio.org

The music in this podcast is courtesy of the local band Appalatin and is used by permission. Explore their delightful music at https://appalatin.com

On Sept. 28, 2025, a Louisville Indivisible Chapter, Freedom of Speech Action Circle, put on a music festival to celebrate democracy, raise awareness and educate those who attended on the rapid loss of American Constitutional rights. The event featured 9 speakers and 7 bands/musicians. This podcast contains presentations by 5 speakers: (1) James Craig, recognized by Louisville Magazine as Best Lawyer in Consumer Law. He spoke on the impact of the Trump agenda on education in Kentucky's K through 12 public schools. (2) John Sutton (Vice President of the Kentucky Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church & State) spoke on the incursion of private Christian education into public school systems here in Kentucky and elsewhere. (3) Marc Murphy (professor at Brandeis Law, trial attorney and award-winning political cartoonist for the Louisville Courier-Journal) spoke on the dismantling of our Constitutional rights and how to resist authoritarian rule. (4) Sarah Lynn Cunningham (environmental engineer, community activist and Founder of the Louisville Climate Action Network) described the enormous energy expense and added pollution of new proposed data centers in Louisville, as well as what people can do to lower their carbon footprint. (5) Chris Harman (first director of Kentucky's Fairness Campaign & steering committee member of the Fairness Coalition) spoke on the LGBTQ community and its expanding voice in Kentucky politics

Mary Williams introduces us to the Spotted Lanternfly, an insect pest that attacks a wide range of tree and shrub species. The invasive pest was first seen in Pennsylvania in 2014, but is now spreading south and west, including Kentucky and Indiana. Then, we hear a portion of the 'Big Picture Science' podcast of Sept. 8, 2025 about researchers trying to decipher language in sperm whales. The episode ends with J. Scott Miller telling us what planets, stars, constellations and meteor showers we can see in the month of October.

Thanks to the SETI Institute for permission to rebroadcast their podcast 'Big Picture Science'. Here is the full podcast: https://radio.seti.org/episodes/animal-alphabets.

‘Bench Talk: The Week in Science’ is a weekly program that airs on WFMP Louisville FORward Radio 106.5 FM (forwardradio.org) every Monday at 7:30 pm, Tuesday at 11:30 am, and Wednesday at 7:30 am.

Visit our Facebook page for links to the articles discussed in this episode: https://www.facebook.com/BenchTalkRadio

Dr. Mario Ransan is the founder of the Solidarity Project, a grassroots coalition of 24 schools and 37 non-profits whose mission is to build coalitions at both the national and local levels in order to serve communities that have been negatively impacted by ever-changing national, state, and local government policies. He is a published academic author and has authored multiple non-academic articles for various websites and publications. Mario is a naturalized citizen and the recipient of the Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from Congressman Morgan McGarvey in 2024. He holds a Doctorate in Education and has three master’s Degrees, teaching at the high school level for 12 years. The motivation behind his dedicated work originates from his students seeking his help to assist their immigrant classmates and their families.

Host K.A. Owens shares quotes from the late Charlie Kirk. Then Host K.A. Owens comments on the Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump speech to Generals and Admirals, comments on the belief that the American people will awaken, and comments on the un-lanced boil of White Supremacy.

Recorded Saturday October 4, 2025, 7 PM

On this week's Truth to Power, we tackle the issue of higher education's role in reintegrating the formerly incarcerated into society. On Monday, Sept. 29th, at the University of Louisville's Ekstrom Library, the UofL Liberal Studies program presented this event on "Reimagining Public Safety: Transforming Public Universities into Pathways of Reintegration and Repair" with philosopher and higher education leader Dr. Brady Heiner, the Founder and former Executive Director (2016-2022) of Project Rebound at Cal State Fullerton (https://www.fullerton.edu/rebound/). Dr. Heiner was also the Founding Executive Director and Executive Committee Chair of the CSU Project Rebound Consortium (2019-2023), which provided leadership and oversight for the statewide expansion of Project Rebound programs across eighteen CSU campuses.

In this public lecture, Dr. Heiner argued that public universities must be reimagined as civic infrastructures of care, accountability, and belonging. Drawing on his experience building and scaling programs that support thousands of formerly incarcerated students across 18 campuses in the California State University system, Heiner outlines how universities can repair social dislocation, reduce incarceration, and rebuild communities harmed by punitive and extractive systems.

On Truth to Power each week, we bring you community conversations like you won't hear anywhere else! Truth to Power airs every Friday at 9pm, Saturday at 11am, and Sunday at 4pm on Louisville's grassroots, community radio station, Forward Radio 106.5fm WFMP and live streams at https://www.forwardradio.org. If you like what you hear, share it with someone, donate to keep us on-air, and get involved as a volunteer!

This week on Single Payer Radio, we discuss how the cuts to healthcare in the Big Beautiful (Ugly) Bill will affect Kentuckians, especially in rural areas.

On this week’s Access Hour, we explore the Environmental Footprint of Artificial Intelligence with Shaolei Ren, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California - Riverside. This presentation was given on September 19, 2025 as part of the Kentucky Resources Council’s on-going Kentucky Environmental Leadership Institute (KELI). Learn more at https://www.kyrc.org/our-work/kentucky-environmental-leadership-institute. Watch the full replay at https://bit.ly/EnvironmentalFootprintAI-VIDEO. The passcode is DataCentersKY2025!

AI might seem invisible, but the environmental toll is real. Data centers that power artificial intelligence consume vast amounts of water and electricity, placing new strain on local ecosystems and public health. Communities across the country are already feeling the effects, often without knowing why. Listen in as Professor Ren uncovers the hidden footprint of AI and what it means for the future of sustainable, health-informed technology.

The Access Hour airs on Forward Radio, 106.5fm, WFMP-LP Louisville, every Wednesday at 2pm and repeats Thursdays at 11am and Fridays at 1pm. Find us at https://forwardradio.org

If you’ve got something you’d like to share on community radio through the Access Hour, whether it’s a recording you made or a show you’d like to do on a particular topic, community, artistic creation, or program that is under-represented in Louisville’s media landscape, just go to https://forwardradio.org, click on Participate and pitch us your idea. The Access Hour is your opportunity to take over the air waves to share your passion.