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. 

Gov. Maura Healey delivers the annual State of the Commonwealth Address, and our panel puts what she said in context for western Massachusetts.

And, water levels at the Quabbin Reservoir are 10 feet lower than normal, and surrounding communities are questioning water use and stewardship of the reservoir. Should public policy be changed to address their concerns?

Plus, a decision made by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection could result in a temporary furlough of work and production for a Springfield manufacturing company. Will we see a broader impact on the 413?

We’re running down all of that and more this week with our panel, Jim Kinney, reporter for the Springfield Republican newspaper; Matt Szafranski, founder and editor for Western Mass. Politics & Insight; and Bridgette Davis, assistant professor of public policy at UMass Amherst.

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 CitySpace 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 Jr. Day 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 Isabel Ruiz Cano.

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.