Now, more than ever, you probably need a good laugh and, perhaps, a reason to be hopeful. So we’re doing both with an added dose of science for good measure. 

We head to Hadley where a comedy dream has come to life and has continued to grow in the past 10 years. Happier Valley Comedy may have started on a personal dare, but it has since become a philosophy of improv that can apply to any aspect of human interaction. We chat with Pam Victor and Scott Braidman about how to craft community around and with the chaos as the organization enters its second decade. 

There’s a new audio documentary exploring the lives of lifelong activists and idealists Wally and Juanita Nelson in their own words and through the perspectives of people who knew them. We speak with one of the producers of the “Eyes on Freedom: Evolving Gifts of Simple, Nonviolent Living,” Carrie Kline, and get you ready to hear the whole piece in person later this week at their community listening sessions.

And, Mr. Universe, Salman Hameed of  Kainaat Studios and Hampshire College, shows us how life may be finding more ways in space as the OSIRIS-REx mission returns with fascinating discoveries about amino acids on the asteroid Bennu. 

We’re recuperating a lot after this week and, in that renewal process, we’re getting more in touch with ourselves and others. 

We bring local singer-songwriter Heather Maloney in for Live Music Friday to celebrate the release of her new album, “Exploding Star,” full of songs that almost didn’t see the public eye. We hear how art and grief have shaped her songwriting process in this new collection of songs and get a preview of her sold out two-night residency at the Iron Horse next week. 

And UMass Amherst is preparing to host the Black Artistic Freedom Conference (Black AF) bringing folx together to explore the expansion of education in a more equitable and modern way. We speak with Imani Wallace, otherwise known as Lyrical Faith, about the intersection of art, activism, and education.

Plus, it’s the very last day of January, and we almost made it dry for the whole month. Alas, we return to our old ways back to West Springfield to taste two Veneto wines with Michael Quinlan at Table & Vine for our first Wine Thunderdome of 2025.  

We’re putting the many in multi-disciplinary and putting on our party hats because there’s anniversaries ahead

The LAVA Center in Greenfield is about to celebrate its fifth birthday this weekend, adjacent to the Winter Carnival festivities. Their scope is so broad that it’d be easier to narrow down what they don’t do, so we head up to the city formerly known as a town’s center to get a glimpse of what the organization has been up to in this half decade with manager Vanessa Query.

We’re also meeting the friends made along the way in music with a trio of folx taking the stage at the Iron Horse tomorrow night, the duo High Tea and singer-songwriter Wallace Field are co-billing a performance in Northampton on the 31st, and we’ll have all three in the studio to talk about new things on the horizon, and the communal nature of the music scene in the area. 

And our weekly chat with Representative for the 2nd district Jim McGovern is a doozy. If we thought last week was a hotbed of crazy activity, this week said to "hold its beer", and steers our conversation through the Fed funding freeze,  constitutional crises concerning the balance of power,  censorship with the NIH and CDA, reader questions,  Guantanamo and immigration and ICE and more. 

We’re digging into a difficult time in the country’s history that folx are still reckoning with to this day, through a new novel from a multi disciplinary artist who has spent his whole life shining light on struggles like it. 

We’re joined by actor, director, script writer, producer and most importantly in this case, Author John Sayles to discuss his latest novel “To Save the Man", and find out from that man himself the appeal and difficulties of portraying the Carlisle Indian School as a living breathing character itself without shying away from the lasting consequences the institution has and had on Indigenous and non-indigenous populations in the United States, before you can meet the author tomorrow night at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley. (we also let you know where you can do a deeper dive through a beloved NPR program on the Carlisle Indian School's connection to football) 

 We also take a term right out of the kitchen and into the realm of the Word Nerd as the senior Editor at Merriam Webster fires us through the origins of the phrases “86” and Deep Six”. 

We’re delving into how every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name. We kid. 

But, the second-worst Disney movie has a point. CISA’s upcoming storytelling event, Field Notes, seeks to bring farmers, activists, makers, entrepreneurs and more together to tell their stories on stage and bring us all closer to the land we live in. We get to spend time with one of the storytellers, Lincoln Fishman, and hear more about his organization, Momentum Ag, that is helping farmers to discover better techniques to do what they do best. 

State Senator Jake Oliveira of Hampden, Hampshire and Worcester counties joins us to talk about his priorities for western Massachusetts, and his concerns about how federal actions may impact the commonwealth.

An accumulation of collaboration is happening in Holyoke, and this Thursday you can see the fruits of those projects. Valley Artist Mentors is an organization that pairs local artists together to study art ecology in the area, and we chat with the organizers and participants about their showing at Holyoke Media later this week.

Today, we have happy cow stories, but uncertain science ones. 

We head to Ashley Falls where 200 acres and 150 head of cattle co-exist happily at Twin Rivers Farm. Owner Bob Kilmer takes us on a tour with the ladies, the robots that milk them, the most challenging breeds and the cutest little calves the winter has ever seen.

There, we’re also joined by Dan Carr, technical advisor for Berkshire Agricultural Ventures who shares insight on not just what that organization accomplishes overall, but how it’s building community and how the dairy industry contributes to the agricultural landscape everywhere. 

And, Mr. Universe, Salman Hameed of  Kainaat Studios and Hampshire College, takes on some heavier topics for the scientific community, including the fervor to colonize Mars and the implications of the president's diversity, equity, and inclusion restrictions in NASA.

We're bringing in the bands today. Two of em. Count em two. 

Westfield native Madison Curbelo joins us for Live music Friday. The sweet voiced singer songwriter is fresh off of her semi-finalist status on The Voice and fleshing out her sound beyond her red six string. We’ll hear the inspiration for the music she plays, and the lessons TV taught her before you can catch her set at the Drake Tomorrow night. 

 And a double Live Music Friday brings the punk aesthetic of Les Derailleurs into the studio. Frontman Joe Pater joins us ahead of the band’s show at the Rendezvous in Turners Falls tonight, and we’ll hear how this particular week is actually tied to the group’s founding. 

Plus author Megan Tady hits the slopes for a cause bringing her ski focused novel Bluebird day, to an Apres SKi Party at Berkshire East, and we’ll get to learn how a chance encounter on our very show inspired the event, and the many ways that your time on the powder can help your neighbors survive the next snowfalls and plummeting temperatures in Charlemont on Saturday. 

We hear that it’s warming up, but we’ll believe that when we feel it. Today we explore piles of delicious things to warm this extra cold day.

We venture into Northampton to Local Burger and hear how its menu has evolved to center local produce and beef. We speak with Tabitha Salfrank, Joe Igneri, and Lexi Badelucci to help us discover what keeping local has meant for their expanding business, and where they source inspiration for their unlikely burger combinations.

We also invite you to become more familiar with one of Mexico’s most important spirits. On Jan. 24, De La Luz in Holyoke will host a mezcal-pairing dinner, offering folx a chance to educate both mind and palette. We speak with the pair helming the endeavor, Tess Rose Lampert, author of The Essential Tequila & Mezcal Companion, and chef Neftali Duran, about the appeal and nuances of the beverage and what other tasty treats might be included in the event. 

And, it’s been an eventful few days since the presidential inauguration on Monday, and Congressman Jim McGovern has much to say about what’s happened so far. We listen to his insights regarding pardons for January 6 insurrectionists, the avalanche of executive orders, and the things that keep him hopeful in these contested times.

We’re examining some of our given rights, to certain freedoms

But how exactly do those freedoms work online? We sit with Professor Amir Houmansadr of Umass to learn about the nature of the TikTok ban, and American digital censorship, and how game theories might help prevent the possibilities of those same security breaches that everyone is nervous about. 

We’ll also head to Great Barrington, where a theater full of 8th graders are getting a civics and civil rights lesson through a screening of the movie Selma. We’ll chat with Triplex Cinema creative director Ben Elliot, a handful of observant pre-teens, and post movie conversation moderator Shirley Edgerton about the importance of the movie and bringing those lessons into the present day in and out of the classrooms. 

And we’ll head back to Philadelphia in our hearts and the past with word nerd Emily Brewster as we delve further into the American Dialect Society’s picks for it’s many other words of the year. Because although there’s only one that gets to be THE word, much like other award shows, there’s a whole lot of other accolades that are given out when a room full of linguists and language enthusiasts come together. 

The Oscar nominations are due out this week and two of the frontrunners for Best-Picture nominations have connections to the 413.

 The Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown" is making headway in theaters now, and we’ll uncover the connection on the album cover of "The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan" to a prominent business owner here in western Massachusetts. Patrick Pezzati from Turn It Up CDs and More is the cousin of Suze Rotolo, portrayed by Elle Fanning in the new movie.  We’ll have him help us separate Dylan fact from Dylan fiction, and discover how the shift she engendered in the folk singer's approach stems from a long running family tradition. 

And "The Brutalist" is now playing at Amherst Cinema. Right down the street from their theaters is a plethora of Brutalist architecture to explore on the UMass Amherst Campus. We’ll talk with Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, Senior Campus Planner and Architect at UMass to get her take on the film, the architectural style that inspired it, and the impact those buildings have on the institution's grounds. Also we’ll bring in our resident film buff, Mr. Universe,  Hampshire College's Salman Hameed, as the two explore the themes on immigration that resonated with each of them in the movie. .