As NEPM’s Hunger Awareness Week continues, we head to another newer pantry just up the road from us here in Springfield. Born Free Food Pantry was birthed from a need in Six Corners to give access to the community to food and services that generally aren’t as easily available. We speak with founders Charlie Holmes and Terrence Lee, and other volunteers about feeding the people’s needs through faith and more. 

We also have an extra rare Live Music Wednesday with Jude Roberts, who we last saw as part of The Mammals. He’s got songs all his own, and a beautiful take on catchy folk in his latest album "The Olive and the Vine”, and we’ll give you a preview before you can see them for yourself at the Dream Away Lodge in Becket. 

Plus word Nerd Emily Brewster senior editor at Merriam Webster helps to explain the letters we don’t say and why as we explore the origins of silent letters in english words, and the historical occasions on which we sometimes say them. 

Hunger awareness week continues here at NEPM, so, we’ll take you into one of the newest of the 199 organizations that the Food Bank of Western Mass works with in Western Mass at The Brick House in Turners Falls. Executive director Tom Taffe brings us into his small-but-mighty food pantry and tells us about the innovative new collaborative anti-hunger effort that several organizations in Montague have formed to fight hunger together

We’ll head to Chesterfield to a small but incredibly diverse farm that is no stranger to the workings of both Snap and HIP as they affect both the people who need their services and the farmers supplying the produce for those programs. Rachel and Tevis Roberston-Goldberg, who show us the incredible array of things they produce at Crabapple Farm from livestock, to houseplants, to produce and more, and the effect that federal and state programs have on us all. 

A new play at CitySpace in Easthampton about the fateful accident that paralyzed soul legend Teddy Pendegrass and scandalized his career opens Nov 21 & 22. The Night We Rode takes a new approach to looking at the event and we’ll speak with playwright Mercedes Loving-Manley and the man playing Teddy, Springfield’s own Terrell James Jones about humanizing the people involved, and the things left behind in getting a new play on it's feet. 

It’s Hunger Awareness Week here at NEPM and that means all week we’ll be talking with folx involved with the fight against hunger, the proverbial boots on the ground here in Western Mass. 

We start at the top, with the head of the organization for which Monte will march next week, executive director for the Food Bank of Western Mass Andrew Morehouse. We’ll hear about the ways that inflation and reduced government outlets have affected their abilities to service the area’s 199 food pantries, and the increase in demand that’s occurred this year. Plus we’ll get into the newest leg for the march for the food bank, the Berkshire’s Mini March. 

Right next to the issue of hunger is that of housing insecurity. Bittersweet Lane is a new book that is a magical mix of memoir and hard looks at policy regarding public housing and the effect and issues surrounding the lack of housing in the Nation. We speak with the author Jamie Madden about his ongoing work on this subject, his thoughts on recent efforts regarding affordable housing and more before he reads at a launch event at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley on Tuesday, November 18th. 

Today on the fabulous 413, we’ll visit the subterranean home of a legacy Western Mass business that is about the change hands. Turn It Up CDs and more took over a basement in Northampton 30 years ago and the owners, Patrick Pezzati and Chandra Hancock are now turning over the keys to one of their longtime employees, Carson Arnold, who starting shopping at Turn It Up when he was 10 years old. We’ll hear about how a store selling physical media has managed to weather 3 decades of digital incursion.

And if you were looking for a fun way to support The March for The Food Bank coming up in just over a week and don't want to walk any part of 43 miles, maybe pop into State St. Fruit Store or Coopers in Northampton where you can make a donation that will land you with a goody bag filled with wine and more. And in the Thunderdome, we’ll taste some indigenous Eastern Block grapes with our wine snob friends at State Street

And it’s Live Music Friday, we welcome back Gina Coleman and Diego Mongue from the Berkshire-based Misty Blues Band who bring their well rooted blues  at De La Luz Soundstage in Holyoke tonight

We’re going from coast to coast in a new book from Alex Werth. On Loop is an examination of the collision of sound, politics, racism, and culture in Oakland, CA and explores the trajectory of influence they have had on the evolution of the city. We speak with the author before you have a chance to hear more about his writing and experiences at a book launch party this Tuesday, Nov 18 at 33 Hawley in Northampton. 

And in Amherst, we’re taking our own bodies to extreme to help support others. The CWC Chilly Challenge will bring people together to support the daily work of the Center for Women and Community this Saturday, Nov. 15th. We speak with Director of Programming and Development, Kathie Cravelli about the daunting prospect of dunking yourself in very cold water, as well as the services they provide beyond the campus of UMass. 

And the Government has just gotten back in session after the longest shut down in the nation’s history, but congressman Jim McGovern has many thoughts about that process and what it’s done to his party, plus the possible penalization of the bay state for its actions paying for the SNAP deficit, the albatross of the Epstein files and more. 

Just because we’re old doesn’t mean we don’t wanna have fun.

The Toy Box in Amherst wants to encourage you in that train of thought. This Thursday, November 13th, sees the store hosting it’s third “So You Think You’re Too Old For a Toy Store” event for those 21+ who may have gotten out of touch with their more playful sides. We head to the amusement stomping grounds to play with toys ourselves and hear what’s changed for year three of getting older folx to come be playful in their space with owner Liz Rosenberg. 

Plus at the Hope Center for the Arts, a pillar of Latin Jazz and more comes to play in Springfield this Friday. Arturo Sandoval has thrilled audiences around the world with a sound that is both technically dazzling and deeply expressive, earning multiple Grammy Awards, an Emmy, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He joins us to talk about his beginnings in Cuba, learning under Dizzy Gillespie, and key lessons for us all about creating and enjoying music, including at his show on November 14th. 

And word Nerd Emily Brewster helps us understand the difference between the lines we use grammatically as we pit hyphens, N-dashes, and M-dashes against each other in a SYNTAX THUNDERDOME, as we also examine how AI is confusing and conflating the three.

It’s veteran’s day, a holiday started after the end of world war I, the current evolution of Armistice Day has grown to encompass and honor those who’ve served in all of the conflicts since. 

But the change in the way those wars get waged in the following century has left more of a mark on both the way we approach military theaters, and those that enter them to fight. 

We chat with the director Catie Foertsch and executive producer Cptn. Tommy Furlong of “What I Want You to Know” a documentary that interviews combat veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts that have plagued this millenia about their expectations, experiences, and outcomes, before you have two opportunities to see this film in Great Barrington and Northampton this coming Saturday. 

We’ll also head to a tiny corner of Western Mass that sorta isn’t Springfield to see how a neighborhood CDC is helping more produce to be produced. Wellspring Cooperative took a quarter acre of ungrowable land, and built a greenhouse on top of it that’s bringing herbs and lettuces to the four counties and we’ll speak with Fred Rose and Farm manager Clive about what happens at Wellspring Harvest. 

Today we examine the connective tissue of faith and culture. 

In Florence at the Bombyx Center for Arts and Equity this Thursday, a panel of musicians will come together to explore the ways sound and spirituality converge. Yearnings is a concert bringing together singers of several spiritual walks to look at the ways those beliefs sound and how the music of faith brings us all together. We’ll talk with the show’s creator Joey Baron, as well as its music director Kevin Sharpe about the collaborations that fuel the event. 

It’s Jewish Book month, and to celebrate, we’ll look at two new children’s books: one about a trailblazer for the Supreme Court, and one about the history of the celebration itself. What Louis Brandeis knows tells the history of the first Jewish justice, from his beginnings in Kentucky to the court cases that paved the way to his seat in the highest court and Fanny’s Big Idea shows Jewish Book week’s origins in the Boston library system. We’ll speak to the author of both books, Richard Michelson about writing history for young folx and what other tomes you can celebrate the month with.  

Plus Mr. Universe Kainaat Studios and Hampshire College’s Salman Hameed and plugs pop culture into the skies as we explore a great many connections including to the comet 3I/ATLAS.

We’re finding new ways to learn, and helping those new ways to thrive. 

We head up to Greenfield to the Center School, whose innovative approach to making well-rounded and adjusted small humans has become a literal institution in the area. And as we get a tour of their new building with some of the staff and teachers there, we’ll hear about the change that inter-generational, integrated classrooms can have, and how a new fundraising campaign hopes to help them continue their educative work long into the future. 

We’ll also chat with multi-disciplinary artist and podcaster East Forest, who’ll perform at the Hope Center for the Arts this Saturday. We’ll hear how he links music to film and perhaps also to psychedelics, and the connections of various types he seeks to create in sound, and what spectacles will arrive in Springfield on November 8th.  

And at Tip Top Wine Shop in Easthampton, Lauren Clark and Miranda Brown take us to France for a Thunderdome that becomes a lesson about cork bleed and cork taint that is important for anyone who likes to imbibe. 

We express ourselves and local history, and at the center of that venn diagram in Amherst, is hats

So we head to the town to see how its millinery legacy is being honored and explored in 9 locations in an exhibit titled Hats. 

Anika Lopes of Ancestral Bridges shows us, through a number of the displays in businesses, museums and more, how the millinery industry of Amherst is tied to the black community, the educational legacy, and the cultural heritage of the people who’ve lived there. 

And even the film industry, as we chat with costumer Mona May, who in conjunction with the exhibit is coming to speak at Amherst Cinema this Monday to discuss the hats and her work in costuming along with a 30th anniversary showing of Clueless. 

And after a momentous election Tuesday this week, congressman Jim McGovern shares his thoughts on the results, the effects of the ongoing shutdown now in week 6 and whether there’s an end in sight, and his preparations for the upcoming March for the Food Bank.