It is more than just our mornings that become eclectic this Monday.

We bring another installment of "Meet the Mayor", this time heading up I-91 to Easthampton to chat with Nicole LaChapelle. A lot has happened in that city as of late, so we talk about it and her love of local music.

Mr. Universe, Salman Hameed, comes with us to the re-opening of the Seymour Planetarium at Springfield Museums this past weekend. We get his thoughts on the update as well as some of their other exhibits!

And Julie Lemieux of Windy Ridge Organics in Hawley stops through to speak about their interesting and innovative CSA program, and how they raise things off the farm as well!

With all of the stress of the week, we figured we would not only double but triple down on the relaxing today.

We head to West Springfield for the Wine Thunderdome once again. It's Sardenga versus Tuscany as Michael Quinlan of Table & Vine brings us two Vermentinos to try out.

Just ahead of their show at the Academy of Music, Langhorne Slim and John Craigie join us in studio. Each has a new album out, and although their songwriting styles seem very different from each other, their partnership dovetails them well, and as does their love for both The Beatles and the late Harry Belafonte.

And pillar of the local rock scene, and endless font of stories about said scene, Ray Mason pays us a visit. He's got a new album coming out soon called "Is There Wiggle Room?" about which we are quite excited.

If you had no plans for this weekend, no worries, we've got you covered. There's so much happening in the 413 this weekend that we wish there were more hours in the day.

A lot of those happenings involve hip-hop, where a legend in the genre is making an appearance in Easthampton this weekend. Large Professor performs at Daily Operation on Saturday and we chat with chef/owner David Schrier about how that's just one small part of keeping hip-hop vibrant in Western Mass.

From there we go to Bombyx in Florence, where the 2nd Annual Power of Truths Festival is taking place on April 29th & 30th. The innovative and ambitious program seeks to inspire folx in order to create more equitable communities, and we chat with Michael Lawrence-Riddell of Self-Evident Education and Jared Bridgeman, aka Akrobatik about how Hip Hop is a large part of that picture and American history as a whole.

This Saturday will also see the return of GreenNFit, a volunteer driven event heralded by Revitalize Springfield (a subset of Revitalize CDC). We talk with President & CEO Colleen Shanley-Loveless and Director of Programs Ethel Griffin about the impact of this program and others throughout the Connecticut River Valley.

And we mcgovern with Rep. Jim McGovern, who is encountering and enduring difficult terrain on Capitol Hill.

We hope you like language because we're getting deep into it today.

The Word Nerd, Emily Brewster, senior editor at Merriam-Webster here in Springfield pulls back the curtain to show the bones of how definitions actually work.

Former poet laureate, and current professor at UMass, Karen Skolfield celebrates National Poetry Month with us by sharing some of her experiences and a bit of her work as well.

At Smith College a production of La Ruta is running this weekend. The show examines the lives of women working and living around Juárez, and director, and new faculty member, Monica Lopez Orozco and one of the actors in the piece, Naidelyn Cruz join us to talk about the import and impact of the play.

And tomorrow is McGoverning with Rep. Jim McGovern! Email your questions for the congressman to [email protected] or text us at [1-800-639-9120](tel:18006399120).

We got up to music, and farms, and moons today, oh my!

Damany Gordon of Genuine Culture LLC in Holyoke is heralding a night of classic hip-hop in Springfield at White Lion Brewing this upcoming weekend. It honors the collective Native Tongues and we tap into why that group is so important and influential.

We hear from Chelsea Gazillo of the American Farmland Trust about the Bay State's efforts to save small farms, as well as a preview of the story she'll be sharing as part of Field Notes, CISA's storytelling event happening this weekend.

NEPM reporter Jill Kaufman keys us into a progressive and effective music therapy program happening in Franklin County. It's akin to other programs across the country seeing similar results and involving some big names as well.

And Mr. Universe, Salman Hameed, shows us insights and connections between the moon, math, and Eid as Ramadan nears it's end.

Today was all about being both collegiate and past tense.

First, Umass had a Bach Festival this weekend! As a part of the festivities, the Asian and Asian American Studies Arts and Culture Center brought three prominent composers and performers to campus to perform new works: Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Texu Kim, and Vijay Iyer. We talk with them about issues relating to western canon and how moving on from that influences their work now.

And since climate change is very very real, and officially Earth day was this past Saturday (though an argument could be made that every day is Earth Day), we sat down with some folx from the Five College area to check in on what their particular campuses are doing regarding sustainability.

It was a crowded house with Beth Hooker from Smith College, Sara Draper from Hampshire College, Ezra Small from UMass Amherst, and Weston Dripps from Amherst College (one day we'll catch them all). Each of their sustainability initiatives is gaining ground, and we got to hear about how they're collaborating with other colleges and universities in the Bay State to do even better.

When you live close enough to someone who's won multiple Nobel prizes and the Gandhi/King/Ikeda prize from Morehouse College, you have to get them in studio with you. You just have to do that.

That is how we end up talking with Dr. Ira Helfand about the threat of nuclear war and all the things we can do to stop it, including the mission of the Back from the Brink Campaign.

And that was such heavy conversation for the first day of the weekend that we needed to lighten our moods a little. Introducing: The Cocktail Thunderdome. Sean Billson of Judd's Restaurant at Gateway City Arts in Holyoke, who pits two variations of Corpse Reviver no. 2 against each other.

And it's live music Friday, which we dig into with Noam Schatz of The Lucky Shots who have a new album that's just come out and a show on April 29th to celebrate that.

It is the 20th day of April, which is celebrated by many it turns out.

But being in one of the few states with legal access to jazz cabbage is not without its nuances too. Payton Shubrick of 6 Bricks dispensary in Springfield, one of only 3 black woman owned in the whole state, chats with us to dig into some of the issues with equity and equality in the industry. (She also shares our fascination with antiquated terminology for cannabis.)

Then we bring a pile of young actors from First Generation into the studio to give us a taste of Shout! Elevate! Inspire!: a performance they'll be a part of at Springfield Technical Community College this weekend alongside Samira Evans, Haneef Nelson and more. Julie Lichtenberg and James Arana of The Performance Project also let us know more places you can catch the show they excerpted.

And after a week's hiatus, we are once again back to mcgoverning with Representative Jim McGovern, who shares his worries about guns, transgender kids, and other issues arising on Capitol Hill.

We're hoping to fit in with the cool kids today.

Some of those cool kids are running on airport runways. We talk to Julie Kumble of Treehouse Foundation and Holly Lurgio of the Northampton Airport about the Runway 5k happening on April 23rd, where they'll be raising funds by letting people run where the airplanes roam (but not while the airplanes roam). We find out how Treehouse is changing the landscape of foster care and that yes, some folx do build their planes from kits.

And other cool kids will be hanging out with Lindsay Patterson and Marshall Escamilla from the Tumble Science Podcast for Kids, who in addition to bringing their songs and knowledge to Meltdown in Greenfield this weekend, bring us tales about birds and blind scientists.

But the coolest kids of all can go backwards in time with their words. Resident wordster, Emily Brewster of Merriam-Webster teaches us about a term coined by former NPR President Frank Mankiewicz and how it dates the evolution of technology.

Some stories are best told by the people who have actually lived them.

But we can accompany those stories with pizza, because food is wonderful. Pizza Quest volume 3 hits the Berkshires as we make a stop, sadly without our amateur pizziaolo, to Betty's Pizza Shack in Lenox.

Then, as it is still April and therefore still National Poetry Month, local poet and social worker Lauren Singer joins us with some of her work and updates on her many projects examining grief and adaptations to loss, including a new podcast.

And CISA is preparing to host Field Notes, stories of our local foodways, at the Academy of Music. So we get a small preview of what will be onstage April 30th with Jacob Nelson and Trouble Erin Anne Gouch Mandeson.

**Please note: The Lauren Singer readings mention child death.