The Point

Graduation rates, student attendance and test scores are important criteria to evaluate our public schools, but they’re only part of what it takes to educate a student. We talk with the 2020 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year Takeru Nagayoshi about some of the challenges students face today and how we can better meet their needs. We hear some of Nagayoshi’s ideas, including education equity, teacher empowerment, and community-based education reforms.

There's a lot going on in the world of birds as we glide through August on the Cape and Islands. Throughout our region, many birds are preparing for their long migratory journeys, while others are getting another brood of chicks raised. We also discuss butterflies and their larvae, and the plants that host them. Mark Faherty, wildlife biologist at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary joins our host Mindy Todd in the Studio. Meanwhile, we check in with Zak Mertz of the Cape Wildlife Center .

WCAI News Director Steve Junker hosts a roundup of some of the top local and regional news of the week, including: members of the Kennedy family gather to say a final goodbye to Saoirse Kennedy Hill, granddaughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy; local spraying will begin after mosquitoes bearing the virus EEE are found in Woods Hole and Falmouth; Cape towns continue tallying the bill for the July tornadoes.

As part of our collaboration with 20 Summers , we bring you a recorded conversation with Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel, and Emily Braun, Distinguished Professor of 20th Century European and American Art at Hunter College. Their topic: The Age of Insight: the Origins of Modernist Thought, and how we understand the role of the mind, brain and consciousness in art.

Newspapers, television, and radio stations are covering less and less local news. Why should we care? It turns out there is a huge economic cost to not covering local issues and topics. On The Point, we talk about the economic benefits of local news coverage versus the costs, and some of the innovative ways we can bring about more local journalism.

Hearing the voices and stories of individuals can help us better understand a region’s history and its people. Historian Linsey Lee has made it her life’s work to capture the oral histories of Martha’s Vineyard residents. The third volume of The Third Vineyard Voices: Words, Faces and Voices of Island People came out this summer. We talk with Lee about some of the individuals profiled in the book and hear some of their stories. You can see an exhibit of Vineyard Voices at Martha's Vineyard

JFK and Bobby Kennedy came of age politically at the dawn of television, and catapulted the entire Kennedy family into the spotlight. We talk with the biographers of three Kennedy family members about the role of media in shaping the legacy of the family, how the family leveraged coverage to their advantage, unprecedented for the time, and at what cost.

WCAI News Director Steve Junker hosts a roundup of some of the top local and regional news of the week, including: the state announces a million-dollar emergency fund to help local businesses recover from last week’s tornadoes; Yarmouth drops a lawsuit against its regional school district; and the future of Cape Cod is the subject of a two-day summit.

Pianist Jacqueline Schwab and historian Greg Williams have teamed up once again for a musical and historical journey, to commemorate the 200th birthday of Herman Melville on the day: Thursday, August 1 at 7:00 p.m. at the New Church, Yarmouth Port , with Happy 200th Birthday, Herman Melville: Beyond The Whale. On The Point, we talk with them about Melville’s life, and hear some of the music Jacqueline chose to accompany the talk.

Now in its 15th year, the Provincetown Jazz Festival brings jazz musicians from around the country to venues across the Cape. We’ll talk with the festival’s founder and jazz musician Bart Weisman about this year’s line up, and enjoy a live performance by one of the festival’s youngest talents, Henry Acker.