Hailing from Luling, Texas, Ben Bethea is the Marketing and Music Director at Sun Radio, a well known institution in Austin, Texas. Sun Radio is a solar-powered, listener and partner supported network of eleven terrestrial and online radio stations. Ben’s been at Sun Radio for over a decade in various roles and has been instrumental in that organization’s growth through the years. He's worn a lot of hats there: marketing/event promotions/social media management, PR/communications, audio/video production, and DJ.

Since the pandemic, the Sun Radio Foundation has given out over $130,000 back to local musicians and members of the community through the Sun Radio Recharge program, helping to pay musicians power bills and during Snowpacalypse helped members of the community with financial assistance. The Sun Radio Recharge program will help local area musicians in the month of August with gas cards. Find out more at sunradio.com.

We review Star Trek (the Original Series), Season 1, Episode 20, “Court Martial." Topics include: the multitude of hats that Ben wears at Sun Radio, the Sun Radio Recharge program and the way that Sun Radio supports Austin musicians in tough times, growing up in a typical small Texas town, Luling’s two claims to fame (other than being Ben’s hometown): watermelons and being the birthplace of a warrior, Star Trek fans and our embarrassingly passionate and uncool devotion for the things we love, Tom Petty and the Wildflowers record, whether or not Wildflowers is better as a single or double album, the challenge of putting out a sequel or companion piece to an already existing perfect work, DC Fontana and the art of good editing, making good art and making good art that’s also commercially viable, we are living in the new golden era of Star Trek, different Star Trek series are for different audiences and that’s ok, episodic vs serialized Star Trek, the first time we hear about “Starfleet,” Starbase 11, Albert Whitlock’s gorgeous matte paintings, the connection between "Court Martial" and DS9's "Far Beyond the Stars," the barrier-breaking and three dimensional character of Commodore Stone, representation on Star Trek in the 60's and why it mattered, Percy Rodriguez, “Measure of a Man” and parallels and continuity with Next Generation, dress uniforms and the only instance of a woman wearing one, Joan Marshall and her amazing and age-appropriate character, Areel Shaw, the holodeck, the Emergency Medical Holographic Program (EMH) and the ways that Voyager expanded the concept of the holodeck, the moral ambiguity of Starfleet as an institution, first introduced in this episode, the continuation of that theme in Deep Space Nine, the edge DS9 brought to the utopian world of Trek, the Wild West of Trek and farthest frontiers, Richard Webb as Finney and Elisha Vanslyck Cook Jr. as Cogley, the obvious stunt doubles in the fight scenes, Finney’s very confusing plans and motivations, what was Finney doing on the Enterprise this entire time? Is he living in the walls plotting revenge? Why didn’t he just sneak off the ship? Was this the plan all along?, Vulcanian vs Vulcan, orbits don’t decay that fast and they could've maintained orbit with only thrusters, Kirk fixes the entire ship with one cable, the X Files, and Star Trek vs Star Wars, and there is only one wrench in all of Engineering.