The Essential Rhythm 4/9/23: Yummy Yummy Copepods

Producer/Host: Sarah O’Malley

This episode highlights Calanus finmarchicus, a tiny crustacean that serves as a keystone species in north Atlantic food webs. North Atlantic Right Whales, commercially important fish and virtually all other predators in the north Atlantic feed on it because of its high nutrient content. C. finmarchicus likewise feeds heavily on phytoplankton and is a major conduit for moving primary productivity into the greater food web.

About the host:
Sarah O’Malley is an ecologist, naturalist and science communicator passionate about deepening her listeners’ experiences with the natural world. She teaches biology and sustainability at Maine Maritime Academy and is currently collaborating on a guide book to the intertidal zone in the Gulf of Maine.

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The Nature of Phenology 4/8/23: Tinder Polypores

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn
Host: Hazel Stark

The tinder polypore has many names including hoof fungus, amadou, or, scientifically speaking, Fomes fomentarius. This perennial mushroom is growing a new pore layer now, one that becomes an especially useful material for humans.
Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com

About the host/writers:
Joe Horn lives in Gouldsboro, is Co-Founder of Maine Outdoor School, L3C, and is a Registered Maine Guide and Carpenter. He is passionate about fishing, cooking, and making things with his hands. He has both an MBA in Sustainability and an MS focused in Environmental Education. Joe can be reached by emailing [email protected]

Hazel Stark lives in Gouldsboro, is Co-Founder and Naturalist Educator at Maine Outdoor School, L3C, and is a Registered Maine Guide. She loves taking a closer look at nature through the lens of her camera, napping in beds of moss, and taking hikes to high points to see what being tall is all about. She has an MS in Resource Management and Conservation and is a lifelong Maine outdoorswoman. Hazel can be reached by emailing [email protected]

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The Cosmic Curator 4/8/23: Make Way For Miracles

This is your Cosmic Curator, Tom Yaroschuk, with a look at the stars for today Saturday April 8th
Well folks, What a week that was? On Thursday, Just after midnight, we had the first full moon of Spring…

About the Host:
Tom Yaroschuk is a Vedic Astrologer. His intention is to help people understand their karma and the issues they may confront to cultivate more fulfilling lives. Tom is writing a memoir of the spiritual lessons derived from his work in a Homeless Day Center in between a career as an award winning television and documentary producer.

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Earthwise 4/8/23: Easter’s Ancient Roots

Producer/Host: Anu Dudley

About the host:

Rev. Dr. Anu Dudley is an ordained Pagan minister and a retired history professor. She continues to teach classes, including the three-year ordination curriculum at the Temple of the Feminine Divine, and others such as History of the Goddess, Paganism 101, Ethical Magic, and Introduction to the Runes. Currently she is writing a book about how to cast the runes using their original Goddess meanings. She lives in the woods off-grid in a small homesteading community in Central Maine.

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Conversations from the Pointed Firs 4/7/23: Peter Beckford

Host:Peter Neill
Producer: Trisha Badger
Music by Casey Neill

Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a monthly audio series with Maine-connected authors and artists discussing new books and creative projects that invoke the spirit of Maine, its history, its ecology, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life.

This month:

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Peter Beckford, Maine farmer and storyteller who will introduce the work of the late Holman F. Day, journalist, poet, and raconteur, whose accounts of neighbors and friends, often in dialect, are classic evocations of the “spirit of Maine.”

Peter Beckford lives in Liberty, Maine where he runs Rebel Hill perennial farm with his wife. Peter is also a piper, a box maker, history buff and collector of old things.

About the host:
Peter Neill is founder and director of the World Ocean Observatory, a web-based place of exchange for information and educational services about the health of the ocean. In 1972, he founded Leete’s Island Books, a small publishing house specializing in literary reprints, the essay, photography, the environment, and profiles of indigenous healers and practitioners of complimentary medicine around the world. He holds a profound interest in Maine, its history, its people, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life.

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Justice Radio 4/6/23: Are Prisons the Answer? Race, Rights, and Untold History in Maine

Producers/Hosts: Leo Hylton and Catherine Besteman
Production Coordinator: Daria Cullen
Other credits:TECHNICAL SUPPORT – Emma Reynolds | MUSIC – Samuel James
Justice Radio is a WMPG production

Justice Radio: Tackling the hard questions about our criminal legal system in Maine.

This week: A special edition of Are Prisons the Answer? with your hosts Leo Hylton and Catherine Besteman and guests, musician, columnist, and podcaster, Samuel James, and ACLU Policy Counsel, Michael Kebede. Learn about Race, Rights, and the Untold History of the intentional efforts made to establish Maine as a white state. Topics include:
– Transforming Power
– Untold history of Maine
– Race, Rights, and Incarceration

Guest/s:
Samuel James, Musician and Podcaster
Michael Kebede, ACLU Policy Counsel

About the hosts:
The Justice Radio team includes:

Leo Hylton is currently incarcerated at Maine State Prison, yet is a recent Master’s graduate, a columnist with The Bollard, a restorative and transformative justice advocate and activist, a prison abolitionist, and a Visiting Instructor at Colby College’s Anthropology Department, co-teaching AY346 – Carcerality and Abolition.

Catherine Besteman is an abolitionist educator at Colby College. Her research and practice engage the public humanities to explore abolitionist possibilities in Maine. In addition to coordinating Freedom & Captivity, she has researched and published on security, militarism, displacement, and community-based activism with a focus on Somalia, post-apartheid South Africa, and the U.S. She has published nine books, contributed to the International Panel on Exiting Violence, and received recent fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations.

MacKenzie Kelley is a formerly incarcerated woman in long term recovery. She is a teachers assistant for inside-out courses through MIT. MacKenzie works at the Maine Prisoner Reentry Center as a reentry specialist, peer support and recovery coach. She is the program director for Reentry Sisters, a program designed to assist women reentering the community from prison.

Zoe Brokos (she/her) is the executive director of the Church of Safe Injection, a comprehensive harm reduction program that operates in Southern and Central Maine. Zoe is a person who uses drugs, a mom, a wife, and has led harm reduction programs in Maine for 15 years. She is part of the Maine Drug Policy Coalition, sits on the board of Decriminalize Maine and joined Justice Radio to promote compassionate conversations and drug user-led advocacy efforts that focus on evidence-based, public health responses to the housing and overdose crises in Maine.

Marion Anderson: Before joining The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls in January of 2022, Marion worked as a harm reductionist, housing navigator, certified intentional peer support specialist, CCAR recovery coach, and a re-entry coach for a diverse range of non-profit organizations.

Charlotte Warren is a former State Representative. She served on the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee for eight years – six as the house chair. Warren previously served on the Judiciary Committee and as the house chair of Maine’s Mental Health Working Group and the house chair of the Commission to Examine Reestablishing Parole. Previous to her time in the legislature, Charlotte served as Mayor of the city of Hallowell.

Linda Small is the founder and executive director of Reentry Sisters, a reentry support organization specializing in a gender-responsive and trauma-informed approach for women, serving Maine and beyond. She is a Project Coordinator for the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition. Linda serves on the Maine Prison Education Partnership board at UMA and the New England Commission for the Future of Higher Education in Prison through The Educational Justice Institute at MIT.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 4/6/23: Understanding AI 2

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

In this second episode in our series on Understanding AI, we’ll begin to take a look at how AI actually works in the many applications we see all around us today.
For those interested in learning more about how AI works, this free online course requires no previous technical knowledge.
For those who might be interested in reading or signing the open letter calling for a pause in training AI, follow this link.

About the host:
Jim Campbell has a longstanding interest in the intersection of digital technology, law, and public policy and how they affect our daily lives in our increasingly digital world. He has banged around non-commercial radio for decades and, in the little known facts department (that should probably stay that way), he was one of the readers voicing Richard Nixon’s words when NPR broadcast the entire transcript of the Watergate tapes. Like several other current WERU volunteers, he was at the station’s sign-on party on May 1, 1988 and has been a volunteer ever since doing an early stint as a Morning Maine host, and later producing WERU program series including Northern Lights, Conversations on Science and Society, Sound Portrait of the Artist, Selections from the Camden Conference, others that will probably come to him after this is is posted, and, of course, Notes from the Electronic Cottage.

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