Donate to WERU Today!Host/Producer: Amy Browne
Brook Minner and Emily Burnham from the Maine Women’s Lobby stop by to invite listeners to the 2026 Hot Ticket Hootenanny: A Very Feminist Variety Show, Thursday, February 26, 2026. 7-9 PM, Next Generation Theatre, Brewer Tickets are available on their website and at the door
About the host:
Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021.
Theme music: BreakBeat Chemists I, 2015
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-
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World Ocean Radio 2/18/26: The Wrong Side of History
Host: Peter Neill
Producer: Trisha Badger
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
A recent report by InfluenceMap, a UK-based think tank that tracks pertinent climate trends, declared that 32 companies emit more than half of the world‘s CO2 emissions. Negative consequences of changing climate are measured by air quality, extreme weather, pandemic, ocean acidification, freshwater pollution, financial inequity, social unrest, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of very few to the detriment the millions of us otherwise. We can sustain the ocean, or we can corrupt it. Who will be on the wrong side of history?
WORLD OCEAN RADIO
5-minute weekly insights dive into ocean science, advocacy and education hosted by Peter Neill, lifelong ocean advocate and maritime expert. A catalog of more than 730 episodes offering perspectives on global ocean issues and solutions, and celebrating exemplary projects. Available for RSS feed and broadcast by college and community radio stations worldwide via Exchange.prx.org and Audioport.org. Visit WorldOceanObservatory.org for the full catalog, searchable by theme.
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Around Town 2/18/26: Local News, Culture and Events
Host/Producer: Amy Browne
In Augusta today, the legislature’s Committee On Health Coverage, Insurance and Financial Services will be taking comments from the public on a slew of bills related to healthcare in Maine, including:
LD 2189, which, if passed, would “require a hospital to provide at least 120 days’ notice prior to the termination of maternity or newborn care services or of a change in the level of care a hospital provides for maternity and newborn care services”, and
LD 2197 which would prohibit the licensure of any health care entity that “enter(s) into any arrangement with a real estate investment trust for the sale and leaseback of the health care entity’s main campus or primary location to the real estate investment trust”
5 Consequences of Private Equity’s Expansion in Health Care Services, Brian Keyser, Alexandra Thornton, Claire Koyle, Oct 30, 2025, Center for American Progress
And a story from the Maine headlines, 100 years ago today…
About the host:
Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021.
Theme music: BreakBeat Chemists I, 2015
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-
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Relationship Rewind 2/17/26: Real Love Respects
Host: Carrie Clark and Jazz Bradley at NextStep Domestic Violence Project. NextStep 24/7 Helpline: 1(800) 315-5579
Theme Music for the show donated by local musicians Megan Light and Nathan Spears.
Relationship Rewind: Rewinding relationships in popular media and breaking down behaviors based in power, control, and abuse.
This episode:
1. Discussing relationships in the media showing respectful, loving behavior and open communication.
2. Discussing the impacts seeing healthy relationships in the media can have one young people in real life vs. some of the abusive behaviors we typically discuss.
Guest: NextStep attorney Eileen Reilly
FMI:
www.nextstepdvproject.org
www.loveisrespect.org
About the hosts:
Alli Williamson is the youth educator and advocate for NextStep Domestic Violence Project based in Hancock and Washington County, ME. She teaches young people from Kindergarten to College about what power and control looks like in friendships and relationships, what resources are available to support those experiencing this, and how we can work to make our schools and communities safer and more equal spaces where abuse may be less likely to happen.
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Outside the Box 2/17/26: “More Reasons to Be Cheerful”
Producer/Host: Larry Dansinger
About the host:
Larry Dansinger (no pronouns) of Bangor came to Maine in 1974 and has been here ever since. Some of Larry’s activities since then: Done community organizing on numerous issues through INVERT and then Resources for Organizing and Social Change (ROSC), committed civil disobedience several times, grown a garden yearly since 1977, joined various food cooperatives and two men’s groups, refused to pay federal income taxes for war, lived on a community land trust for 23 years, and met a wonderful partner whom Larry has loved for over 40 years. Larry has produced Outside the Box features on WERU since 2007 and continues to look for unique ways of seeing almost any problem or situation.
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Around Town 2/17/26: Local News, Culture and Events
Host/Producer: Amy Browne
John Jurcheck of the Counter Current Collective is here with a suggestion for your weekend plans (yes, we’re already thinking about the weekend). THey’ll be presenting Tögal – A world premiere original work- on Friday and Saturday (2/20 and 2/21) at 7pm at the UU Church in Belfast. Click here for more info and tickets
About the host:
Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021.
Theme music: BreakBeat Chemists I, 2015
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-
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Around Town 2/16/26: Local News, Culture and Events
Host/Producer: Amy Browne
Presidents’ Day 2026 reading from the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights
About the host:
Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021.
Theme music: BreakBeat Chemists I, 2015
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-
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A Word in Edgewise 2/16/26: Lulu, Sledding, Han Kang, & Presidents’ Day . . .
Producer/Host: R.W. Estela
Hi, I’m RW Estela: Since 1991, I’ve been presenting A Word in Edgewise, WERU’s longest-running short feature, a veritable almanac of worldly and heavenly happenings, a confluence of 21st-century life in its myriad manifestations, international and domestic, cosmopolitan and rural, often revealing, as the French say, the more things change, the more they stay the same — though not always! Sometimes in addressing issues affecting our day-to-day lives, in this age of vagary and ambiguity, when chronological time is punctuated elliptically, things can quickly turn edgy and controversial, as we search for understanding amid our dialectic. Tune in Monday mornings at 7:30 a.m. for an exciting journey through space and time with a few notable birthdays thrown in for good measure during A Word in Edgewise . . .
About the host:
RW Estela was raised as a first-generation American in Colorado by a German mother and a Corsican-Basque father who would become a three-war veteran for the US Army, so RW was naturally a military brat and later engaged in various Vietnam-era civil-service adventures before paying his way through college by skiing for the University of Colorado, playing Boulder coffeehouses, and teaching. He has climbed all of Colorado’s Fourteeners; found work as an FAA-certificated commercial pilot, a California-licensed building contractor, a publishing editor, a practitioner of Aikido, and a college professor of English; among his many interdisciplinary pursuits are the design and building of Terrell Residence Library (recently renamed the Terrell House Permaculture Living & Learning Center at the University of Maine), writing Building It In Two Languages (a bilingual dictionary of construction terminology), aerial photo documentation of two dam removals (Great Works and Veazie) on the Penobscot River, and once a week since 1991 drafting an installment of A Word In Edgewise, his essay series addressing issues affecting our day-to-day lives — and WERU’s oldest continuous short feature. When pandemics do not interfere, he does the Triple Crown of Maine open-water ocean swims (Peaks to Portland, Islesboro Crossing, and Nubble Light Challenge) and the Whitewater Downriver Point Series of the Maine Canoe and Kayak Racing Organization. RW is the father of two and the grandfather of three and lives with his partner Kathleen of 37 years and their two Maine Coons in Orono.
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