Donate to WERU Today!Host/Producer: Amy Browne
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, Senator Angus King, and at least 70 other members of Congress have issued a letter in opposition the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) recently announced interim final rule ending the automatic extension of employment authorization documents (EAD) for individuals who have filed timely renewal applications.
You may submit comments on the entirety of this IFR, identified by DHS Docket No. USCIS-2025-0271, through the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal until December 1st.
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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Healthy Options 11/5/25: AGEISM: Disrupting & Challenging Internal & Societal Beliefs & Actions
Host/Producer: Rhonda Feiman
Co-Producer: Petra Hall
Technical Assistance: Joel Mann
Healthy Options: For Well-being & Being Well
This month:
-We ALL will get older; how we deal with this reality is important for each of us to face in a positive, life-affirming manner
-Age-positivity & how to reframe aging
-Why & how do positive views of aging produce healthier outcomes?
-The difference between a “health span” and a “life span”
-Pervasive age-related stereotypes in society, systemic ageism, & internalized, self-perpetuated ageism
-What is internalized ageism & how is it detrimental to all of us as we get older?
-The stigmatization of using the term “memory loss” & how it can be used indiscriminately & incorrectly
-How older people are treated differently than middle-aged & younger people in health care settings, based on perceptions of their age, versus their well-being & vitality.
-Economic disparities & bias that may manifest as we age, in being female and/or a person of color, resulting in a lack of resources and poverty
-Downsides of individual responsibility as we age vs. benefits of collective responsibility in communities
-What can we learn from other countries in relation to addressing the needs & credits of older citizens?
-How older people who want/need to work, & have skills & experience, can aid the employment shortage in Maine
-The Leadership Exchange on Aging as a participatory learning experience for leaders in all fields; 350 have graduated from the program, in Maine (see link, below).
Guest(s):
Jess Mauer, Executive Director of the Maine Council on Aging (MCOA).
FMI:
Maine Council on Aging (MCOA):
mainecouncilonaging.org
Northern New England Geriatric Education Center programs:
www.dartmouth-hitchcock.org/nnegec/programs#GITT-PC
mainecouncilonaging.org/agepositiveme/
Learn about/Join the Tri-State Learning Collaborative on Aging:
www.agefriendly.community
Leadership Exchange on Ageism
mainecouncilonaging.org/leadership-exchange-on-ageism/
About the host:
Rhonda Feiman is a nationally-certified, licensed acupuncturist practicing in Belfast, Maine since 1993. She primarily practices Toyohari Japanese acupuncture, using gentle and powerful non-insertion needle techniques, and also utilizes Chinese acupuncture and herbology. In addition, Rhonda is a practitioner of Qi Gong and an instructor of Tai Chi Chuan in the Yang Family tradition.
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Around Town 11/5/25: Local News, Culture and Events
Host/Producer: Amy Browne
Indivisible’s Solidarity in Action speaker series continues (virtually) tonight, 7 – 8pm, with Solidarity in Action: Protect Immigrant Rights, Build Collective Power with National Director of Immigrant Community Strategies for the ACLU Maribel Hernández Rivera. FMI and to register for the link, click here
Friends of Sears Island invites you to attend a free Zoom presentation titled “Sears Island Fungal Project: The Importance of Collection and Conservation”,tomorrow, Thursday at 6:30 pm To register and receive a link to this Zoom presentation, email [email protected]
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-
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
World Ocean Radio 11/5/25: Waste
Host: Peter Neill
Producer: Trisha Badger
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
The most substantial by-product of human consumption is waste, thus far omitted on balance sheets and in calculation of individual and gross national product. Waste comes in many forms: polluted water, poisoned land, energy lost, habitat destroyed, industrial waste, food discarded, planned obsolescence, even recycling. What remains? The ocean. While under stress by the same forces, it contains the necessary supply of source and resource if we have the courage to sustain it.
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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Outside the Box 11/4/25: “A Rights Economy”
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 11/4/25: Local News, Culture and Events
Host/Producer: Amy Browne
Maine statewide ballot questions with Ann Luther, League of Women Voters – and voting information from the Secretary of State’s office
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-
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Around Town 11/3/25: Local News, Culture and Events
Host/Producer: Amy Browne
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-
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
A Word in Edgewise 11/3/25: Thomas Hood, Tuesday’s Vote, Guy Fawkes, & the Hunter’s Moon . . .
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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