Donate to WERU Today!Host/Producer: Amy Browne
We speak with author James B Wells who will be in Maine next week (Bangor, Ellsworth and Lincoln) talking about his latest book, Because: A CIA Coverup & a Son’s Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew
October 8 | Bangor, ME | The Briar Patch BookSpace – 48 Columbia Street, downtown Bangor | Discussion & signing Because | 7:00 pm
October 9 | Ellsworth, ME | Ellsworth Public Library | Discussion and signing Because | 5:00 pm | Books available through Union River Book & Toy Co. to pre-order or at the event.
October 11 | Lincoln, ME | Our Heroes Military Museum | Discussion and signing Because | 2 :00 to 4:00 pm | Books can be pre-ordered at most bookstores or at the event.
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 10/6/25: Von Behaim’s Erdapfel, a Keatsian Autumn, & Plumly’s Beach . . .
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.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Nature Notes: A Maine Naturalist Afield 10/5/25: Sailing the Maine Coast, part 6
Host/Producer: Glen Mittelhauser
Leaving Marshall Island after a rainy night at anchor, Glen sails east toward Mason Ledge, a long-time seabird colony. Along the way, he notes loons now commonly seen on saltwater in summer, lines of black guillemots, and flocks of southbound semipalmated sandpipers.
More information about Maine Natural History can be found at mainenaturalhistory.org.
About the hosts:
Glen Mittelhauser founded Maine Natural History Observatory (MNHO) in 2003 to fill the need for an organization that specializes in collecting, interpreting, and maintaining datasets for understanding changes in Maine’s plant and wildlife populations. Glen received his Bachelor’s in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic in 1989 with a focus in the biological sciences and received his Master of Science degree in Zoology (with a focus on ornithology and statistics) from the University of Maine in 2000. Glen was the Managing Editor for Northeastern Naturalist and Southeastern Naturalist for 18 years and has served as external graduate faculty for 3 graduate student committees at the University of Maine. Glen currently serves on the Baxter State Park Research Committee.
Logan Parker is an Ecologist residing in Waldo County, Maine. Logan started the Maine Nightjar Monitoring Project in 2017 and brought the project (and his passion for bird conservation) to MNHO when he joined the team in 2018. Logan is heavily involved in the ongoing Maine Bird Atlas where he both coordinates and participates in the project’s special species surveys. When “off the clock”, Logan enjoys birding, writing, gardening, and working alongside his wife, Hallee, on their off-grid home in the Maine woods. Logan is also a wildlife photographer and shares photos and field notes through his project, Here In The Wild.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Esoterica 10/5/25: Give Peace A Chance
What’s the Word on Maine Street? 10/4/25
What’s the Word on Maine Street?, hosted by Sarah Pebworth, is a weekly short feature Saturdays at 9:30am looking at local literary and visual arts events and offerings!
About the host:
Sarah Pebworth leads the steering committee for Word—a Blue Hill Literary Arts Festival, founded in 2017 and held each October. She serves on the boards of the Cultural Alliance of Maine and Lawrence Family Fitness Center YMCA. Since February 2023 Sarah has written “Shared Seas and Common Grounds,” a column published in the Penobscot Bay Press’s Weekly Packet. She and her wife Julie Jo Fehrle live in Blue Hill.
Theme music: Ross Gallagher is a bassist who grew up in East Blue Hill, ME, and currently lives between Bath, ME and Brooklyn, NY, where he works with a wide variety of musical artists. Infinite Blues is a cut from his recently released neon night, an excursion into an ambient/electronic musical world built around rhythmic bass ostinatos, clouds of processed looping electronic atmospheres, and melody. By turns both subtle and unapologetically noisy, the songs are a collection of luminous constellations, roved between by a band of texturally minded instrumental improvisers.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Earthwise 10/4/25: The Color Orange
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.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
The Cosmic Curator 10/4/25
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.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Conversations from the Pointed Firs 10/3/25: Ian Ludders
Host: Peter Neill
Producer: Trisha Badger
Music by Casey Neill (Mock Turtle Music)
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. Airs the first Friday of every month from 4-5pm. Online at pointedfirs.org.
Ian Ludders, author of “Didn’t Do Much but a Little of Everything”, a micro-history of Dalton Raynes who’s workday diary from his 19th year, in 1897, serves as the book’s center, and of Bob Quinn who worked the land up into the 2000s. Ian Ludders, who annotated the text, worked as a day laborer with Bob Quinn before he moved to the island to work and fish with Bob and to manage Eagle for the Quinn family. “Didn’t Do Much but a Little of Everything” encapsulates life on the small community of Eagle
Island, and was produced primarily for the small community of people who know and love it, though it will be of interest to anyone who loves Maine, island, and coastal living.
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.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
