December 13, 2023: Leftover dino doomsday

We’re suckers for unexpected love stories. Like the one between dinosaurs and local history. An unlikely pairing to be sure, but one you can discover this weekend at the Great Greenfield Dinofest. We chat with Tim Neuman from the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association and artist Christopher Janke about this ecclectic combination of the region’s paleontological and abolitionist histories, and how the many events throughout the weekend’s free festivities can bring us all closer to Greenfield’s storied past. There’s one near the bomb as well. In this case, two activists lobbying the globe to put down their nuclear arms and start thinking critically about the encroaching environmental benchmarks that we, as a planet, are hoping to avoid. Timmon Wallis and Vicki Elson, nobel prize winners for their work on nuclear armament who fell in love with each other through the cause, give us a preview of Wallis’ latest book “Warheads to Windmills: Preventing Climate Catastrophe and Nuclear War”. They show some ways in which laying down our weapons really could save the world, which is at the core of work of their organization Nuclearban.us. And Word Nerd Emily Brewster, our resident wordster and senior editor at Merriam-Webster, continues our perusal of the would-be words of the year, including her very favorite.