February 12, 2025: W!ne and Din3

It’s a pre-Valentine’s Day extravaganza for those of you celebrating, with wine and chocolate and innuendosWe’ll take you to the heart of Thorne’s Marketplace in Northampton, where chocolate dreams are being made real from the worlds of pure imagination. Dan McKenney of Firetype Chocolate talks about his unlikely journey into confectionery, the impacts that climate change has on making sweets locally, and the many delicious treats you can get from their location year roundThen we head up to the hilltown hinterlands to get a taste of an extra special beverage. Headwater Cider is making Ice Wine with their apple bounty and we chat with proprietor Peter Mitchell about his apples and the many ciders they’re fashioning in Hawley, and with Doctoral Candidate Elizabeth Garofalo of UMass Extension about the science helping those apples to thrive.And word nerd Emily Brewster, senior editor at Merriam Webster, shows us yet another evolution of language with a delve into algospeak, including a little exploration into the other online based language variations that got us to here.