January 20, 2026: Star-free histories to eat up.

It’s cold. And after a full weekend of snowfall we can’t help but think of our neighbors in the winter who are facing heat insecuritySo we’ll chat with newly minted Ex. Dir of Community Action Pioneer Valley, Lev Ben Ezra, about their Eat up for Heat up fundraiser, which has a full week of local restaurants donating to the Claire Higgins Fund for Community Resilience. We hear more about who’s participating, the ongoing need in the face of unstable federal support and more. We’ll also have a look at the broader reach of American history from a whole other continent. Clark University Professor Ousmane Power-Greene joins us from Liberia to talk about the connections of the pioneer valley to the cross oceanic migrations that helped found the nation, and recent efforts to preserve, restore, and broadcast more of that history for an intercontinental edition of the Power of History. And is a galaxy naked without stars? Mr. Universe, Kainaat Studios and Hampshire College’s Salman Hameed talks with us about the first ever instance of a galaxy found without stellar trappings, and about an important shift in the trekkie-verse in an exploration of its latest show, Starfleet Academy.