Local issues, explained close to home.
New England Weekend works like a weekly local check-in for Massachusetts and the surrounding region. Its conversations turn local programs, reports, fundraising, weather training, youth sports, and public health ideas into clear, human-scale explanations.
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New England Weekend is a local interview show with a warm, practical sense of place. Its center of gravity is Greater Boston, the South Shore, and the wider New England community. The show favors organizers, nonprofit leaders, public-service workers, and civic specialists over punditry. It asks what is happening, who it affects, and how residents can take part. That makes the episodes feel close to the ground. A conversation about the Emerald Necklace becomes a springtime guide to parks, cleanup days, student programs, and community bike rides. A feature on the JET Foundation traces how a family’s Duchenne diagnosis grew into support, camp programming, research fundraising, and resources for families. Weather coverage looks past the forecast and into the Skywarn volunteer network, where residents help the Weather Service understand what is happening on the ground. Other episodes move through harder local questions with the same plainspoken patience. The Boston Women’s Fund conversation focuses on money, grassroots organizations, women and girls of color, and the cost of inequity. The wage-gap episode follows how Greater Boston businesses are being pushed toward more transparent and useful data. The show also makes room for everyday community life. Kids playing street hockey at Garvey Park and families using the South Shore YMCA sit alongside arts-based health referrals and nonprofit finance reports. The tone stays inviting, even when the subject is serious. Guests get time to explain. The questions are built for clarity rather than confrontation. It is a strong fit for listeners who want local institutions to feel less abstract and more navigable. New England Weekend makes local life sound like something happening nearby, with names, places, programs, and next steps attached.
Made for: For listeners in Greater Boston and New England who want grounded interviews about community life, community services, health, parks, youth programs, and regional nonprofits. It especially suits people who like local news with practical context rather than argument.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its patient, service-minded interview style: guests are given room to explain how local systems actually work. It connects neighborhood details to broader questions about equity, safety, care, and participation.
WBZ’s Nichole Davis shares the stories people are talking about in your community each weekend. You can also hear the show live on iHeartRadio stations WBZ, WRKO, WTAG, WHYN, WZLX, WBWL, WXKS, and WJMN!
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Nicole Davis connects sports to New England's civic life through practical interviews about local institutions, events and community needs.
Nicole Davis uses focused interviews to connect New England institutions with the practical problems they are trying to solve. New England Weekend moves from social prescriptions and the South Shore YMCA's community plans to children's beds and Greater Boston's wage divide, with…
A prescription for museum time is where your neighborhood curiosity gets pleasantly ambitious.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear Massachusetts-focused look at social prescriptions for loneliness, stress, and cultural connection.
New England Weekend follows a Massachusetts effort to treat loneliness and stress as problems that can sometimes be met outside the clinic, through museum visits, stand-up, nature walks, dance classes, volunteering, and other arts and culture options.
The South Shore YMCA looks ahead with a broader mission built around wellness, connection, and local service.
Trevor Williams gives Nicole Davis a grounded look at where the South Shore YMCA is headed as a long-running local institution enters its next chapter. The familiar frame is still there: pool, basketball court, gymnasium.
A measured look at Greater Boston's wage gap and the workplace practices that could help narrow it.
Greater Boston often talks about innovation and progress, but this episode keeps its focus on a slower, more stubborn measure: wage equity. Nicole Davis speaks with Kim Borman, executive director of the Boston Women's Workforce Council, about a regional report that shows the…
Kyle Mickelson turns an overlooked need into a practical call for Massachusetts volunteers.
Access to a bed becomes a clear family-need story in New England Weekend, led by Nicole Davis's conversation with Kyle Mickelson, the Idaho founder of Sleep in Heavenly Peace.
A Worcester ballpark brings baseball fans and poets into the same lively civic space.
Baseball poetry gets a warmly local treatment here, starting with the easy pleasures of a Fenway evening and minor league mascots before settling into Worcester's National Baseball Poetry Festival.
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An interview with Akiba Abadie, new executive director of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, discussing the 55-year tradition of 'Black Nativity' in Boston.
Executive Director Ardo Van discusses Project Save, a photograph archive preserving Armenian history and stories from before and after the diaspora, celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Host Nichole Davis interviews Kyle Mickelson, founder of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, about child bedlessness.
Host Nicole Davis introduces the National Baseball Poetry Festival in Worcester, now in its third year.
Ocean sunfish may survive only 15 minutes out of water, making fast responses critical during Cape Cod's fall strandings.
Jeff Plate marks Trans-Siberian Orchestra's 30th anniversary while discussing the band's annual holiday tour.
The Emerald Necklace Conservancy hosts community bike rides and other spring events to explore Boston's historic park system.
This episode explains the National Weather Service's SKYWARN volunteer program, which trains citizens to report severe weather to improve forecasts and warnings.
This episode discusses the Jett Foundation's 25 years of supporting individuals with Duchenne muscular dystrophy through research, summer camps, and family resources.
The Boston Women's Fund releases a report revealing that a tiny fraction of philanthropic funding in Greater Boston goes to grassroots organizations serving women and girls of color, leading to severe burnout.
Boston Parks and Rec promotes the upcoming Mayor's Cup Street Hockey Tournament for kids during April break, featuring multiple age divisions and a new girls division.
Nicole Davis speaks with Trevor Williams, the newly appointed president and CEO of the South Shore YMCA, about an organization that says it serves more than 60,000 individuals a year across 12 locations.
Nicole Davis frames WBZ Newsradio’s New England Weekend around Massachusetts “social prescriptions,” where doctors can write a prescription for culture instead of only medication.
Anna Campos, founder of the Fiber Witch Festival and owner of Circle of Stitches in Salem, tells host Nicole Davis that the event grew from a first-year line down Essex Street into a gathering of close to 2,000 attendees.
WBZ News Radio's Nicole Davis interviews Kim Borman, executive director of the Boston Women's Workforce Council, about Greater Boston pay equity and the council's latest wage-gap report.
An interview with Jonathan Lane of Revolution 250 about the history and upcoming commemoration of Evacuation Day in Boston.
Kyle Mickelson discusses his charity Sleep in Heavenly Peace, which builds and delivers beds to children in need, and its expansion into Massachusetts.
Amy Hebb discusses her online non-profit designer store Second Serve Resale, which allows customers to choose which non-profit to support with their purchase.