STL on the Air 📻

Beau Willimon joins St. Louis on the Air to talk about how his documentary "Lights of Baltimore" sheds lights on the development of policing in Baltimore, early redlining practices and the disinvestment in Black communities around the U.S. He also talks about the free screenwriting class he's offering as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival.

In the month leading up to Election Day, most public opinion polls showed former Vice President Joe Biden leading by a sizable margin, yet his margin was much closer than many pollsters predicted. As Vittert writes in a recent editorial, “How were all the pollsters so wrong, again, even after the soul searching and methodological recalibrating that followed 2016?”

In the 20th century, St. Louis was a hub for candy manufacturing. As 94-year-old candy magnate Menlo Smith puts it, “St. Louis was the best place in the country to manufacture confectionery if you were going to be distributing it nationwide.” Smith is the man behind favorites such as Pixy Stix, SweeTarts and Nerds.

At Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Parish food pantry in Ferguson, volunteers have seen a 25% client increase in recent months, with Blessed Teresa serving about 1,300 people in October alone. That’s in keeping with what food banks and other partners are observing throughout the area, according to Operation Food Search’s director of strategic services, Lucinda Perry. She’s seen about a 40% increase in food insecurity amid COVID-19 upheaval. The St. Louis community is stepping up to help, including local farms such as EarthDance.

The Refugee Integration Project spent 12 months documenting critical shifts and moments for refugees who resettled in St. Louis. The stories emerging from that research will be presented this week in a new puppet show called “We Came As Refugees: An American Story.” A collaboration with the University of Missouri-St. Louis, the St. Louis Storytelling Project and the University of Missouri Extension, it's all in an effort to help increase awareness about refugees and challenges they face in the United States.

New restaurants and bars continue to open in the St. Louis region — often with extensive safety protocols. And they’re offering new items for local food lovers and ways for patrons to get their favorite dishes. Sauce Magazine features eight new restaurants in its November Hit List, and executive editor Meera Nagarajan joined "St. Louis on the Air" to talk about them.

Members of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force said that as hospitals in the St. Louis region near their capacity to treat coronavirus patients, doctors, nurses and other hospital staff are overworked and afraid.

Author Nini Harris' new book “Oldest St. Louis” explores the history of everything from the oldest house in the region (which dates to 1790s Florissant) to the region’s oldest prayer vigil (ongoing since 1928). She explains how she got to the bottom of things and why her findings give her hope.

Among the offerings of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival is “Test Pattern.” It is the first feature film by St. Louis native Shatara Michelle Ford and, which follows a young Black woman as she navigates the medical and justice system after an assault.

Missouri Republicans performed exceptionally well on Tuesday. Jean Evans, the Missouri GOP’s executive director, joins the show to discuss the winning strategy that she said boiled down to three things: great candidates, a strong ground game and the Democratic Party’s failure to resonate with Missouri voters.

St. Louis filmmaker Matthew Rice's "The Ballad of John Henry" is streaming as part of this year's extended St. Louis International Film Festival. The documentary delves into the folk hero John Henry's hardships of living under Virginia’s “Black codes” and the convict-lease program, an unjust legal system developed after the Civil War as a replacement for slavery.

In September, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a report supporting the phaseout of subminimum wage for people with disabilities. For St. Louisan Colleen Starkloff, co-founder of the Starkloff Disability Institute, it’s about time. While she’s quick to acknowledge the good intentions of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act exception when it was first created, she’s convinced that phasing it out is critical to human dignity and inclusive employment practices. “There’s a way to do that, and sheltered workshops aren’t it,” she says.

A new program in St. Louis will divert some 911 calls crisis counselors, while some social workers will now respond to calls for service alongside a cop. The city's point person on the project and the contractor handling calls discuss the rollout and the goals behind it.

In conversation with UMSL's Anita Manion and St. Louis Public Radio's Jason Rosenbaum, we dig into some of the biggest local and statewide races and issues voters weighed in on this fall — and what to make of the results. We also talk with Congresswoman-elect Cori Bush and with STLPR reporters Jonathan Ahl and Jaclyn Driscoll.

KaDrea Harrison doesn’t particularly enjoy asking for help. So when she was unable to work because of COVID-19 and fell behind on rent earlier this year, she hesitated telling her leasing office. But now she’s glad she did, because it was quick to direct her to something called the St. Louis Mediation Project. Elad Gross is the outreach coordinator for the partnership.

While most voters head into the voting booth alone, all 50 states allow parents or guardians to bring their kids with them to the polls. Nareissa Smith, an attorney and teacher with the St. Louis-based company, Varsity Tutors, says this is a good practice because it's a learning opportunity and it gets kids excited about civic engagement.

A study in the Journal of Public Economics finds that people who vote, regardless of party affiliation, are more likely to comply with voluntary public health directives during the pandemic. Co-author John Barrios of WashU’s Olin Business School explains what the study tells us about America.

“I really wanted to do something for our audience that would take them away from their computer,” the festival’s executive artistic director, Carrie Houk, explains. Radio seemed the perfect medium, and indeed, she and other organizers, including Brian Hohlfeld, are finding that the playwright's dialogue translates well to it.

This year’s fall foliage looks a bit different than past years. Among the golden, warm-toned hues sprucing up the St. Louis region for autumn is still a noticeable amount of green leaves. Daria McKelvey of the Missouri Botanical Garden explains why.

On November 2, 1920, William E. Woods made St. Louis’ first radio broadcast, announcing election results from his home on De Tonty Street out to the airwaves. Frank Absher of the St. Louis Media History Foundation gives us the details.