Missouri has combined its higher education and workforce development departments. But some liberal arts students and professors question whether public universities should steer students toward high-demand professions.
Ecology is still relatively "new" to circles of scientific respect, but Indigenous peoples world-wide have grown scientific, creative and functional expertise from ecological understanding, as long as humans have been around. What can we learn from this today?
What happens when you pair hip hop and violin? Host Sarah Fenske explores the answer with acclaimed hip-hop violin duo Black Violin, alongside St. Louis music producer and musician Brandon McCadney, known as Mad Keys.
The International Institute of St. Louis has been a welcome community for immigrants and refugees to the area for 100 years. In this segment, Sarah Fenske talks with the group's president and CEO, Anna Crosslin, as well as the founder of St. Louis Bosnians Inc. and the director of Grupo Atlantico.
State Rep. Becky Ruth joins St. Louis Public Radio’s Julie O’Donoghue and Jason Rosenbaum on the latest episode of Politically Speaking.
Ruth represents a portion of eastern Jefferson County, which includes cities like Festus, Herculaneum, Pevely and Hematite. The Festus Republican is the first woman to ever lead the House Transportation Committee.
Many community college workforce development programs are supposed to prepare residents to fill vacancies in the local job market. There are questions about whether they are helping close the skills gap noted by employers. St. Louis Community College is expanding some programs in the hopes of filling that gap.
Filmmaker Lynn Novick’s new documentary “College Behind Bars,” set to air on PBS later this month, follows the journeys of men and women pursuing academic degrees while in prison. In doing so, it illustrates the life-changing nature of educational opportunity while also putting a human face on mass incarceration and, as the film’s website puts it, “our failure to provide meaningful rehabilitation for the over two million Americans living behind bars.” Prison education programs including the one featured in Novick’s film, the Bard Prison Initiative, are among efforts to address that failure across the nation. Locally, both St. Louis University and Washington University run programs that bring faculty members to several of the region’s correctional institutions to lead college-level classes. And like other such programs, they boast extremely low recidivism rates for participants who have since been released from prison. In this episode, Novick sits down with host Sarah Fenske to discuss her film and the critical issues it puts in the spotlight. An alumnus of the Bard Prison Initiative, Salih Israil, participates in the conversation, too, as does Paul Lynch, the director of SLU’s Prison Program.
In the new Netflix documentary, "Game Changers," the former team physician for the St. Louis Rams and Cardinals challenges what he refers to as a “locker room mythology about meat, protein and strength.” Dr. James Loomis says that contrary to popular belief, protein isn’t what sustains a person’s energy. Rather, energy comes from carbohydrates, and when carbohydrate calories are sacrificed for protein calories, athletes can develop symptoms like chronic fatigue or loss of stamina. In this segment, Sarah Fenske talks with Loomis about the rise of plant-based eating in professional sports.
On the latest episode of Politically Speaking, St. Louis Public Radio’s Julie O’Donoghue, Jason Rosenbaum and Jacyln Driscoll review some of the week’s biggest stories in state and local politics.
One of the big topics on the show is the first meeting of the Board of Freeholders, which can propose consolidating services in St. Louis and St. Louis County — or even combining city and county governments.
When St. Louis resident Elsie McGrath became an ordained female priest in 2007, her defiance angered local Catholic officials. Though she was later excommunicated by a St. Louis archbishop, McGrath has continued to lead a small Roman Catholic congregation. She's now feeling hopeful that the church may eventually allow women to join the ministry.
The Trump administration’s formal withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on climate change has members of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative concerned. The organization is worried that the withdrawal could lead to U.S. commodities producers being taxed or penalized by countries that signed on to the accord, something that the European Union has signaled they would like to pursue. In this interview, Sarah Fenske talks with the executive director of the Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative, Colin Wellenkamp, as well as Kimmswick, Missouri, Mayor Phil Stang, about what leaving the accord could do to the competitiveness of Midwest commodity exports.
At their core, Missouri and Illinois programs do the same thing: They allow doctors to certify patients to use cannabis if they have a qualifying condition. But there are significant differences in the details of each law. In this segment, Sarah Fenske talks with St. Louis Public Radio reporter Jaclyn Driscoll about the differences between the two state's medical marijuana programs.
Metro Theater Company’s Julia Flood was looking for a classic holiday show this fall — one that would also speak to Metro’s mission as a theater company inspired by the intelligence and emotional wisdom of young people. Her colleague John Wolbers’ fresh take on the story of George Bailey and the town of Bedford Falls aspires to fit the bill. Set at a fictional St. Louis radio station 70 years ago and framed as a radio play within a play, the local playwright’s retelling of “It’s a Wonderful Life” aims to build a generational bridge. The 50-minute production opens this Sunday at the Grandel, with the cast introducing younger theatergoers — and audiences of all ages — to the golden age of radio as well as a long-beloved tale. In this segment, Wolbers joins host Sarah Fenske to talk about his adaptation ahead of its opening matinee (performances run Nov. 17 through Dec. 15). Also joining the broadcast are cast members Alicia Revé Like, Abraham Shaw and Chris E. Ware. The trio present a scene from the play during the show, complete with Foley sound artistry.
Kyle Wernke teaches music at Missouri S&T which has no music majors. But Wernke is having one of his compositions recorded by a European Orchestra and premiered this weekend by the Tampa Bay Symphony.
The weather outside may be frightful, but Patrick Horine, co-founder of the popular Tower Grove Farmers Market, isn’t exactly closing up shop for the colder months these days. As he looks toward the final market of the season this weekend in the south St. Louis park, he’s also gearing up for its wintry equivalent — which is growing. Initially launched in 2007 as a monthly affair, the Winter Market this year will take place weekly beginning Dec. 7. And it’s moving to the spacious Koken Art Factory in St. Louis’ Fox Park neighborhood to accommodate dozens of local vendors. In this segment, Horine joins Sarah Fenske for a sneak peek at the wintry offerings, which also will feature a holiday theme the first three Saturdays of the season. He also discusses farmers market trends in the region as a whole.
In 2012, Rita Csapo-Sweet and her husband, the late Frederick Sweet, jointly published a paper on the ghastly but little-known legacy of Carl Clauberg, a German physician who conducted mass sterilization experiments at Auschwitz during World War II. Clauberg would use his work in the concentration camp to develop a pioneering fertility test. “Clauberg’s name needs to be placed next to [Josef] Mengele’s in its rightful place in infamy,” the two scholars concluded, emphasizing that Clauberg’s medical crimes against humanity “must be disclosed whenever the test bearing his name appears” in modern biomedical texts. As Csapo-Sweet and Sweet dug into their research, filmmakers Sylvia Nagel and Sonya Winterberg also began a documentary about Clauberg — and the St. Louis-based couple’s academic article filled in key gaps in the filmmakers’ story. Nagel and Winterberg reached out to Csapo-Sweet in 2015, and she joined the documentary as its American producer. Now complete, “Made in Auschwitz: The Untold Story of Block 10” will be screened this weekend as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival. In this episode of St. Louis on the Air, host Sarah Fenske talks with Csapo-Sweet about the film and the history of genocidal collaboration by medical professionals, both during the Holocaust and more recently. Csapo-Sweet is an associate professor of media studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Bush honeysuckle isn't native to Missouri, but the species is flourishing in the state. In an effort to upset honeysuckle infestation, the Missouri Botanical Garden has organized public events and volunteer removal days to raise public awareness about the need for bush honeysuckle removal and the benefits of replacing it with native plants. Host Sarah Fenske talks with the garden’s restoration outreach coordinator, Ali Brown, about the organization’s Honeysuckle Sweep Month, the impacts of honeysuckle and other invasive plants in Missouri and what can be done to combat their disruptions.
A documentary about Prison Performing Arts will be shown this weekend at the Missouri History Museum. Director Lisa Rhoden Boyd talks about her experience documenting a group of prisoners at the women's prison in Vandalia, Missouri as they developed the St. Louis-based organization's first commissioned play.
Environmental problems make a lot of news, but solutions are in the works in many places too. Where thinking around a whole system is taking place, ideas-in-action deserve a listen!
Beth Porter, Climate Campaigns Director for the DC based non-profit Green America, digs into making solutions work, toward a green economy.
Green America works to harness economic power - the strength of consumers, investors, businesses and the marketplace - to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.
THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer
Music: Butter II, performed live at KDHX by Ian Ethan Case
In 2009, New York Post reporter Susannah Cahalan suddenly experienced hallucinations, paranoia, seizures and catatonia. She was misdiagnosed for a month before she was finally treated for a rare autoimmune disease that can attack the brain, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. She investigated her experience and published the details in her 2012 book, “Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness.”
Led by a concern that others suffering from this condition were being mistreated in psychiatric hospitals, she began looking into an influential 1973 study titled "On Being Sane in Insane Places" by psychologist David Rosenhan. The details of her investigation are found in her latest book, “The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness.”
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