Puerto Rican circus children visiting their counterparts in St. Louis are busy juggling, tumbling and catching up with old friends. They are working with Circus Harmony, a local organization that teaches acrobatics, juggling and life skills like perseverance and teamwork.
As littered plastic from our bottles, bags, straws and more gets swept from streets to creeks to oceans, where the kinds of creatures we eat are eating plastic that passes to us, humans are growing more aware of this Plastic Pollution problem. But what can we do?
EcoChallenge.org leads a friendly competition for teams of people, nation-wide, who want move toward living Plastic-Free. Here is St. Louis, teams are taking this challenge from leading cultural institutions like Missouri Botanical Garden and the Saint Louis Zoo. From a wide range of learning and action options, EcoChallenge participants are tracking their Plastic-Free progress throughout this month of July. The program's goal is to build awareness and habits that persist when this summer's EcoChallenge ends.
EcoChallenge Director of Learning Lacy Cagle returns to Earthworms, detailing this initiative's What and Why. Joyce Gorrell, Green Team leader and Sustainability Projects Manager for the Garden's EarthWays Center, joins Lacy to share what's motivating her, and her Garden EcoChallenge team.
Listening to this Earthworms edition in July? Check out this Challenge!
Music: Jamie, performed live at KDHX by Yankee Racers
THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer and partner-in-Green
St. Louis Public Radio’s Jonathan Ahl talks with Washington University neurosurgeons Albert Kim and Eric Leuthardt about the particularities of the brain and their “BrainWorks” theater production that dramatizes real-life neurological cases to help explain the science behind brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, brain tumors and strokes.
After a very rainy spring and early summer that have included more than 80 days of flooding along rivers in the St. Louis region, many area residents are still feeling the effects. St. Louis Public Radio’s Jonathan Ahl talks with guests from both Illinois and Missouri about the impacts they’ve been dealing with in their respective communities. Joining the discussion are Adam Jones, a fourth-generation farmer on about 900 acres in Missouri, and Herb Simmons, the longtime mayor of East Carondelet, Illinois.
St. Louis native Merrique Jenson discusses her work nationally and in the Kansas City LGBTQ community, along with the start of her transition as a transgender woman.
St. Louis Public Radio’s Jonathan Ahl discusses factors contributing to the country’s current political environment with Frank DiStefano, author of “The Next Realignment: Why America’s Parties Are Crumbling and What Happens Next."
St. Louis Public Radio’s Jonathan Ahl discusses factors contributing to the country’s current political environment with Frank DiStefano, author of “The Next Realignment: Why America’s Parties Are Crumbling and What Happens Next."
When José moved his family to the U.S. from Mexico nearly two decades ago, he hoped to give his children a better life. Now, the Illinois resident worries about the future of his 21-year-old-son, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. José fears his son's mental illness could lead to deportation.
Unionized workers at St. Louis Lambert International are concerned about their futures as the city considers privatizing the airport. They've been told contracts would be honored, but there is no guarantee for wages and benefits to stay the same once those deals expire.
Several longstanding St. Louis traditions get underway this week, including Fair St. Louis and the VP Parade. Both events have connections to the Veiled Prophet Organization, which was founded in 1878 by white elites. The organization and its regular celebrations have been associated with civic pride and philanthropy – and at times with controversy, secretive rituals and protest. St. Louis Public Radio’s Shula Neuman looks back on Veiled Prophet history and considers the organization’s evolution and ongoing influence while talking with two guests: Percy Green, a prominent civil rights activist perhaps best known for scaling the Gateway Arch 55 years ago, and Devin Thomas O’Shea, a Chicago-based freelance writer who recently finished an as-yet-unpublished novel inspired by the city’s Veiled Prophet traditions.
St. Louis Public Radio’s executive editor Shula Neuman talks about the ongoing St. Louis Cardinals season and what’s ahead for the team as they go on break for the All-Star game with Rob Rains of STLSportsPage.com.
The view from I-64 in midtown St. Louis near IKEA is about to drastically change. Work continues on the multi-million dollar City Foundry mixed-use development. Crews are transforming the old Century Electric facility into a destination for food and entertainment.
Sometimes, here on Earthworms, we focus our conversation on one unique element of Life on Earth. This time it's Squirrels.
Don Corrigan - respected local newspaper editor, college professor and ranconteur - has done this too, with his new book Nuts About Squirrels, The Rodents That Conquered Popular Culture (McFarland, 2019). His talks on this topic are wildly popular, hear?
Don's research has unearthed nuggets about TV, movie, radio, cartoon, sports, community and Civil War squirrels. He also finds squirrels raising genuine enviro-awareness, right in our own backyards:
Is climate change causing squirrels in America to migrate north, or move up into mountain elevations?
Do humans bear any responsibility for disrupting squirrel habitat?
Are squirrels better equipped than we are to deal with effects of climate change?
Keep your mind open and the holes in your house eaves closed up, to enjoy this salute to SQUIRRELS!
Thanks to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms fellow-enviro engineer
Music: Agnes Polka, performed live at KDHX by Chia Band
St. Louis Public Radio executive editor Shula Neuman explores how parents approach “the talk” with their children – which often varies widely across race, gender and cultural lines.
A year after being racially profiled along with fellow black college students in Clayton, Missouri, Teddy Washington and his mother, Denise Washington, talk with St. Louis Public Radio's Shula Neuman. Also joining the discussion is Richard Weiss, whose story about the 2018 incident will appear in this Sunday's edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His reporting is supported through a grant from the Pulitzer Center.
A Washington University student is reflecting one year after being accused of leaving a Clayton Road restaurant without paying. The story of Teddy Washington and his family is at odds with how many portray St. Louis as a hotbed of racial strife. Washington says in many ways he feels privileged, a word he understands is generally applied to whites.
Senate Minority Leader Gina Walsh returns to Politically Speaking to talk with St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum about Gov. Mike Parson’s first year in office, as well as the lay of the land for organized labor.
The Bellefontaine Neighbors Democrats represents Missouri’s 13th Senatorial District, which takes in a portion of north St. Louis County. Walsh will leave the Senate after 2020 because of term limits, completing a 16-year legislative tenure that began in the early 2000s.
As minority leader, Walsh is often the spokeswoman and chief negotiator for the 10-person Democratic caucus. While Democrats are heavily outnumbered in the Missouri Senate, they often have a lot more power to make a mark on major bills because of the state’s tradition of a strong filibuster.
Sauce Magazine art director Meera Nagarajan and staff writer Matt Sorrell talk up some of the latest additions to the St. Louis region’s food-and-beverage community.
Eric Schmid joined St. Louis Public Radio’s newsroom a few weeks ago as its Metro East reporter – a new role made possible through the Report for America initiative, which aims to fill important gaps in local journalism. Schmid talks with St. Louis Public Radio editors Shula Neuman and Maria Altman about what this means for the station’s news coverage and how he hopes to help boost people’s understanding and knowledge of communities just across the river from St. Louis.
St. Louis Public Radio editor Maria Altman talks with reporters Sarah Fentem and Jason Rosenbaum about the legal and political drama surrounding the state's only remaining abortion clinic.
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