Aggregator

On the latest edition of the Politically Speaking podcast, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies welcome Missouri's Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft on the program for the third time. The Republican statewide official was sworn into office in January. He’s in charge of overseeing Missouri’s elections, writing ballot summary language for initiative petitions, registering corporations and regulating financial advisers and brokers.

On the latest episode of Politically Speaking, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies welcome St. Louis Alderwoman Pamela Boyd to the show for the first time.

Earthworms home turf is the Show-Me State - where ecological gardening ideas and practices are growing like . . . plants with WEED in their names. So it follows that getting to see the plants of this place, the ones that are our Natives, is a great way to explore this Nature Thang that's benefiting critters, people, water quality, and more.
                 
St. Louis Audubon hosts their third annual Native Plant Garden Tour on Saturday, September 16, 9 am to 4 pm. Ten homes will open their gardens to visitors using a self-guiding map that describes each site. Volunteers supporting home hosts and a limit of 300 tickets sold will ensure that each visit can include conversations about the environs on view. Personal connections are a hallmark of the Native Plant Gardening movement in the St. Louis region, in many ways, not the least is the opportunity for everyone to connect with Nature's beauty and surprises.

                                           

Earthworms guests are Mitch Leachman, Executive Director of St. Louis Audubon, and Tour Hosts Kari Pratt and Cori Westcott. Along with all gardeners hosting this year's tour, our guests are all involved - as service providers or advisees - with Audubon's "Bring Conservation Home" habitat consultation program. All 2017 Native Plant Garden Tour sites have taken advantage of this program's customized, innovative service.

Visit www.stlouisaudubon.org for program and tour ticket details.

Music: Balkan Twirl, performed live at KDHX by Sandy Weltman and the Carolbeth Trio.

THANKS to Cody Pees, Earthworms engineering wiz, making us peeps and plants sound good!

Related Earthworms Conversations: Wild Bees and Native Plants (March, 2017); Growing a Joint Venture with Nature (February, 2017); Prairie Power (March, 2016); Natives Raising Natives: Butterflies and People (May, 2017)

On the latest edition of the Politically Speaking podcast, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies welcome St. Louis County Councilman Pat Dolan to the program for the first time.

St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies welcome back Sen. Andrew Koenig to the program. Originally published July 18, 2017.

October 14, 1987. They gathered in the shack, on the grassy knoll in Arnold, MO.  A small group of volunteers who'd been digging and wiring and building and raising money for - well, probably felt like forever. A switch got flipped. A needle dropped. Static transformed to the ragtime riffs of "Radio" sung by Banu Gipson. KDHX was ON THE AIR!

Jeff Ritter (front row, left) was the only one of those ten weary, cheering folk who didn't have to go to work the next morning, so he camped out in the shack, spun records and hosted the very first KDHX airshift ever. First of just about 88,000 at this year's 30-year anniversary point, and all contributed by volunteers.

Jean Ponzi - one of several notable Ritter recruits to the KDHX team - got to show the guy who's now Dr. Ritter around our spiffy new Larry J. Weir Independent Media Center when he cruised through The Lou on a summer motorcycle trip. This Earthworms special edition celebrates that tenacious KDHX Person-Power, has a bit o' KDHX history fun, and affirms the ongoing, growing value of KDHX today.

Music: Cadillac Desert, performed live at KDHX by William Tyler
THANKS to Cody Pees, Earthworms engineer

We've heard the statistics: seven point something BILLION and growing. What do those "billions" mean, what's at issue for Earth's capacity to support human life - and what about the rest of the species living here?

World Population Day was designated in 1987 by the United Nations to educate and advocate on population-related issues. This Earthworms' conversation takes place on July 11, 2017, the 30th annual round of focus on these global concerns.

                 
 
Joe Bish, Director of Issue Advocacy for the Population Media Center, explains some of these issues, especially from an environmental viewpoint. He also describes how PMC is changing the public population education game in countries where these issues are major stressors, with significant taboos. PMC produces Soap Operas! They collaborate with local talent to create stories based on local culture, supporting the work of writers, producers and actors and impacting community values and practices. Who doesn't love a juicy serial drama? 

Music: Abdiel, performed live at KDHX by Dave Black

THANKS to Cody Pees, Earthworms engineer

In 2013, the Population Institute, a key partner of Population Media Center, recognized KDHX Earthworms and host Jean Ponzi with a Global Media Award for Best Radio Show.

On the latest edition of Politically Speaking, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies welcome back state Rep. Joshua Peters.

Franklin County Presiding Commissioner John Griesheimer joined St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies on the latest edition of the Politically Speaking podcast. Griesheimer has served as Franklin County’s top elected official since 2011. Beforethat, the Republican served for 18 years in the Missouri General Assembly. Born in St. Clair, Grieshimer was a car salesman. Along the way, he was elected to the Washington City Council and to the Franklin County Commission before winning a seat in the Missouri House in 1992.

We too often hear how out society is checked-out, apathetic, overwhelmed. There is a LOT of keep track of and cope with in the news today - in no small part because there's so much news coming at us constantly. But keeping engaged as citizens is IMPORTANT. The Missouri Coalition for the Environment has a new tool to help us be active, responsive, inquiring. It puts efficient, effective potentials in our pockets.

                 
Caitlin Zera, Community Engagement Manager for MCE, leads the team developing The People's Pocket Guide to Environmental Action. A pdf version is available now. MCE staff and volunteers are distributing (pocket sized!) print copies at community outreach events, and will be offering citizen action trainings starting this fall. An interactive online Pocket Guide is in the works, giving MCE and many partner organizations the capacity to illustrate the basic action measures with community issue examples. 

As Caitlin talks through the action process with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi, we are confident you'll get the goal this guide's subtitle energizes: How YOU Can Make a Difference in Your Community NOW.

Music: Magic 9 performed live at KDHX by Infamous Stringdusters

THANKS to Cody Pees, Earthworms engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: From the Pipeline with Filmmaker Caitlin Zera (January 2016)

New Food Policy Coalition Grows Health & Environment Resources (December 2015)

They stand around us, enrich our lives in countless ways - that are increasingly well-documented with compelling data. They embody cooperation in many ways that humans could emulate. And they give us shade. When we tune to their frequencies, what's on the Great Tree Playlist for us? Plenty!

             

Biologist David George Haskell has been listening to trees in very different Earth locales. His new book The Songs of Trees - Stories from Nature's Great Connectors (Penguin 2017) features trees in an Ecuadoran rain forest, on Broadway in Manhattan, in a middle-eastern olive grove, and other unique spots. His observations and perceptions combine scientific precision with a philosopher's expansive take on life, told in a troubadour's voice. Trees have MUCH to teach our kind, about dancing between competition and cooperation, toward the vision (Haskell says it's an attainable goal!) of regenerating and benefiting all we touch.

David Haskell will speak on July 25 in St. Louis, for the Wild Ideas Worth Sharing biodiversity speaker series - FREE - at the Missouri Botanical Garden. He will also present to area teachers as keynote speaker for the "Visualizing Biodiversity Symposium." He teaches biology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. His work integrates scientific, literary, and contemplative studies of the natural world.

Music: For Michael, performed live at KDHX by Brian Curran
THANKS to Cody Pees, Earthworms engineer

Related Earthworms Conversations: Urban Forests: Seeing the Benefits FROM the Trees (October 2016)

Backyard Woodland: How to Tend Your Forests and Your Trees (August 2016)

Missouri Democratic Party Chairman Stephen Webber joins St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies for a candid episode of the Politically Speaking podcast.

St. Louis Public Radio’s Politically Speaking podcast team of Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies were on the road again Wednesday, this time to Picasso’s coffeehouse in the historic downtown of St. Charles. The two welcomed state Sens. Bob Onder and Bill Eigel, Republicans who represent much of St. Charles County.

Our human culture shapes our human values, which in turn makes us more (or less) of how we see ourselves and who we "really" are, as individuals and as the societies we form. Writer and thinker Jeremy Lent has explored the connecting, shaping forces in the context of human history - to help us see and hopefully direct ourselves.

                                

This conversation lights on topics from Agriculture - and how it cultivated Hierarchies - to Truth, with and w/o the capital emphasis, to Love being our realization of connectedness, at the heart of human-kind-ness. We think you'll dig these deep thoughts, seasoned with Earthworms' sense o' humus about what it means to be Human - in the past, now and in possible futures. 

May this podcast prompt you to pick up Jeremy Lent's new book, The Patterning Instinct - A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning (Prometheus, 2017), and check his work through the non-profit Liology Institute, where connection is appreciated as a universal organizing principle. 

Music: Beneath the Brine, performed live at KDHX by The Family Crest

THANKS to Cody Pees, Earthworms engineer and hub of Sedentism Awareness

 

   
      
   

St. Louis Alderman Megan Ellyia Green joins St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies for a second time on the  Politically Speaking podcast.

Consider money: abstract medium of exchange representing all human and natural creativity and productivity. Could money evolve through human ingenuity - motivated by human love - to restore, protect and cultivate the human and natural resources it stands for?

Investment expert Joel Solomon says, emphatically, YES! and expounds on how in his new book The Clean Money Revolution - Reinventing Power, Purpose and Capitalism (New Society, 2017; written with Tyee Bridge).

                            

This revolution means that we who have monetary privilege can and will use the energy of money for the good of the whole, for the long term. Visionary - and practical, advocating from 30+ years investment experience that proves doing well can do good, in major ways. 

This Earthworms conversation explores the options, as it affirms the urgent necessity of transforming how money works, and how to realize changing it.

Music: Giant Steps, performed live at KDHX by the Dave Stone Trio

THANKS to Cody Pees, Earthworms engineer, and to Carney & Associates P.R.

Check out Joel Solomon's Ted Talk - Joel, chair of Renewal Funds, a $98 million mission venture capital firm in Vancouver, BC, was instrumental in bringing TEDx to Vancouver. 

The bug us. They bite us. Some of them carry a dread disease. Mosquitoes are a fact of summer life that WE can and must actively control.

                       

Jim Sawyer, Vector Control Supervisor for St. Louis County Department of Public Health, covers the details about mosquito biology, disease concerns, and County mosquito control protocols. Earthworms host Jean Ponzi gets the facts to help us all work together with public health officials to minimize mosquito breeding (dump and prevent standing water!) and to identify sites where mosquito species of concern may be proliferating.

Hear how Integrated Pest Management by a local government uses surveillance, conservative and strategic applications of adulticide and larvaecide chemicals, and plenty of public education to protect human health while also protecting beneficial insects. If you are gardening for bees or butterflies, learn how you can opt out of street spraying.

                       

For specific information about mosquito controls where you live, call you municipality or county government Vector Control office. Resources from St. Louis County, MO, include the basics of citizen-municipal collaboration toward good health for all.

Music: Hunters Permit, performed live at KDHX by Mr. Sun

THANKS to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms engineer, assisted by Cody Pees.

Related Earthworms Conversations:
Fight the Bite!  City of St. Louis Mosquito Team (July 2016)

On the latest edition of the Politically Speaking podcast, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies welcome back Gregg Keller for the second time.

On the latest edition of the Politically Speaking podcast, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Jo Mannies shook things up, recording the show with state Rep. Bruce Franks on Wednesday in front of a live audience at Yaquis on Cherokee in St. Louis.

Across the tribal lands of Oklahoma, indigenous people are supporting Monarch butterflies and other pollinators by learning about and restoring the area's indigenous plant communities.

           

Jane Breckinridge - herself a Butterfly farmer! - co-directs this initiative, Tribal Environmental Action for Monarchs (TEAM), a collaboration of seven sovereign native nations. TEAM is growing a living stream of plants and butterflies, the Monarch Migration Trail, in partnership with the international initiative Monarch Watch.  Jane also founded the project Natives Raising Natives (2013), which is teaching rural tribal members to cultivate butterflies with goals to (1) reduce unemployment, (2) promote STEM education for Native youth and (3) promote conservation of native butterflies and the ecosystems that support them. 

Evolving on the wings of cultural and environmental purpose, this is a new model for conservation as community action. that is working in accord with the partners' diverse tribal values. Healthier humans of all ages are thriving with bugs and plants, in interactions that restore the land all depend upon.

Jane Breckinridge will be guest speaker at The Pollinator Dinner, June 20, at the Saint Louis Zoo. Tickets for this delectable, inspiring event go fast. 

THANKS! to Andy Heaslet, Earthworms Engineer

MUSIC: Jamie, performed live at KDHX by Yankee Racers

Related Earthworms Conversations: Dr. Chip Taylor, founder of Monarch Watch (March 1, 2017)