St. Louis on the Air

In this episode we hear from two struggling tenants at the Fountains at Carondelet as well as Lee Camp, an attorney with ArchCity Defenders. Kennard Williams, a lead organizer with Action St. Louis and active member of the St. Louis Housing Defense Collective, joins host Sarah Fenske throughout the discussion, and also interacts with callers.

The St. Louis County Library's Tap In Center seeks to provide a safe space for people who need assistance in resolving warrants, meeting with an attorney, learning their case status or applying for a public defender.

Scores of St. Louis residents are traveling to rural Missouri counties to get vaccinated. Reporter Kayla Drake discusses the issues surrounding these road trips.

After Walter Parks started researching his musical and cultural roots in southeast Georgia, he found a treasure trove of material in the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center. The library had preserved early field recordings of homesteaders in the Okefenokee Swamp region, where Parks remembers camping and exploring as a kid. In this conversation, the writer, guitarist and vocalist joins host Sarah Fenske to share stories and tunes ahead of his show at the Blue Strawberry.

The "We Live Here" team delves into their latest Farm Dreams & Toxic Dust episode, and what the rest of the season on environmental racism has to offer.

Abra McField, the CEO and founder of St. Louis based Abra Kadabra Hair & Healing, has noticed a surge in clients dealing with hair loss since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Susan Van de Riet is the owner of St. Louis Native Plants, a landscape consulting and design company that helps locals figure out the ideal way to grow a garden in their yard. She recently designed a native garden plan with the local chapter of Wild Ones Natural Landscapers. It’s time and budget friendly and totally free to download.

Journalist Masuma Ahuja discusses her new book, which compiles diary excerpts from 30 teenaged girls in 27 countries. She explains why she sees hope in even the most challenging stories.

In the middle of winter’s coldest month, we make time to celebrate love. Valentine’s Day is Sunday. What better way to get in the mood than to listen to some love songs?

As the new executive director of Medical Students for Choice, St. Louisan Pamela Merritt works with medical student groups across the globe to ensure they have access to training in abortion. She discusses those efforts and her perhaps surprising assertion that "abortion is winning."

The year 2021 is shaping up to be a pivotal one in St. Louis politics — with both a new mayor being chosen and a new system of approval voting being pioneered. But the big shifts won’t stop with this spring’s elections: The city is also set to reduce its number of wards from 28 to 14, ultimately shrinking the size of the Board of Aldermen by half.

Sauce Magazine executive editor Meera Nagarajan highlights five new food-and-drink establishments in the St. Louis area.

Black Squares is a new program looking to expand access to chess for low-income and Black and brown youth in north St. Louis. The founders explain how they're planning to make a St. Louis version of Washington Square Park in the Hyde Park neighborhood.

Prairie Farms representative Darin Copeland discusses the initial impact of the pandemic on the company’s production, which Prairie Farms products have proven pandemic popular and how its farmers have been able to keep up a new set of demands.

Mayor Lyda Krewson discusses the causes of recent unrest at the City Justice Center, as well as changes to the police 911 dispatch system, the state's vaccine rollout and more.

The World Chess Hall of Fame's most recent exhibition, “Masterminds: Chess Prodigies," explores the stories of chess prodigies from past to present.

Allyson Mayer, a computational biologist for the St. Louis startup, is particularly hopeful about a current project she hopes will help COVID-19 "long-haulers."

Tad Yankoski, Missouri Botanical Garden’s senior entomologist and "bug dad," returns to the program to dismantle cockroaches' bad reputation and detail some of their positive attributes.

Bubonic plague. Influenza. The Red Death. An infection of zombies. For humanities scholar Marie Lathers, reading fiction about these and other pandemics has proved to be a surprisingly comforting experience over the past year. And now, she's leading a group of Missouri S&T students on a similar journey.

With Sunday's big game looming, Jeremy Housewright and Kendel Beard join host Sarah Fenske to share their perceptions of Chiefs fandom growth in the St. Louis region and what sets the Kansas City team apart.

STLPR's Corinne Ruff gives us a closer look at the enormity of what the Missouri Department of Labor is demanding back from residents whom it mistakenly overpaid a collective total of $150 million in unemployment benefits — and how lawmakers are fighting against that demand.

Every year, Sauce Magazine profiles rising stars in the St. Louis restaurant industry in its "Ones to Watch" feature. We meet two of them: Juwan Rice and Justin McMillen.

The longtime president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, Lewis Reed, is making his third run for mayor. He discusses his agenda.

Chemist Cynthia Chapple is the founder of Black Girls Do STEM, a local organization focused on the empowerment of Black girls in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. She explains how the organization is trying to combat barriers faced by women of color in the STEM fields.

Alderwoman Cara Spencer is making her first run for citywide office in the mayoral primary this March. She explains her vision for the city and why being an outsider might actually be a benefit.

St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones almost won the 2017 mayor's race -- and is one of four candidates this spring. She explains her thoughts on public safety and what she'd do as mayor.

The rates of alcohol and drug abuse are higher within the food service industry than most other professions. And yet, restaurateur Katie Collier is a testament to the fact that you don’t need to leave the service industry to curb an addiction. After struggling with substance abuse for years, Collier is now celebrating a decade of sobriety.

Concerns about the rural-urban divide are a common refrain in 21st-century America. In his latest feature for St. Louis Public Radio, reporter Jonathan Ahl digs into one big idea for a solution to that issue and more: better rural internet access. He talks with host Sarah Fenske about the possibilities.

Mayoral candidate Andrew Jones is the only person in the race who’s never held elected office. He explains why voters should trust him with the city, and how his plan to get tough on crime is different than Mayor Krewson’s.

The biggest campaign on Kickstarter right now comes courtesy of a St. Louis dad who lost his job in the pandemic and decided to go all-in on a simple idea with big appeal: magnetic pillow forts. Conor B. Lewis explains his vision for Fort.

2020 Great Rivers Biennial Arts Award recipient Tim Portlock delves into his “Nickels from Heaven” exhibit. The St. Louis-based artist uses aesthetic conventions from 19th-century American landscape paintings to illustrate his themes about America’s identity.

The STORM Act, signed into law on Jan. 1 by then-President Donald Trump, authorizes FEMA to provide $200 million for a Resilience Revolving Loan fund and allows states to offer low-interest loans to counties and cities for disaster mitigation projects.

Legislative aides to Missouri Democrats are angry that they voted to censure state Rep. Wiley Price, not expel him. Price is accused of threatening an aide to cover up a sexual interaction with an intern. Jason Hancock of the Missouri Independent explains why staffers are so upset.

Democratic lawmakers want to commemorate a sordid chapter in St. Louis history at one of downtown's most visited sites — pens that held enslaved people in what's now the shadow of Busch Stadium. We discuss the new effort and the history behind it.

The ability to speak freely in 2021 is complicated in ways the framers of the U.S. Constitution never envisioned. In this episode, we discuss how the First Amendment applies in this brave new world and whether unpopular speech — be it a dissenting opinion, a false claim or outright hate speech — deserves protection not just from the government, but tech giants like Twitter, Facebook and Google.

Steve St. Pierre opened Have A Cow Cattle Company and Urban Farm Store, along Lafayette Avenue in the Gate District neighborhood, on Jan. 20. In addition to the restaurant's menu items and other products, the for-profit endeavor incorporates goals of service, loving one’s enemies and breaking down barriers.

Jacque Knight, chair of St. Louis' Community Mobility Committee, joins the talk show to share how the group is focusing its efforts and what local residents can do to amplify its work to improve road conditions for all users.

St. Louis on the Air's Legal Roundtable discusses a lawsuit attorney Mark McCloskey filed against a local Catholic school, an age discrimination claim against KMOV, St. Louis County's governance battle and more.

Washington University Sociology Professor David Cunningham shares what we can learn about right-wing, white nationalist groups today — and best practices for defeating them — by studying their mobilization during other moments in our nation's history.

Sarah Abbas and Grace Ruo, both 17, discuss Amanda Gorman's inaugural poem. They also share their hopes for bringing written and spoken words to bear on society, and read poems of their own.

Missouri Rep. LaKeySha Bosley discusses political journey and some of her initiatives tackling criminal justice reform, police brutality and the CROWN Act, which aims to address Black hair discrimination

Sylvester Brown’s new book, “White Castles with Jesus and Uncle Ray at the Used Tired Shop,” collects stories and essays the St. Louis native and longtime journalist wrote from 1995 to 2018. That period covers Brown’s years as the founder and publisher of upstart Take Five Magazine, his tenure as a columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and his many years of maintaining a blog.

The Missouri Historical Society has a major project underway to document and preserve aspects of LGBTQ history in St. Louis. To help prepare for a special exhibition on the LGBTQ community that will open in 2024, the Missouri History Museum is first presenting a virtual exhibit, which launches Thursday, to kickstart the effort.

Host Sarah Fenske explores Metro Theater's "Jacked!" production, which incorporates storytelling, poetry and hip-hop to spread an age-appropriate message about substance abuse and its effects on the community.

A study published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases finds that in addition to up to half of adults being wrongfully prescribed antibiotics in hospital settings, one in four children given antibiotics in children’s hospitals are prescribed the drugs inappropriately.

Last Friday, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen was prepared to vote on a plan that would have compelled the mayor’s office to contract with Persistent Surveillance Systems, an Ohio company that hopes to use planes equipped with high-resolution cameras to monitor the city in a bid to solve violent crimes. Alderwoman Annie Rice of the 8th Ward discusses what’s next for that proposal, as well as a plan she introduced that would provide some oversight to surveillance used by the city and its police department.

As a local union rep, Dan Thacker isn’t accustomed to dealing with unemployment processes. But when the COVID-19 crisis started hitting St. Louis hard 10 months ago, that changed. Thacker, the principal officer with Teamsters Local 610, encouraged the public-sector school bus drivers and monitors the union represents to apply for unemployment when schools shut down. They did so, and were approved. Now those same workers are receiving letters from the state demanding the money back.

Local filmmaker shares more about her latest endeavor to bring the international community art "Before I Die" project back to St. Louis in hopes of reinstilling hope and reminding people of all the good left to accomplish in this lifetime.

In this episode of "St. Louis on the Air," we talk with East St. Louis native Alex Fennoy who was recently recognized with the 2020 George Bailey Distinguished Service Award from the American Bankers Association for his work bringing banking services to underserved communities.

Community members share how their lives are beginning to change and what they’re looking forward to the most, now that they’ve received the vaccine. St. Louis Public Radio health reporter Sarah Fentem also fields questions about the vaccine rollout.