Prairie Journal

More than 100 years ago, a grisly series of murders took place in an isolated cabin in southeast Kansas.  Susan Jonusas is the author of "Hell's Half Acre:  The Untold Story of the Benders, America's First Serial Killer Family." Our Kansas 250 Bookshelf series continues with "Mad Prairie," a set of unsettling short stories by Kate McIntyre.

We're getting in the mood for Halloween with stories of witches, ghosts, demons... and the true story of a father-daughter team searching for a serial killer, 100 years after the fact. Alex Grecian is the author of Red Rabbit and The Saint of Wolves and Butchers; Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James are the authors of The Man from the Train.

The world lost a much-beloved country superstar last month with the death of Dolly Parton.  We set the stage for the upcoming Dolly Parton Tribute concert with Sarah Smarsh, author of "She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs."

Nearly thirty years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case, a different fight played out in Kansas City, Kansas, one that drew in the Mexican consulate, the Kansas governor, and the U.S. State Department.  It's Episode 6 in the Per Aspera series, a history series produced by Kara Heitz and the Kansas 250 Commission.

Sarah Smarsh, Lucas Bessire, and Kate Benz share stories of the challenges of rural life in this month's Kansas 250 Bookshelf.  They're the authors, respectively, of Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, Running Out: In Search of Water in the High Plains, and Nothing but the Dirt: Stories from an American Farm Town.  

The Kansas Book Festival is an annual celebration of books, readers, and writers.  Director Lara Avery joins us to preview the festival, taking place in Topeka on September 26th.  We also hear from two festival participants, Sonja Czarnecki and Vanessa Eicher, hosts of the popular podcast "In Walks a Woman."

How did an inventor manage to build a subway in New York City...in secret? KPR's own Matthew Algeo tells the story in "New York's Secret Subway: The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit."

The 4th annual Paper Plains Zine Fest is coming up Labor Day weekend in Lawrence.  It's three days of celebrating, exploring, and exhibiting zines and zine culture.  We talk to Rachel Gibson and Grace D. Corndog, zine creators and volunteers with the Zine Fest.

Former U.S. Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker passed away August 21, 2026, at the age of 94.  In this special rebroadcast of her 2022 talk at the Dole Institute of Politics, she reflects on her life, her career, and her legacy.

KPR's Community Spotlight this month is on NAVO, a collective of internationally-recognized musicians and performers based in the Kansas City area.

Charley Curtis was the first Native American elected to the U.S. Congress, the Senate, and the Vice-Presidency.  Deb Goodrich explores Curtis's Kansas roots and his political legacy in her Kansas Notable Award-winning book, part of our Kansas 250 Bookshelf series.

Dirty politics, partisan division, contested elections, fake news -- none of it is new.  Greg Jackson is the author of "Been There, Done That: How Our History Shows What We Can Overcome" and the host of the "History That Doesn't Suck" podcast.

We visit with best-selling author Laura Moriarty about her just-released novel, Sunshine Finds You .  Also, Robert Rebein's The Last Rancher has been named to the Library of Congress' "Great Reads from Great Places" for 2026.  Both these authors join Kaye McIntyre on this week's program.

What better way to celebrate America 250 than with food?  This month's Kansas 250 Bookshelf features Teatime to Tailgates: 150 Years at the K-State Table and Amy Barickman's Vintage Notions.

Kansas voters head to the polls August 4th in the primary.  Who's running and what's on the ballot? Washburn University's Bob Beatty joins us to talk about the constitutional amendment on electing Kansas Supreme Court justices, and we hear from the candidates for Kansas governor and U.S. Senate.

From Kentucky to Kansas to New York City in the Gilded Age, journalist-reformer and self-proclaimed "Queen of Bohemia" Zoe Anderson Norris chronicled the lives of immigrants and the poor in her self-published magazine, The East Side.

The story of the fight to save a Kansas City, Kansas, cemetery, and the Wyandotte woman who became the first Native American woman to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court.   We visit with the editors of "Lyda Conley and the Fight to Preserve Huron Indian Cemetery." 

Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, historian, and author Rick Atkinson gives the 2026 Dole Lecture at the University of Kansas.  His latest book, The Fate of the Day , is the second in his Revolutionary War trilogy, The War for America.

What better way to celebrate America 250 than with a cross-country road trip?  Dr. Beverly Gage is the author of This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History.  She's joined by Dr. Colleen Shogan, former U.S. archivist and CEO of the online history series In Pursuit.

Movies, music, and more!  It's time for the 2026 Free State Festival,  a week-long celebration of independent films taking place June 22nd-28th.  Festival director Marlo Angell joins us to talk about this year's FSF theme: The Revolution Will Be at the Movies! 

The World Cup is here!  Tim Bascom explores the universal appeal of the game in his book "The Boundless Game: Soccer Stories from Across the Street to Around the World."

In the late 1880s, Kansas voters did something almost no other state was doing: they elected women to local office. This episode of Per Aspera follows three of those elections: how Susanna Salter became the first woman mayor in the United States after being nominated as a joke, as well as wins in Oskaloosa and Baldwin City.  Per Aspera is a Kansas history series produced by Kara Heitz and the Kans...

This week marks the 60th anniversary of an F5 tornado that ripped through Topeka, killing 17 people, injuring hundreds more, and destroying homes, cars, and buildings in the heart of the city.  We look back on June 8, 1966, with Bonar Menninger, author of "And Hell Followed With It: Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado," and with journalist Bill Kurtis, on the air at WIBW the night of the devastatin...

As Bill Kurtis marks his last weekend as scorekeeper for NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," we revisit KPR's book launch event for his memoir, "Whirlwind: My Life Reporting the News."

Our Kansas 250 Bookshelf series continues with two books for kids and teens: Henry, Like Always by Jenn Bailey and A Constellation of Roses by Miranda Asebedo.