NCSL Podcasts

Until recently Alabama's constitution still had racist language from the original document written in 1901, led by an avowed white supremacist. Though the provisions weren't operable today, plenty of people have wanted them gone for years. But it wasn't easy to revise a constitution that is the longest such document in the world, one that has nearly 1,000 amendments. Still, the state legislature r...

On this episode, Host Tim Storey talks with Cedric King, a retired army master sergeant, speaker, and author, who will be the keynote speaker at NCSL’s Legislative Summit in Indianapolis in August. King joined the army in 1995, eventually rising to a leadership role in the elite Army Rangers. On his third combat deployment in Afghanistan in 2012, King was leading a patrol in a small village when h...

This is Legislative Staff Week 2023 at NCSL, and we sat down with two staffers to talk about why people come to work in the legislature and why they stay.  Our guests are Anne Sappenfield, director of the Wisconsin Legislative Council and NCSL staff chair, and Heshani Wijemanne, assistant secretary of the California Senate. Sappenfield began working in the legislature in the mid-‘90s while Wijeman...

Host Tim Storey’s guest for this episode is Leonor Ehling, the executive director of the Center for California Studies at Sacramento State University. She is also co-director of the Legislative Staff Management Institute (LSMI), which is a flagship program that NCSL produces jointly with Sacramento State and the University of Southern California. They discussed LSMI and the hundreds of legislative...

Young students in New Mexico made history when they convinced lawmakers that the smell of roasting chilis should be the state's official aroma. They researched, wrote letters, testified in hearings and celebrated when the Governor signed the bill at their school. It's the only state with a designated aroma, and it was the first time students were the force behind a new law, with the help of Senato...

Childhood vaccinations in the U.S. were steady for the decade before the pandemic, but have shown a decline for the past couple of years. We sat down with Dr. Pam Shaw, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Kansas Medical Center, who explained some of the reasons for that decline. She also discussed other disruptions to vaccinations and some of the challenges to getting children vaccinate...

Resources Senator Whitney Westerfield The Sentencing Project Why Youth Incarceration Fails: An Updated Review of the Evidence , The Sentencing Project

Resources Legislative Staff Management Institute , NCSL University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy

National Conference of State Legislators Center for Legislative Strengthening National Institute for Civil Discourse Next Generation Program Millennial Action Project    

Resources State Exchange on Employment and Disability, U.S. Department of Labor

Resources Earn to Learn

Resources Council of State Governments

Resources “The Time Is Now,” NCSL

Resources State Elections Database , NCSL

Resources Americans for the Arts

Resources 100% Human

Resources NCSL

RESOURCES Prescription Drug State Bill Tracking Database | 2015-Present Rep. Iman Jodeh, Colorado General Assembly

Contact Host and Producer Kelley Griffin, Sr. Editor at NCSL kelley.griffin@ncsl.org  

Resources Peverill Squire, University of Missouri

Resources Biden-Harris Administration Announces $5.6 Million in Internet for All Grants to Two Minority-Serving Colleges and Universities in California , National Telecommunications and Information Administration Digital Inclusion Trailblazers , NDIA High-Speed Internet for All Join the NDIA Community The New Broadband Maps Are Finally Here, Federal Communications Commission , FCC State Digital Eq...

Contact Kelley Griffin at kelley.griffin@ncsl.org.  

Resources National Academy of Public Administration

Resources Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: Implementation and Key Resources , NCSL National Association of State Energy Officials Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs, U.S. Department of Energy