Louisiana Considered

Last week, a nonpartisan science news nonprofit called Climate Central released new modeling showing that a huge swath of New Orleans residents live in areas where the temperature is hotter due to their surroundings. The Coastal Desk’s Halle Parker tells us why an urban environment can increase temperatures and how New Orleans is addressing this issue. New Orleans multidisciplinary artist José Tor...

At the end of July, journalists in Louisiana and Mississippi formed a union with the National Association of the Employees and Technicians – Communications Workers of America (NABET-CWA). Reporters from two nonprofit newsrooms, Verite in New Orleans, and Mississippi Today in Ridgeland, just north of Jackson, are now united in the Deep South Today Union. They’ve become the first two newsrooms in th...

Today on Louisiana Considered, we bring you the second part of the latest episode of our climate change podcast, Sea Change. Last week, we looked into the impacts of the largest environmental disaster in US history: the BP Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010. We were joined by investigative reporter Sara Sneath to learn how spill cleanup workers are still facing health impacts 13 years later. Then we...

On Tuesday, the first episode of the new season of the true crime podcast Smoke Screen officially dropped. This season, “Betrayal on the Bayou,” tells the story of Chad Scott, former New Orleans special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration who was later tried and convicted of corruption-related charges. He is now serving more than 13 years for his crimes. The two reporters behind the pod...

One week and thirty three years ago today, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law. On today’s show, we bring you three stories about Louisianans making their communities more accessible. First, we look back on Carnival season. With loud noises, tightly-packed crowds, and objects flying left and right – a Mardi Gras parade might not seem like the friendliest space for people with d...

The 23rd annual Satchmo Summerfest kicks off this weekend! The festival celebrates the many contributions of New Orleans native son Louis Armstrong, who is recognized around the globe as a founding father of jazz. Emily Madero, CEO and President of French Quarter Festivals, Inc., joins us for more on what to expect at the events. It’s August in the Crescent City, and that means it’s time to put on...

Schools across Louisiana will welcome 80 teachers from around the world into their classrooms in the upcoming school year. The teachers, who come from France, Belgium, Canada, Senegal, Cameroon, Lebanon, Spain, and Mexico, are contracted to teach French and Spanish under public school language immersion programs, and are overseen by the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL)....

On April 20th, 2010, out in the Gulf of Mexico, the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded. The oil spill that followed is still considered the largest environmental disaster in the history of the United States. Today, we are looking at the impacts of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster 13 years later. We hear about the ongoing health effects on people who helped clean up the oil spill and ask,...

Blood Donation. Many of us think about it. Fewer of us do it. But there are many people who have been excluded from donating blood due to a variety of health issues. But recently, the US Food and Drug Administration finalized recommendations for assessing blood donor eligibility with less exclusions than before.   Dr. Tim Peterson, the medical director of the Blood Center at Tulane, joined us to d...

This Saturday, the East Baton Rouge Parish Library will hold a day-long symposium examining the efforts of genealogists to uncover the untold stories of families enslaved in Louisiana. Much of the symposium will be based on research by Rachel Swarns, a professor at New York University, a contributing writer for The New York Times and the author of The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold t...

Musicians are gathering in New Orleans this week for what is fast becoming an annual tribute to a queen. Leigh “Little Queenie” Harris, of Lil Queenie and the Percolators, lost her battle with cancer in 2019, and for three of the past four years, her birthday, July 27, has been honored with a tribute concert.  Alex MacDonald, Little Queenie’s son, joins us for more on his mother’s legacy and the u...

Friday July 14, explosions at the Dow Chemical facility in Plaquemine, Louisiana rattled the homes of nearby residents. While some people have returned to business as usual, others are worried dangerous levels of pollution could have made their way into the air.  Drew Hawkins, health equity reporter for the Gulf States Newsroom, traveled to Plaquemine, in Iberville Parish, to speak to people who l...

In July of 1973, two FBI agents shot Milton X. Scott, a Black Muslim and LSU employee, at his front door in Baton Rouge. While Scott had been accused of deserting the army, it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. This year, three students at the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication, Myracle Lewis, Amelia Gabor and Birdie O’Connell, investigated what went wrong 50 years ago. They join...

In March, Loyola University New Orleans named a new university president, Xavier Cole . When he begins his tenure this fall, Cole will be the first person of color and second layperson to lead the 111-year-old Jesuit institution.  Cole joins us today for more on returning to his Southern home, his love of jazz and his goals for the university.  The 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, resulted i...

During a single-day veto override session on Tuesday, Louisiana lawmakers passed a ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors. The controversial bill was the only one that passed from this special veto session. Capitol Access reporter Molly Ryan tells us more about what this means and what may happen next.  Last week, the conservative activist group Citizens for a New Louisiana released a surve...

Earlier this month, author Maurice Carlos Ruffin was selected as the 24th recipient of the Louisiana Writer Award. The New Orleans native’s debut novel, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for multiple awards, and his second book, The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You , was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and selected as the focus of One Book One New Orleans, a city-wide reading campaign.  Maurice Ca...

A new New Orleans law that seeks to protect tenants from landlord retaliation went into effect earlier this month. The Healthy Homes Ordinance makes it harder for landlords to retaliate against renters who ask for repairs or report problems covered by the City’s housing health and safety rules.   Josie Abugov reported this story for the nonprofit news site Verite, and she joins us now for a look a...

 It's no secret that 2023 has been a big year for sports in the Bayou State, as Louisiana State University took home two championship titles in women's basketball and baseball. But LSU's accomplishments aren't the only ones worth celebrating, as the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame (LSHOF) gears up to induct this year's class honoring some of the best athletes, coaches and journalists the state has e...

It’s been a year since Avis Williams started as superintendent of New Orleans public schools. She is the first woman to permanently hold the position in the district’s more than 180-year history. But as head of the only all-charter school system in the country, William’s role is unique and comes with its own challenges.  She joined education reporter Aubri Juhasz to discuss the state of the city’s...

Hurricane season is just around the corner, and as many Louisianans know, how well you can grapple with the damage and flooding of these storms is often based on how prepared you are. One Louisiana-based tech startup is focusing on making communities better prepared for floods by crowdsourcing data from individual neighborhoods and spreading the information to residents. Julia Kumari Drapkin, foun...

Just a few weeks ago, New Orleans' own Big Freedia debuted her new series, Big Freedia Means Business. The show follows the Queen of Bounce’s new music and entrepreneurial endeavors since her last documentary series, “Big Freedia Bounces Back.”  We spoke to Big Freedia in January, ahead of the show’s release. Today, we listen back to that conversation.  This month marks 157 years since a deadly ri...

We know that everyone has a role in tackling the climate crisis, so what about artists? Today on Louisiana Considered, we talk with Atlanta-based artist  Heather Bird Harris , who has begun making her own paint out of the earth to talk about environmental problems in Louisiana. And we sit down with ecologist  Ashley Booth  and historian  Jeffery Darensbourg to hear how art can combine with other d...

Back in 2020, Lake Charles, Louisiana suffered from back to back hurricanes, and while some areas of the city have since recovered, others look like the storms just blew through yesterday. Now, money from the Biden administration could help the area become more resilient, but some worry the investments won't get to the neighborhoods and people that need it most. WWNO’s coastal reporter Halle Parke...

LSU Libraries’ T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History recently partnered with the Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs to unveil a limited-episode podcast. The series, Oral History and the Louisiana Veterans Experience, aims to uncover untold narratives of individuals who served in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the Persian Gulf Wars.  For more on this series, WRKF’s Kar...

In July of 1963 a group of activists held a ‘swim-in’ protest in which they attempted to enter the City Park Pool in Baton Rouge to protest segregationist laws. This came after years of African Americans often not having access to swimming pools in many parts of the American South.    Now, that event from 60 years ago is the subject of an art exhibit opening this month at the Baton Rouge Gallery c...