Louisiana Considered

For the last two weeks on Louisiana Considered, we’ve been bringing you Wetlands Radio, a series on coastal restoration from producer Eve Abrams. Today: the final episodes.   First we explore glass recycling, and how one innovative idea can make a huge impact. Then we take the longview, and learn why our understanding of the coastline is perhaps Louisiana’s greatest weapon against climate change. ...

It’s Thursday, and that means it’s time to catch up on politics with The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate’s editorial director and columnist, Stephanie Grace. Today, she tells us about the likelihood that President Trump will still send the national guard to New Orleans — and why that puts Gov. Jeff Landry in a precarious position.  Every two years, the state of Louisiana selects its Poet Laure...

Driving down St. Claude Avenue in New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood, the St. Roch Market is hard to miss. The historic public food hall first opened in 1875 and is where many popular restaurants and chains — like the Daily Beet and CR Coffee — got their start.  Now, the St. Roch Market is celebrating 150 years with a birthday party on Saturday 27 at 2pm. Kevin Pedeaux, operator at the St. Roch Mar...

Last week, pro football hall of famer Emmitt Smith and reality star-turned recovery advocate Zac Clark stopped at Louisiana State University to discuss the opioid epidemic and how to combat it. LSU was the latest stop on their college tour with the Ready to Rescue Initiative, an organization that aims to fight the stigma of opioid addiction and teach people how to save lives with naloxone nasal sp...

The last few years have seen an influx of Northern college students flocking to big Southern Universities. Whether they’re attracted to college football season, a robust Greek life, cheaper tuition prices or HBCUs, the impact remains the same: an increased “southernization” of American culture. Jonquilyn Hill, host of the Explain It to Me podcast at Vox, has been exploring the newfound appeal of t...

This week on Louisiana Considered, we’re bringing you Wetlands Radio, a series about coastal restoration from producer Eve Abrams. Today, diversions: how the river builds land and why many people want to mimic it. Then, we dive into dredging, the process of underwater excavation that allows humans to build land from what the river brought us.  It’s been two years since the Louisiana Department of...

It’s Thursday and that means it’s time to catch up on politics with The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate’s editorial director and columnist, Stephanie Grace.  Today, we break down the latest in the New Orleans mayor’s race, including fundraising, poll numbers and what it means to be a “New Orleanian.”  Louisiana schools have made some big strides in recent years. Math and reading scores are as...

The Louisiana Economic Development (LED) agency is charged with bringing new industry to the state and helping expand existing businesses. Recently, the organization has launched four new initiatives to give businesses the tools, visibility and support to thrive.  Capitol Access reporter Brooke Thorington joins us for an overview of the new programs. Congress will cut funding to the educational co...

The deaths of two bicyclists on a busy New Orleans roadway have energized a long-running conversation about making the city's streets safer. The Gulf States Newsroom’s Kat Stromquist takes a ride down St. Claude Avenue to report on the push for change. Musical siblings Marlon and Rachel Jordan’s southern tour is making a stop in Baton Rouge. The Jordans are the children of legendary New Orleans ja...

Increasing temperatures in New Orleans are driving up utility bills as air-conditioners struggle to keep up. And some people are more vulnerable than others, like seniors. The Gulf States Newsroom’s Drew Hawkins worked with the climate research group, Climate Central, and reports from the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood in New Orleans, where seniors with lower incomes struggle to deal with the heat...

The LSU Museum of Art recently opened a new exhibit, “A Bayou State of Mind,” that tells individual stories of the Louisiana experience. Chief Curator of Exhibitions Michelle Schulte brought together 33 artists and over 100 contemporary artworks that tell different stories about Louisiana.  Schulte joins us to discuss the exhibition, along with one of the featured painters, New Orleans-based multi...

It’s Thursday, and that means it’s time to catch up on politics with The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate’s editorial director and columnist, Stephanie Grace. Today, she breaks down the latest poll numbers in the New Orleans mayor’s race.  After a decade of haggling, disposing, redesigning and modifying, the state’s Public Service Commission finally approved an energy efficiency program on Augu...

Louisiana is dealing with its worst whooping cough outbreak in decades. Hospitalizations have continued to rise over the summer, and two babies have died.  Health reporter Rosemary Westwood joins us for more on the outbreak and why the disease is so dangerous for young babies. The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) has released its annual scorecard, an analysis of the legislatur...

Earlier this year, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, broke ground on a $10 billion data center for artificial intelligence in the middle of a Louisiana cornfield. Located in the town of Holly Ridge, the unfinished data center is already turning Richland Parish into a boomtown. Stephanie Riegel has been covering this for the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate. She tells us about her recent trip to...

The nonpartisan, public policy organization, Leaders for a Better Louisiana, recently released its latest Louisiana Fact Book. It’s a list of 35 indicators over five key areas used to measure the state’s overall wellbeing.  The organization’s chief policy officer, Barry Erwin, joins us to discuss this year’s slight upward trend. The documentary “City of A Million Dreams - Parading for The Dead In...

For the first time since Hurricane Katrina made landfall 20 years ago, you can take a train ride across the Gulf Coast, from Mobile to New Orleans. And all these years later, the cities along that route are still living with the storm's aftermath. In this episode, we hop aboard the train and make four Gulf Coast stops along the way to share that story. About what happened during Katrina. How some...

It’s Thursday, and time for our Week in Politics with the Times Picayune’s/The Advocate’s editorial director and columnist, Stephanie Grace. Today, we discuss President Trump’s proposal to send the National Guard to New Orleans and how Gov. Jeff Landry has responded.  Ask anyone in New Orleans, and they know: Hurricane Katrina was such a devastating disaster because of the catastrophic failure of...

In 2020 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that non-unanimous jury verdicts – previously legal only in Louisiana and Oregon – were unconstitutional. Yet there are more than one thousand people in our state who had been convicted by non-unanimous juries before the court ruling and who remain behind bars.  Richard Webster joins us for more on what happens next to those who have been convicted by split jur...

The New Orleans arts community, which was scattered across the nation post-Katrina in 2005, provided a healing balm for the city when artists finally made their way back home. Fast forward to 2008, an idea spawned at WWNO by general manager Paul Maassen provided a platform for those struggling artists to bring the community together. That platform is what we now know as Culture Collision, a previe...

When Hurricane Katrina happened 20 years ago, 4-year-old Nigel Tapp evacuated from the Lower Ninth Ward to Montclair, New Jersey – the hometown of managing producer Alana Schreiber. When his pre-K classmates learned that his family had lost their house to the storm, they wrote a book and sold it to raise money.  Twenty years after Katrina – and the publication of “Nigel and the Hurricane,” Schreib...

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall 20 years ago, New Orleans East was especially hard hit. This part of the city is home to a large Vietnamese population, many of whom had experienced fleeing their home in the aftermath of the Fall of Saigon.  Yet the Vietnamese community bounced back, in larger numbers, and at a faster rate than many other enclaves.  Cyndi Nguyen is a New Orleans East resident...

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall 20 years ago, many residents were looking to find their way out of New Orleans, but journalists were descending upon the city looking for a way in. In the days and weeks that followed, the country was overwhelmed with a variety of media narratives, as journalists worked to report honestly on the situation without ignoring the fear and desperation they saw. For...

After Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans 20 years ago, public education in the city came to a complete stop. And when schools reopened, many of the city's educators didn't get their jobs back. Instead, they were replaced with young people who were new to teaching and new to New Orleans. Education reporter Aubri Juhasz spoke with two teachers on opposite sides of that divide. While all New Orlea...

Hurricane Katrina destroyed an estimated 320 million trees in the Gulf Coast. This was not only a dramatic shift in the look of the landscape, but left the region more vulnerable to further disasters without the trees to absorb carbon and intercept stormwater. Over the last 20 years, NOLA Tree Project has planted tens of thousands of trees to help rebuild New Orleans’ canopy. Executive director Co...

Two decades after Hurricane Katrina and its devastating aftermath reshaped New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, we gathered to remember all that was lost, reflect on the lessons learned, and pay tribute to all the good that has been done in the two decades since. And, we look to the future: where do we go from here, and how can this region not just survive but thrive? Renowned jazz musician Dr. Michael...