RANGE

Val, Luke and Aaron Hedge talked about deconstructing from Christianity, TikTok (and the potential ban) and how those two wildly different things relate — and the lessons on community that these reflections can give us. 03:49 Brief overview of the latest TikTok news 07:16 Defining Deconstruction in Christianity 13:26 Personal Stories of Faith and Doubt 25:20 Navigating Faith an...

This week on Free RANGE, Luke and both Erin/Aarons discussed an unexpected nationalist rabbit hole Hedge dove down, the contours of a new bike box program for people biking to City Hall (Spoiler alert, it's not all it's cracked up to be) and a Sellers deep-dive into numbers for the city's new homeless scatter sites, focusing on one that's opened beds for 30 medically fragile unhoused people at Wes...

Luke was out doing ~boss-coded things~ so co-host Erin interviewed fellow RANGE reporter Aaron Hedge on his newest big story: “A burning question for police: Does ‘deescalation’ mean ‘up to lethal force’? If you’re not a big fan of reading  4k word stories , but you want to know about how Spokane’s police force — the third deadliest per capita in the nation — thinks about use-of-force and dee...

The whole gang discusses our news year resolutions, including but not limited to: striving for better work-life balance, engaging more deeply with community, and doing more labor, rural and culture reporting. 00:00 Intro 01:03 Holiday Break Recap 04:33 Personal and Team Goals for the Year 06:39 Labor Reporting and Community Engagement 21:05 Connecting community desires with coverage 27:38 Focusing...

Luke was out sick, so Audience Editor Valerie Osier joined Erin to talk about RANGE’s newest labor story: a timely expose on union-busting at the local Planned Parenthood affiliate. If you’re not a big fan of reading 4,000 word stories, but you want to know about the CEO’s crazy-high salary, the high cost of union-busting ($425 an hour) and the employees caught in the crossfire, listen now! Editor...

Luke and Erin did a 2024 Wrapped, running through the interesting (and often depressing) coverage RANGE did in the last year. You can find all of our coverage  here ! And, shameless plug, we just launched a merch line, which you should  shop ! Help us get sustainable, show your commitment to civic engagement, and look hot doing it. Do you have questions about local government? Wondering...

Luke, Erin and guest Aaron Hedge — the environmentalism and County reporter at RANGE Media — chatted Spokane City Council rule changes (and the consequences for conservatives), the continued saga of Liberty Lake City Council’s growing control over their library and a grab-bag of other local news items! If you listened to our episode and want to learn more, here are the stories we referenced: Erin’...

Welcome to our very special Thanksgiving episode of Free RANGE, where Luke and Erin convened a panel of local notables Joni Harris, Sara Dixit and Kai Teo — a cook, an organizer and a data journalist, respectively, to discuss the political disconnection felt right now by working people in Spokane and one idea the nerds at RANGE have had to try to help struggling renters feel more protected by and...

Luke, Erin and guest Aaron Hedge — the environmentalism and County reporter at RANGE Media — talked about the city’s will-they-won’t-they relationship with the C.O.P.S. contract, CEO Larry Krauter’s departure from the Spokane Airport and a short Civics round-up of all the biggest pieces of news that came out of local municipal meetings this week. If you listened to our episode and want to learn mo...

RANGE Media ’s Luke Baumgarten and Erin Sellers pay attention to news in Spokane and the Inland Northwest so you don’t have to. Join them Thursdays at 3 pm on KYRS Thin Air Community Radio for a round-up of the serious (and not so serious) local news of the week, behind the scenes drama at public meetings and deeper dives on important stories with the journalists who broke them. If you want to lea...

Behold the first episode of RANGE's new radio show, Free RANGE, produced at KYRS Thin Air Community Radio. Hosts Luke Baumgarten and Erin Sellers are joined by Aaron Hedge to talk about the week in news.

Spokane Regional Health District (SRHD) is amid a months long process to determine if it should privatize its treatment services division, which currently serves 1,000 patients, connecting them with methadone and mental health services to manage opioid addiction. The process, which began last spring has been a tense one led by SRHD Administrative Officer Dr. Alicia Thompson. Thompson recently comp...

This week, we’re telling you exactly how you can live your nosy dreams with public records.  Join host Luke Baumgarten and reporter Erin Sellers as they explore the vital role of public records in holding our electeds accountable.  First we have a lively roundtable with local reporters Nate Sanford of the Inlander and Daniel Walters of InvestigateWest (but formerly at the Inlander too!),...

The Pod stays back, baby! Episode two is out and only a few hours late.  We’re still nailing down our format and process, so in the future, you can expect the pod a little earlier than 8 pm whatever time Luke actually gets this uploaded to the website… Join host Luke Baumgarten and some of the RANGE team, Val Osier, Erin Sellers & our intern Holly VanVoorhis. Luke plays nature documentary...

The pod is back for the next time, for the last time. And this time , we are pulling back the curtain!  The old format was a lot to pull off each week, so we’re brainstorming ways to make it happen consistently. Join host Luke Baumgarten and the rest of the RANGE crew, Val Osier, Erin Sellers & Aaron Hedge, as they go on a fantastic voyage into the life of the journalistic mind, brainstor...

Welcome to a place where dead dogs, communion wafers, pipe diameters and fluoride in the water live alongside important ongoing public testimony about the conduct of public officials and the ramifications of legislation passed by Spokane’s City Council. The Open Forum period at Spokane City Council meetings is a land of contrasts, playing host to a number of topics that, at first glance, might see...

With temperatures climbing into the 90s in May and wildfire smoke already fouling air quality in some areas of the Northwest, RANGE wanted to learn more about what this unseasonably warm weather means for the rest of summer, the risks of heat-related illness in our community and the role climate change plays in driving extreme weather. So, RANGE out to Dr. Brian G. Henning, the Director of Gonzaga...

Today, on a brief trip to Spokane to visit Thrive International and the Podium sports complex, Gov. Jay Inslee visited the RANGE office for a half-hour interview. The interview, like much of our coverage, focused on key areas of concern for Spokane: homelessness, affordable housing and behavioral health. Gov. Inslee repeatedly called for increased investment in home building from the state legisla...

We’re back at you with a whole new podcast episode and it’s only been … five months? We’re still figuring out how to carve a sustainable podcast with all of our reporting work and limited staff, but we’ve missed you — and we know you missed Luke’s buttery podcast voice — so we have a special episode! In November, we hosted our first-ever live podcast recording at the Central Library , where we got...

We’re back with the third installment in our RANGE of Care miniseries on productive disagreements at an interpersonal level and a societal level through the lens of family therapy and restorative justice. This began as a conversation about how to have productive disagreements and quickly became a discussion about how do we change our criminal legal system, and maybe on our way to that needing to c...

Today on the pod, we have the second part of our conversation with Daniel Walters.  Last week we spent a lot of time breaking down the chronology of how the June 11 anti-Pride event was conceived and initially promoted locally, but how “local” in the case of North Idaho now includes an increasing number of far-right celebrities. This week we discuss how, just as the pot seemed likely to boil...

Today on the pod, The Inlander’s Daniel Walters joins us to talk about the many groups, YouTube celebrities, and far-right hype people who brought the June 11 counter-demonstration against Coeur d’Alene’s Pride in the Park near to a boiling point. This event led to 31 Patriot Front members getting arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to riot, including at least two men with ties to far-right pastor...

At a lot of media companies, the crime beat is new reporter purgatory. This is probably your first job out of college: listen to scanner traffic and when something newsworthy happens, you run out and report it.   In one sense, it’s journalism on easy mode — the stories literally come to you — and in that sense, it’s understandable to put a young reporter on it. But that inexperience crea...

The Inland Northwest offers a unique glimpse into the future of the rest of the US in light of the expected overturn of Roe v. Wade & Planned Parenthood v. Casey, two landmark Supreme Court decisions that codified the federal right to an abortion.  This is because there already aren’t any abortion clinics in North Idaho, so many abortion-seekers as far away as western Montana need to go o...

Video games obviously don’t just come into being. Like any piece of art, they have creators. And we happen to know one right here in Spokane.  A couple weeks ago we talked to Justin Baldwin, Creative Lead & Cofounder at Moonlight Kids . He’s one of the creators of a pretty popular indie game called The Wild at Heart. It’s described as cute and cozy, but it introduces important themes to k...