St. Louis on the Air

The year 2021 is shaping up to be a pivotal one in St. Louis politics — with both a new mayor being chosen and a new system of approval voting being pioneered. But the big shifts won’t stop with this spring’s elections: The city is also set to reduce its number of wards from 28 to 14, ultimately shrinking the size of the Board of Aldermen by half.

Sauce Magazine executive editor Meera Nagarajan highlights five new food-and-drink establishments in the St. Louis area.

Black Squares is a new program looking to expand access to chess for low-income and Black and brown youth in north St. Louis. The founders explain how they're planning to make a St. Louis version of Washington Square Park in the Hyde Park neighborhood.

Prairie Farms representative Darin Copeland discusses the initial impact of the pandemic on the company’s production, which Prairie Farms products have proven pandemic popular and how its farmers have been able to keep up a new set of demands.

Mayor Lyda Krewson discusses the causes of recent unrest at the City Justice Center, as well as changes to the police 911 dispatch system, the state's vaccine rollout and more.

The World Chess Hall of Fame's most recent exhibition, “Masterminds: Chess Prodigies," explores the stories of chess prodigies from past to present.

Allyson Mayer, a computational biologist for the St. Louis startup, is particularly hopeful about a current project she hopes will help COVID-19 "long-haulers."

Tad Yankoski, Missouri Botanical Garden’s senior entomologist and "bug dad," returns to the program to dismantle cockroaches' bad reputation and detail some of their positive attributes.

Bubonic plague. Influenza. The Red Death. An infection of zombies. For humanities scholar Marie Lathers, reading fiction about these and other pandemics has proved to be a surprisingly comforting experience over the past year. And now, she's leading a group of Missouri S&T students on a similar journey.

With Sunday's big game looming, Jeremy Housewright and Kendel Beard join host Sarah Fenske to share their perceptions of Chiefs fandom growth in the St. Louis region and what sets the Kansas City team apart.

STLPR's Corinne Ruff gives us a closer look at the enormity of what the Missouri Department of Labor is demanding back from residents whom it mistakenly overpaid a collective total of $150 million in unemployment benefits — and how lawmakers are fighting against that demand.

Every year, Sauce Magazine profiles rising stars in the St. Louis restaurant industry in its "Ones to Watch" feature. We meet two of them: Juwan Rice and Justin McMillen.

The longtime president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, Lewis Reed, is making his third run for mayor. He discusses his agenda.

Chemist Cynthia Chapple is the founder of Black Girls Do STEM, a local organization focused on the empowerment of Black girls in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. She explains how the organization is trying to combat barriers faced by women of color in the STEM fields.

Alderwoman Cara Spencer is making her first run for citywide office in the mayoral primary this March. She explains her vision for the city and why being an outsider might actually be a benefit.

St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones almost won the 2017 mayor's race -- and is one of four candidates this spring. She explains her thoughts on public safety and what she'd do as mayor.

The rates of alcohol and drug abuse are higher within the food service industry than most other professions. And yet, restaurateur Katie Collier is a testament to the fact that you don’t need to leave the service industry to curb an addiction. After struggling with substance abuse for years, Collier is now celebrating a decade of sobriety.

Concerns about the rural-urban divide are a common refrain in 21st-century America. In his latest feature for St. Louis Public Radio, reporter Jonathan Ahl digs into one big idea for a solution to that issue and more: better rural internet access. He talks with host Sarah Fenske about the possibilities.

Mayoral candidate Andrew Jones is the only person in the race who’s never held elected office. He explains why voters should trust him with the city, and how his plan to get tough on crime is different than Mayor Krewson’s.

The biggest campaign on Kickstarter right now comes courtesy of a St. Louis dad who lost his job in the pandemic and decided to go all-in on a simple idea with big appeal: magnetic pillow forts. Conor B. Lewis explains his vision for Fort.

2020 Great Rivers Biennial Arts Award recipient Tim Portlock delves into his “Nickels from Heaven” exhibit. The St. Louis-based artist uses aesthetic conventions from 19th-century American landscape paintings to illustrate his themes about America’s identity.

The STORM Act, signed into law on Jan. 1 by then-President Donald Trump, authorizes FEMA to provide $200 million for a Resilience Revolving Loan fund and allows states to offer low-interest loans to counties and cities for disaster mitigation projects.

Legislative aides to Missouri Democrats are angry that they voted to censure state Rep. Wiley Price, not expel him. Price is accused of threatening an aide to cover up a sexual interaction with an intern. Jason Hancock of the Missouri Independent explains why staffers are so upset.

Democratic lawmakers want to commemorate a sordid chapter in St. Louis history at one of downtown's most visited sites — pens that held enslaved people in what's now the shadow of Busch Stadium. We discuss the new effort and the history behind it.

The ability to speak freely in 2021 is complicated in ways the framers of the U.S. Constitution never envisioned. In this episode, we discuss how the First Amendment applies in this brave new world and whether unpopular speech — be it a dissenting opinion, a false claim or outright hate speech — deserves protection not just from the government, but tech giants like Twitter, Facebook and Google.