St. Louis on the Air

Host Sarah Fenske talks with a local artist who takes a contemporary look at St. Louis athletes pursuing their dreams as fighters.

Host Sarah Fenske talks with St. Louis Public Radio reporter Andrea Henderson about how a group of local residents doing their part to remember the first slaves brought to the English colonies four hundred years ago this month.

Earlier this week, members of the Missouri Botanical Garden horticulture staff returned from a research trip in the Central Asia country of Kyrgyzstan. Host Sarah Fenske talks to Megan Engelhardt, manager of the Botanical Garden's Seed Bank, and horticulturist Dave Gunn, about how the staff went about bringing seeds back to add to the Botanical Garden’s seed bank to propagate.

Host Sarah Fenske talks with renowned St. Louis chef Gerard Craft about his battles with anxiety, and the way rankings and awards wreaked havoc with his well-being.

The XFL is a planned professional U.S. football league with the mission of reimagining America’s favorite sport. The league originally debuted in 2001, and only lasted one season. XFL games are set to begin again in February 2020. The St. Louis BattleHawks were one of the league’s eight teams announced this week. In this interview, Sarah Fenske learns about the XFL resurgence by talking with the B...

Thousands of people in the St. Louis region depend on Metro Transit’s 83 total MetroBus routes and 46 miles of MetroLink tracks to get where they need to go every day. But on Monday, many of those transit users were left waiting at their usual stops for many minutes, some even for hours, as expected public transportation vehicles did not arrive. The transit agency cited a driver shortage early Mon...

For more than a year, city officials and an army of consultants have been exploring the possibility of leasing St. Louis Lambert International Airport to a private entity. Host Sarah Fenske explores where things stand with leasing the city’s largest public asset alongside St. Louis Public Radio reporter Corinne Ruff and Alderwoman Cara Spencer, D-20th Ward.

In this segment, we mark National Senior Citizens Day by talking with Vanessa Woods, who teaches ballet classes to seniors in assisted living facilities.

Last Friday, local theater veteran Linda Kennedy died after battling cancer. She was 68 years old. In this episode of the show, host Sarah Fenske talks with Ron Himes, founder and producing director of the Black Rep, where Kennedy performed many of her greatest roles.

Host Sarah Fenske delves into the latest news surrounding plans for a Major League Soccer team in St. Louis. Joining the discussion are Alderwoman Christine Ingrassia, whose 6th Ward encompasses the west downtown area where the proposed stadium would sit; “St. Louligan” Stu Hultgren, a south St. Louis resident and avid local soccer fan; and “Mr. Soccer” Bill McDermott, St. Louis University’s longt...

St. Louis’ literary community lost one of its most influential members, Lorin Cuoco, 64, earlier this month. The longtime editor and poet passed away at her University City home Aug. 8 after a long illness, as reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Cuoco is perhaps best known for her work alongside the late novelist William Gass, a dear friend and collaborator. Together they founded and oversaw...

Host Sarah Fenske explored how and why people start their own pop-ups, and how patrons can find out about them for the latest Sound Bites segment with Sauce Magazine. Joining the program were Sauce managing editor Heather Hughes – and pop-up owners Chelsie Hellige of Spirit House and Steven Pursley of Ramen x Rui.

A U.S. District Court recently ruled that the Missouri Parole Board has been violating the U.S. and Missouri constitutions in its handling of cases involving juvenile offenders. In this interview, host Sarah Fenske talks with the director of the MacArthur Justice Center, Amy Breihan, about the ways Breihan feels the parole board has failed to comply with state and federal law in its handling of ca...

Legal experts Bill Freivogel, Mark Smith and Lisa Hoppenjans discuss topics including the sentence of former St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger, a licensing dispute concerning a restaurant on The Hill and the case of a man wearing body armor and carrying a rifle who caused panic at a Walmart in Springfield, Missouri.

More than 430 inmates have overdosed in Missouri prisons since May 2017, and at least five of them have died after taking controlled substances such as heroin, fentanyl and synthetic cannabinoids. St. Louis Public Radio’s Shahla Farzan talks with host Sarah Fenske about her recent reporting on the situation.

From its early Lemp Brewery days to the Schlafly era and beyond, St. Louis has earned its reputation as a drinking town. But lately the city is also seeing a nightlife trend that doesn’t involve alcohol at all. Among other beverage and restaurant industry professionals, the people behind WellBeing Brewing, a locally based company that exclusively makes non-alcoholic craft beer, have helped to cata...

St. Louis Public Schools has lost four children to gun violence over summer break, including the most recent death of Xavier Usanga, an incoming second-grader at Clay Elementary, who was shot and killed on Monday. In this St. Louis on the Air episode, host Sarah Fenske talks with school officials about the ways their districts are helping St. Louis kids cope with a long, violent summer.

The chancellor is the chief academic, administrative, and budgetary officer of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Tom George has held the post for the past 16 years. He is retiring Sept. 1. In this St. Louis on the Air segment, Sarah Fenske talks with George about his tenure, major trends in higher education and what he hopes to see in the university’s future.

In this St. Louis on the Air segment, guest host Jonathan Ahl talks with the new chancellor of Missouri University of Science and Technology.

"How has the death of Michael Brown Jr. impacted your life?" That's among the questions that the St. Louis Public Radio community and people throughout the region have been pondering in recent days in light of the five-year anniversary of the Ferguson protests. The answers are myriad, but Olajuwon Davis’ certainly stands out in the crowd: He’s spent most of his life since that time in prison. How...

Host Sarah Fenske explores what the busing experience has been like for students who participated in St. Louis' desegregation program – and if it’s really time to wind it down. Joining the conversation were former VICC students Maalik Shakoor and Hope Rias; and Veronica Johnson, a civil rights attorney in St. Louis who represented the NAACP and helped bring about the busing program by suing the St...

Host Sarah Fenske talks with artist Tonina Saputo, who is among the rising names in the local music scene, and whose reach is far and wide. The St. Louis-raised musician has made the world her stage, performing throughout Europe and singing in both English and Spanish. Former President Barack Obama is a fan himself and placed her song “Historia De un Amor” on his best-of-the-year roundup.

Last week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch unveiled a new online comment system. Declaring its old Facebook-based model broken, the daily newspaper explained that community moderation and a scoring system for commenters would give greater prominence to readers who “consistently drive positive conversation.” The paper's reader engagement editor, Beth O’Malley, joins the show to discuss how the new syst...

A few weeks ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released some positive statistics related to the ongoing opioid crisis. While drug overdose deaths in the U.S. had reached record levels in 2017, the nation saw an overall 4.2% decline in 2018. In Missouri, though, the 2018 outcomes were far less hopeful – despite an influx of $65 million in federal funds aimed at addressing the crisi...

To describe the St. Lou Fringe Festival as a theater event is something of a misnomer. There are plenty of actors, playwrights and other theater professsionals involved in the annual six-day-long extravaganza that gets underway this Tuesday. But there are also poets, dancers, performance artists, sculptors, burlesque performers and improv acts. This year’s offerings also run the gamut with offerin...