St. Louis on the Air

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) became part of the official designation of May as Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in 2022. U.S. Census Bureau numbers from 2022 show less than 1% of folks who live in the Metro St. Louis area home identify as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Edwardsville educator, social worker, and writer Stephanie Malia Krauss, h...

You’ve heard “attendance is mandatory,” but, in Missouri schools, attendance is actually a matter of state law. During the 2021-22 school year, two single mothers in Missouri discovered just how powerful that law can be: They found themselves sentenced to jail when their children missed more than two weeks of school. The case is among several burning legal topics taken up by St. Louis on the Air’s...

International superstar Tina Turner died Wednesday at the age of 83. Turner moved to St. Louis when she was 16 years old and her ties to the area ran deep. Author Maureen Mahon discusses Turner's time in St. Louis and we hear listener reactions to her death.

The O’Fallon, Missouri, based winter drumline Modulation Z won their division in the Winter Guard International World Championships last month. The group achieved a score of 96.05. That score was two points ahead of the second-place finisher and the second highest score ever achieved in the division. Modulation Z director Ryan Treasure and senior Lukas McGill discuss what it took to become a champ...

Members of Gold Star Families, or families that have lost an immediate family member in active duty, hold Memorial Day in high regards as they honor their loved ones, even those whose true fate remains a mystery. Until recently, the Court of Honor at Soldiers Memorial only listed 214 names of St. Louisans who gave the ultimate sacrifice during the Vietnam War. That changes this weekend with a spec...

The Catholic Diocese of Belleville underreported the number of clergy who sexually abused children. That’s one of the findings of a 700-page report released by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul. The report also details how the diocese enabled a pattern of abuse. STLPR Metro East reporter Will Bauer explains.

The countdown to Pride Month ends in just eight days. Soon there will be parades and parties to celebrate LGBTQ+ communities and commemorate the long, continuous fight for basic human rights for queer individuals. For Black queer people, creating space for joy in a time of persistent political and societal oppression is an everyday necessity. One example of that is ballroom culture, which was crea...

Ninety years ago, on May 24, 1933, a strike led by Black women workers at a St. Louis nut factory made labor history. Devin Thomas O’Shea, who wrote about the strike in a lengthy feature story in Jacobin, discusses the dramatic events leading up to the strike, including how an 18-year-old ringleader led her co-workers to the streets “with a Bible in one hand and a brick in the other.”

For lovers of theater, a St. Louis summer doesn’t truly start until Shakespeare is being performed. That moment comes next week, on May 31, as the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival opens its annual free performances in Forest Park. Tom Ridgley, the festival’s producing artistic director, breaks down this season’s unique take on “Twelfth Night,” set in Miami, and previews the other performances to com...

John Gaal witnessed naloxone’s ability to save lives when he stepped in to administer the overdose reversal medication to a fellow passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight in 2022. He shares why he’s pushing for greater access to the drug, including its inclusion in medical kits on all airline providers.

VibeSzn began as an online business in 2017 and now has a retail location at City Foundry in Midtown St. Louis and has amassed nearly 200,000 followers on Instagram. Co-owner Omar Badran discusses his homegrown business and his family’s journey to St. Louis.

St. Louis is littered with ‘tangled titles.’ The term describes what happens when a person dies without leaving a will or estate plan to define the ownership of their home. St. Louis Magazine senior editor Nick Phillips investigated how tangled titles became common, how they affect Black neighborhoods, block the transfer of intergenerational wealth, and lead to vacancy.

St. Louis singer Neil Salsich gained national fame over the past several months as a participant on "The Voice." Salsich talks about his time on the NBC reality singing show and as a founding member of the St. Louis-based band, the Mighty Pines.

On average a total solar eclipse occurs once every 400 years in the same location on earth. In 2017 the St. Louis region was within the path of totality for the first time since 1869. This coming April millions of residents in eastern Missouri and southern Illinois will find themselves within a two-hour drive of another total solar eclipse. Author and eclipse chaser David Baron joins the show.

For five years, St. Louis’ Black Tulip Chorale has fused queer history, music and inclusivity. The group celebrates the milestone May 21 with a special show “Shining Through,” that pairs each song with a moment from LGBTQ history. Founding member Dr. Ken Haller explains the group’s origin story, and how its approach to a mixed voice “all-expression, all-gender, ​all-identity” chorus has attracted...

For more than a decade, groups of white St. Louis residents have used Shelly Tochluk's book, “Witnessing Whiteness,” to explore white racial identity and racism's role in individual and community life. We’ll hear from Witnessing Whiteness facilitator and St. Louisan Mary Ferguson; and talk with Tochluk about the place and purpose of her newest book, “Being White Today: A Roadmap to a Positive Anti...

In a sudden announcement on Tuesday, Kim Gardner resigned from her elected position as St. Louis circuit attorney — effective immediately. Her resignation came two weeks before she’d initially planned to step down. STLPR reporter Rachel Lippmann explains what happened and what comes next.

A sudden dust storm caused low visibility conditions that led to 72 vehicles colliding on Interstate 55 in Illinois on May 1. Seven people died and 37 others were injured. We look into what happened, how common these types of storms are in the Midwest and what drivers can do to better their chances of survival in similar situations.

St. Louis native and yoga instructor Nico Marie McNeese knows all too well about the burden that can weigh down on one’s mental well-being. Social distancing measures meant she could no longer teach in person, so McNeese went to social media to reach her students. She later started a YouTube channel — Black Yogi Nico Marie — to make her yoga videos more accessible. In three years McNeese’s YouTube...

On Monday night, students at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in south St. Louis made their first public performance since a deadly school shooting last October. Many of the students said they worked through the trauma of the shooting with their art. STLPR’s senior education reporter Kate Grumke covered the event and discussed the highlights.

Missouri’s 2023 legislative session ended as infighting and contention derailed many of the priorities set by the Republican-controlled Senate and House. Two laws that did pass, targeting transgender people. STLPR statehouse and politics reporter Sarah Kellogg breaks down the biggest takeaways from the session. AJ Hackworth, a trans man and dad living in Springfield, MO, discusses the new laws’ ef...

By studying an extinct, domesticated subspecies of the buckwheat family, Washington University researcher Natalie Mueller hopes to uncover wisdom from indigenous cultures about growing new crops that are resilient to extreme drought and flooding.

Earlier this month, Matt Vogel was in London for the coronation of King Charles III. In the royal box, Vogel also had a very special frog with him: Kermit the Frog. Vogel is the puppeteer behind Kermit, Big Bird, Count von Count and more. The Webster University alum is in town to deliver the 2023 commencement address and he talks about his remarkable career.

Washington University professor Carl Phillips won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry this week for his most recent book, “Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020.” The collection chronicles an era of American culture roiled by crises of politics, identity and the pandemic. We listen back to our 2022 conversation with him.

Soccer fans at St. Louis’s City SC CityPark have been treated to a remarkable concentration of local food excellence. The stadium features more than 20 local restaurants, and Sauce Magazine’s Meera Nagarajan says the result is no accident: Fans are enjoying a diverse selection of food that goes way beyond soggy nachos and peanuts — including farm-made ice cream from Bold Spoon Creamery.