Episodios

  • How a Missouri Supreme Court ruling triggered clash between justices and state lawmakers

    How a Missouri Supreme Court ruling triggered clash between justices and state lawmakers
    Jan 30 2026
    Judges and lawmakers are clashing in Missouri, and it all has to do with a unanimous ruling delivered last week by the state Supreme Court. On this episode of the Legal Roundtable, our panel of legal experts unpacks the drama over the court’s decision to strike down a law that allowed the secretary of state to rewrite ballot summaries. In response, the law’s sponsor called the justices “little kings and queens in their black robes.” In addition to that case, our panel also analyzes major developments in the state’s ban on trangender healthcare, a trial over abortion restrictions, a developer suing over lost profits, and more.
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    50 m
  • Meet Me — The Great Divorce: How St. Louis split itself in two 150 years ago

    Meet Me — The Great Divorce: How St. Louis split itself in two 150 years ago
    Jan 29 2026

    150-years ago, St. Louis chose to split itself in two. The decision, now known as the Great Divorce, created an enduring divide that still shapes the region today. In STLPR’s new podcast, “Meet Me,” host Luis Antonio Perez visits a family whose home sits right on the city-county line and explores the origin of the split with historian Andrew Wanko. Then, host Elaine Cha talks with Perez about his work on the debut episode and what’s to come.
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    43 m
  • How a St. Louis-based newspaper helped ignite the spark that led to the Mexican Revolution

    How a St. Louis-based newspaper helped ignite the spark that led to the Mexican Revolution
    Jan 28 2026
    In 1905, Mexican journalist Ricardo Flores Magón escaped the Porfiriato dictatorship and settled in St. Louis, where he launched the newspaper Regeneración. With 20,000 readers throughout Mexico and the U.S., the leftist publication raised awareness of growing wealth inequality, labor exploitation and political corruption in both countries. Historian Francisco Perez shares how Flores Magón connected the struggles of the American working class with that of the Mexican working class, how St. Louis' labor movement shaped Flores Magón’s worldview, and why, more than a century later, the activist’s politics still resonate.
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    23 m
  • Missouri’s prison population is at a 20-year low. But prison deaths have never been higher

    Missouri’s prison population is at a 20-year low. But prison deaths have never been higher
    Jan 28 2026
    The number of people incarcerated in Missouri prisons is lower than it has been in decades; yet, recent years have seen record-high deaths among those in custody. The deaths reflect an ongoing crisis behind the walls of the state's correctional institutions, say activist ML Smith, founder of the Missouri Justice Coalition, and Rika White, criminal justice policy manager at Empower Missouri. Smith and White take us inside their role in a notable Jan. 14 Missouri House Corrections Committee hearing that featured pointed questions for Trevor Foley, director of the Missouri Department of Corrections, about the state of healthcare inside the state’s 19 prisons.
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    28 m
  • Why Megan Green is focused on reforming development incentives in St. Louis

    Why Megan Green is focused on reforming development incentives in St. Louis
    Jan 27 2026
    When Megan Green became St. Louis Board of Aldermen President in 2022, she made reforming development tax incentives a top priority. Critics of using tax increment financing and abatements say the incentives take away tax revenue that could otherwise have gone toward benefiting public schools and other services. In this episode, we hear STLPR economic development reporter Kavahn Mansouri’s conversation with Green. Then, Mansouri discusses the bigger picture around development in St. Louis.
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    27 m
  • How a WashU professor used concrete to build a 20-foot-tall home for migratory birds

    How a WashU professor used concrete to build a 20-foot-tall home for migratory birds
    Jan 27 2026
    A 20-foot-tall concrete spiral was recently completed at the Audubon Center at Riverlands nature reserve near St. Louis. The structure's practical use will be as a bird blind — a temporary home for migratory birds. But there’s something else that’s fascinating about this structure: A novel method of shaping concrete. To get to the bottom of this spiral (and inside its concrete walls) we talk with Pablo Moyano Fernández, associate professor of architecture at WashU’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Moyano Fernández is the creator of that structure, called "Avis Spiralis."
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    23 m
  • New book explains why Missouri and Illinois prairies vanished

    New book explains why Missouri and Illinois prairies vanished
    Jan 26 2026
    The American prairie once stretched across Missouri and Illinois, a vast grassland teeming with wildlife and rich biodiversity. Today, less than 1% of that prairie remains — disappearing even faster than the Amazon rainforest. In this encore presentation, environmental journalists Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty discuss how prairies were destroyed, why their loss is one of the world’s greatest ecological disasters, and what it will take to bring it back. Hage and Marcotty are authors of the new book, “Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie.”
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    50 m
  • Missouri Sens. Schmitt and Hawley differ on Trump’s demands to seize Greenland

    Missouri Sens. Schmitt and Hawley differ on Trump’s demands to seize Greenland
    Jan 23 2026
    President Donald Trump made startling demands to take over Greenland this week. And Missouri’s U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt have reacted much differently to the prospects of the United States taking over the Danish island. On the Politically Speaking Hour on St. Louis on the Air, we talk with Washington University and Arizona State University’s Steve Smith about the differing reactions to Trump’s Greenland push.
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    19 m