St. Louis on the Air

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 Antiracist Life.”

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 audience has grown to over 100,000 subscribers from around the world.

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’ effect on his healthcare, while a father in St. Louis County worries about what the laws mean for his 9-year-old trans son.

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.