St. Louis on the Air

Corey S. Bradford Sr. chose a tough time to come home to the St. Louis metro. The native St. Louisan took office as president of Harris-Stowe State University on May 4 — an unprecedented time for higher education, which is grappling with both funding shortages due to the economic downturn and complications from the coronavirus. In this interview, he talks with Sarah Fenske about his career in higher education, his reasons for returning to St. Louis and the challenges Harris-Stowe faces in an uncertain time.

St. Louis-based nonprofit Duo Dogs has placed trained service dogs with clients in 38 states, as well as Canada and the United Kingdom. Their dogs are taught a wide range of skills that make them the perfect assistant for people who have trouble getting around or have hearing disabilities. In this episode, we learn about how the organization trains their puppies to become the ultimate companion to those in need.

The death of George Floyd has not just sparked action to protest against police brutality, but it’s also led to more conversations about how to support and uplift black Americans. Anti-racism books are selling out and topping best-seller lists, while infographics about how to best support local black-owned businesses are filling social media feeds. LaShell Eikerenkoetter, also known as Ohun Ashe, advocates for black lives in the streets as a frontline protester — and she does the same advocacy online for black entrepreneurs. She created For the Culture STL, a directory of black-owned businesses and events in the St. Louis area. She said support for the initiative has skyrocketed over the past couple of weeks. She host Sarah Fenske to talk about these two parallel efforts.

Alex Lindley and Danny Kerth are among the St. Louisans affected by suicide; they’ve each lost friends and family to it, including their mutual friend Ryan Candice. After Candice’s death in 2014, Lindley and Kerth started Project Wake Up — a nonprofit organization working to destigmatize mental illness and suicide, and raise awareness about providing adequate access to mental health care in the country. Their film, “Wake Up," highlights the voices of people from various walks of life along their mental health journeys. Kerth joins host Sarah Fenske to talk about the film’s future and ways it aims to spread awareness about various ways to seek help, including telehealth care.

As a professor of political science at Washington University, Clarissa Rile Hayward had a front-row seat for the protests and disruption that followed the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014. She paid attention as activists blocked highways, demonstrated at a symphony performance and even interrupted brunch at fancy restaurants to agitate for the Black Lives Matter movement. And she found herself thinking about what tactics work, and why. Hayward recently published a paper detailing this new way of looking at disruption in the Journal of Politics. In this interview, she discusses her findings and how they apply to the current protests sweeping the globe.

Three years ago, a Tennessee man made a wrong turn and ended up lost in rural Missouri. The man, Tory Sanders, sought help from local law enforcement — only to end up dead in a Mississippi County jail cell eight hours later. Two top jail officials reportedly pressed down on Sanders' neck for more than three minutes even as a colleague urged them repeatedly to ease up. Then-Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley declined to prosecute anyone for those actions. Now, George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police is reigniting interest in Sanders' 2017 death. Host Sarah Fenske talks with Missouri NAACP President Nimrod Chapel Jr.

For Dr. Sameer Vohra and his colleagues, a focus on improving the lives of people in southern and central Illinois has long been at the heart of their work. But now, in the age of COVID-19, the urgency of their mission is more obvious than ever. Vohra leads SIU School of Medicine's Department of Population Science and Policy as its founding chair, and the coronavirus pandemic has magnified many of the challenges that the region’s small cities and rural communities already faced. In this episode, Vohra joins host Sarah Fenske to share his insights on these challenges — and what can be done to address them. The conversation also includes comments from Audrey Gough, the health director for Shelby County, Missouri, about what she’s observed on the other side of the Mississippi River.

Quincy, Illinois, is among the thousands of cities across the country where demonstrations against police brutality have taken place in the past two weeks. Illinois’ Gem City has a population of about 40,000, with nearby Hannibal adding another 17,000. Jessica Benton and Michelle Renee Houston are longtime Quincy residents. They’re among the community members taking action in their own ways to raise awareness about police brutality and racism, joining a movement inspired by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. They join host Sarah Fenske on Tuesday’s St. Louis on the Air to talk about how their community is reacting to the Black Lives Matter movement and the change they’d like to see happen.

Data from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows that, as of May 31, 253 Missouri nursing home residents had died of COVID-19. That’s about a third of the state’s 771 deaths. Marjorie Moore, executive director of VOYCE, an advocacy group for those in assisted living or nursing homes, joins to talk about what that figure says to her and the changes she would like to see moving forward.

Most people have become uncomfortable navigating public life in the months since the new coronavirus hit, but things are even more difficult for those who experience the world differently than the majority, like those with blindness or those who are deaf. In this episode, host Sarah Fenske talks with Nick Silver, who is almost completely blind, and Colleen Burdiss, who is hard of hearing, about how they've been getting by in the last few months.