Eastern Standard

Is there a “right way” to nap? (Image: Shutterstock)

• Army Corps of Engineers professionals on the difficulty of designing and planning as climate change accelerates and spins off extreme weather. LISTEN
• Part One of a four part series examining the…

Downtown Hazard, Ky (Photo by Chris Begley)

• A contest for budding Eastern Kentucky entrepreneurs. Details from Geoff Marietta of Invest 606 LISTEN
• Leaving big city life for Hazard, Kentucky - and loving it. Our guest is Hazard Downtown Coordinator Bailey…

• Listening in as members of the Kentucky Student Voice Team have a discussion about the ways their races and ethnicities affect their learning experiences.  LISTEN
• Model on the EKU campus in Richmond is the state’s last remaining laboratory school where…

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School superintendents call for respect and support of teachers. A plan to have the backs of parents with kids in school. A new book about Shirley Chisholm, first Black woman in Congress. How Mt. Sterling is upping its…

Downtown Hazard, Kentucky (Photo by Chris Begley)

Forty-five lives were lost. Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed by the flash flood in July of 2022. While still adjusting to such heavy loss and amid much uncertainty, Eastern Kentuckians are…

(Photo by Jeanne Marie Hibberd)

RISE, Episode Five: Response. Recovery. Preparedness - the three phases that follow a natural disaster. Six months after a moisture-laden storm stalled above and relentlessly drenched southeast Kentucky the region remains somewhere among those stages…

(Photo by Jeanne Marie Hibberd)

Episode Four of RISE explores the psychology of crisis and how mental health has been affected by experiencing the flash flood of July 27-28, 2023. Hear about impacts on survivors who have lost everything, children…

(Photo by Jeanne Marie Hibberd)

This week's episode of RISE, the third in this six-part documentary series, investigates an increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as the moisture-heavy storm system that stalled above 13 eastern Kentucky counties on…

(Photo by Chris Begley)

Episode Two focuses on a pre-existing housing shortage made far worse by the flood; flood insurance issues; floodplain mapping; leadership exhaustion and stress; and the work of some of the key nonprofit organizations in the region…

Michelle Lucas outside her home in Camp Branch, KY (Photo by Chris Begley)

Episode One of RISE captures what happened on the early morning of July 28, 2022 when several communities in Eastern Kentucky experienced record flooding that eventually claimed…

John Winn Miller, author of "Hunt for the Peggy C" (Photo by Kevin Nance)

Former Kentucky Poet Laureate, Richard Taylor, author of numerous collections of poetry, two novels, and several books relating to Kentucky history, on becoming an inductee…

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In this season of giving there is need among flood survivors in eastern Kentucky. And the response is not always what you might imagine. Anya Slepyan has the story of a gift of kindness and warmth from quilters…

(Photo by Chris Begley) 

Announcement of RISE, a special series documenting the complex impact of the July 28, 2022 flash flood on the present realities and future of eastern Kentucky.  LISTEN

Working to reverse a shortage of teachers in Kentucky…

Fear is on trial for dashing hope and creativity in the latest Eastern Standard radio play, "The United States v Fear." (Image: Shutterstock)

Real and immediate need lingers in areas of eastern Kentucky hit hard by the July flash flood…

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Efforts to maintain and support connections between incarcerated parents and their children have produced positive outcomes benefitting the child, the jail, and the community. We talk with Tara Grieshop-Goodwin of Kentucky Youth Advocates and Wendi Hall, program director…

A retelling of the Daniel Boone saga through the eyes of his wife, Rebecca, and her daughters. (Image: University Press of Kentucky)

• It was hard being a pioneer in the wilds of what would become Kentucky. Try doing it as…

Nearly 1 in 4 Kentucky adults is functionally illiterate (Photo: Shutterstock)

• “Nearly 1 in 4 Kentucky adults can read and comprehend only basic material, making them functionally illiterate” begins the first in a five chapter series by Courier-Journal investigative reporter…

Together Outdoors Coalition Lead Gerry Seavo James

• A new book from Sayre graduate, former Marine and now Wall Street Journal correspondent Ben Kesling follows the experiences of Bravo Company, an army unit that saw heavy combat in Afghanistan. The book…

Have math anxiety? You are not alone. (Image: Shutterstock)

• It’s unusual for one person to appear twice in an edition of ES, but Whit Whitaker does just that: in his role as Director of the Lyric Theater in Lexington, and…

Jon Meacham on Abraham Lincoln and the parallels between then and now.   (Image: Shutterstock)

Presidential biographer and historian Jon Meacham is out with a new book about Abraham Lincoln. We discuss the parallels between the divisive atmosphere of 1861 and…

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Is it possible to get a divided America back on speaking terms? "Meeting of America" aims to find out, and it begins in Kentucky. We’ll hear from co-founder Pearce Godwin and Meeting of America Kentucky Director, Julie Babbage…

Kentucky elections officials are flooded with public records requests (Image: Shutterstock)

• Efforts to inundate local elections officials with records requests only weeks before we go to the polls: we ask the state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Michael Adams…

The music of India in Kentucky (Image: Shutterstock)

Never far from our minds these days: school safety and security. Education contributor Gill Hunter gets an update from state School Security Marshall, Ben Wilcox. LISTEN 

Why is the state short-handed and…

PG Peeples, Sr. to be honored for a half-century of civil rights leadership in central KY (Photo by Sam Dick)

• PG Peeples, Sr. has for many decades been a quiet force behind civil rights in Kentucky. As the Urban League…