This past September, a coalition of 22 donors announced a national initiative to strengthen communities and democracy by supporting local news and information with an infusion of more than a half-billion dollars over the next five years.

The following are headlines from a few local news sites on a recent Sunday. In Ashland: “City Council to vote on camping ordinance, consider funding to extend emergency shelter operation.” In Medford: “Medford council worries about draining last federal dollars to help homeless people.” In Grants Pass: “Parents, superintendent want fence between school and homeless campers.” Besides all being about homelessness, there’s another similarity in these stories. None talked about the lack of housing in the Rogue Valley.

Arsenic in green dresses? Lead in make-up? Mercury in feather hats? Oh my. The Underground History podcast has recently been chatting with experts on the many ways toxins and dangerous—and sometimes just gross—things can make their way into museums or even our homes.

Once upon a time, a blue planet orbited a white sun at 67,000 mph in a small solar system located at the edge of a large galaxy hurtling through the vastness of the universe’s mostly empty space at 1.3 million mph. The blue planet was billions of years old and had become home to millions of species of plants and animals that had originated and evolved out of the cosmic chaos of a long-ago exploded star. One of the animals on the blue planet eventually evolved to become a hyper-intelligent being that invented language and began naming things. This animal named itself Homo sapiens (“wise man”) and called the blue planet “Earth” and the galaxy it was in “The Milky Way”.

There is a lot to take in on Sufjan Stevens' Javelin. It’s a beautifully produced, profoundly sad, deep dive into the psyche of a singer/songwriter not afraid to bare his soul if not just for his audience, for his own understanding of life.

In a fundraising break during our Fall Fund Drive, JPR News Director Erik Neumann and I got to talking about the role JPR plays in mentoring and developing early-career journalists. Erik reminded me that I once described this role as being similar to that of a teaching hospital, albeit in a different field. I’ve been thinking about this lately because we’re in the midst of recruiting and hiring a new regional reporter for our news team.

This past summer Underground History did something a little different. In order to continue to explore ways in which we can connect our listeners to history and heritage, we decided to bring the show on the road!

Here at JPR, we’ve been covering the Klamath dam removal a lot lately. In many ways, this big story about the largest dam removal in U.S. history, comes back to lots of individual stories about home. Who could get their home back because of this project? And whose home could be lost?

In his Facebook videos from the first days after the fire in Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui, the look on Nicholas Winfrey’s face was painfully relatable.

October 11, 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of one of the most infamous crimes in Southern Oregon. This tale has train robbers, rumors of gold, dynamite, and all the intrigue of an old timey wild west crime overlaid on the backdrop of a rapidly modernizing world. Four innocent men brutally lost their lives on that day, and the ensuing manhunt captured the attention of the nation.