Sarah Jane Tribble is a journalist with Kaiser Health News who grew up an hour away from Fort Scott, Kan. Not even 20 years after the opening of a gleaming new hospital there, it closed. People in Fort Scott lost healthcare, workers lost jobs and Tribble saw a story. In this episode of TLDL, we talk with Tribble about her reporting for the podcast “Where it Hurts,” produced in a partnership between Kaiser Health News and St. Louis Public Radio. Anyone affected by or concerned with rural healthcare will find a lot of relevance in this seven-part series.

Asians make up just 3½ percent of the population in Fargo, N.D., and people of Chinese descent are a smaller slice of that. Annie Prafcke is a native of China adopted as an infant by a single white woman in Fargo. From an early age, Prafcke was aware of her otherhood, but only in the past couple years did she hit upon the idea of exploring her experiences through a podcast. She produced a three-part series in partnership with Prairie Public in North Dakota called “Chinese Adoptees: Not Abandoned or Alone.” In this conversation, she talks about the impetus, process and impact of her work on this series.

Here's a stunning and sobering statistic: In 2021, there were 249 school shootings in the U.S. That’s more than twice the highest total in any previous year going back to the first tracking of school shootings in 1970. All of these incidents make headlines. But what about shootings that never happen, that only reach the point of a serious threat? A team from Vermont Public Radio dug deep into one such episode that reverberated throughout the state. My guests today are Nina Keck and Liam Elder-Connors, the hosts and reporters of the podcast “Jolted.”