In The NoCo

Nuclear Waste is piling up at power plants around the country, and we have no idea where to put it. Many states are aggressively fighting plans for new storage facilities. 

But northwest Colorado is quietly opening the door. 

KUNC’s investigative reporter Scott Franz recently traveled around rural Colorado talking with people about what nuclear waste storage could do for the local economy – and also interviewing folks who are dead set against that idea.  

On this special edition of In The NoCo, we’ve combined all of Scott’s reporting from the past few months into a single episode. You can also see photos and check out more on this investigation. 

Scott’s reporting was edited by Leigh Patterson. 

Over the past few months, crews have worked on an unusual firefighting operation near Boulder. They extinguished a blaze that has burned underground for more than a century. 

 The work happened at Marshall Mesa near an open area that's popular for hiking. A fire in a a coal seam there had smoldered beneath the surface for years. It was a remnant of a time when coal mining thrived in the area. And it was a hazard: Heat from underground blazes can sometimes set fire to grass and other brush nearby.  

So crews have spent the winter digging up combustible material and bringing it to the surface. Then they mixed in cooler dirt to prevent future fires.   

Work at the site wrapped up recently, and officials held a celebration at the site on Thursday. So today, we’re revisiting a conversation with Jeff Graves recorded back in October, as the work was getting started. Jeff is director of Colorado’s Inactive Mine Reclamation Program, and he managed the job.  

He talked with In The NoCo's Brad Turner about how Marshall Mesa is one of at least 38 sites in Colorado where coal is burning underground – and some of the others are even more challenging to deal with.

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Questions? Feedback? Story ideas? Email us: [email protected]
Like what you're hearing? Help more people discover In The NoCo by rating the show on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!
 
Host and Producer: Erin O'Toole
Producer: Ariel Lavery
Executive Producer: Brad Turner
 
Theme music by Robbie Reverb
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
In The NoCo is a production of KUNC News and Community Radio for Northern Colorado.

After the recent death of President Jimmy Carter, many of the tributes mentioned his environmental legacy and push for energy-efficient development. And one unusual part of his plan was focused here in Colorado.  

Carter’s administration had backed the design of some experimental homes along the Front Range. They were warmed by the sun and fueled by renewable sources – an exciting idea in the late 1970s.  

John Avenson was paying attention back then, and wanted to live in one of those homes. He got the plans, hired a contractor and built his very own Carter home in Westminster in 1981 – even as Carter’s successor in the White House, President Ronald Reagan, scaled back renewable energy development.  

Avenson still lives in that home today. It’s featured in an episode of the PBS series Heart of a Building, which focuses on innovative building construction.  The episode will be shown at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival in Golden on Feb. 23.  

Erin O’Toole spoke with Avenson and Heart of a Building host Paul Kreischer to learn about life in one of Colorado’s first energy-smart homes.  

Find the full schedule for the Colorado Environmental Film Festival here.   

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Sign up for the In The NoCo newsletter: Visit KUNC.org
Questions? Feedback? Story ideas? Email us: [email protected]
Like what you're hearing? Help more people discover In The NoCo by rating the show on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!
 
Host and Producer: Erin O'Toole
Producer: Ariel Lavery
Executive Producer: Brad Turner
 
Theme music by Robbie Reverb
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
In The NoCo is a production of KUNC News and Community Radio for Northern Colorado.

A note: Today’s episode deals with issues around suicide and firearm violence. 

Over the past decade, Colorado has seen more than 7,000 deaths by suicide that involved a firearm. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, guns are involved in more than half of Colorado’s deaths by suicide. 

A bill making its way through the state legislature could help reduce those numbers.  

The proposal would allow Coloradans to place a voluntary freeze on their own access to buy a gun.  Someone who’s concerned about their mental health could add their own name to a database of people who are ineligible to purchase a firearm.  

Colorado’s proposal is based on a national campaign called Donna’s Law. If approved, the bill would make Colorado the fifth state to set up what's known as a Do Not Sell registry.  

So, how effective are voluntary programs like this at reducing the risk of suicide with a firearm? Erin O’Toole spoke with two KUNC colleagues: editor and reporter Leigh Paterson, and Chas Sisk, editor of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance, to learn more.

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Sign up for the In The NoCo newsletter: Visit KUNC.org
Questions? Feedback? Story ideas? Email us: [email protected]
Like what you're hearing? Help more people discover In The NoCo by rating the show on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!
 
Host and Producer: Erin O'Toole
Producer: Ariel Lavery
Executive Producer: Brad Turner
 
Theme music by Robbie Reverb
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
In The NoCo is a production of KUNC News and Community Radio for Northern Colorado.

Ask a teacher about the hardest part of their job, and you might expect them to cite long hours or low pay.  

But there’s another, less visible challenge that educators face: exposure to student trauma. Students may confide in a teacher about not having enough to eat at home, or an abusive family member.  And exposure to those problems takes a serious toll on teachers.  

According to a new study out of the University of Northern Colorado, about 9 in 10 teachers and other classroom educators deal with what’s called secondary traumatic stress from helping students with their problems, or simply hearing about them.  And of those teachers, 42 percent had secondary traumatic stress that was considered severe.  

Breanna King, a graduate student in UNC’s School Psychology program, designed and led the study. She spoke with Erin O’Toole about how high levels of secondary traumatic stress may contribute to teachers leaving the field – and she shared ideas about how to help teachers cope.

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Sign up for the In The NoCo newsletter: Visit KUNC.org
Questions? Feedback? Story ideas? Email us: [email protected]
Like what you're hearing? Help more people discover In The NoCo by rating the show on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!
 
Host and Producer: Erin O'Toole
Producer: Ariel Lavery
Executive Producer: Brad Turner
 
Theme music by Robbie Reverb
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
In The NoCo is a production of KUNC News and Community Radio for Northern Colorado.

In 2025, many of us are on social media – and lots of us are hunting for a new job.  

If that sounds like your situation, a University of Colorado researcher says be thoughtful about what you post online. Because what you do on Facebook or Threads or BlueSky can change your odds of landing that new gig. 

Jason Thatcher has been studying how hiring managers use social media to make decisions about candidates. And he found 60 percent of hiring managers decide who to interview or who to hire, in part, by checking out applicants’ social media accounts.  

So how do your Facebook posts about politics affect your chances of landing your dream job? And is there anything you can do to make your social media accounts more appealing to a hiring manager? 

Thatcher recently spoke with Brad Turner about what he’s observed. We’re listening back to that conversation today. 

You can also check out his previous In The NoCo interview on how to keep “technostress” from driving you crazy at work. 

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Sign up for the In The NoCo newsletter: Visit KUNC.org
Questions? Feedback? Story ideas? Email us: [email protected]
Like what you're hearing? Help more people discover In The NoCo by rating the show on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!
 
Host and Producer: Erin O'Toole
Producer: Ariel Lavery
Executive Producer: Brad Turner
 
Theme music by Robbie Reverb
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
In The NoCo is a production of KUNC News and Community Radio for Northern Colorado.

Researcher Caitlin Clark has a job a lot of people would envy. Clark is a food scientist who oversees a new laboratory devoted to the study of chocolate – how it’s made, what makes it taste so good, and how to make new and better varieties of it. 

She and her team, based at the Colorado State University Food Innovation Center in Denver, work to dream up new confections that hopefully will end up on grocery store shelves or, maybe, in your box of Valentine’s Day chocolates.  

Clark talked with Erin O’Toole about her work in the new laboratory, and how her expertise in fermentation helped pave the way for her to become a chocolate researcher.

Sign up for the In The NoCo newsletter: Visit KUNC.org
Questions? Feedback? Story ideas? Email us: [email protected]
Like what you're hearing? Help more people discover In The NoCo by rating the show on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!

Host and Producer: Erin O'Toole
Producer: Ariel Lavery
Executive Producer: Brad Turner
Theme music by Robbie Reverb
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
In The NoCo is a production of KUNC News and Community Radio for Northern Colorado.

In February of 1942, not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military removed thousands of Americans of Japanese descent from their homes. Most of them were full citizens who had been born and raised in the United States.   

Families had just a few days to get their affairs in order before reporting to relocation centers, mostly in Western states. Roosevelt’s order affected about 120,000 Japanese Americans, including 17,000 children.  

Writer and poet Brandon Shimoda, who is fourth-generation Japanese American, says the impact of incarceration didn’t end with the war.   

Shimoda, who lives in Colorado Springs and teaches at Colorado College, is a descendant of several family members who were incarcerated in internment camps. He says his family’s stories helped inspire his newest book, The Afterlife Is Letting Go.  

He spoke with Erin O’Toole about the legacy of Japanese American incarceration, and why the impacts still resonate today. 

Brandon Shimoda will be part of a discussion on untold histories, this Saturday, Feb. 15 during Fort Collins Book Fest. Find the full lineup of Book Fest authors and events here. 

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Sign up for the In The NoCo newsletter: Visit KUNC.org
Questions? Feedback? Story ideas? Email us: [email protected]
Like what you're hearing? Help more people discover In The NoCo by rating the show on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!
 
Host and Producer: Erin O'Toole
Producer: Ariel Lavery
Executive Producer: Brad Turner
 
Theme music by Robbie Reverb
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
In The NoCo is a production of KUNC News and Community Radio for Northern Colorado.

In the late 1960s, a new movement of Black music grew out of the end of the civil rights era. Black artists declared their “Black power” and rocked the airwaves with the sound of funk.    

Funk music was more than just a genre with excellent grooves. It had deeper social and political meaning. Funk began as a reaction to tumultuous times and would ultimately lay the foundation for the hip0hop and R&B we listen to today. 

This is the argument in the new book by Reiland Rabaka, called The Funk Movement: Music, Culture, and Politics.  

Rabaka is a professor of African, African American, and Caribbean studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is also the founder and director of the Center for African American Studies at CU, and hosts a podcast called The Cause. 

He joined Erin O'Toole to talk about the importance of funk, and why it deserves respect for its singular impact on music and culture.    

 
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Sign up for the In The NoCo newsletter: Visit KUNC.org
Questions? Feedback? Story ideas? Email us: [email protected]
Like what you're hearing? Help more people discover In The NoCo by rating the show on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!
 
Host and Producer: Erin O'Toole
Producer: Ariel Lavery
Executive Producer: Brad Turner
 
Theme music by Robbie Reverb
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
In The NoCo is a production of KUNC News and Community Radio for Northern Colorado.

If you grew up in the 80s, you might remember a famous anti-drug public service announcement from TV. There was a frying pan, a sizzling egg and an ominous warning:  “This is your brain on drugs.” 

Josh Gowin, a researcher with the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, remembers that ad quite well. Anti-drug PSA's like that one inspired him to study the effects of marijuana use on the brain and find out if that fried egg analogy is accurate.  

Gowin, a neuroscientist, looked at more than 1,000 scans of people’s brains. And he saw something notable in the brains of frequent cannabis users: a reduction in their working memory, which is the brain function that helps people keep track of what they’re doing.  

Gowin recently published his research. He joined Erin O’Toole to explain what his findings mean for cannabis users – and what kinds of tasks might suffer if someone’s working memory deteriorates.

Sign up for the In The NoCo newsletter: Visit KUNC.org
Questions? Feedback? Story ideas? Email us: [email protected]
Like what you're hearing? Help more people discover In The NoCo by rating the show on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!

Host and Producer: Erin O'Toole
Producer: Ariel Lavery
Executive Producer: Brad Turner
Theme music by Robbie Reverb
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
In The NoCo is a production of KUNC News and Community Radio for Northern Colorado.