In The NoCo

A vaccine against weight gain could be on the horizon, according to new research from the University of Colorado Boulder. 

The research shows that a particular strain of bacteria known as M. vaccae could help prevent obesity by reducing inflammation.  

Chris Lowry is a professor of integrative physiology at CU and led the research. His study found that he could prevent mice from becoming overweight even when they were raised on the equivalent of an all-McDonald’s diet. When his team injected mice with M. vaccae, the junk food mice gained no more weight than mice with healthy diets.   

Lowry spoke with Erin O’Toole about this research, and why he thinks it’s a promising solution for weight gain.

Correction: An earlier version of this episode gave the incorrect last name for Chris Lowry’s colleague who helped with the research. The colleague’s name is Luke Desmond.

* * * * *
 
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.

Travelers making their way through Denver International Airport can experience a colorful, distinctive new art exhibit.  

The project, called “It’s Not What You Take, It’s What You Bring Back,” was created from 183 pieces of used luggage, suspended over a walkway in Concourse B. They’re painted in the vibrant colors of the Colorado sky – turquoise, baby blue, ruby red – and they form a shape resembling the infinity symbol.  

That painted baggage is part of a new installation by Colorado artist Thomas Evans, better known as Detour. He’s well known around Denver for his colorful murals of local sports legends like Denver Nuggets Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic.  

Detour talked with Erin O’Toole about what inspired his new art at DIA – and some of the stories behind the luggage. 

* * * * *

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.

For many people, being stopped by police can produce a wave of anxiety. But that sense of stress and uncertainty is even worse for people with conditions like autism spectrum disorder, hearing loss, Tourette’s syndrome, or dementia.  

Boulder’s Police Department recently rolled out a new initiative called the Blue Envelope Program to help people with disabilities communicate when they encounter an officer.  

It allows a person to get an official blue envelope and fill it out with information that an officer might need to know to communicate with them. Then if they’re stopped by Boulder Police, they hand over the envelope. 

The program is used by agencies in a handful of states, but Boulder’s Blue Envelope Program is the first in Colorado. Alistair McNiven, Chief of Staff for Boulder Police, helped launch the program in January. He spoke with Erin O’Toole about why he thinks the envelopes may be a transformative tool for law enforcement. 

McNiven said people can email [email protected] to request an envelope or get one in person at the front desk of the Boulder Police Department.

* * * * *

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 visit the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge northwest of Denver, you see different types of wildlife, miles of hiking and biking trails and acres of rolling prairie.  

But you don’t see any trace of the astonishing history of what happened there during the Cold War: Rocky Flats was the site of a plant that made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons until it was shuttered in the early 1990s.  

Officials removed later removed the buildings used in processing plutonium and cleaned up the area. And after a series of sometimes contentious public hearings, the wildlife refuge opened to the public in 2018. 

Filmmaker Jeff Gipe explores that history in a new documentary, Half-Life of Memory: America’s Forgotten Atomic Bomb Factory. Gipe grew up in nearby Arvada. His father worked at the plant in the 1980s.  

Gipe says he made the film to remind people of the hazards buried beneath the wide-open spaces of the wildlife refuge, and to share the voices of workers whose lives were affected by the dangerous materials processed at Rocky Flats.  

Today we’re listening back to Gipe’s conversation with Erin O’Toole recorded ahead of the film’s premiere at the Denver Film Festival in November. 

The documentary is now available for streaming on Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video, and will be screened Feb. 23 at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival in Golden. Find the complete lineup and schedule for the festival here. 

You can watch the film’s trailer here.

* * * * *

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.

You likely haven’t heard the word ‘bipartisanship’ used much lately when it comes to news out of Washington. Republicans control the presidency and both chambers of Congress – and they’re making big policy moves. 

But Democratic Congressman Jason Crow still sees value in members of the two parties working together. Crow represents Colorado’s 6th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, which includes Aurora and parts of the Denver metro area.  

He has served for six years on the For Country Caucus – a group of Republican and Democratic military veterans in the House – and recently wrapped up a two-year term as the group’s co-chair.

Rep. Crow spoke with Erin O’Toole to share what he sees happening in Washington – and why he thinks the veterans caucus is an important group in Congress, particularly in this moment.   

Looking for more In The NoCo interviews with Colorado lawmakers? We recently spoke with Rep. Brittany Pettersen about her effort to change strict in-person voting rules for new parents in Congress.
And State Rep. Kyle Brown talked with us about how legislators are working to keep homeowner’s insurance viable in Colorado, despite the growing risk from natural disasters.

* * * * *
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.

Manipulating the clouds to make it rain or snow sounds like the stuff of science fiction. But the technology behind cloud seeding is nothing new: It dates back to the 1940s. 

That science got a new look recently when lawmakers ordered the Government Accountability Office to re-examine the possibilities of cloud seeding as water becomes a more precious resource in the U.S. The newly published report calls cloud seeding promising, but also says more research is needed. 

That got Alex Hager – KUNC's in-house water reporter -- thinking about how cloud seeding might affect what’s probably the biggest water story in the nation: the drought-stricken Colorado River. Alex wrote about it recently, and joined In The NoCo’s Erin O’Toole to talk about what he learned.  

For more on the Colorado River, check out KUNC’s award-winning podcast Thirst Gap.

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.

JBS is one of the largest meat producers in the world. The company – which is headquartered in Greeley – reportedly earned $76 billion last year.   

And the company relies on immigrant labor to keep their meatpacking plants, like the one in Greeley, operating.   

A new story from the Food and Environment Reporting Network and the investigative journalism show Reveal offers a look at the community of immigrant workers at the Greeley plant. Many of them are Haitian, and many of them are here legally under what’s called TPS, or temporary protected status. Now, their future is uncertain as President Trump’s administration plans to take a harder line on immigration issues.   

Investigative journalist Ted Genoways reported the new audio documentary for Reveal. He spoke with Erin O’Toole to share insights about the lives of JBS workers in Greeley, and the grueling work of slaughtering hundreds of cattle per hour on what Ted calls the “disassembly line.” 

The Reveal episode hits podcast feeds this Saturday, and airs Sunday at 6:00 p.m. on KUNC. 

* * * * *
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.

The recent news stories about wildfires in California seem all too familiar to Coloradans. We see homes destroyed by wildfires here every year.  

But we’ve also been hearing reports of a second, slower-moving disaster in news reports out of California: insurance companies pulling out of high-risk areas, leaving thousands of homeowners with no ability to get coverage.  

That kind of crisis is something Colorado lawmakers are working to avoid here. Democrat Kyle Brown represents House District 12, which includes Louisville and Superior, in the state house. He knows about natural disasters firsthand, since that area saw hundreds of homes destroyed by the Marshall Fire three years ago. 

Brown and other legislators are working on ways to limit these insurance problems in Colorado – even as natural disasters become more common and severe. He joined host Erin O’Toole to discuss some of the bills he’s introducing at the state Capitol. 

* * * * *
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.

Clinicians who treat patients with eating disorders have endured a perfect storm of challenges in recent years. 
 
Specialists say the pandemic, and the years that followed, saw more people developing eating disorders and often taking longer to seek help. On top of that, treatment for these conditions is expensive. At the same time, lawmakers have heard terrible stories of patients being mistreated at clinics in Colorado.  

Jennifer Brown has been covering this issue for the Colorado Sun. She remembers hearing from parents who tried to help their kids by finding a clinic where they could get help. "It was just heartbreaking to hear from these moms saying that they thought they were doing the best they could for their kid, and, come to find out, their kid was feeling abused,” she said.  

So how does Colorado – a national hub for this kind of treatment – address these issues?  

Erin O’Toole spoke with Brown about the severity of these problems and how new measures might offer patients better care in Colorado.

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.

Parents worry about getting parenting right: limiting screen time, teaching responsibility, helping with homework.  It’s a lot of pressure. 

Author Deborah Winking is an elementary school educator in Fort Collins. And she found her fears about raising a well-rounded child magnified after one of her children, Jack, was diagnosed with Sotos syndrome,  a rare neurological disorder. Doctors weren’t optimistic that Jack would be able to live a full life.  

But Deborah figured out how to support her son through childhood and school. Along the way she developed some guidelines for what it means to be a supportive parent.  

Her newest book, Raising Capable Kids, distills years of her research and experience into a set of 12 habits for parents. She wrote it with families of neurodivergent kids in mind, but says she hopes her book is useful to any parent or teacher who wants their kids to grow into strong, curious and independent human beings.  

Deborah spoke with host Erin O’Toole about some of the advice she offers to parents. 

* * * * *
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.