In The NoCo

Tired of hearing about the election? And thinking about the election? We get it. 
 
But before we move on, let’s walk through a few notable decisions that Colorado voters considered this week. Like whether we should ban the hunting of mountain lions and other big cats. And whether sales of guns and ammunition should help pay for mental health services. And a measure that would have transformed how Coloradans vote for candidates. 

ITN’s Erin O’Toole spoke with Lucas Brady Woods, KUNC’s politics and elections reporter, to analyze what passed, what failed, and how Colorado voted this election. 

Just a reminder that ballots in some contests are still being tabulated. KUNC will continue to provide updates as more election results are announced.   

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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. 

All eyes were on the Presidential election Tuesday night: Donald Trump vs. Kamala Harris. 

But there were plenty of important Colorado issues on the ballot, too. Like what the state constitution says about same sex marriage, who should review judges in ethics cases and whether the right to an abortion should be protected. 

KUNC’s politics and elections reporter Lucas Brady Woods spoke with ITN’s Erin O’Toole to discuss some of the most noteworthy issues decided by Colorado voters. 

Votes in some ballot measures and races – including the 8th Congressional District race between Democrat Yadira Caraveo and Republican Gabe Evans – were still being tallied late Tuesday when we recorded this episode. It may be a few days before we know the outcomes in some contests. KUNC will continue to provide updates as more results are announced.

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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.

It's Election Day in Colorado. And along with who wins or loses, something that a lot of people are thinking about today is election security.  

After all, elections are complicated: Millions of Colorado voters will fill out and turn in their ballots. And county election officials will gather and tally them – quickly.   

On top of that, some recent headlines have called Colorado’s election systems into question. Mesa County officials reported recently that someone stole 12 mail ballots and returned them. And news broke last week that the Colorado Secretary of State’s office accidentally posted some security passwords on their website. State officials say they’ve fixed that problem, and election systems around the state have not been compromised.   

Even so, we wanted to look at the steps that make sure your ballot is collected and counted securely. Two county clerks – people whose job is to keep ballots secure – walked us through some of Colorado’s election safeguards.  

ITN’s Erin O’Toole spoke with Molly Fitzpatrick, a Democrat from Boulder County, and Carly Koppes, a Republican from Weld County.

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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 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: The Rocky Flats plant made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons until it was shuttered in the early 1990s.  

The buildings used in processing the plutonium were destroyed and the area was cleaned up under a Superfund site designation. And after a series of sometimes contentious public hearings, the wildlife refuge opened to the public in September 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. He spoke about the documentary with ITN’s Erin O’Toole. 

The film premieres Saturday, Nov. 2 at the Denver Film Festival. Find the complete lineup and schedule for the festival here. 

You can watch the film’s trailer 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. 

Evacuating thousands of people during a natural disaster is a lot more complicated than simply telling everyone to move to safety. 
 
A wildfire or tornado in Colorado, or the hurricanes that recently struck the southeast U.S., often hit vulnerable populations especially hard. Elderly folks, people with disabilities, or people who can’t afford to quickly pick up and leave have a more difficult time getting out of harm’s way. 
 
Carson MacPherson-Krutsky is a researcher with the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. In a new study, Carson laid out what she’s learned about how communication during natural disasters helps save lives – or, in some cases, fails to help. She conducted the study in part because officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) wondered why more people didn’t take advantage of shelters it set up during hurricanes.  

Carson spoke with ITN’s Erin O’Toole about how she thinks emergency managers should rethink how they warn the public about natural disasters.

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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.

Paying for a hospital visit often ends in a guessing game. For example, if you hurt your ankle and need an X-ray, you could pay a few hundred dollars – or nothing at all – depending on  which hospital you go to and the deal they’ve negotiated with your insurance company.  

That fluctuation in pricing from hospital to hospital is true for many procedures in Colorado. 

But some new websites might help consumers find answers. One of them – ColoradoHospitalPrices.com – was developed by a nonprofit to let patients look up price estimates for various procedures and find the best value. 

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis was so impressed he promoted the site in a press conference last week. He said it’s a first step to creating market pressure that will level out price differentiation. 

John Ingold is a health reporter for The Colorado Sun who has been covering this story. He spoke with In the NoCo’s Brad Turner about the these websites and how they could help Coloradans. 

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 handful of Colorado schools monitor their students with cameras that use facial recognition software. It’s a security measure: An administrator with access to the technology can upload a student’s photo and then the system can use cameras around the school to pinpoint a student’s location.  

More school districts across the state are exploring whether to adopt this technology, according to a recent story in the Denver Post. And it's highlighting a conflict between supporters who say it helps make schools safer and opponents who call it a violation of students’ civil rights.  

In the NoCo’s Brad Turner talked with Denver Post education reporter Elizabeth Hernadez, who has been covering the subject and spoken with people on all sides of the issue.

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.

Crews recently began work to extinguish a blaze that has burned underground for more than a century. 
 

It's happening on Marshall Mesa, south of Boulder in an area popular for hiking. A fire in a coal seam there has been smoldering beneath the surface for years. It's a remnant of a time when coal mining thrived in the area. 

Because heat from underground blazes can sometimes set fire to grass and other brush nearby, residents of nearby Superior and Louisville have been more concerned about potential dangers since the Marshall Fire.  

So in the weeks ahead, crews from Colorado’s Inactive Mine Reclamation Program will prepare to dig up the combustible material at Marshall Mesa and bring it to the surface. They’ll mix it with cooler dirt to prevent future fires.  

Jeff Graves, Director of Colorado’s Inactive Mine Reclamation Program will manage the job. He spoke with In the NoCo’s Brad Turner about how crews will snuff out the blaze. 

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.

Endless work emails. Slack messages from coworkers. Virtual meetings on Zoom.  

If these things boost your anxiety, you're experiencing something called technostress. Technostress can also include anxiety about keeping up with new technologies – or being replaced by them.  
 
It makes employees miserable. And easing technostress at work is an ongoing struggle for employers, especially since technology seems to blur the boundaries between work time and personal time. 

Jason Thatcher is a University of Colorado researcher who studies how people do their jobs and use technology in the workplace. He teaches at CU’s Leeds School of Business. 

In a recent paper, he argues that the key to reducing tech-related stress is to understand that individual employees will react to different technologies in different ways.  

Jason spoke with ITN’s Brad Turner about how you, and your boss, can lower the technostress you encounter at work. 

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.

Heart disease causes one out of every five deaths in the United States. Now, a University of Colorado researcher says she’s found promising clues that could help treat it, but the source of her discoveries might make your skin crawl.   

Dr. Leslie Leinwand is a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at CU Boulder. Her insights come from research conducted on a rather unwieldy animal to keep in your laboratory – pythons. Leinwand and her team observe Burmese pythons – snakes that go weeks or months between meals without eating. She has studied pythons for decades and she recently published a new paper on her research.   

Erin O’Toole spoke with Lienwand about her research and learned that, while humans and snakes have very different physiologies, the way snakes eat in the wild may inspire new treatments for heart disease and other metabolic conditions in people.   

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.