Louisiana Considered

Increasing temperatures in New Orleans are driving up utility bills as air-conditioners struggle to keep up. And some people are more vulnerable than others, like seniors.

The Gulf States Newsroom’s Drew Hawkins worked with the climate research group, Climate Central, and reports from the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood in New Orleans, where seniors with lower incomes struggle to deal with the heat — both physically and financially.

The U.S. rice industry has made impressive gains in sustainability over the last 40 years. Yet the crop is still at risk due to climate change, disease outbreaks, pests and human activity that can cause disturbances in production. 

The LSU AgCenter is continuing its research on rice sustainability, in large part thanks to a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Ronnie Levy, state rice specialist at the LSU AgCenter, joins us for more on this research.

Over the next two weeks on Louisiana Considered, Producer Eve Abrams will be sharing a series of stories on coastal restoration. Wetlands Radio traces the history of coastal restoration and the methods Louisiana is using to restore our coast. 

Today, we learn how land loss is measured and what to do when our land disappears.

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Today’s episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Karen Henderson. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber. We receive production and technical support from Garrett Pittman, Adam Vos and our assistant producer, Aubry Procell. 

You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at noon and 7 p.m. It’s available on Spotify, the NPR App and wherever you get your podcasts. 

Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you! Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. And while you’re at it, fill out our listener survey! We want to keep bringing you the kinds of conversations you’d like to listen to.

Louisiana Considered is made possible with support from our listeners. Thank you!

The LSU Museum of Art recently opened a new exhibit, “A Bayou State of Mind,” that tells individual stories of the Louisiana experience. Chief Curator of Exhibitions Michelle Schulte brought together 33 artists and over 100 contemporary artworks that tell different stories about Louisiana. 

Schulte joins us to discuss the exhibition, along with one of the featured painters, New Orleans-based multimedia artist Carl Joe Williams. 

This year, LSU’s Golden Band from Tigerland introduced a new member, Kent Broussard. But the freshman isn’t your typical student. The 66-year-old retired accountant is roughly 40 years older than his bandmates. By marching in the purple and gold, he is living out a lifelong dream. 

Kent joins us now for more on his history-making role in the band.

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Today’s episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Alana Schreiber. Our managing producer is Alana Schrieber. Matt Bloom and Aubry Procell are assistant producers. Our engineer is Garrett Pittman.

You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at noon and 7 p.m. It’s available on Spotify, Google Play and wherever you get your podcasts. 

Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you! Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. And while you’re at it, fill out our listener survey! We want to keep bringing you the kinds of conversations you’d like to listen to.

Louisiana Considered is made possible with support from our listeners. Thank you!

It’s Thursday, and that means it’s time to catch up on politics with The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate’s editorial director and columnist, Stephanie Grace. Today, she breaks down the latest poll numbers in the New Orleans mayor’s race. 

After a decade of haggling, disposing, redesigning and modifying, the state’s Public Service Commission finally approved an energy efficiency program on August 20.  So far, it has the support of utility companies, advocacy groups and PSC commissioners.

Alaina DiLaura, policy coordinator for the Alliance for Affordable Energy, joins us to explain the program and how it will save money for residents.

The New Orleans Saints had their first game of the 2025 season, ending months of speculation and what-ifs. The Saints lost SCORE against Y. But fans are still optimistic about new head coach Kellen Moore’s first season.

Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate Saints columnist Jeff Duncan joins us for his take on the start of the season

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Today’s episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Bob Pavlovich. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber. We get production support from Garrett Pittman and our assistant producer, Aubry Procell.

You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at noon and 7 p.m. It’s available on Spotify, the NPR App and wherever you get your podcasts. 

Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you!  Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. 

And while you’re at it, fill out our listener survey! We want to keep bringing you the kinds of conversations you’d like to listen to.

Louisiana Considered is made possible with support from our listeners. Thank you!

Louisiana is dealing with its worst whooping cough outbreak in decades. Hospitalizations have continued to rise over the summer, and two babies have died. 

Health reporter Rosemary Westwood joins us for more on the outbreak and why the disease is so dangerous for young babies.

The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) has released its annual scorecard, an analysis of the legislature’s performance on a number of policy issues from a business and industry perspective including tort reform, education, energy diversity and taxes.

Will Green, President and CEO of the LABI, joins us to break down the results. 

According to the Louisiana Policy Institute for Children, early childcare providers continue to face low pay and longer hours than K-12 educators. 

Mattilyn Karst Batson, research & policy director for the Louisiana Policy Institute for Children, tells us more about these challenges.

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Today’s episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Adam Vos. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber. We get production support from Garrett Pittman and our assistant producer, Aubry Procell.

You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at noon and 7 p.m. It’s available on Spotify, the NPR App and wherever you get your podcasts. Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you!

Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. And while you’re at it, fill out our listener survey! We want to keep bringing you the kinds of conversations you’d like to listen to.

Louisiana Considered is made possible with support from our listeners. Thank you!

Earlier this year, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, broke ground on a $10 billion data center for artificial intelligence in the middle of a Louisiana cornfield. Located in the town of Holly Ridge, the unfinished data center is already turning Richland Parish into a boomtown.

Stephanie Riegel has been covering this for the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate. She tells us about her recent trip to the region.

Renowned painter, author and illustrator Alex Beard might be known for his Magazine Street Studio, but the artist is waxing poetic in a new collection of bird artwork and original poems. His new book, “For the Birds: An Artist’s Aviary,” comes out later this month.

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Today’s episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Diane Mack. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber and our assistant producer is Aubry Procell. Our engineer is Garrett Pittman.

You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at noon and 7 p.m. It’s available on Spotify, the NPR App, and wherever you get your podcasts. 

Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you! Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. And while you’re at it, fill out our listener survey! We want to keep bringing you the kinds of conversations you’d like to listen to.

Louisiana Considered is made possible with support from our listeners. Thank you!

The nonpartisan, public policy organization, Leaders for a Better Louisiana, recently released its latest Louisiana Fact Book. It’s a list of 35 indicators over five key areas used to measure the state’s overall wellbeing. 

The organization’s chief policy officer, Barry Erwin, joins us to discuss this year’s slight upward trend.

The documentary “City of A Million Dreams - Parading for The Dead In New Orleans” explores the history and evolution of the New Orleans jazz funeral. That final goodbye is a mix of grief and joy, sadness and elation, weeping and second line dancing. 

Director Jason Berry joins us to discuss the making of the film, and how viewers can watch on Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

Two decades after Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans still has plenty of vacant lots, especially in the majority Black neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward. After the storm, Black New Orleanians struggled to return to their land and rebuild their homes, in part, because of the way the city and the state handled recovery efforts. 

As the coastal desk’s Eva Tesfaye reports, one artist has navigated a bureaucratic city program to reclaim her family’s land, with the help of her community. 

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Today’s episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Karen Henderson. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber. We receive production and technical support from Garrett Pittman, Adam Vos and our assistant producer, Aubry Procell. 

You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at noon and 7 p.m. It’s available on Spotify, the NPR App and wherever you get your podcasts. 

Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you! Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. And while you’re at it, fill out our listener survey! We want to keep bringing you the kinds of conversations you’d like to listen to.

Louisiana Considered is made possible with support from our listeners. Thank you!

For the first time since Hurricane Katrina made landfall 20 years ago, you can take a train ride across the Gulf Coast, from Mobile to New Orleans. And all these years later, the cities along that route are still living with the storm's aftermath. In this episode, we hop aboard the train and make four Gulf Coast stops along the way to share that story. About what happened during Katrina. How some places built back better, and how others are still trying to figure out how to rebuild.

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This episode was reported and hosted by Stephan Bisaha of the Gulf States Newsroom. Sea Change's executive producer, Carlyle Calhoun, co-hosted the episode.

Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. For another great podcast serving up more great stories from the region, check out Gulf States Gumbo wherever you get your podcasts.

Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Sea Change is also supported by the Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

It’s Thursday, and time for our Week in Politics with the Times Picayune’s/The Advocate’s editorial director and columnist, Stephanie Grace. Today, we discuss President Trump’s proposal to send the National Guard to New Orleans and how Gov. Jeff Landry has responded. 

Ask anyone in New Orleans, and they know: Hurricane Katrina was such a devastating disaster because of the catastrophic failure of the city’s levee system. In the storm’s wake, the federal government built an entirely new levee system, and the state created entirely new organizations to oversee it. 

Despite the upgrades, water policy critics are warning that politics could be undermining the city’s most important protection against the next storm. The coastal desk’s Eva Tesfaye tells us more. 

You have an idea, and you convince your friends to join you in realizing it.  They move to another city, in this case, New Orleans. But just before that vision is about to take center stage, Katrina hits.

That’s what happened to The NOLA Project when they were getting ready for their first production as a theatre company in 2005. But the group returned to the city and persevered, often performing their works outside of traditional venues and in “found spaces.”

Founder Andrew Larimer and original company member and second artistic director, AJ Allegra, tell us more about the theatre’s unique origin story.

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Today’s episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Bob Pavlovich. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber. We get production support from Garrett Pittman and our assistant producer Aubry Procell.

You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at noon and 7 p.m. It’s available on Spotify, the NPR App and wherever you get your podcasts. 

Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you!  Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. 

And while you’re at it, fill out our listener survey! We want to keep bringing you the kinds of conversations you’d like to listen to.

Louisiana Considered is made possible with support from our listeners. Thank you!

In 2020 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that non-unanimous jury verdicts – previously legal only in Louisiana and Oregon – were unconstitutional. Yet there are more than one thousand people in our state who had been convicted by non-unanimous juries before the court ruling and who remain behind bars. 

Richard Webster joins us for more on what happens next to those who have been convicted by split juries.

Last month, Second Harvest Food Bank announced it will open two new facilities in south Louisiana, one in Lake Charles and the other in Houma. Second Harvest says these facilities will better position the organization to respond to disasters more quickly, providing an uninterrupted supply chain. 

John Sillars, chief strategy officer for Second Harvest Food Bank, tells us more. 

Immigration remains a priority at the White House. And reports from around the country show traffic arrests are playing a part. For some, everyday roadside encounters are leading to immigration detention. 

Bobbi-Jeanne Misick of Verite News and Kat Stromquist from the Gulf States Newsroom wanted to find out if this was true in Kenner, a suburb of New Orleans with a large Hispanic population. They discussed their findings with The Gulf States Newsroom’s Drew Hawkins.

After Hurricane Katrina, many musicians left New Orleans, raising fears that the city could lose its musical culture. Then two prominent jazz musicians got together and created a village to bring the musicians back.

The Gulf State Newsroom’s Joseph King reports the place is still thriving. 

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Today’s episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Adam Vos. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber. We get production support from Garrett Pittman and our assistant producer Aubry Procell.

You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at noon and 7 p.m. It’s available on Spotify, the NPR App and wherever you get your podcasts. Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you!

Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. And while you’re at it, fill out our listener survey! We want to keep bringing you the kinds of conversations you’d like to listen to.

Louisiana Considered is made possible with support from our listeners. Thank you!

The New Orleans arts community, which was scattered across the nation post-Katrina in 2005, provided a healing balm for the city when artists finally made their way back home. Fast forward to 2008, an idea spawned at WWNO by general manager Paul Maassen provided a platform for those struggling artists to bring the community together.

That platform is what we now know as Culture Collision, a preview of the arts and cultural season, which is celebrating 15 years. WWNO business manager and spokesperson Jameeta Youngblood tells us more about what’s on deck for this year’s Sept. 10 event. 

Hurricane Katrina is largely associated with widespread flooding and displacement in New Orleans, but it also devastated coastal Mississippi. It became the worst storm in the state’s history as thousands of homes and businesses from the coast to the I-10 highway were destroyed.

In Gulfport, in the heart of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, a group of historic Black communities found themselves at the center of it all. The Coastal Desk’s Michael McEwen reports on how increased development has surrounded these historic communities, making them more vulnerable to flooding and future storms.  

This year, Be Loud Studios launched Born After the Storm, an audio storytelling project that brings youth who were not alive for Hurricane Katrina into the citywide conversation about the legacy of the storm. The stories will also anchor a new classroom curriculum that allows students to discuss the impact of Katrina.

Today, we hear from 12th grader Amari Walton, who discusses her grandmother’s experience during the storm.

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Today’s episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Diane Mack. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber and our assistant producer is Aubry Procell. Our engineer is Garrett Pittman.

You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at noon and 7 p.m. It’s available on Spotify, the NPR App, and wherever you get your podcasts. 

Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you! Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. And while you’re at it, fill out our listener survey! We want to keep bringing you the kinds of conversations you’d like to listen to.

Louisiana Considered is made possible with support from our listeners. Thank you!