This week on Know the News, Arts & Entertainment Editor Becca Martin-Brown chats with Karla Gray, director of The Learning Center of Northwest Arkansas, based in Berryville.

The Learning Center works to give children with disabilities the best start and adults with disabilities the best lives in their community, and Gray has been leading that effort for 30 years in Carroll County.

Listen here and read about her on Sunday when April Wallace features her in the Profiles section.

After almost 10 years with TheatreSquared — and a variety of jobs from assistant stage manager and production stage manager to associate producer, and finally general manager — Shannon Jones was named executive director of Fayetteville's professional theater company Aug. 24. Listen to her chat with Becca Martin-Brown, Arts and Entertainment editor, about what's ahead.

Members of Fayetteville’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board have been working to establish a “friends of” group that would raise money for the city’s parks system. Department heads say raising extra money would help expedite development of park projects. We talk with Stephen Sheely, the advisory board’s vice chairman, on this week’s edition of the Know the News podcast.

The third annual Fort Smith International Film Festival is Aug. 25-26. We talk with festival founder Brian Chase Goldsmith about what to expect from this year’s event on this week’s edition of the Know the News podcast.

Hundreds of students attending Northwest Arkansas schools are considered homeless. We talk to Damon Donnell, the Springdale School District’s director of student services, about what the district does for those students and how homelessness affects them. 

A new school year starts next week.

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This week on Know the News, host Becca Martin-Brown talks with Maggie Green, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s summer intern, about her project story on the Tontitown landfill and her experiences as an intern.

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The recent announcement of plans in Rogers for a 5,000-seat soccer stadium and two United Soccer League teams — men’s and women’s — sets the stage for Northwest Arkansas to enter the world of professional sports. In this week’s episode of Know the News, we speak with Devon Kerr, a television analyst for MLS soccer on Apple TV, for the USL and for NCAA soccer on ESPN about the league, what the teams mean for Northwest Arkansas and the other teams that might become rivalries for this region’s as-yet-unnamed men’s team.

Plus we preview coverage readers of the Democrat will see in this weekend’s editions.

Ticks are as ubiquitous in Arkansas as fans of the Razorbacks. More so, even. If the title of state insect was won by sheer volume, ticks would have a strong chance of winning the competition. It’s understandable that Arkansas lawmakers chose the honeybee for that honor; nobody feels much love for the tick. The Arkansas Department of Health says the little buggers are responsible for more human disease than any other insect, even though not all ticks transmit diseases.

In today’s edition of Know the News, University of Arkansas professor of entomology Dr. Ashley Dowling visits about the little bloodsuckers and addresses a question that’s probably crossed every Arkansas resident’s mind at one time or another: Why do ticks exist?

Listen as Dr. Dowling sets the stage for more coverage in this weekend’s Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on the dangers ticks represent starting in the spring and continuing throughout the summer and fall. Higher levels of human activities in the places ticks thrive can mean an uptick — yes, we said it — in bites and in instances of tick-transmitted diseases. That’s this week in the Know the News podcast.