It’s the holiday season, a time when we hear a lot about warmth, charity, and joy. If you’re good, maybe Saint Nick will bring you something from your wish list. But there’s also something darker that lives in the shadow of the season for anyone who misbehaves. It’s a half-goat, half-demon creature known as Krampus.LPM’s Ayisha Jaffer speaks with Steve Vessell, the founder of the Louisville Krampus Celebration, about the roots of Krampus and how Louisville has turned this darker holiday icon into a celebration blending art, music, costumes.

Louisville Free Public Library’s new executive director, Heather Lowe, shares her journey into this new role, her hopes for the library, and a few cozy reading recommendations for the winter season.

As Kentucky faces rising need for pet care and support, the leader of the Kentucky Humane Society discusses how a new service center could reshape care for pets and families.

As the Festival of Faiths highlights its theme of “Sacred Belonging,” Berea College professor and bell hooks center founder M. Shadee Malaklou reflects on hooks’ legacy and the practice of radical inclusion.

Americana Community Center has served Louisville’s refugee and immigrant communities for over 30 years. Last month, the nonprofit hired Ricky Santiago to be its new executive director.Santiago talks with LPM about the financial challenges Americana has weathered, his hopes for future sustainability, and the resurgence he believes the organization is making.

Across Kentucky, families are feeling the squeeze as the cost of living keeps rising, while wages have barely moved.

We spoke with Jason Bailey, the founder and executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, a progressive think tank, about what’s driving essential costs up across Kentucky, and what we should be watching as we head into the holiday season.

November is Family Literacy Month — a chance to focus on how families, schools and communities support reading. Here in Louisville, Felicia C. Smith, president and CEO of the National Center for Families Learning, leads two-generation literacy work that connects adults and children.We spoke with Smith about the state of literacy in Kentucky, what family literacy looks like in practice, and where families and educators can make the biggest difference.

Janice Clarke opened a Jamaican restaurant Elliment in downtown Louisville earlier this year, and it’s already become a gathering spot and resource for Louisville’s Jamaican community.Last month, Clarke’s native country of Jamaica was devastated by Hurricane Melissa, the strongest recorded hurricane to ever hit the island country. We talked with her about how she came to start the restaurant, and how she is raising money and collecting non-perishable food and new and gently used clothes to send to Jamaica amidst the recovery.

Unlike a lot of places in greater Louisville, access to groceries in west Louisville can be difficult, especially for those who don’t have their own transportation.Since 2019, the nonprofit Change Today, Change Tomorrow has worked to narrow the gap between needing food and having access to it. We talk with Taylor Ryan, the organization’s founder and executive director, about what her organization does and what more it wants to do to help feed the West End.