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The German educational system has the daunting task of teaching about the Holocaust and the rise of the Nazi Party. Can their approach inform how schools in the U.S. teach about atrocities in our own country’s past?

On this week’s “In Conversation,” we talked about the difficulties of teaching about race in America, particularly with current legislative attempts to limit curriculum about race in the public school system.

Our panel included WFPL's Jess Clark and Stephanie Wolf, who created the documentary "A Critical Moment," and Professor Jamel K. Donner, Associate Professor of Education with The Center for Racial & Social Justice at William & Mary.

Your credit score doesn’t determine your worth—but it can greatly affect your access and opportunities. And if money management isn’t something you learned about as a kid, it’s hard to figure out how to catch up.

This week on “In Conversation” we discussed personal finance and financial literacy. Do you need a budget, and how do you tackle making one? Which debts should you pay off first? And how can you take what you make now and use it to plan for a more financially secure future?

Education news tends to focus on high schools and grade schools. But what about higher education — how are COVID-19 and education bills, for example, affecting colleges and universities?

On this week’s “In Conversation,” host Rick Howlett talked to regional college and university leaders about their issues, challenges, and aspirations.

Turn on cable news or open any social media app, and you’ll see example after example of awful public behavior. People are throwing hands on airplanes, serving up knuckle sandwiches in restaurants and bullying each other online. Public civility seems like a quaint concept.

On this week’s “In Conversation,” we talked about how our social norms and behaviors have changed since 2020, and how we can de-escalate the situations in our lives that make our blood boil.

Coming up this Friday, we'll talk about teaching race in schools. Proposed legislation in several states, including Kentucky, could limit how race is covered in classrooms. It's the subject of a recent documentary from the WFPL newsroom called "A Critical Moment," and the reporters who made it will be part of our panel this week. Here's the piece, so you can listen in advance of our show. To learn more and see photos from the project, visit wfpl.org/acriticalmoment

Failure brings to mind all the negative associations of letting yourself or others down. But what are the benefits of missing the mark?

On this week’s “In Conversation,” host Rick Howlett talked to some of the participants from a program at the Louisville Free Public Library on how and why to celebrate failure from various perspectives.

Many big-ticket items are under consideration during this session of the Kentucky General Assembly: the budget, redistricting, education bills, abortion, laws regarding criminal justice, the legalizing of medical cannabis, and more.

On this week’s “In Conversation,” host Rick Howlett talked to reporters Ryland Barton, Jess Clark and Becca Schimmel, along with Dee Pregliasco with the League of Women Voters of Kentucky, to examine and explain the proposed bills and laws, and discuss their possible implications.

bell hooks was a widely regarded author, activist, and academic who explored the intersection of sexism and racism in American society. She was also a Kentucky native, with deep roots in the state. hooks died at the age of 69 last month in Berea, Kentucky.

On this week’s “In Conversation,” host Rick Howlett talked with friends and colleagues of bell hooks, and Kentucky poet laureate Crystal Wilkinson reflects on hooks’ influence, her legacy, and their friendship.

With a global pandemic, a tumultuous election season, and widespread racial justice protests, it’s safe to say that the past two years have brought about unprecedented change and chaos.

Or is it unprecedented? On this week’s “In Conversation” host Rick Howlett talked with historians about how the events of 2020 and 2021 could be viewed and talked about by historians and students of history for years to come.

Also, WFPL Health Reporter April Rickert joined us with an update on COVID-19 and the omicron variant.

It's been almost a week since tornadoes hit western part of the commonwealth. The storms killed over 70 Kentuckians and reduced whole communities to rubble. On this week's show, we hear from WKMS's Derek Operle and WFPL's Ryan Van Velzer, some of the reporters who have been our eyes and ears on the ground in places like Mayfield and Dawson Springs. We check in with WEKU's Corinne Boyer, who's been keeping up with Gov. Andy Beshear and relief efforts. And we talk with Jared Bennet from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting about Mayfield Consumer Products, the candle factory that's now at the center of a class action lawsuit related to its leadership's management of the emergency.