Prairie Journal

From Kentucky to Kansas to New York City in the Gilded Age, journalist-reformer and self-proclaimed "Queen of Bohemia" Zoe Anderson Norris chronicled the lives of immigrants and the poor in her self-published magazine, The East Side.

The story of the fight to save a Kansas City, Kansas, cemetery, and the Wyandotte woman who became the first Native American woman to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court.   We visit with the editors of "Lyda Conley and the Fight to Preserve Huron Indian Cemetery." 

Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, historian, and author Rick Atkinson gives the 2026 Dole Lecture at the University of Kansas.  His latest book, The Fate of the Day, is the second in his Revolutionary War trilogy, The War for America.

What better way to celebrate America 250 than with a cross-country road trip?  Dr. Beverly Gage is the author of This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History.  She's joined by Dr. Colleen Shogan, former U.S. archivist and CEO of the online history series In Pursuit.

Movies, music, and more!  It's time for the 2026 Free State Festival,  a week-long celebration of independent films taking place June 22nd-28th.  Festival director Marlo Angell joins us to talk about this year's FSF theme: The Revolution Will Be at the Movies! 

The World Cup is here!  Tim Bascom explores the universal appeal of the game in his book "The Boundless Game: Soccer Stories from Across the Street to Around the World."

In the late 1880s, Kansas voters did something almost no other state was doing: they elected women to local office. This episode of Per Aspera follows three of those elections: how Susanna Salter became the first woman mayor in the United States after being nominated as a joke, as well as wins in Oskaloosa and Baldwin City.  Per Aspera is a Kansas history series produced by Kara Heitz and the Kansas 250 Commission.

This week marks the 60th anniversary of an F5 tornado that ripped through Topeka, killing 17 people, injuring hundreds more, and destroying homes, cars, and buildings in the heart of the city.  We look back on June 8, 1966, with Bonar Menninger, author of "And Hell Followed With It: Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado," and with journalist Bill Kurtis, on the air at WIBW the night of the devastating storm.

As Bill Kurtis marks his last weekend as scorekeeper for NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," we revisit KPR's book launch event for his memoir, "Whirlwind: My Life Reporting the News."

Our Kansas 250 Bookshelf series continues with two books for kids and teens: Henry, Like Always by Jenn Bailey and A Constellation of Roses by Miranda Asebedo.