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During the Covid-19 pandemic, it's important we don't lose sight of other epidemics that have impacted the nation's health. The opioid epidemic has contributed to lower life expectancy for non-college-educated whites in the U.S. in each of the last three years. Our guest today, author Nancy Campbell, has written a compelling social history of the drug Naloxone ("Narcan"), the best-known opioid reversal agent we have, and how it has evolved from a drug used only in scientific and medical settings

In the wake of the US Supreme Court's Common Cause v. Rucho case which ruled that gerrymandering cases are a non-justiciable issue, citizen grassroots efforts have emerged to use other means to prevent partisan gerrymandering and other voter suppression efforts. These locally organized efforts have led to initiative petition victories to create non-partisan redistricting commissions in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Utah, expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act in Idaho, and

This month on C-SPAN, the public affairs network has been airing short documentaries created by Jenks High School students, winners in the network's annual Student Cam video documentary competition. Leviathan Lee and Mason Chow won 1st Prize for their documentary on the opioid crisis "200,000." Several other Jenks student entries won awards which featured over 5400 entries nationwide. This is a common occurrence for the documentary filmmaking program at Jenks. My guest today is their teacher

As our current pandemic continues, we hear from historian John M. Barry, who wrote one of the definitive accounts of the worst American pandemic, the Influenza pandemic of 1918-19. Barry is the author of the 2004 book, "The Great Influenza: The Story of The Deadliest Pandemic in History." Barry says that the most important lesson from the influenza pandemic is that truth is the strongest weapon available to man in a pandemic. In 1918, truth and transparency were among the first casualties of the

(Note: This program first aired last year.) Our guest is the Kansas City-based poet and teacher Anne Boyer, who joins us to discuss her bold, well-written memoir of cancer. The book is called "The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care." As was noted of this book by The New York Times: "The pink ribbon, that ubiquitous emblem of breast cancer awareness, has long been an object of controversy and derision, but the poet and essayist

Today, in labs and clinics all over the globe, the search for a COVID-19 vaccine is moving incredibly fast. On this edition of ST, we offer an interesting and optimistic account from the vaccine-related annals of American history as we revisit a 2015 interview from our archives. At that time, we spoke with Dr. Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs about her biography, "Jonas Salk: A Life." The book also offers a fascinating cultural hitory of polio in the US.

Our guest is Eileen Bradshaw, the recently-named CEO of the vitally important Tulsa nonprofit known as LIFE Senior Services. She brings us up to date on the various efforts that LIFE is now, in the age of Coronavirus, putting toward assisting the elderly in our community. These actions include (as detailed at the LIFE website ) utility and telephone help, mental and behavioral health services, food resources, COVID-19 testing-site data, details on special shopping hours for seniors, and so on.

The latest batch of historic recordings to be annually inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress was announced last month. Among them was the 1968 single, "Wichita Lineman," which was a big hit for Glen Campbell. That song was written by Jimmy Webb, the Oklahoma native who's widely seen as one of America's finest pop songwriters -- and who had a remarkable run of hit songs in the 1960s and early 1970s. On this edition of ST, we listen back to our 2017 conversation

The Tulsa nonprofit known as Clarehouse has been providing care for dying people in need for more than 15 years. It offers its services for free, and it partners with groups and organizations from all over the health care vortex in our community. Clarehouse will soon be presenting a virtual Tulsa Healthcare Decisions Day, which we learn about on this edition of ST Medical Monday. Per the Clarehouse website : "Only 22% of Oklahomans have an advance directive. Because of this, Clarehouse is

Looking for new tunes to check out as you pass away all those homebound hours of late? We have some great tips on this edition of ST as we welcome Julie Watson to our show. She's long been a fixture of Tulsa's local music scene, writing about musicians and bands, presenting concerts, promoting new and emerging artists, and so forth. Watson formerly hosted a fine public-radio show on another station, "Tune In Tulsa," which mixed great conversations with compelling playlists, and she's also a