America is staring down the barrel of its long term housing issues. Now, there are added complications and divisions created over the last few years. On this episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay looks at the outcome of the country’s housing shortage. While rent increases have slowed, nationally, costs are still well above where they were pre-COVID. If you’re trying to buy a house, mortgage rate hikes make it prohibitively expensive for many. These days, emergency pandemic relief programs are ...
Jan 25, 2023•52 min•Ep. 182
International adoption helped many Americans build families, but a dark side victimized poor people in developing countries. The practice began in the 1950s to help Korean War orphans and more than 70 years later hundreds of thousands of children born in other countries are part of a complex cultural legacy. By the early 2000s, corruption scandals scaled back or shut down programs in some of the most popular countries for adoption - South Korea, Romania, Russia, and Guatemala. On this Us & T...
Jan 06, 2023•54 min•Ep. 181
It’s been a year in America with lots of big political news and some very disturbing events. Supreme Court decisions are reshaping the nation’s policies as violence and shootings continue to take lives. Us & Them host Trey Kay has been traveling around asking people “How’s America doing?” and “Why do you think that?” Trey spent Election Day in a swing district in Pennsylvania talking with voters about the state of America. Some worry financial strains have made things worse while others say ...
Dec 19, 2022•52 min•Ep. 180
In West Virginia there are nearly 50 specialized court programs designed to help teens and adults kick their drug addictions. Drug courts divert people away from incarceration into a rigorous, court-monitored treatment program. They are intense experiences, some more than a year long. Participants are drug tested regularly and require monitoring devices. Graduation rates across the country show success rates from 29% to more than 60%. There are many supporters within the justice system, but crit...
Dec 07, 2022•42 min•Ep. 179
Imagining the future is at the core of this episode of Us & Them . Earlier this fall, we held a day-long workshop to hear ideas and talk about what can make the future a reality. The Civic Imagination Project based at the University of Southern California works with cities across the country to get residents thinking about new directions and possibilities for their communities. We invited people from the Upper Kanawha Valley with a range of backgrounds and experiences to discuss their hard-h...
Nov 21, 2022•52 min•Ep. 178
There’s a lot of energy and movement on abortion policy and law this fall. Some states have defined their position with five states offering ballot measures to protect or further restrict access to abortion. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, plenty of people feel like one side has won...and the other has lost. But how is this power shift playing out for people on the front line of the issue? How are individuals and groups facing what comes next in this post-Roe world? ...
Nov 09, 2022•43 min•Ep. 177
It’s time for our Us & Them dinner party crew to share a meal in person! This remarkable group of people has been meeting for two years, virtually, to talk across their social and political divides. There’s a lot they disagree on and there are moments of awkward concern at the table as they navigate that space. In this new episode, we’re together to talk and listen and try to understand a little more about each other. Our guests agree that sharing food and views enhances a sense of comradery...
Oct 26, 2022•52 min•Ep. 176
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin may be redefining the nation’s political landscape by reconfiguring the middle. While some say he’s tough to predict, others insist Sen. Manchin’s consistency has come to serve as an important political reference point. As the spotlight shines on the toxic battle between left and right, a man with decades in public office recently helped deliver a rare compromise bill through Congress. For the past two years, Joe Manchin has seemed to be at the center of the political debat...
Oct 05, 2022•45 min•Ep. 175
West Virginia’s U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin is the man in the middle. For years, Manchin has used his deciding vote in the Senate to stand up to Pres. Joe Biden’s legislative agenda, but recently a surprise agreement changed everything. In this episode of Us & Them, we look at the outcome of that legislation called the Inflation Reduction Act. Many are asking, “Who is Joe Manchin?” The important compromise on climate legislation in the bill is producing a transformation to Manchin’s political imag...
Sep 21, 2022•52 min•Ep. 174
Whatever you call what happened at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, a rally - a protest - a riot - or an insurrection, the congressional investigation and hearings are forging new territory. On this episode of Us & Them , we look at who’s watching the hearings, who’s not and why. What some call a clarifying moment in our nation’s experiment in democracy is surprisingly forgettable to others. Host Trey Kay listens to a range of opinions about what that day meant and finds a new layer of unco...
Sep 07, 2022•38 min•Ep. 173
More than a hundred years ago West Virginia was home to our nation’s most violent labor uprising. For some, the Battle of Blair Mountain was a watershed moment when coal workers decided their rights were worth fighting and even dying for. The armed insurrection pitted 10,000 coal miners against 3,000 heavily armed coal industry guards and state troopers. The conflict came to a head because of the social and economic forces that hit West Virginia’s coal country after World War I. It was the large...
Aug 24, 2022•51 min•Ep. 172
Many West Virginians have trouble with their teeth. In fact, there’s a big gap between folks who can reliably access an affordable dentist and those who can’t. That’s no surprise when half the state’s counties have fewer than six dentists. A recent national ranking shows West Virginia is second to last in overall oral health care. A state report shows that by third grade, 56 percent of children show signs of tooth decay, and 12 percent of adults have had all their teeth extracted. People who don...
Aug 10, 2022•36 min•Ep. 171
More than a dozen states have new laws banning transgender girls and women from competing on girls and womens sports teams. Recently, three states have limited medical care or treatment that supports gender affirming therapy. On this episode of Us & Them , the battle over gender and sports. We’ll hear from transgender athletes who say they want to be who they truly are as they compete on the playing field. We’ll hear a lawmaker who says the new laws are not anti-trans, but rather designed to...
Jul 27, 2022•52 min•Ep. 170
2020 presented new levels of outrage over police killings of Black and Brown people in this nation. Police killed George Floyd and Breonna Taylor which prompted protests, marches and rallies to denounce racially motivated police brutality. A Black Lives Matter march in Kingwood, West Virginia set up a flash point for that tiny town. Black protestors and their allies faced off with white people who say Kingwood has no race problem. The angry white crowd outnumbered BLM marchers and showed the raw...
Jul 13, 2022•33 min•Ep. 169
Charges of vaccine hoarding and global protectionism are coloring the debate over our response to new strains of COVID with vaccinations. The World Health Organization reports so far, only 16% of people in low-income countries have gotten a single vaccine dose. That compares with 80% in some high-income countries. The role vaccinations can play in shortening or ending the pandemic is still critical although COVID fatigue may prevent people from getting their first dose or continuing on to comple...
Jun 22, 2022•52 min•Ep. 168
Healthcare workers are the glue in our public health system. They’ve seen firsthand the impacts of messaging around COVID-19 — the good, the bad, and the downright dangerous — especially on social media. That firehose of information shaped our experience of the pandemic. The internet has also catapulted dangerous misinformation about the virus and treatment into mainstream public opinion. It’s a crisis some healthcare workers are taking to task themselves. In a new Us & Them episode, host Tr...
Jun 07, 2022•45 min•Ep. 167
America has roughly 400 million guns in circulation. Our divisions - social, political and racial - and our fear of those differences fuel even more gun purchases. 2020 showed a historic rise in gun violence. Guns killed a record 45,000 people, the majority of them by suicide. In this episode of Us & Them we explore the foundations of the Second Amendment and the cultural and historical beliefs and myths that contribute to our very American divide over guns. Gun ownership is at record levels...
May 25, 2022•52 min•Ep. 166
The weedkiller dicamba has created a divide between people who work the land in Arkansas. In a new episode from the award-winning program Us & Them (from PRX & West Virginia Public Broadcasting), their team follows up on a story that’s gotten ugly over the past few years. A newer version of the herbicide is designed to give soybean farmers a way to combat pigweed, a tenacious plant that can take over soybean fields. However, there's evidence that the chemical can evaporate from where it ...
May 12, 2022•52 min•Ep. 165
Our trust can be tested by many things, both personal and professional. Political fractures make us question those we disagree with. The shifting science of a pandemic presents challenging scenarios for healthcare leaders. As COVID cases continue to rise and fall, Us & Them wanted to hear from people who’ve landed at different points along this trust continuum. Some don’t trust information or data about the coronavirus or the vaccines; from science, from healthcare, from government. Others s...
Apr 28, 2022•52 min•Ep. 164
America’s public schools are once again in the crosshairs of our nation’s culture wars. Some parents want more say in what and how their kids are taught — especially topics like racial history and gender studies. These parents say schools are pushing a social agenda they don’t agree with. The call for more parental involvement includes increased challenges to the books used in classrooms. Last year, those cases quadrupled with challenges against nearly 1600 individual titles. Educators worry tha...
Apr 14, 2022•52 min•Ep. 163
Americans are looking back to reassess their history and origins. George Floyd’s murder launched a global movement to assert the critical role that race plays in American law and society; however, even before Black Lives Matter protests swept the nation and the world, there were efforts to redefine America’s origin story. Now, there are fresh fracture points in how we see ourselves and how we teach our history. A focus of this debate is on a little-known academic and legal concept called Critica...
Mar 23, 2022•52 min•Ep. 162
Born from an era of segregated educational opportunities when Black students were not welcome at predominantly white schools, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have been focused on surrounding students with Black excellence. Today, HBCUs are no longer exclusive. In fact, some schools — like Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD — are actively recruiting a more diverse population to provide a more global experience to prepare graduates for the future. In West Virginia, white...
Mar 10, 2022•38 min•Ep. 161
The public health campaign to sell people on COVID-19 vaccinations is more than a year old, but its success is limited. The latest strain of the virus shows that unvaccinated people are significantly more likely to contract the omicron variant, resulting in higher rates of hospitalization and death. This reality raises a question - why are people refusing the shots? What’s gone wrong with the public health message? Early on the focus was on mass vaccinations, which convinced many millions of peo...
Feb 24, 2022•52 min•Ep. 160
We can document almost everything around us with devices of all kinds. But in 1970, there were few cameras around when police opened fire on crowds in Augusta, Georgia. A protest-turned-riot over the brutal murder of a Black teenager left six Black men dead from police bullets. But there was never justice for any of the deaths, including 16-year-old Charles Oatman in the Richmond County Jail. The story of that riot remains relatively unknown among Augusta residents both Black and white. Us &...
Feb 10, 2022•41 min•Ep. 159
A social movement has been gaining steam in the past decade as we’ve learned more about the way trauma can affect our physical and psychological health. A study more than twenty years ago, first came up with a way to assess the impact of childhood neglect, abuse and family dysfunction. Now, advocates are getting traction with “trauma-aware” campaigns and coalitions. School districts, communities, states and even countries are investing in trauma awareness, training and screening. Nearly half the...
Jan 27, 2022•52 min•Ep. 158
The coronavirus pandemic continues to prove just how interconnected the world is. Now, a new COVID strain called “omicron,” shows the potential downside of our global vaccination approach. As people in the U.S and Europe line up for booster shots, low vaccination rates in some countries allow the virus to mutate into new strains. ‘America first’ has been a consistent focus for the Biden administration’s vaccination campaign. Early in 2021, high income countries controlled nearly 60 percent of gl...
Jan 13, 2022•41 min•Ep. 157
Masks and vaccines continue to trigger Us & Them divides across the nation. As statewide public health mandates have dwindled, public health choices increasingly fall to local government officials - city, county and school board leaders. Many say the mask and vaccination requirements they’ve imposed in the interests of public health, have put a target on their back. More than 80% report they’ve been harassed, threatened or experienced violence. Some are afraid to do their job and they say th...
Dec 21, 2021•52 min•Ep. 156
Travel is an activity some people use as a classroom. Leaving the familiar lets us learn about culture, history, the environment and many other topics. Recently, a small group spent six days traveling America’s southern states to learn about the country’s racial past and the impact of the Civil Rights movement today. This immersive tour took them across several states to places that have come to define periods in America’s racial history—from Charleston, South Carolina’s slave trade market to Eb...
Dec 09, 2021•47 min•Ep. 155
It’s another Thanksgiving with COVID-19, but this time, vaccinations allow many Americans to gather together and share a hug and a meal. Us & Them host Trey Kay invites his ‘virtual dinner party’ guests back for an anniversary. It’s a tradition we began last year - bringing together a wide ranging group to talk occasionally about the hot topics of the day. We talk politics and the 2020 election as well as the issues of election reform that continue to reverberate. COVID vaccinations and mask...
Nov 23, 2021•52 min•Ep. 154
Us & Them host Trey Kay honors Veterans Day with a remarkable conversation with the last surviving World War ll U.S. Marine recipient of the Medal of Honor. Hershel Woodrow “Woody” Williams grew up as a farm kid in the Mountain State and enlisted in the Marine Corps just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He served in the Pacific campaign and fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima. Williams received the Medal of Honor for fighting against enemy positions to open a lane for infantry soldiers. For f...
Nov 10, 2021•29 min•Ep. 153
