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48 episodes
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A People's History of Kansas City KCUR Studios
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- History
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4.8 • 187 Ratings
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The podcast about the everyday heroes, renegades and visionaries who shaped Kansas City and the region. If these stories aren't told, they're in danger of fading into the past. Made by Suzanne Hogan and Mackenzie Martin.
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The Ozark Music Festival of 1974
Fifty years ago, thousands of people took over the small town of Sedalia, Missouri, for a party full of nudity, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll music that is often remembered as Missouri’s Woodstock. People still talk about the lore from that hot wild weekend. Local filmmaker Jefferson Lujin walks Suzanne Hogan through how it all went down. Depending on what side of the festival fence you were on it was three days of heaven — or three days of hell.
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Saving the Kansas prairie
Most of Kansas was once covered by an ocean of grass and wildflowers. But that diverse prairie biome is collapsing, partly because of our obsession with trees. Humans have unleashed an aggressive “Green Glacier” that’s swallowing the Great Plains, and for these ranchers, saving the environment means being a tree killer — not a tree hugger. (This episode comes to us from the new KCUR Studios podcast Up From Dust, reported by Celia Llopis-Jepsen and David Condos.)
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The Walker Walkouts
70 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional in its landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education. But the case may have played out differently if it hadn’t been for a tenacious group of women in Johnson County, Kansas, who led their own integration lawsuit five years earlier. As Mackenzie Martin reports, the case centered around a two-room schoolhouse and included a lengthy boycott, big-shot NAACP lawyers, FBI surveillance — and six very brave children.
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Where cassette tapes never died
Cassette tapes could have remained a relic of the 1970s and 80s. But against all odds, they’ve survived the eras of CDs and streaming to win over music lovers of a new generation. That’s in large part thanks to the National Audio Company in Springfield, Missouri, the largest cassette manufacturer in the world. Suzanne Hogan shares the story of how this proudly analog format found a new life.
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Hydrox, the original Oreo
Oreo is the best-selling cookie in the world today. But few people remember the product that Nabisco blatantly ripped off: Hydrox. A creation of Kansas City’s Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company, Hydrox was billed as the “aristocrat of cookies,” with a novel combo of chocolate and cream filling. So why, more than a century later, is Hydrox still mistaken as a cheap knockoff? Producer Mackenzie Martin documents the rise and fall of America’s first chocolate sandwich cookie.
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PHKC live! A podcast party for America's original sandwich cookie
Did you know that a certain cream-filled black and white sandwich cookie got its start right here in Kansas City? And no, we're not talking about the Oreo.A People's History of Kansas City is hosting a special live event on March 1, 2024, where host Suzanne Hogan and producer Mackenzie Martin will take you back to the birth of the very first: Hydrox. Hear our next episode before everyone else. Go to KCUR.org/cookies for tickets.
Customer Reviews
60 years a Kansas City Citizen
I am just old enough to have fuzzy memories of the riots in 1968. I was in kindergarten at Fairfax Elementary school, one of three white children in my class. We lived in Quindaro projects so there was quite a bit of activity in my neighborhood during that. Whether or not he lived in Kansas City this is the top shelf production, and sure to stimulate.
Great for old and new Kansas Citians
Great podcast. Wish they kept it going. Binged it over the summer and keep waiting for more!!!
Compelling Local History
Engaging, well researched and well told local history.