This week marks the 1-year anniversary of the shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison. Meanwhile the search for the Brown University shooter is ongoing. To talk about these events and the ongoing crisis of school shootings across the US, host Ali Muldrow is joined by Dr. David Riedman who tracks these shootings and the online communities that foster gun violence.

Dr. Riedman takes an evidence-driven approach to the study of school shootings. He’s tracked 3,400 shootings back to the 1960s, including 226 of which were deliberately planned. He says there are some common denominators when it comes to shootings: the vast majority are committed by a current or recently former student who has likely experienced abuse in their home, has easy access to a gun, and has shown signs of distress, like leaving weapons out, leaving out maps of their schools, and making shrines to previous school shooters. These realities may run counter to the desire to view school shooters as deranged, lone-wolf outsiders. Instead, Dr. Riedman calls the majority of school shootings “violent public suicides.”

They also talk about the stereotype that public and urban schools are more dangerous than private, rural, or suburban schools, even though the majority of school shootings occur in small suburban communities and rural schools. Dr. Riedman advises that parents be educated about past school shootings in order to spot signs that kids are becoming radicalized by online communities like the True Crime Community (TCC) and Groyper movement, led by white nationalist influencer, Nick Fuentes. Meanwhile young people in Wisconsin have been calling for better mental health resources and better gun storage laws.

Dr. David Riedman is the founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database and hosts the podcast Back to School Shootings.

Featured image of students from Des Moines Public Schools participating in the National School Walkout to end gun violence in 2018 by Phil Roeder on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

The post The Tragic Repetition of School Shootings appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Currently, Wisconsin and Arkansas are the only two states that have not expanded healthcare coverage for new moms. On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon speaks with ProPublica reporter, Megan O’Matz, about her investigation into Robin Vos’s rejection of postpartum Medicaid expansion in Wisconsin.

Even though there is bipartisan support in the Wisconsin legislature to expand Medicaid coverage for up to a year for low-income new moms, Robin Vos has blocked a bill that would do just that. O’Matz reports that Vos broke with other anti-abortion members of his party and that this decision is timed with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. She calls it hypocritical not to give new moms healthcare past two months and claim you’re “pro-life” because the early months after birth are a vulnerable period when parents often need ongoing medication and treatment. O’Matz also tracks the influence of business interests on Vos’s decision, including the Uihlein family’s financial contributions to the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee.

They also talk about O’Matz’s most recent article on Sen. Ron Johnson’s support of a discredited Wisconsin doctor whose new book on chlorine dioxide–a bleaching agent used as a disinfectant and deodorizer–spreads misinformation. Sen. Johnson has written a blurb on the book’s dust jacket and has joined the doctor on panels on vaccine skepticism even though chlorine dioxide is not a drug or a medicine approved for therapeutic use. O’Matz says that we’re in a place where people don’t trust the CDC and that studies cited in Dr. Kory’s book are not scientifically rigorous.

O’Matz says that she got her start in Florida, where open records laws support journalists’ work of keeping elected officials accountable. However the newspaper industry has been contracting over the years due to influence from media conglomerates. She’s now with ProPublica, a nonprofit, independent newsroom that seeks to deliver a level of accountability to readers by reporting on how people with power use it. They rely on open records, data, and fact checking to foster reader trust.

Megan O’Matz is a ProPublica reporter covering issues in Wisconsin and throughout the Midwest. She has been with ProPublica since 2021 and writes about voting processes in Wisconsin, a swing state, as well as stories about family court, prosecutorial blunders and predatory lending. She has also worked at the South Florida Sun Sentinel. She and her colleagues were finalists for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for stories about widespread fraud in federal disaster aid programs after a series of devastating hurricanes. She also shared in the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the failures of school administrators and police officers in connection with the Parkland school shooting.

Featured image of a pregnant person holding their belly via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).

The post One Man Stalled Healthcare Expansion For New Moms appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

As WORT celebrates its 50th birthday this year, we’ve been reflecting on what the last half-century has meant to our community. But on today’s show, host Douglas Haynes asks, what will the next 50 years look like? He’s joined by the next generation of radio leaders, Olivia O’Callaghan and Daniel Stein from WSUM and Ted Hyngstrom from the Daily Cardinal who produces the weekly feature, Cardinal Call, on WORT.

Record numbers of UW Madison students are signing up to volunteer at WSUM, say O’Callahan and Stein. There’s interest from students wanting to play music on air and from listeners wanting to engage in digital content, like DJ spotlights and vinyl takeovers. Hyngstrom speculates that there’s such a demand for radio because it’s easy to consume, you can just put on your headphones and get music or news on demand.

There may be something to the generational generalizations about Gen Z-ers ditching the algorithm in favor of analog media, from cassettes to radio. O’Callahan says it’s rewarding to be a part of a medium with a long history. And Stein says that even if the medium is an old one, people are consuming radio content in very 21st century ways, by listening on apps, by setting reminders for their favorite shows, replaying favorite shows, and listening on the go.

Stein says that “radio is a big market for people who are looking for an itch that’s not already being scratched.” Whereas AI is zapping people’s creativity, people tune into WSUM or WORT “because they want to hear something authentic.”

College Radio and community radio are shaping local culture, and that work excites these three students. Hyngstrom says that the work of “making something” motivates him, like an art form would. He’s driven to work on human-centered stories shaped by expert knowledge, like the Daily Cardinal’s recent AI issue. O’Callahan says that getting to know show hosts contributes to the intimacy of the listening experience of radio. She got connected to college radio as a way to meet people, and now she’s getting professional experience by applying classroom work in a real-world capacity. And from multimedia content to dynamic programming, our guests envision a bright and innovative future for radio.

Ted Hyngstrom is the producer of Cardinal Call, a collaboration between WORT and UW-Madison student newspaper “The Daily Cardinal.” As Podcast Director, he has overseen a comprehensive overhaul of how the Cardinal approaches audio journalism, working to integrate podcasting and audio journalism into the newsroom while simultaneously supporting multimedia storytelling. Academically, Ted is a sophomore Honors college student at UW-Madison studying Journalism and Political Science. Someday, he hopes to work as a local news multimedia journalist.

Olivia O’Callaghan is a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying journalism and sociology. She joined WSUM Student Radio her freshman year, and worked as a Traffic Director in 2024 before being elected to serve as Station Manager for the 2025 calendar year. She hosts a music show at 10pm on Wednesday nights called “Kitchen Sink.”

Daniel Stein is the Program Director at WSUM where he oversees the content broadcast on their FM and online signals, develops show schedules for nearly 200 active members, and enforces federal broadcast regulations.

Featured image of a soundboard at a college radio station via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The post College Students Say Radio Still Has a Lot to Offer appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.