03 Jan White Gold Fever
What’s rich, buttery, and tastes like opportunity? Callo de Hacha. The shellfish delicacy that gave one Sinaloan town… “White Gold Fever....
10 Aug Map to the Disappeared
A woman in Veracruz, Mexico receives a map from a pair of anonymous strangers that leads her on a search to solve a mystery that’s haunted her for years. And a psychiatrist brings together three men who believe they are all Jesus Christ, hoping to cure them of their delusions....
16 Dec In Mexico, shuttered cemeteries mean financial ruin for thousands of flower farmers
Day of the Dead is usually one of the most profitable times of the year. Families buy dozens of flowers to build altars at the graves of their deceased loved ones. But in October, news broke that many cemeteries in Mexico would be closed to the public due to rising COVID-19 cases....
05 Oct The Children of Smithfield
Last March, while the country grappled with stay-at-home orders, meatpacking plants across the nation quickly became invisible hotspots for the coronavirus. Maira Mendez, a high school administrator in Lincoln, Nebraska, worried her parents might contract coronavirus from their jobs at Smithfield Foods, a massive pork processing plant in the nearby town of Crete....
12 Dec In Rural Colorado, Advocates Travel Far To Serve Undocumented Immigrants
Inside a small mobile home in rural Colorado, dark brown curtains are pulled tightly across the windows, locking out light from outside. A woman who we'll call "A" lives here with her husband and three young children. We're not using her real name to protect her identity, because "A" is originally from Guatemala and undocumented. Like many people in her position, she fears an encounter with immigration officials could force her and her family to return to the country they fled nearly two years ago....
04 Oct In The San Luis Valley, Lettuce Has Shaped The Land and Local Culture
Farmers had been growing lettuce in the San Luis Valley for decades, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that the crop started to take off, thanks to advances in farming and vacuumed sealed shipping containers. At the time, locals referred to lettuce as “green gold,” and thousands of heads were shipped to East Coast cities each day....
05 Sep It’s Late Summer And Thousands Of Tarantulas In Southeastern Colorado Are On The Move
Late summers in southeastern Colorado are usually synonymous with golden honeydews and cantaloupes, as the Rocky Ford melon harvest gets underway. But as evening temperatures cool, another lesser known ritual begins — the annual tarantula migration. KUNC’s Esther Honig traveled south hoping to catch a glimpse of the spiders on their journey. ...
14 Aug Seven Years After Legalization, Colorado Battles An Illegal Marijuana Market
Earlier this spring, police in Fort Collins seized 420 marijauna plants (yes, 420) that had been illegally grown inside area homes. Also recovered: processed weed, weed concentrate, guns and approximately $110,000 in cash. ...
09 May Denver To Decriminalize Psychedelic Mushrooms
Denver voters made history last night with the first popular vote in the U.S. to decriminalize hallucinogenic mushrooms. Final unofficial results show the measure barely passing by just a couple thousand votes. The initiative tells police to treat enforcement of laws against mushrooms as their lowest priority. The author and journalist Michael Pollan studied mushrooms and other hallucinogens for his book "How To Change Your Mind."...
05 Feb With Fewer Refugees, Who Will Work At Greeley’s Meatpacking Plant?
At his one-room apartment, 35-year-old Abul Basar made a tight fist with his right hand. As he opened his palm, his ring finger remained bent and rigid. "It's locked my finger, (it) doesn't work," he said. Basar came to the area as a refugee in 2017 after escaping violent persecution in his former country of Burma, also known as Myanmar. He said he fled to Bangladesh and then Thailand and eventually Indonesia, where he was detained for nearly a year by immigration authorities. Today, he's relieved to be in the U.S....