Nation May 02 Missouri public defenders are overloaded with hundreds of cases while defendants wait in jail The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees every American facing trial the right to a lawyer, even if they cannot afford one. But across the country, the public defender system is being stretched to the breaking point, and Missouri may…
Nation Apr 09 Giving vulnerable residents help before mental health issues land them in jail Each year, an estimated 2 million people suffering from mental illness are booked into county jails. In Kansas City, Missouri, like other places around the country, officials are looking for a better way to get those people the help they…
Nation Mar 07 ‘The Trade’ tells personal stories of far-reaching drug crisis The new Showtime documentary series "The Trade" shows the pain and consequences of the nation's opioids epidemic by putting a human face on the crisis. Best known for the Oscar-nominated film "Cartel Land," director Matthew Heineman wanted to show just…
Arts Feb 23 Pre-9/11 drama ‘The Looming Tower’ explores the failure of intelligence when division gets in the way A new drama takes viewers back to the events that led to the 9/11 attacks. Hulu’s "The Looming Tower," based on Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, retells the true story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in the years…
Arts Feb 23 Jeff Daniels on how he landed ‘Dumb and Dumber’ When Jeff Daniels first auditioned for "Dumb and Dumber," everyone told him he couldn't do the film.
Nation Feb 06 Can Houston prevent disaster when the next storm comes? Houston, known as the Bayou City, is no stranger to flooding. But the record-breaking rains and devastating deluge of Hurricane Harvey helped expose a disconnect between developers building on flood-vulnerable land and home buyers who might not have realized the…
Nation Feb 05 How decades of Houston development add up to rising flood risk Houston is 627 square miles of urban development, highways, office parks, strip malls and neighborhoods -- and it keeps growing farther and farther out. Five months ago, Hurricane Harvey devastated the Texas coast, dropping more than 50 inches of rain…
Nation Jan 15 More churches are opening their doors to undocumented immigrants facing deportation Since President Trump took office, the number of American churches willing to shelter undocumented immigrants from the threat of deportation has grown to about 1,000 -- a small fraction of the Christian community. Special correspondent Duarte Geraldino meets one immigrant…
Economy Dec 07 Do tax cuts spur growth? What we can learn from the Kansas budget crisis Four years ago, businesses in Kansas went from paying over 6 percent taxes to paying nothing at all, as part of a Republican experiment to boost the limp state economy. But when the massive drop in tax revenue destabilized the…
Arts Oct 12 ‘The Florida Project’ is a movie about life on the margins, through the eyes of children “The Florida Project” is the story of a young mother struggling to pay rent while living in a rundown motel, told through the eyes of her daughter, a rebellious little girl who roams Orlando, engaging in shenanigans with her friends.