(upbeat music) - Welcome back to another edition of "Kansas City Experience," I'm Cole Blaise.

KCX provides a chance to highlight just a few of the segments from Kansas City PBS flatland and 90.9 to bridge that you might have missed.

(Techno dance music) This month, we share performance from quixotic part of our KC series, as well as a song from Katie Keenan and the Drive from the KC bands together.

(Folk rock music) We also go behind the scenes of the scripted horror podcasts, BM Woodstream - And we report on how much of our food goes to waste and look at ways to reduce the problem - [Expert] I expect to see rotten food.

But when you see like a perfectly frosted cake from somewhere, it can become disheartening sometimes.

When you just see what people throw away.

- But we get started this month with a look at park university project that aims to give proper recognition to world war one vets who were discriminated against based on race or religion.

- [Weber] Obviously we knew that there was some kind of racism or antisemitism, but we really didn't know the scope.

- [Weston] These men, these heroes have done actions that even today we see in combat that have been awarded the medal of honor yet just because they were black or native American Asian American or Jewish American simply based on something.

So, so superficial they didn't receive the honor that they deserve.

(Gong) - [Dr. Westcott] The Valor metals review project deals with African-Americans Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans Jewish Americans, and native Americans for world war I that may have been overlooked for the highest Bauer that this country can give which is the medal of honor due to race and or religious discrimination.

- [Weston] Although there's, been systematic reviews of every other war world war one has been left on touch.

- [Weber] We ended up meeting with world war one Centennial commission, and a number of other organizations in the country and decided we were going to perform one of the largest systematic reviews that the world has ever seen.

- Which is profound, it's never been done before.

- [Weston] We have to meet modern day of honor standards which is difficult for a war that happened 102 years ago.

I have to find the longitude, the latitude the weather enemy provisions, various different things, such as maps, geography, and individual movements typically hour by hour, if possible.

And so in order to acquire that information I had to dig through different documents, whether it's from the military itself or historical accounts, journals letters, correspondence, military orders, so on and so forth.

And I just kind of put together the story for each person where they crawling through the mud and the rain through barbed wire while being shot at and artillery blowing up around them gas in the air for each individual so that they could understand that it wasn't a small action, but it was significant.

And that's why we're doing this.

- [Weber] Most of my job is monitoring and finding individuals who qualify in the first place tracking them down, getting a biographical sketches who they are so that we can get some information about unit and attachment info and then tracking them through time.

So the biggest part of my job is just finding people where they went where they ended up and then seeing if there's anybody that's still alive that knew them.

And if there is we're lucky and Dr. Wescott and I have the immense pleasure of speaking to them what they recall about the individual if they never knew them, what the family recalls about the individual, if they don't know anything at all it's us informing them, Hey here's who your great grandfather or great uncle was.

We are so proud to be working with him and his service.

And we want to tell you about him.

- [Dr. Wescott] I remember the first one I did was to a young lady in Pennsylvania.

So I called her and told her who we were what we were doing, and then asked her if she was related to this particular person, there was dead silence.

And pretty soon all I heard was weeping.

And I, and I said to her, I said, "ma'am, are you okay?"

And she said "we've waited a hundred years for this phone call."

- [Weber] This is important because these are some individuals that are some of the most wonderful men we have ever read about and have ever done any work on.

And yet their name does not remain in the history books along with other individuals, nobody ever knew what they did and why they deserve more credit than they actually got.

- [Weston] Valor never expires.

And our support for veterans should never expire.

- This year has been extremely challenging for not only Quixotic, but other performing arts communities and companies.

And we can all use your support.

There's a lot of, you know, people behind the scenes that also are impacted by this.

And all of our wishes right now is just to move forward stay positive, and just continue to create in the best of our abilities in these challenging times.

(Dance music) (Beeping) - [Announcer] The Violet Hour presents.

- [Woolley] It's part horror, part thriller part mystery.

It's about a woman who flees her hometown after a violent tragedy.

And when she's finally forced to return about a decade later, she realizes that the long-term effects of that violence have changed the town forever almost consumed it.

And that the people that she left behind are also changed In a really scary way.

They're hooked on a new psychedelic drug with psychotic side effects and they have an issue with her leaving.

And now that she's back they're not going to let her leave again.

- [Male Narrator] Here's to us, to our reunion it's been a long time.

- [Female Narrator] Hey Paige, can I ask you something?

- [Paige] Yeah, of course.

- [Female Narrator] Where is your necklace?

- [Paige] My what?

- [Female Narrator] Your necklace I'm wearing my half or our union.

Here's the forever.

And you have the friends remember.

- So violet hour media is a premium horror scripted podcast network.

And basically that means that we are delivering really high quality immersive fiction podcasts.

And they're all in the horror space.

And I'll start off by saying that I am just a huge fan of the horror genre I have been for a long, long time.

So my previous role, I was in the corporate strategy and development group at Warner brothers.

And luckily I had the opportunity to work with lots and lots of our horror properties.

So I was working on horror for the studio, from film TV games and everything in between.

And I also started supervising Warner brothers podcast market entry.

So how can the studio play in the space?

Once I got really involved in podcasting I became just aware of what an incredible opportunity it is both from a business perspective and from a storytelling perspective.

And one of the things I like the most about it is it gives an opportunity to tell stories that you might not ever be able to get through just film or TV.

And Rachel's story is an incredible example of that.

We're really hoping to differentiate by bringing a really thorough process for going through the script and development just like you would at a studio.

And then similarly for getting incredible quality actors and working with talented filmmakers who can capture those performances.

And then finally in post-production with CJ adding that really professional, you know kind of an immersive binaural audio experience.

And I'm finding that most podcasts aren't quite doing that up to the level that we are.

And that's what I hope will be our calling card.

I really want the violet hour to be synonymous with just premium quality horror.

- [Male Narrator] Someone's coming.

- [Female Narrator] Close the door!

- [Male Narrator 2] Barricade the door!

- [Female Narrator] Jake close the door!

- [Male Narrator 1] This is not (inaudible) Help me, help me press this - It's edgy, it's cool It's, it's really, really deep and complex and something like that might take quite a while to make it through the traditional studio ecosystem.

So one of the things I'm really proud of is giving opportunities for a great stories like this and great writers like Rachel to shine and come to light - [Female] Hey, the trees, why do they look.. - [Female 2] Dead?

Because they are.

Every last one of them.

- [Male] Welcome back they were tunes.

It's amazing, right?

It's still our Elmwood High Paige.

- [Paige] I don't know if I can do this.

I feel sick.

- [Male] This is what you came for, isn't it?

- You know, as a director directing in this medium, it's really interesting to just completely take away the visual and as a filmmaker, it's, it's even, you know an another interesting challenge.

It's like a Luke Skywalker, you know, putting on the blast shield to learn how to fight with light saber and you have to kind of work different muscles.

And, and so I found myself directing the actors in different ways.

And you know, you kind of have to create an environment in which actors who are creating separately, all sound like they're in the same room.

And we just, you know, in casting cast, all of our leads every single like our leads are either in Kansas city.

So it's Sarah McGuire, Matt Rappaport, Alice Pollock and Tim Robinson.

And they're either in Kansas city or they're from Kansas city, or they have a connection to Kansas city.

It was not by design.

It just happened.

And you know, we make cool stuff here.

I mean, I'll tell you like we have cool lives.

We make cool stuff.

That's it - [Male] Here, Jeff, give me dearest Paige please accept this sacred earth infused with my gratitude.

(Soft Laughing) - [Paige] I love you too, baby boy - Actually every single person involved on the talent side on the all, every single actor that we have in the show is just overachieving in regard to the, their performances.

And, and, and what I really was trying to go for is something that transcended traditional radio drama.

And also to be honest with you transcended most scripted podcasts, because I you know, I find that there's a lot of radio drama residual radio drama performance style where everything's really big.

And I wanted really my new small nuanced performances that would provide a platform in the edit for CJ to then take those moments and do world building around them.

- [Demonic Narrator] We've been waiting for you.

It's time to start the show.

(Horror music and distant screams) - I'm as sound designer.

Once I have that world built in VR I am now controlling what you're looking.

So I got my hand on the back of your head going like this you know, and, - [Female] You said you were ready.

- [Female 2] I am.

- [Male] Hey.

Hey.

- And sometimes that's the main actor or sometimes that's maybe the perspective of somebody in the corner of the room watching a scene happen.

- [Male] That tree's as good as dead.

- [Male 2] Dutch Elm disease - [Female] So?

Take care of it.

( Male scoffs) - Or the, you know, you know, the antagonist or whoever it is.

And that's the real fun part of this.

And it's addicting.

- [Male] Focus Paige.

- [Female] There's murder and then there's sacrifice.

- And the correlation between causing emotion.

So if I cause fear or if I cause love or whatever it is, whatever emotion that I'm causing you're correlating that emotion with your personal experience.

(Whip Lash) - [Paige] Let me out!

Please!

- [Male] I'm trying to explain a miracle to you.

- [Paige] Shut up, shut up.

- That's because that's not laid out for you on the screen.

You know, you don't know what it looks like.

So you're, you are connecting those emotions with something from the past.

- [Male] Why did you do that?

(Paige crying in fear) - [Male 2] Paige?

Run!

- [Audio Director] I think it is a special opportunity and I think it needs to be even more validated than it already is in that it is a valuable way to connect with people through imagination.

And I think that's a, an exchange that, you know people remember for their whole lives.

So it's, there's, it's a very powerful thing.

- [Paige] They're coming.

- [Female Narrator] When we look at it in the U S we have about as much food waste to fill the Rose bowl in Pasadena every single day.

(Gong) - [McAllister] When food is thrown into your trash, that goes ends up in the landfill.

It ends up producing methane and there are different studies showing how harmful it is but it's around 28 times worse than carbon dioxide.

- [Chappelle] One of the things we do is waste characterization studies.

These are studies where we go to landfills go to transfer stations, waste facilities and sort through the trash that comes in.

I expect to see rotten food but when you see like a perfectly frosted cake from somewhere, it can become disheartening sometimes.

When you just see what people throw away.

- [Narrator] 20-25% of your waste drain coming in is food is a lot once it's in the waste stream there's nothing to do to feed people with.

- From the trends that I've seen.

It does look like we're probably disposing of more food than we were part of that tends to be economic when times are good, equal buy more food, eat less of it and throw it out.

Some of the literature I've been reading from the pandemic is that they've seen that actual like food waste from the consumer end user side may be going down because people are at home more.

And so we're more connected to what we're actually throwing away.

- It's happening at the farms where, you know the food is being grown and not harvested for, you know, maybe it doesn't they know that they can't sell it to the grocery store because the grocery store will only sell the pretty fruit.

And then it's happening at the grocery stores where people only pick the prettier looking fruit and then it's happening obviously at home.

And that's where we focus.

- [Female Narrator] We are out every day collecting food scraps from households.

So people will put out their trash they're recycling.

And then you have your little compost bucket.

My husband and I just noticed that there was a need for something like this.

Other cities around the country have something similar and just launched a little pilot in our neighborhood.

We're now all across the Metro and have about 1200 customers.

We're collecting hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

- I'm standing in slaughter with the Zuri organic recycling and the garden and education specialist.

I have about 320 clients from grocery stores to schools to corporate cafeterias, to restaurants.

- [Narrator] Composting is a bacterial process.

Bacteria, simply exude enzymes.

And those enzymes dissolve the carbohydrates then dissolve the proteins and then they reabsorb the food that they use.

Well, that's a very, very primitive and sloppy process but plant life eats it rapidly.

If you can imagine it has every mineral in the world to rebuild everything that the plants need.

I get, I get choked up about it because it's providing us incredibly valuable service for the whole community and collectively we all eat and we all contribute.

It's just a matter of kind of our society growing up.

- It's absolutely a systemic issue.

I mean, there's a lot a person can do.

People can, we can do as individuals.

The bigger areas of food waste are in the supply chain are in commercial preparation are in getting it from a to B spoilage a person can't compete with that amount of waste.

- I think we have the capabilities to compost all this food waste.

Do I think we should be?

No, I definitely think we're producing too much.

And I think we're buying too much.

We stock our fridges and then only use, you know a partial amount with that.

We're not really planning our meals.

And I think composting with us in general is a really good start.

You have all of your food waste in this one five gallon bucket, and you start to realize, Oh my gosh this is what I'm producing every week.

And we know that some people just aren't there yet.

Some people just aren't quite ready to pay for a service to take their food away.

And that's okay.

We hope to just continue to put information out there on why it's important and hopefully someday will change their mind.

(Upbeat guitar music) - Well it's fragile I know, I went and broke up in the dark, pulled out the pieces and tried to make them shine.

There is no right time, no right state of mind when you should let out everything there is inside.

I don't know what came over me, I can't tell you what it means just a moment of weakness.

Moving at the speed of light, takes everything inside and I wonder can I keep this?

Wish we would drive anywhere but home But I can't wait to get back.

Oh I finally got used to this post, but it's okay you knew that.

Back to normal.

(Guitar solo) (Drum solo) - It's not normal I know all this living on the road but we've got so many places I'd like to go.

Well I tried to stay away, pay attention to the stakes let this rambling mind take over.

Moving at the speed of light, takes everything inside because I can't live without a body sometimes.

Wish we were driving anywhere but here.

But I can't wait to get back.

No I finally got used to this place, but we're okay to get back.

Back to normal.

For I can't wait to get back.

Oh I finally got used to this.

And we're okay to come back.

And to live without without you though There's no going back back to normal.

I have to live with it.

Live with what you know.

There's no going back back to normal, no.

(Guitar solo) - Wish we were driving anywhere but home but I can't wait to get back.

Oh I finally got used to this post but we'll be okay to get back.

Back to normal.