A keeper wearing a "crane suit," to resemble a parent whooping crane, feeds a recently born chick, a critically endangered species, with her hand in a puppet, at the Audubon Nature Institute's Species Survival Center in New Orleans, Thursday, June 21, 2018. To ensure the chicks don’t take to people, keepers wear the disguises to hide the human shape and obscure the face.

A is for apple, B is for bicycle, and C is for… czar? A new book explores the sneakiest, most frustrating words in the English language. Hear about gnocchi-eating gnomes, gift-wrapping wrens, and more. Then share your favorite children’s book and what made it special.

Subject of endless memes and even taking the place of babies, dogs have been with us for upwards of ten thousand years. Or is it thirty thousand? Our most familiar interspecies friends are shrouded in mystery. That old story about humans taking it upon themselves to domesticate wolves might just be a myth. This hour, a look at how dogs (maybe) became dogs.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, William Shakespeare coined over 3,000 words that are still in use in modern-day English. Well, a few years ago the authoritative dictionary cut that number down to about 1,500 words — but no matter; it’s still a huge number. Well, actually ... the OED never said that Shakespeare invented words.

Tattoos have been around for thousands of years, possibly even as long as humans themselves. The recent discovery of tattoos on two 5,000 year old Egyptian mummies underscores that possibility. This hour, we’re talking about why tattoos aren’t just a trend, but part of being human.

My pitch was selected for the 2016 Third Coast pitch panel. I pitched to Anna Sussman, senior producer of Snap Judgement.

Before the catalytic 200 nights of fair housing marches in Milwaukee and before Lyndon B. Johnson’s federal fair housing legislation, there was Vel Phillips. Phillips passed away on Tuesday this week. Phillips began pushing for fair housing legislation to her white, male colleagues five years before the housing marches in Milwaukee began and six years before a federal fair housing bill was passed.

On August 28, 1967, the Milwaukee NAACP Youth Council, their advisor Father James Groppi, alderwoman Vel Phillips and members of the public marched from the city’s black north side, over “Milwaukee’s Mason-Dixon Line” — the 16th Street Viaduct — and into the white south side. When the group of 250 or so protesters set out to march again the next night, they were met with 13,000 counter-protesters armed with eggs, bottles, rocks and other projectiles, and the NAACP returned to their headquarters that night to find it’d been set on fire.

A recent report from the Milwaukee Health Department found that, although the city’s overall infant mortality rate has dropped since 2000, there is a persistent racial gap in infant mortality rates. Black babies born in Milwaukee are three times more likely to die than white babies. This isn’t just a problem in Milwaukee, though - it’s nationwide.

The National Rifle Association sees its candidate ratings as a service and voting guide for its members. And in its 2018 ratings, the NRA downgraded more Republicans than is typical. We take a look at why, and whether the political leverage of the organization is changing.

Earlier this month, President Trump signed an executive order requiring government agencies to review their welfare programs from Medicaid to food stamps, and to find ways to tighten those programs and gives states more control over how to implement them. The Trump administration has also been considering a plan that would allow states to require certain recipients of food stamps to undergo drug testing.

The Civil Rights Movement is, in part, a story of interfaith and interracial collaboration. We talk about the alliances forged by African-Americans in their fight for basic freedoms. Also, a look at an exhibit at the Jewish Museum in Milwaukee that explores the history of Jewish involvement in black Americans' struggle for civil rights.

Wisconsin had the largest gap in the nation in high school graduation rates between white and black students in 2017, with black students trailing their white peers by nearly 30 percent. It’s the third year in a row that the state has had the largest black-white high school graduation gap in the country. This hour, we’ll delve into why this problem is so severe in Wisconsin. We’ll also take a look at how Chicago managed to close its racial graduation gap by more than 16 percentage points over 5 years.

Laura struggles with a worm.

The 1967 University of Wisconsin-Madison Dow Chemical protest isn’t just another story of Vietnam-era campus activism. It was the first time things really turned violent at a peaceful campus protest because of a police riot.

Before Doog could walk, his family gave him a guitar to hold and encouraged him to play music. By the time he was twelve, he'd started writing songs as a way to make sense of the confusing world around him. Back then he was just Eric Alexander, the friendly weird kid who dressed like a punky cowboy.