Born into slavery around 1846, Celia was sold in 1850 to Robert Newsom, a widowed Callaway County farmer. Celia bore Newsom two children. After five years of sexual assault from Newsom, Celia defended herself. Newsom died in the interaction. Celia was tried, found guilty and hung for murder.
Credit: Celia Newsom Legacy Foundation
Since last year, the Celia Newsom Legacy Foundation has been working towards recognition and justice for Celia. On a recent episode of ‘The Current’ on KOPN, Trevor Harris and Heather O’Connor aired an interview with the Foundation’s founding president Pamela Westbrooks Hodge and Fulton Human Rights Commissioner Tom Clapp. They talked about Celia’s legacy and an upcoming event commemorating her life and celebrating her recent pardon.
This interview originally aired on Columbia, Missouri community radio station KOPN 89.5fm on December 17, 2025.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to taking over our world. The myriad benefits of AI are often touted, but there are growing ethical and environmental concerns.
One face of the future of AI is that of Sai Nuguri. She is pursuing a PhD at the University of Missouri in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Her work uses virtual reality (VR) and AI in learning environments that benefit neuro-diverse students.
Trevor Harris and Heather O’Connor talked to Nuguri recently about her research and the future of VR and AI. This is an excerpt of that interview.
This interview originally aired on December 3, 2025 on KOPN 89.5fm.
Colin Bowles was a guest on KOPN recently. The Columbia, Missouri actor talked about the improv acting classes he is teaching at Columbia Entertainment Company. Colin demonstrated the improv method to great success with Heather O’Connor.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, there were 24,000 people incarcerated in Missouri state prisons in 2024 with another 12,000 people housed in local jails. These prisoners are paying for their crime with their time.
Whether they return to prison after release depends on a handful of factors. One of those factors for repeat violent crime is their presence of mind in the heat of the moment. How well-prepared are these (mostly) men to deal with the frustrations and challenges so ubiquitous on the outside? Once released, will these once-incarcerated fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers have the presence to turn to a non-violent solution when conflict arises?
Credit: Facebook / AVP-USA
The Alternatives to Violence Project concerns itself with preparing prisoners for life on the outside. In mid-Missouri Stephanie Brooks is the coordinator for the series of three-day workshops that happen regularly at the Boonville Correctional Center (BCC). Earlier this year, Steph was a guest on my radio show. After the show, I felt like the real impactful audio to gather and share with the listener would be the stories of the men who were participating in her local AVP workshops. To that end, I accompanied Steph Brooks to the Boonville Correctional Center in September 2025.
We recorded six of the camp’s residents that day. I asked them to tell me their life story in 15 or so minutes. Steph asked a few general questions for the group. Those answers are sometimes included in the final edit that I came up with.
These life stories were important for the men to tell. They are an audio letter home to their families and friends and a statement to the world about the work they are doing to transform themselves. The change they are creating is thanks to their participation in AVP and other prison programs that help to prepare them for life after incarceration at Boonville.
In 2025, Cameron is incarcerated in the Boonville Correctional Center. Here is his life story.…and here is Charles’ life story……this is Dayqwaun’s life story.Eric shared his life story and how AVP has impacted him.
When we met, I never asked what specifically put them in prison. I did not take their pictures nor do I know their last names as per DOC policy. I am e-mailing the final edits of each man’s story to his stated next-of-kin. The BCC staff plan on airing the recordings to the rest of the population.
While we must condemn the crimes that put these men in prison, we also need to spend time hearing their stories. Once they are free, they will come home to communities all across Missouri. How ready we are to receive them depends on their choices and how willing we are to listen to and try to understand each man’s unique path as he works toward a successful re-entry.
These life stories originally aired on community radio in Columbia, KOPN 89.5fm.
Thanks to the men of the Boonville Correctional Center for sharing their stories, to Alternatives to Violence Program mid-Missouri coordinator Stephanie Brooks for taking me there and to my radio co-host Heather O’Connor for embracing it all.
Pageturner attendees toured a tobacco barn near Weston, Mo. Credit Jim Pascoe
In Autumn 2024, The New Territory regional magazine put on an event called ‘Hearing Place’. That day of sound brought together academics, the audio obsessed, journalists and friends of the publication.
Held in Weston, Missouri, the event was recorded and produced into a podcast. Here is the audio postcard we created from sounds heard at the day-long exploration called ‘Hearing Place’.
Looking up at the night skies in late fall and winter requires a special devotion. One needs tenacity – plus coat and gloves at the ready – to leave the warmth of inside and go find a dark place outside. It is there that you can best (re)discover the stars and planets that have dotted our skies since before time began.
In this Field Notes segment, astronomy educator Melanie Knocke – pronounced kuh-KNOW-kee – discusses how our winter sky viewing in the United States differs from summer observing. She also shares her simple remedy for preserving the night dark skies that are required for successful stargazing.
For ongoing night sky education, EarthSky news provides “updates on your cosmos and your world.” I find it to be a useful regular e-mail in my inbox.
Thanks to Melanie Knocke for the interview. And until next time, remember, your neighbors are more interesting than you think.
There is a time within memory when schools in America were segregated by race. Before 1954, the law of the land dictated that white children went to public schools and black children attended their own local and regional schools. Starting in 1955, public schools began the often painful process of bringing together black and white students in classrooms for the first time. Each community had its own story to tell. This is one of them.
In early 2022, students in Courtney Taylor’s Charleston, Missouri civics and history classes interviewed area residents with memories of this era.
As a new school year begins, it is worthwhile to listen to the recollections of these Missourians. Now community leaders and respected elders, these white and black men and women reflected on what it was like to experience segregation then integration in one small Missouri community.
These oral histories also make up a recent two-part episode of the podcast Mo’ Curious. Here are parts 1 and part 2 of that podcast.
If you are interested in histories of integration, you might also want to see this video about Chariton, County, Missouri’s former Dalton Vocational School.
In 1973, the Doobie, Allman and Isley Brothers all had popular records. Richard Nixon started his second term as America’s president. Also that year, a community radio station in Columbia, Missouri got a license to broadcast at 89.5fm.
In 2022 and 2023 – in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of KOPN, I organized current station volunteers to conduct oral histories with former and long-time station staff and programmers. These full oral histories live here.
For 13 weeks in early 2023, I hosted a live radio show on KOPN that drew from these oral histories, mined the station’s deep and wide archives and queried a live, in-studio guest about the week’s theme. I called the show KOPN: The First 50 Years. That’s a lot of work to put in to a one-hour show, so the shows live on as a predictably title podcast KOPN: The First 50 Years.
My goal with this podcast (and the KOPN Oral History Project broadly) is to preserve the story of our community radio station and give the listener (that’s you!) an idea of what it was like in the early, heady years after KOPN’s 1973 founding.
Episode 9 features excerpts from a 2022 oral history with long-time KOPN programmer Carol Goodnick. Also, featured on the podcast is an in-studio interview with current KOPN programmer and University of Missouri Journalism School student Tadeo Ruiz and music from the KOPN archives. It sounds like the former Columbia band, Swoop…
Episode 8 explores how women have created their own space on KOPN over the past 50 years. The 59 minute episode includes an oral history excerpt from Vic Day’s April 2022 interview with Margie Sable, archival excerpts of Margie’s show, The Brazen Hussy and 1979 Women’s Weekend, and a live interview with station programmers Corri Flaker Fraser and Luna Hawk. Music on the episode is 1976 archival jazz from former St. Louis jazzers Jasmine and madrigrals from Lyn Wolz.
Episode 7 features KOPN archival selections from longtime KOPN volunteer and Columbia community activist Wynna Faye Elbert talking about Columbia’s Black history. Bringing things into the present, the episode also includes a selection from Trevor Harris’ March 2023 interview with Worley Street Roundtable team members Verna Laboy and David Aguayo. The podcast concludes with a second excerpt from the KOPN archives: a selection from Lynn Harris’ 1976 interview with Maya Angelou.
Episode 6 features an oral history with former KOPN program director, Butch Burrell and his son and former children’s programmer, Eli Burrell. The episode also features an interview with former KOPN children’s radio producer, Christine Gardener and music from KOPN-adjacent artists Rhonda Vincent and Taj Mahal.
Episode 5 features oral history form lee Ruth plus poetry from the Chez Coffeehouse and archival recordings from Lee Ruth and Cathy Barton.
Episode 4 is about the ways the folk music found a radio home at KOPN.
Episode 3 features an interview with area fiddler and author Howard Marshall and KOPN programmer Margot McMillan, archival material from the Boone County Fair Fiddle Contest, Dear KOPN letters and more.
Episode 2 features an oral history with former KOPN children’s programmer Christine Gardener and current programmer Jackie Casteel, archival material from Inside Radio featuring Eli Burrell and Brother Blue plus live in-studio guests, including Ann Mehr, Sarah Catlin and Dante Dupuy.
Episode 1 looks at KOPN’s history with prison issues and features oral histories with James Robnett and Jim Austin, an archival feature about Renz Women’s Prison and guests Peggy Placier and December Harmon.
Stacy and Garrett Enloe met over rock n roll. They grew up in St. Louis and attended local schools. They went to rock concerts eventually meeting and bonding over heavy metal bands like Manowar and Judas Priest. One of their favorite venues was the club Mississippi Nights.
The venue was located on Laclede’s Landing and for over 30 plus years hosted everything from jazz to folk, metal to blues.
I remember venturing from my suburban home to the riverfront bar to see folk duo the Indigo Girls, reggae groovers the Roots Radics and political rocker Bruce Cockburn.
In 2007, the club was forced to close and the building demolished for a planned future development.
After a few years of grieving, the couple – by day, he works for UPS and she is a stay-at-home mom – decided to write a book chronicling the place that was Mississippi Nights.
In this Field Notes installment, the Enloes describe the beloved venue, its durable fan base and how the couple came to write a book chronicling the story of a club that seemingly booked everyone before and after they became someone.
You can hear more Field Notes installments, hear my Missouri History podcast, Mo’ Curious and learn more about my oral history business at RecollectionAgency.com.
The health risks associated with plastics are astonishing. I am not a chemist, but even a casual read of the hazards surrounding plastic give me pause. Once ingested, the chemicals used to create single-use food packaging are now linked to cancer, they impact human development and can impede reproduction. Much plastic now ends up in our environment where it wreaks havoc on marine life.
Columbia businesswoman Leah Christian has a solution for removing plastic containers from your home one bottle at a time.
My logical self says to never bring plastic in the home and to remove all the plastic already here. The realistic side of me understands that plastic is everywhere. It is in my computer, appliances, food packaging, pens and toiletries. Plastic is everywhere.
Armed with the awareness that most plastics in our home are unsafe, I started eliminating those plastic containers that seem to be closest to the foods we eat. Getting my wife on board with no more Tupperware took some doing however. As it turns out there are plastics with sentimental value. We ultimately found some lovely glass jars in which to store our sugar, flour and coffee.
Leah Christian understand the quest to remove plastic from our lives. To that end, she started a business. The Clean Refill sells soaps, cleaners and hair care in re-fillable glass containers. Leah’s mission? Remove plastic from your kitchen and bath one bottle at a time.
For more information about Leah’s business, check out TheCleanRefill.co. For more on the dangers of plastic in your home and in the environment and tips on how to get plastic out of your life, check out UnwrappedProject.org.
I will tell you it is a process removing plastics from your life. My advice? Start small. Take it one bottle and container and thing at a time. And don’t go touching the Tupperware without consulting your wife.
Thanks to Leah Christian for the interview. And until next time, remember, your neighbors are more interesting than you think.
The Recollection Agency 