Suzanne Hogan

When most of us think about death, we assume our bodies will take the traditional routes of being cremated or buried. This is not always the case as author Bess Lovejoy points out in her new book, Rest In Pieces released this month. Rest In Pieces shares the journeys famous corpses took before being laid to rest.

The MidCoast Takeover is a concert of local talent at Austin’s South by Southwest music festival to take place next weekend.  It’s generating a lot of local excitement as the festival is quickly approaching and the local bands are preparing. The MidCoast Takover is organized with the help of The Midwest Music Foundation a local organization that support local musicians.  We're in conversation with Sondra Freemans of the Midwest Music Foundation to talk the ways the MidCoast Takeover supports local musicians and hear some of the local bands she's most excited to be heard in Austin.

When South Sudan gained its independence from Sudan on July 9th 2011, it was the outcome of a peace deal that ended Africa’s longest running civil war; a war that resulted in millions of lives lost to ethnic and religious warfare. On this Central Standard, we explore the community of Sudanese refugees who now live in Kansas City.

For most of a child's life, from infancy and into adulthood, parents take care of, support and help their children make decisions. It's an odd experience though when the parents gets elderly and the child has to step in as caregiver. On this Central Standard, we look at how the family dynamic changes when parents can't take care of themselves and how to approach the situation from an emotional and logistical point of view.

The American Crow is a smart and wary social bird with all black feathers, black talons and a black beak. Every once in a while during the winter, you can see thousands of these crows gathering in certain spots around parts of Kansas City.  Over the past 50 years, crows have been congregating more and more in urban environments – and if you’ve been in the middle of a dive-bombing murder, you know they create quite the disturbance.

In the world of music, so many songs center around one common subject: love. But for those who aren't singing the praises of romance, there are plenty of songs about the darker and more cynical side of love. Richard Alwyn joins Central Standard to share his favorite songs for the lonely heart and to talk about his live event, The Love Hangover.

In the United States, Valentine's Day is celebrated or scorned by many, but what is love like around the world? William Jankowiak, professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and author of Intimacies: Love and Sex Across Cultures, joins us to talk about love across cultures.

At the corner of Roe Avenue and Johnson Drive facing Shawnee Mission Parkway, if you look to north side of the street, you see Roeland Park. There are sparsely inhabited businesses, including a cremation center and weight loss store, facing a weed- and dirt-filled lot on the Mission side of Johnson Drive.  This empty lot will be the new Walmart and Gateway Development expected to open in 2014. It will close the Roeland Park Walmart store located 8/10 of a mile away down Roe Avenue.   Walmart is the number one sales tax generator in Roeland Park.