Mackenzie Martin
Senior Podcast Producer/Host/ReporterWhether it’s something happening right now or something that happened 100 years ago, some stories don’t fit in the short few minutes of a newscast. As a podcast producer for KCUR Studios and host of the podcast A People’s History of Kansas City, I help investigate questions and local curiosities in a way that brings listeners along for adventures with plot twists and thought-provoking ideas. Sometimes there isn’t an easy answer in the end – but my hope is that we all leave with a greater understanding of the city we live in.
Presently, I'm host of A People's History of Kansas City, the senior producer for Up From Dust, and the editor of Seeking A Scientist. I previously produced Overlooked, Hungry For MO and Real Humans. Reach me at mackenzie@kcur.org or find me on Twitter @_macmartin.
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Kansas City composer Dana Suesse was behind some of the most popular American music of the 1930s. Nicknamed “the girl Gershwin,” Suesse’s songs like “You Oughta Be In Pictures” and “My Silent Love” were performed by stars like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. As Classical KC’s Lilah Manning reports, Suesse blazed a path on Tin Pan Alley in a music scene otherwise dominated by men.
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During times of drought, when the rains fail, man-made lakes come to the rescue of our cities and towns. Except the reservoirs we’ve come to depend on for drinking water are filling up with mud instead. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has an idea to tackle the problem, and they’ll try it for the first time ever — in Kansas.
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Armada con una grabadora, la bibliotecaria de Kansas City, Irene Ruiz, capturó la evolución de la historia del vecindario de Westside e hizo de la biblioteca un lugar más acogedor para los inmigrantes mexicanos y latinos que vivían allí. Hoy en día, la sucursal del vecindario de Westside la Biblioteca Pública de Kansas City, que cuenta con la sólida colección de idioma español que Ruiz comenzó, lleva su nombre en su honor.
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Armed with a tape recorder, Kansas City librarian Irene Ruiz cataloged the evolving history of the Westside and made the library a more welcoming place for the Mexican immigrants and Latinos who lived there. Today, the Westside branch of the Kansas City Public Library — featuring the robust Spanish language collection that Ruiz began — is named in her honor. Mackenzie Martin traces how Ruiz brought her activism and sense of community across all the chapters of her life.
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Armed with a tape recorder, Kansas City librarian Irene Ruiz captured the evolving history of the Westside and made the library a more welcoming place for the Mexican immigrants and Latinos who lived there. Today, the Westside branch of the Kansas City Public Library — featuring the robust Spanish language collection that Ruiz began — is named in her honor.
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The American dance craze known as 'the cakewalk' began as a form of resistance by enslaved Black people — a showy promenade that concealed a mockery of slave owners. Now, modern devotees are marking the life of its most charismatic and famous champion, Kansas City’s own Doc Brown.
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The 19th-century American dance craze "the cakewalk" began as a form of resistance by enslaved Black people — a showy promenade concealing a mockery of slave owners. One of the most charismatic and famous cakewalking champions was Kansas City’s own Doc Brown. KCUR’s Julie Denesha reports on a modern movement to recognize Brown’s stamp on history.
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Ancient waters that lie deep beneath the dry High Plains helped to turn western Kansas into an agricultural powerhouse. But the Ogallala Aquifer’s wells have begun to run dry after decades of tapping it for our corn, wheat and cows. In the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains, we’ll learn how farmers are adjusting as the water disappears and hear how some are prodding state leaders to finally act.
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After Europeans colonized America, their descendants plowed their way across the continent, seeking prosperity through farming. But breaking up the soil – that had built up over many thousands of years – made it wash away. So some farmers are retiring their tilling equipment. Amble through Kansas prairies and cornfields as we learn how treasuring the ground beneath our feet can lead to farms that better withstand climate change, use less fertilizer and suck carbon out of the atmosphere.
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Most of Kansas was once covered by an ocean of grass and wildflowers. But that diverse prairie biome is collapsing, partly because of our obsession with trees. Humans have unleashed an aggressive “Green Glacier” that’s swallowing the Great Plains, and for these ranchers, saving the environment means being a tree killer — not a tree hugger. (This episode comes to us from the new KCUR Studios podcast Up From Dust, reported by Celia Llopis-Jepsen and David Condos.)