Petrie Dish is a weekly explainer podcast on the coronavirus and its ripple effects with bioscience and medicine journalist Bonnie Petrie from Texas Public Radio. This page is assembled for awards consideration purposes for content produced in 2020.
These three episodes exhibit the program s commitment to covering underserved communities and bringing strong, local characters to a wide listening audience. As a program, Petrie Dish is not afraid to cover social issues like racism and inequity or more complex subjects related to health, medicine and death. Why Can t I Breathe? How Systemic Racism Makes COVID-19 Worse For Communities Of Color July 14, 2020
Texas Public Radio
San Antonio s Metropolitan Health District is administering COVID-19 vaccines at Fiesta events to try to increase accessibility.
The Fiesta festival in San Antonio. Juneteenth. Pride celebrations. Graduations. People are out and about again as they get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. But an increasing number of cases of the Delta variant in the United States has many experts urging caution.
The Delta variant has been found in at least 85 countries and is responsible for at least 20% of new coronavirus infections in the U.S. It is expected to overtake the Alpha variant, B.1.1.7., as the dominant strain in the U.S. sometime this summer.
Graphic by Wells Dunbar
Texas Gains Two Congressional Seats
Texas gained about 4 million more residents in the past decade, according to newly released Census data. The population growth means the state will gain two new congressional seats, bringing its total U.S. House districts to 38. Texas will be a bigger player in the Electoral College, growing from 38 to 40 votes. Rogelio Saénz, a demography professor at the University of Texas in San Antonio talks to the Standard about the impact.
Ron Wright Special Election
More than two dozen candidates are running in a special election to fill a congressional seat left open after North Texas Republican Ron Wright died from COVID-19 earlier this year. The race is likely headed to a runoff. But as the race has intensified in the past couple of weeks, it’s harder to say which Republican will make that runoff, despite Ron Wright’s wife, Susan Wright, being the favored front-runner just a month ago. Jim Riddlesperger is a political s
Illustration by Wells Dunbar/Texas Standard
Here are the stories on Texas Standard for Monday, April 5, 2021.
Last week, the Biden administration proposed a plan that could help address Texas’ electric grid failures and resilience to natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey. But Biden’s plan also pushes for a larger investment in green energy, which Texas Republicans in Congress are calling an attack on the oil and gas sector. Ben Wermund, Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle, talks to the Standard.
We’re entering a new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. About 15 percent Texans are now fully vaccinated, and that figure is growing. But questions remain about how to navigate this stage. To help us get some answers, we turn again to Dr. Fred Campbell, doctor of internal medicine and associate professor of medicine at the Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio.
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Failure of Power is a production of Texas Public Radio and The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration between public radio stations across the state and NPR.
When the Texas power grid failed during a historic winter storm, millions of people were left in the cold and dark. The operator of that grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) said they were only moments away from an absolute nightmare scenario: a statewide blackout that could have lasted weeks or months.
The storm was unprecedented but it wasn’t unpredictable. How did this disaster happen, and what can be done to prevent a similar failure?