Robert Bailey was a coal miner for 36 years. He began working in McDowell County, and after it became too hard to breathe, he retired from a mine owned by Patriot Coal in Boone County. Bailey first told his story with WVPB in June 2014. He shared his final story with Inside […]
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On a rainy, chilly fall day, a research team made up of graduate students from the University of Pennsylvania pack up and depart from a hotel lobby in Princeton, West Virginia. It takes about an hour to get to the Elkhorn Water Plant in McDowell County, where, outside, water from […]
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If you’ve been paying attention, you know by now that Appalachia is in the middle of an opioid addiction crisis. You may have seen suffering with substance abuse disorders in your own neighborhood. But John Law, spokesman for the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, says what isn’t as visible could be just […]
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As the opioid epidemic continues to kill people across the country, local governments are struggling to get a handle on the problem. More and more, states and municipalities are filing suit against pharmaceutical companies. That trend started right here, in the place that’s known as the “epicenter” of the opioid […]
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Do people who identify as LGBTQ struggle for acceptance in Appalachia? Ideas about gender are changing across the country and in places like West Virginia. Still, some people, like 20-year-old Kyra Soleil-Dawe, who lives in Shepherdstown, West Virginia and identifies as gender-queer, have found that coming out to their family […]
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While President Trump pushes for a brand new wall to separate the Mexican and U.S. border that could cost as much as $1 billion, residents in coal country are hoping the President will fund an infrastructure project more than 27 years in the making. The Coalfields Expressway broke ground back […]
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