Us & Them

Daniel Johnston, a visual artist and singer-songwriter from West Virginia made his mark in the indie music scene of the1980s. His raw and unpolished style earned him a label as an outsider artist, and a place in the state’s Music Hall of Fame. Johnston recorded his best-known songs on cassette in his parents’ basement in Hancock County. Songwriters saw past the lo-fi production values and musicians like Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain championed his work. Johnston was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his 20s, and as his fame grew, his mental health struggles increased. He died in 2019 at age 58, leaving hundreds of songs and drawings. In this award-winning episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay talks with family members, musicians and others about Daniel’s life and legacy.

Psychedelic drugs are getting attention from the Trump administration as treatment potentials for some mental health conditions. An executive order from President Trump fast tracks research and access to the drugs, which can carry health risks. On the latest episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay checks back on someone who’s been using an illegal psychedelic called ibogaine to help people kick addictions. Ibogaine can alter brain functions and is used in some countries to treat depression, anxiety, PTSD and drug withdrawal symptoms. Twenty years ago most U.S. doctors wouldn’t touch the drug and politicians stayed away from it but now, the prospects for psychedelics in America may be changing.

America’s crime rates have prompted President Donald Trump to deploy federal agents and National Guard troops in a handful of major cities. On this episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay looks at what data and statistics can really tell us about the level of violence in our country. Crime continues to be one of the defining issues for the Trump administration, and the president refers to “out of control” crime numbers to deploy soldiers on city streets and support his actions while using federal agents to sweep up undocumented immigrants. However crime rates are inconsistently reported and the analysis is challenging. The administration points to its own actions as a reason for a recent drop in crime, but FBI data show major crime categories have been on the decline for the past two years. In fact a recent poll suggests Americans are less anxious about street crime and more fearful of online scams and school shootings.

This episode first aired in 2023, focusing on the strategies to motivate young voters and we’re sharing it again in the wake of the Sept. 10, 2025, assassination of Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA. Kirk, a renowned conservative youth organizer, was shot and killed during a campus event at Utah Valley University. Nothing divides Americans like politics — but young voters continue to matter. Host Trey Kay talks with journalist Kyle Spencer, whose book Raising Them Right traces how conservative organizers spent years building a youth movement on campuses. Spencer says the growth was strategic and well funded. Money can organize power, she notes, though it doesn’t force a single, uniform ideology on young people. Kay also talks with Abby Kiesa of Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), who explains how youth participation has shifted in the Trump era and why a deeper problem persists: the political system still struggles to turn young people’s political interest into sustained turnout. Revisiting this Us & Them episode in the wake of Kirk’s death offers context for how campus-based organizing — and reactions to it — have shaped youth politics today.

Just as America faces some of its most critical political divides, our criminal justice system suffers from a lack of public trust. How are these dual crises interwoven? In this episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay talks with legal scholar David Sklansky, a Stanford professor who co-directs the school’s Criminal Justice Center. In his new book “Criminal Justice in Divided America,” Sklansky says reforming the nation’s justice system may be at the core of recovering our democracy. In fact, he says there are clear approaches and solutions to help reform what’s broken and that even the basic concept of the jury trial can re-educate us in the skills and habits required to work across differences in a pluralistic democracy. In the end, Sklansky says the criminal justice system is one of the few places where Americans of varying beliefs and persuasions engage with each other to make important decisions.

Every week across the U.S. more than two newspapers go out of business. In the past two decades more than 3,000 papers have shut down operations. That’s left more than 1,500 counties so-called news deserts. Forty-three of West Virginia’s 55 counties have just one local news source and that limited access gives the state a ranking of 46th out of all 50 states. Studies show when local news sources vanish, the result is a drop in community participation on many levels. On the next episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay visits some regional news deserts to talk about the way local news organizations help a community see and define itself. Some say local coverage is the glue that brings a place together and in Putnam County the Hurricane Breeze continues to offer essential local news while in Greenbrier County, a startup is working to bring back that voice.

Our country’s divides often reveal themselves in our choices and habits, including how and where we get our information. As the economics of the media landscape have imploded, the economics of the industry have forced changes. In the past two decades, online sites have taken over much of the income stream from classified ads and general advertising. Many local news outlets have gone out of business and there are now more than 200 counties across the country with no source of local news, communities often referred to as news deserts. One of those news deserts is McDowell County in West Virginia. Last year, publisher Missy Nester was forced to shut down the Welch Daily News after a valiant effort to keep the paper running. Join host Trey Kay and reporter Todd Melby on this episode of Us & Them to see what happens when local news organizations stop telling the stories of a community.This episode was recently honored with a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Best News Documentary and by the Virginias Associated Press Broadcasters for Best Documentary .

State borders are the new front lines in the nation’s abortion battle. On this encore episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay looks at the evolving geography of abortion. Since a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturned federal abortion rights, 21 states have either banned or restricted abortion access, including West Virginia. Meanwhile, West Virginia’s neighbor, Maryland, is one of 22 states that are protecting abortion rights and expanding access. Kay follows the decision of Women’s Health Center of West Virginia to move its abortion services from Charleston to a new clinic just over the border near Cumberland, Maryland. The move was intentional because Western Maryland, like West Virginia, is a so-called abortion desert. The two regions have some deep political and cultural similarities. Western Maryland Republicans say they feel ignored by the overwhelmingly liberal, Democratic legislature in Annapolis. They say the new abortion clinic is not wanted or needed in their part of Maryland, and they blame the clinic’s presence on the fallout from Roe v. Wade’s defeat. This Us & Them episode was recently honored by the Virginias Associated Press Broadcasters as Best Podcast of 2024.