Ahead of his new album, "A World That's Bigger," Washtenaw County songwriter Mike Vial stops by the WEMU studios for exclusive live music performances and conversation.

As I reflected on the past 12 months, I realized that 2016 was a banner year for jazz releases. It was extremely difficult to narrow my selections of outstanding recordings to just 16. My criteria for this list is that these were all CDs that moved me emotionally. They are albums that I would like to keep in my permanent collection.

WEMU’s first free Sesi Motors 5:01 Jazz Show for 2017 will be a salute to the legendary trumpet player and widely respected teacher, Louis Smith. Louis passed away in August, 2016. He had suffered a stroke, but recovered valiantly and lived for years afterwards with his loving and generous wife, Lulu. Louis was equally generous and was very wise as a teacher. Trumpeter Paul Finkbeiner will lead the Louis Smith salute on Friday, January 6th at 5:01PM sharp at Rush Street Nightclub, 314 South Main Street in Ann Arbor.

On May 5th the Detroit Music Awards honored WEMU for 40 years of jazz broadcasting with a Distinguished Service Award at the Fillmore Theater in Detroit.

Early in her musical career, in the ‘90s, Diana Krall played a regular gig on Saturday evenings in Boston. When she drove down to New York City on Sunday mornings, she’d plan the trip so she could get close enough to hear the FM signal of WBGO in time to hear Singers Unlimited. She’s been hearing herself playing piano and singing ever since on WBGO. Diana Krall performs live in-studio, and speaks with Michael Bourne. Recorded 5/5/17. Nowadays, she can listen to wbgo.org during her travels around the world or in her hometown, Nanaimo, British Columbia. “I listen to you all the time,” she said when she came in for a recent session with a killer band, featuring frequent quartet-mate Anthony Wilson on guitar, along with bassist Robert Hurst, drummer Karriem Riggins and violinist Stuart Duncan.

As WEMU continues our yearlong celebration of 40 years of jazz, it is great to invite former staff members to join the party this Friday.

To wrap up our 40 Years of Jazz celebration, WEMU is inviting area musicians and jazz fans to come in the studio and be a Guest DJ. Today’s guest was drummer Sean Dobbins. Sean remembers years ago when his main musical mentor, trumpeter, and teacher Louis Smith told Sean to listen to WEMU to hear more of the music he wanted to play. WEMU has been a big part of Sean’s life and Sean has been a big player in our sound and programming for years.

The first Roots Music Project of 2018 is a special one! Host Jeremy Baldwin welcomes Ann Arbor's own Americana band Corndaddy to the WEMU studios for a live interview and performance!

The New York State Board of Regents’ reassessment of high school graduation standards won’t change the state’s troubled standardized testing system, but could allow more ways for students to graduate.

SUNY Chancellor Kristina Johnson is calling the Excelsior Scholarship a success despite statistics that show it was used by only 3.2% of SUNY students to help pay tuition costs in its first year.

The New York State Board of Regents is expected to decide in October whether to allow local public school officials to have the final say over education at private schools.

Fewer Long Island students chose to opt out of New York’s standardized testing last spring, compared to two years ago.

Enrollment at colleges in Connecticut is declining at a rate faster than the national average.

Legislation introduced in New York could place a four-year freeze on tuition costs at state and city universities.

A fiscal report about four public universities in Connecticut shows a $457 million operating loss in 2019, despite increased state funding and higher tuition.

Microbes are the bacteria that live in our guts. Scientists are learning how they help us process medication.

A Stony Brook University scientist who discovered a penguin supercolony in Antarctica has won a national science prize of $250,000.

Audio File Edit | Remove Saturday marks 50 years since the first moon landing. Now, NASA is tapping a team from Stony Brook University to investigate how going to space impacts human health. The team is one of eight NASA has selected to help further exploration of our solar system with robots and astronauts. Timothy Glotch, a professor of geosciences at Stony Brook, leads the team. Professor Glotch, thank you for joining All Things Considered. What do you hope to find in your research? So the overall goal of the RISE2 team, which is the name of our team, is to help pave the way for humans to safely return to the moon and explore and get back safely to Earth. So as you mentioned one of our goals is to try and understand the health effects of exploration. We have a team of geochemists working with folks in the medical school at Stony Brook University to understand the reactivity of dust on the moon, and how if you breathe that in how that might lead to potential health effects. And how

A Southern Connecticut State University study explores the link between cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins and Type 2 Diabetes.

The Sahara – the world’s largest desert – was once underwater. Now a 20-year study led by a Stony Brook University professor has profiled the aquatic animals that once lived there.

A new study from Yale University found some users of the popular e-cigarette brand Juul might be inhaling unexpected chemicals.

A new study from Yale University and Oregon Health and Science University looks at how doctor’s prejudices toward LGBT patients change during medical school.

Researchers at Stony Brook University hope to find new ways to treat depression among teenagers – using a computer or smartphone.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has won a $750,000 grant from TD Bank to support its new cancer research facility.

Connecticut’s public health laboratory has begun screening newborn babies for a genetic disorder called spinal muscular atrophy.

In Connecticut supporters of paid family and medical leave made their case to state lawmakers on Thursday.

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont presented his first, two-year budget plan to state lawmakers in Hartford on Wednesday.

Public campaign financing could be coming to New York by the end of this year, now that Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature have created a commission to come up with a plan. Supporters say the current system favors a small group of big money donors at the expense of the average citizen and needs to be changed. But not everyone agrees that is a good idea.

Connecticut’s finance committee has approved a tax package that increases revenue by more than $2 billion over the next two years. Democrats say the increase is needed to fund the state’s $43.3 billion two-year budget proposal.

Some of the bills passed by Connecticut lawmakers in committee this week challenge Governor Ned Lamont’s control of state finances, which could lead to testy budget negotiations with the governor in coming days.

Officials say Connecticut paid $63 million to settle lawsuits last year. Nearly three-quarters of the money went to settle one case.

The State Assembly narrowly approved a measure to remove the religious exemption for vaccinations, in the wake of a severe measles outbreak that began in communities with a high percentage of unvaccinated children in New York and is steadily spreading to other states. The measure almost didn’t make it out of the Health Committee, and the Chair of the Committee voted against the bill on the Assembly floor.

The governors of Rhode Island and Massachusetts encourage Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont to pursue his highway toll proposal.

Suffolk County prosecutors have charged a county legislator with perjury and ethics violations.

The first hearing of a state commission to implement a public campaign finance system for New York’s elections was overshadowed by the issue of whether to end fusion voting, which allows candidates to run on multiple ballot lines. Critics of the proposal say Governor Cuomo wants to strike against a left leaning party that he’s been feuding with, something the governor denies.

Senator Rich Funke of Rochester is the latest Republican lawmaker to announce he will not seek reelection. Funke joins a growing list of seven other minority party GOP senators who say they are moving on to other things, after less than a year under Democratic rule in the Senate.

NPR's education reporter talks about what graduating seniors are going through right now as the colleges are closed due to the pandemic and answers their questions.

President Trump wants states to begin relaxing stay-at-home orders and reopen businesses after the spread of the coronavirus pummeled the global economy and killed millions of jobs. The White House coronavirus task force released guidelines on April 16 to encourage state governors to adopt a phased approach to lifting restrictions across the country. Some states have moved ahead without meeting the criteria . The task force rejected a set of additional detailed draft recommendations for schools, restaurants, churches and mass transit systems from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that it considered " overly prescriptive ." A number of states have already begun to lift restrictions, allowing for businesses including hair salons, diners and tattoo parlors to once again begin accepting customers. Health experts have warned that reopening too quickly could result in a potential rebound in cases. States are supposed to wait to begin lifting any restrictions until they have a 14

For the first time in its 231-year history, the Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments remotely by phone and made the audio available live. The new setup went off largely without difficulties, but produced some memorable moments, including one justice forgetting to unmute and an ill-timed bathroom break. Here are the top five can't-miss moments from this week's history-making oral arguments. A second week of arguments begin on Monday at 10 a.m. ET. Here's a rundown of the cases and how to listen. 1. Justice Clarence Thomas speaks ... a lot Supreme Court oral arguments are verbal jousting matches. The justices pepper the lawyers with questions, interrupting counsel repeatedly and sometimes even interrupting each other. Justice Clarence Thomas, who has sat on the bench for nearly 30 years, has made his dislike of the chaotic process well known, at one point not asking a question for a full decade. But with no line of sight, the telephone arguments have to be rigidly organized, and

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Very briefly, at the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, there were slightly more women on American nonfarm payrolls than men. That's no longer true. The historically disastrous April jobs report shows that the brunt of job losses fell on women. Women now account for around just under half — 49% — of American workers, and they accounted for 55% of the increase in job losses last month. One way of looking at why that matters that is to look at the gap that opened up between women's and men's unemployment last month. The below chart shows women's unemployment rate minus men's unemployment rate since 2007. Usually, the line bumps around near or just below zero — meaning men's unemployment is usually near or slightly higher than women's. But that spike on the far right shows how women's unemployment leapt to be 2.7 points higher than men's in April. Women had an unemployment rate of 16.2% to men's 13.5% last month. That's uncommon for a recession. The below chart is a longer view, and the

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends. "We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?" Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked. "I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out." At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough. By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to

The Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners will discuss tonight how they may move forward with county operations amid a COVID-19 crisis.

Police are responding to an increased number of domestic violence calls during the coronavirus pandemic. An increase had been expected because many women have to shelter-in-place with their abusers. Shelters had prepared for an increase in service requests, but those calls aren't coming as frequently as anticipated. As WEMU'S David Fair found out from Safehouse Center executive director Barbara Niess-May, that is worrisome for a number of reasons.

It's been forecast that this spring will be quite wet. That could bring flooding to portions of Washtenaw County. Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner Evan Pratt joined WEMU's David Fair to discuss planning for such issues and the proactive nature of work already underway on this week's "Issues of the Environment."

It's safe to say that the COVID-19 crisis will be more than a footnote in world history. In fact, a new initiative is underway to see that this moment in time will be never be forgotten and that "we're all in this together." For this week's "On the Ground-Ypsi," WEMU's Lisa Barry and Concentrate Media's Sarah Rigg talk to local historian Kim Clarke about the "Ypsilanti Coronavirus Digital Archive," a new photo project designed to preserve memories of everyday life during the pandemic.

The Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority is getting a boost in funding from the federal government to help cover operational costs during the coronavirus pandemic. We get the details from WEMU’s Taylor Pinson.

The Washtenaw Intermediate School District expects to receive less state revenue sharing this year as a result of COVID-19.