Wanna Know Idaho

Wanna Know Idaho is your crowd-sourced podcast. We're looking for your votes to determine which story we should report next. Each of these questions were submitted by curious folks in the community just like you:

When you search "zoo poo" on the internet, one of the first things that comes up is a link to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. You quickly learn that the facility sells composted animal waste to people in the Pacific Northwest, and at least one person says it makes amazing garden fertilzer.

Melissa Hamilton lives in McCall, Idaho with her young family. She works at the University of Idaho extension office in Cascade, and she identifies as being a member of the West Central Mountains. When she heard Wanna Know Idaho was featuring the region on the podcast, her first thought was not a question. It was a statement she's heard repeated many times:

For this round of Wanna Know Idaho – we’re headed to the West Central Mountains. Have you ever wondered…

Once you’re old enough to read, it’s hard not to notice the sign: “Welcome to Historic Lewiston, Idaho – Idaho’s First Territorial Capital.”

August in Idaho means the last month of summer vacation, county fairs, camping and … oh yeah, wildfires. Here's just a few of the wildfire stories Boise State Public Radio covered this month.

OK, so you know that typically, the decisions about what stories you hear on your podcast feed or on the radio are made by...someone else. Typically: reporters, editors and hosts.

In 2017, Boise's Greenbelt sustained massive damage as a result of a wet winter and subsequent flooding. So as spring settles in this time around, it's no wonder folks are recalling the events of last year.

Idaho: a lot of us live here, but how many of us know the origin of the word itself?

Treefort Music Fest is taking over downtown Boise. More than 400 bands are scheduled to play over the five day festival. For this installment of Wanna Know Idaho, we take a look at how the selection process works.

The Snake River Canyon is an iconic landscape -- especially for people who live in central Idaho. And one of our listeners from Twin Falls was curious to know more about how it was formed.

Monday, February 12 would have been President Abraham Lincoln’s 209th birthday, which is a big deal for people like Dave Leroy. Leroy is Idaho’s unofficial Lincoln scholar, and has amassed quite a collection of artifacts connected to our 16th President over several decades.

The holiday season is replete with parties, get togethers and acts of generosity, but navigating it all can be difficult. For this seasonal installment of Wanna Know Idaho, we asked listeners about holiday etiquette.

Artist Pat Kilby is an oil painter.

Marilyn Frazier pours freshly steeped tea at her kitchen table. Amid the cookies and bright tangerines she’s laid out, the retiree has a notebook full of concerns about a new military plane that could soon be based in Boise.“So how much it cost, how destructive they are, how polluting they are, noise levels," Marilyn Frazier says. "It just didn’t seem like the right airplane to have in a city.”

With four more months to go until the end of the year, the number of firearms found by TSA officials at the Boise Airport this year has already eclipsed the number found in all of 2016.

In the latest installment of Wanna Know Idaho, we asked what you've been wondering about the August 21 solar eclipse in Idaho. We got a lot of great questions, and because this is a once-in-a-lifetime event, Samantha Wright decided to answer all 17 of them.

We’ve been asking you for questions and you’ve been sending them our way. In the latest installment of our news experiment, we meet Jordan Harris. He works for one of the big hospitals in Boise managing a team of couriers. The roads are a major facet of his job, so it’s no surprise Jordan’s question has to do the freeways.

Summer means barbecues, baseball and of course, bathing suits. When temperatures push a hundred degrees, there’s no better way to cool off than by jumping in a pool or pond. But this season, some of the ponds around Boise have dealt with outbreaks of E.coli. As part of our news experiment where we answer questions submitted by you, we went with a summer theme and explored this question from listener Alexi Balmuth: Who monitors harmful bacteria in public swimming areas and how is it done?

The Boise Depot is one of those places Boiseans take visitors to show off their town. The early 20th Century Spanish architecture stands out and is a great backdrop for weddings and parties.

The region's volcanoes represent the northeastern portion of the Pacific's "Ring of Fire" and 12 million years ago, Idaho saw much more volcanic activity than it does today. The latest installment of Wanna Know Idaho imagines a Gem State covered in lava-spewing volcanoes.

Wanna Know Idaho asked Idahoans to submit questions they want answered about our state. In the latest edition, host Frankie Barnhill seeks to answer the question on everybody's mind - "what happens to the poop at Zoo Boise?" Barnhill joins Idaho Matters to flush out the answer.

Idaho is rich with geothermal activity. The state boasts dozens of natural hot springs for soaking, some close to city centers and others a hike away. But when Wanna Know Idaho listener Ted Eisele moved to Idaho in 1980, it wasn’t the natural hot springs that caught his attention about geothermal. What really blew him away was the fact that Idaho’s state buildings — like the Capitol and the state Supreme Court — were heated using geothermal systems.

Back in 2016, Wanna Know Idaho listener Marshall Simmonds was out on a summer bike ride with some friends on the Boise Greenbelt. Suddenly, a bike tire popped. Then, another. Soon, Marshall and his friends found themselves walking their bikes back home with 18 popped tires, thanks to a patch of goatheads, or puncture vine, that had made its way onto the trail.

Up until her retirement a few months ago, Debra Smith taught high school English in Meridian. Every year, she had her 11th graders read "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry.

Michael Kramer-Duffield had just moved to Idaho and was looking for work in the restaurant industry when COVID-19 swept through. He's out of work, but like many of us, getting antsy and knows he could be putting his free time to use.

Walking her dogs every evening in Meridian, Wanna Know Idaho listener Morgan Keating began to wonder: what’s up with all these seagulls? And suddenly, birds of all kinds were everywhere. (Cue the cliche Hitchcock montage.)

Yesterday would have been Abraham Lincoln’s 211th birthday.

When Robin Fehlau was planning her move to Boise eight years ago, something peculiar kept throwing off her housing search: homes in Boise County kept on showing up, all of which were miles and miles away from her office.

You may have been wondering what Wanna Know Idaho has been up to lately. Rest assured: We'll be back in June! You can always submit a new question here.

On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted.

Update!

Wanna Know Idaho traveled to Idaho's West Central Mountains to answer this question from McCall resident Fred Coriell: "What impacts will an open-pit mining operation, like the one proposed by Midas Gold, have on our region?" Cascade-based reporter Monica Gokey has the story for this episode of the podcast.

UPDATE: Mining stories are complicated, and we want to take the time to tell this story right. So be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss our complete Wanna Know Idaho episode on the Stibnite Gold Project coming in November. In the meantime, here's a preview.

Depending on where you live in Idaho, you might find that prices at your local gas station are 30-40 cents higher per gallon than in neighboring Wyoming and Montana. So...what’s up with that?

Update -- This voting round has closed. The winning question: "What about the prices we pay at the pump: Why does it seem like the price of gas is higher in the Gem State than in surrounding states?" Be sure to subscribe to the podcast here!