From crawfish and Heavenly Hash to conjuring spirits and exploring the rhythm of America, we've covered a lot this year on "Louisiana Insider." For the final week of the year, we're shining some light on some of our most popular…
Gordon “Nick” Mueller once had a conversation with Stephen Ambrose, a history professor colleague at the University of New Orleans. What Ambrose had to say would make history itself. He proposed a project to build a museum focused on the…
Louisiana has a rich literary history. All authors conduct interviews as part of their craft, but only one wondered what it would be like to interview a vampire. As another Louisiana author, Kate Chopin, might have said about Anne Rice’s…
When driving into Baton Rouge, one can be amazed by the object in the distance that looks like a rocket ship on a launch pad about to take off. The building, of course, is the state capitol, the tallest…
Jessica Harris has twice won James Beard Foundation awards, including one for Lifetime achievement. Rather than just being in the kitchen, she has proved herself to be especially skilled at blending sentences and paragraphs and then seasoning the mix with…
Suppose your job is to take care of a tiger – a real tiger with jaws and claws and that is physically fit. David G. Baker is a veterinarian who for several year had the responsibility of overseeing the most…
One of the great green spaces in America is New Orleans’ City Park. In 2005, the flood waters from Hurricane Karina turned it into a gray space that was muddied, overcome with fallen trees, deprived of joy and hope. Robert…
Who better to talk about the Day of the Dead celebration than a Vodou priestess? Also known as Día de los Muertos, the celebration has different roots than Vodou, which worked its way through Haiti. It is also Hispanic in…
Barbara Sillery has her favorite haunts, not just to visit but to write about. She has written several books about hauntings including in Louisiana, Mississippi (as well as its Delta country), Cape Cod and Nantucket. Sillery joins Louisiana Life Executive…
In 1873, though little known throughout the state, the Shreveport area suffered one of the greatest tragedies in Louisiana history. The region faced what is recorded as the third largest Yellow Fever epidemic in the nation’s history. In the course…
Jim Brown has had quite a career including terms as Louisiana’s Secretary of State; Insurance Commissioner and a state senator. He is also a publisher, a columnist and a font of knowledge about the state and its politics. Brown joins…
Millions of people listen to music on the radio. Over a half million people listen to radio each week to hear Nick Spitzer talk about music. Spitzer’s pioneering broadcast American Routes is way more than a D.J. spinning songs but…
A teenager named Abraham Lincoln was once part of the crew of a packet boat bringing goods downriver to New Orleans. As they approached the city they camped on the river banks up shore from New Orleans. There were rough…
Whenever polls are taken of Louisiana’s most popular restaurants Commander’s Palace in New Orleans is usually near or at the top. That’s quite an accomplishment for a state already known for its great restaurants. Ti Martin, co-proprietor of Commander’s Place,…
There are thousands of hurricane stories. Some stories are tragic, others are heroic and many are truly compelling, especially for podcast listening. A documentary recently released by Louisiana Public Broadcasting, the statewide public broadcast system, entitled “Cajundome City” tells the…
Remember the comedian George Carlin? In 1958, when he was an airman at nearby Barksdale Air Force Base, his first appearance on a stage was in Shreveport. Carlin was the star of the Shreveport Little Theatre’s production of “The Happiest…
There are two things, among many, that we all need to do – eat, and be fit. The problem is that sometimes doing one contradicts the other. Fortunately, there are some dietitian who keep and eye on that sort of…
If you confuse the Louisiana Children’s Museum for a boat permanently docked alongside a small bay that is understandable. The museum, located in New Orleans’ City Park, is a masterpiece of whimsical design and learning creativity. It is as much…
New Orleans was once a fertile area for developing championship boxers. Mainly because of the large Italian immigration many of the boys who came from poor families and grew up in tough neighborhoods were attracted to boxing. Not only were…
Who would have thought that there would be a working farm on Jackson Avenue right in the heart of Uptown amid the mansions and the magnolias? Well, there is, and it is more than tomato plants stuck in the ground…
When hurricanes rumble from the Gulf, the high winds and storm surges sometimes re-locate unwilling sea mammals into surrounding land masses and waterways. That happened after Hurricane Ida in 2021, which displaced a dolphin into a bay near Grand Isle.…
In 2010, during the time that Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser was Plaquemines Parish’s President, the BP Oil Spill took place. He became immersed in the issue, so much that the national media referred to him as the “Face of the…
Fifty years ago there was a tragic fire in New Orleans’s French Quarter at a bar with a largely gay clientele called the Upstairs Lounge. There were 32 deaths. Documentary maker Royd Anderson joins Louisiana Life Executive Editor Errol Laborde, along…
If the subject is restaurants don’t call Stanley Dry; if the subject is kitchens, then he’s your man. Dry is the long time writer of the “Kitchen Gourmet” column for Louisiana Life magazine. He has also authored cookbooks; two of…
