Colorado Matters

Buildings that tell the story of Colorado are deteriorating, and some risk being lost altogether. Today we’ll hear about the latest additions to the state’s “endangered places” list. One is the Tabor Opera House in Leadville. Then, new plays hatch in Denver in a sort of theatrical incubator. This year’s new play summit includes a piece about a female mariachi band, love in Antarctica, and one about a struggling climate scientist.

Is Wall Street the answer to the water shortage in the West? That’s the question investigative reporter Abrahm Lustgarten raises in a piece for ProPublica and The Atlantic. He profiles a hedge fund manager who’s betting that water won’t always be so cheap. Then, Rennie Harris has channeled the violence he grew up with into dance. The hip-hop choreographer is an artist-in-residence at CU Boulder. He joins us ahead of a big show this weekend.

Addiction to prescription painkillers like oxycontin is at an all-time high. Some doctors feel pressured to prescribe. A new course teaches doctors and other medical providers to say, “No.” Then, a Denver composer developed obsessive compulsive disorder just after she gave birth to her daughter. She talks about how music has helped her share her unusual experience.

Investors are betting on a Denver plan to help house 250 of city’s chronically homeless. The backers make money if it works and lose money if it doesn’t. But is the city taking too much of a gamble? We’ll explore that question. Then, relationships between police and minorities are strained. Officers in Denver want to change that by getting young people and cops together to talk.

Today there are more migrants around the world than ever before, according to the International Organization for Migration, perhaps over a million. A University of Denver professor has created a whole new political philosophy with migrants at its center. He tells us about it. Then, with winter in full swing, CDOT has been cracking down on drivers with dangerous bald tires to keep traffic flowing.

The Broncos take the field this Sunday for Super Bowl 50 against the Carolina Panthers, and we take a look back at the team’s good, bad and sometimes strange history with a perhaps unlikely source. Then, owner Pat Bowlen had a profound impact on many in the Broncos organization including John Elway. We’ll look back at his impact with former player John Lynch.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and others have plans to create a national cyber security hub in Colorado Springs. We speak with a security expert about what that means. And, in an encore presentation, we revisit the story of running legend Micah True, who inspired the book “Born To Run,” and is now the subject of a new documentary.

Thousands of soldiers have been kicked out of the U.S. Army for misconduct, despite many of them being mentally injured from their tours in Iraq or Afghanistan., and that means many are discharged without the health benefits they need to help heal. We have An update on a joint CPR News-NPR investigation. Then, the Colorado Department of Transportation is moving ahead with a massive project to transform and widen a section of I-70 in Denver, but not everyone is happy about it. And, as Denver’s Kirkland Museum prepares to move into new digs, we’ll hear the three pieces that embody the museum — not one of them is from the artist Vance Kirkland. We’ll learn why after the news.