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Don founded Close To Home on Blue Ridge Public Radio (previously WCQS) in 1985. The show moved to WNCW in 2024. Don also offers mountain dulcimer workshops, books, videos, and weekly Zoom jam sessions.

[Copyright 2024 NPR]

Simone Popperl is an editor for NPR's Morning Edition and Up First. She joined the network in March 2019, and since then has pitched and edited stories on everything from the legacy of burn pits in Iraq, to never-ending "infrastructure week," to California towns grappling with climate change, to American alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin's ascendance to the top of her sport. She led Noel King's reporting on the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Steve Inskeep's reporting from swing states in the lead up to the 2020 Presidential Election, and Leila Fadel's field reporting from Kentucky on the end of Roe v. Wade.

[Copyright 2024 NPR]

Eric Whitney is NPR's Mountain West/Great Plains Bureau Chief, and was the former news director for Montana Public Radio.

A former road scholar, Jaclyn made her first donation to WNCW from the cab of her big rig in 2007 and became a volunteer not long after. She hails from just down the road in Lincoln County. When not at the station, Jaclyn can be found foraging in the woods, making jellies and preserves, or tending her bee hives. In addition to bees, she cares for a cat named Poot and many plants.

Jasmin was born and raised in beautiful Mitchell County, North Carolina. She was most influenced musically by her father, who had her playing guitar by age 12, and listening to bands such as The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, The Band, Mike Cross, and The Osborne Brothers. She now lives in the Lake Lure area with husband Ben and two boys, Henry and Kai. They enjoy hikes in the woods, record stores, and listening to all kinds of music together. Jasmin says, “Nothing makes me happier than sharing good music with good folks, and I am so blessed to be a part of the WNCW family.”

Barbara J. King is a contributor to the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture. She is a Chancellor Professor of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary. With a long-standing research interest in primate behavior and human evolution, King has studied baboon foraging in Kenya and gorilla and bonobo communication at captive facilities in the United States.

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).