From WXPN host to WXPN ambassador: Kathy O’Connell announces retirement
With O’Connell’s retirement, after four decades on air, the popular children’s program Kids Corner will end in June.
2 min. read
After four decades of soundtracking childhoods across the region and beyond, WXPN host Kathy O’Connell has announced her retirement. Her show, Kids Corner, will draw to a close, with its final shows airing this June.
After four decades, Kathy O’Connell and WXPN’s Kids Corner program are retiring.
(Image: Courtesy of WXPN)
O’Connell launched Kids Corner at WXPN in 1988 after leaving WNYC, where she co-hosted Kids America. O’Connell will remain a strong ambassador at future WXPN events and a vital part of the WXPN family. “I’m going to miss the whole WXPN crew,” she says. “I’m going to miss the fun of being on the air.”
Her time on the air influenced and helped generations of kids in the WXPN listenership find their voices, feel welcomed, learn about a variety of topics, and simply be kids. O’Connell helped guide children through national tragedies, divorces, and family deaths over the years. WXPN general manager Roger LaMay points to something harder to define about her gift with young listeners.
“If you’ve ever listened to Kathy O’Connell interview kids for an hour about what costume they’re wearing for Halloween and why, it sounds simple, but she makes it magical,” he says. “She has this unique thing of being able to talk to eight-year-olds on their own level and gets the sort of wide lens that’s part of being a kid.”
WXPN host and Kids Corner producer Robert Drake likens their collective impact to that of Fred Rogers. “He talked a number of times about how humbling it was to have generations of people come up to him and say how they grew up with his show,” he says. “It’s kind of like that, but a very small version. You play a role in these people’s lives from a developing age through adulthood. You meant a lot to them when they were 12 years old, but then they’re 45 years old and you still mean a lot to them.”
Novel plant-based approach to a better, cheaper GLP-1 delivery system
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell investigates the use of a lettuce-based, plant-encapsulated delivery platform as a new oral delivery of two GLP-1 drugs previously approved by the FDA in injectable form.
No brain, no gain: Neuronal activity enhances benefits of exercise
Research led by Penn neuroscientist J. Nicholas Betley and collaborators finds that hypothalamic neurons are essential for translating physical exertion into endurance, potentially opening the door to exercise-mimicking therapies.
In honor of Valentine's Day, and as a way of fostering community in her Shakespeare in Love course, Becky Friedman took her students to the University Club for lunch one class period. They talked about the movie "Shakespeare in Love," as part of a broader conversation on how Shakespeare's works are adapted.
In Becky Friedman’s English course Shakespeare in Love, undergraduate students analyze language, genre, and adaptation in the Bard’s plays through the lens of love.
Beating the heat: Designing cooling for bodies in motion
Dorit Aviv, director of Weitzman’s Thermal Architecture Lab, studies how humans, technology, and design intersect, paving the way for the development of novel approaches to cooling people efficiently.
