Chris Polansky
News Anchor & ReporterChris joined Public Radio Tulsa as a news anchor and reporter in April 2020. He’s a graduate of Hunter College and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, both at the City University of New York.
His most recent stint at an NPR member station was as a general assignment reporter at Utah Public Radio in Logan, Utah, in 2019. His stories have also appeared in/on Gothamist / WNYC, NPR's All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, and the Brooklyn Eagle.
Chris is a New Jersey native and perpetually disappointed Mets fan who spent just about ten years in New York City before coming to Tulsa. He likes hiking and camping with his dog, Trout Fishing in America. He’s also a proud alumnus of Bike & Build, an affordable housing nonprofit with which he’s bicycled coast-to-coast twice: from Portland, Maine, to Santa Barbara (2014), and from Nags Head, North Carolina, to San Diego (2016). Both trips crossed Oklahoma.
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The Rev. Don Heath, a Disciples of Christ minister at Edmond Trinity Christian Church and chair of the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, talked and prayed with death row inmate James Coddington inside the death chamber during Coddington's Thursday morning execution at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Heath spoke with Public Radio Tulsa's Chris Polansky shortly afterwards.
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Death row inmates failed to convince a federal judge that Oklahoma's lethal injection method is cruel and unusual punishment. It will resume executions at a pace of about one a month through 2024.
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Summer Boismier had posted a QR code in her classroom that pointed students toward a resource from the Brooklyn Public Library in New York that provides digital access to its collection — particularly books that may be banned elsewhere.
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Less than 48 hours before his scheduled execution, Oklahoma death row inmate James Coddington on Tuesday afternoon was still awaiting word on whether or not Gov. Kevin Stitt would accept the state pardon and parole board's recommendation that his sentence be commuted to life without parole.
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Calling health care workers who provide gender-affirming care to trans children "at best, delusional, and at worst, demonic," a Republican state senator on Monday said he plans to file a bill that would punish providers with penalties as harsh as life in prison.
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Comparing voluntary union membership to a form of bondage, Walters said in a statement the order was meant to "[cut] the liberal union chains off of our teachers."
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