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Mary Hunter runs Materials for the Arts at the Monroe County Waste Reduction District—the recycling center. She’ll find a place for almost anything you bring her. Read More »
Allison Duerk didn’t go to college to become the director of a museum devoted to Eugene Debs, one of the U.S.’s most famous socialists, but she’s pretty happy it worked out that way.
So many of us are happy not to be involved in local government. Bloomington City Councilmember Isak Asare talks about its satisfactions, and how questions of protocol are also questions of justice.
When Justin’s grandmother died, her siblings stopped getting together. Then Justin started taking pictures, and things changed. Justin Carney is an artist who uses photography to think through family grief. It seems to be helping.
In the past 12 years, singer-songwriter Amy Oelsner has released 9 albums. We talk about grief, creativity, and why she started Girls Rock Bloomington, a music program for girls, and trans and nonbinary youth.
A walk among memorials and public art pieces in the fall of 2021. We talk with creators, participants, and passers-by about the meaning of public art, about Native presence in a state named for Indians, about immigration, Christopher Columbus, Columbus, Indiana, who we choose to remember, and how.
Nanette Vonnegut on painting and getting older, and the late writer Dan Wakefield on Indianapolis, spiritual writing, and his friend, Kurt Vonnegut.
Limestone work used to be quite dangerous. Joyce Jeffries remembers workers, including her grandfather, dying or getting injured. It’s gotten safer though. This week, Joyce, and others, on limestone.
Music critic Stephen Deusner on the book he wrote about the Drive-By Truckers, the South, and more. Plus, a review of a locally-born band that made President Obama’s best-of list.
When Marabai Rose was 38, a mysterious paralysis came over her. The challenges of getting diagnosed – and treated – in this episode, based on her book, Holding Hope.
What gets you out in support of a cause? Alex talked with some of the people at the Pro-Palestine encampment on the IU Bloomington campus, a week after it started.
We talk with Ross Gay about his new book (more delights!), how writing a sentence helps us see how we change, and protecting the sanctity of one’s interiority.
First, a conversation with artist Honey Hodges about immigrating to the U.S., and the opportunity to care for someone who has always taken care of you, and making collages. Then, naturalist Jim Eagleman reminds us why we should go outside in the winter, and at night.
Intellectual freedom, the future of narrative, and what libraries are for in the 21st century, with Monroe County Public Library director Grier Carson
Scholar and writer Ava Tomasula y Garcia tells the story of the Calumet Region, how the gas boom started with a bang, brought major industry and new racial dynamics, and why “the Rust Belt” is a bit of a misnomer.
Is classical music in trouble? Pianist Orli Shaham believes most people, “given half a chance,” will seek out deeper art forms at some point in their lives. This week, Orli Shaham on helping people find their way to classical music, and more.
It’s a mixtape! Five songs (okay, stories), by five different producers. Three are about being behind the scenes. One’s about your dad retiring. And an investigation into love.
Critic Eric Deggans says TV offers him a wide canvas for engaging with culture, and comedian Sara Schaefer decides Twitter isn’t the best place to address sexism in comedy. So she makes video sketches instead.
Yalie Saweda Kamara’s first full-length poetry collection, Besaydoo, has been getting attention – and for good reason. This week, we talk about the book, how moving to the Midwest changed her, and how teaching keeps her honest.
Radiolab founder Jad Abumrad has been interviewing interviewers lately: journalists, therapists, conflict mediators, salespeople. We talk about what it takes to have a meaningful conversation.
On this week’s Inner States, producer Violet Baron takes us to rural southern Indiana, where Danny Cain still makes fishing nets by hand. Then we listen to a 2016 interview with Peter LoPilato, who founded the Ryder Magazine and Film Series. He passed away on March 7.
This week, Inner States presents Episode 3 of Fire!: An American Burning. Inferno at Whiting is about the 1955 Whiting Refinery fire in Whiting, Indiana. It’s also about how oil – and fire - are at the heart of the modern world.
Comedian Mohanad Elshieky explains the difference between comedy and therapy, and novelist Tess Gunty tells us why she set her National Book Award winning novel in Indiana.
A walk in the woods with botanist Ellen Jacquart about 25 years in the future. And a conversation with the director of the new documentary, Major Taylor: Champion of the Race.
This week, a profile of the alien who roams downtown Bloomington, a werewolf, two witches, and the childhood that led to an article about the secret government facility under Bloomington's water treatment plant. Plus, a discussion about how shapeshifters help us think about gender.
When Iryna Voloshyna started a Slavic choir at IU in 2021, she didn’t realize it would be a local expression of a political situation halfway around the world. But then, in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, and suddenly the choir was in high demand.