Big Talk – WFHB: Recent Episodes
Big Talk – WFHB
Bloomington is home to the most fascinating, creative, and successful people. Big Talk host Michael Glab goes one-on-one with different guests each week, learning about their lives, their hopes, and their accomplishments. Find out what makes this town so special on Big Talk. Tune in every Thursday at 5:30pm, immediately following the Daily Local News.
We’ll be airing encore presentations at our normal time, Thursdays at 5:30pm, through the end of July 2026.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She’s the queen of events in Bloomington and south central Indiana. Kel McBride has been hatching quirky and crazy event ideas for years, organizing like-minded characters, and staging extravaganzas that draw hundreds and, occasionally, thousands. The wizard behind Eroticon, the Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls, Krampus, and many others, McBride’s Ms. Lake Lemon pageant pits gowned, muck-booted women of a certain age against each other in a contest of strength, resilience, and badassed-ness.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Grief and healing are important themes in her work. When Katina Bitsicas’s father was dying of cancer, she recorded his feelings and impressions. Then after he died, she created a liquid light image of the type of cancer cells that ran through his body. Bitsicas also has compiled a book, Luci: The Girl with Four Hearts, about a young woman who underwent three separate heart transplants by the age of 32. Bitsicas is an associate professor in IU’s Media School.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Her boss at a previous job inspired her to get involved with Court Appointed Special Advocates as a volunteer. Now, Tia Arthur is Monroe County CASA’s executive director. CASA, a nationwide network of nonprofit organizations, provides help, comfort, and guidance for kids involved in court custody proceedings. Judges depend on CASA’s reports and advice before making custody decisions.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The historian and author has devoted five years of his life to studying and writing about what he characterizes as this country’s first major foreign policy initiative. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led some 40 people in an exploratory mission, hoping to find a water route from the Mississippi to the Pacific Northwest. They failed in that quest but did make contact with great indigenous nations and visited bustling trade centers. Fehrman’s new book, This Vast Enterprise, looks at the expedition through the eyes of a number of participants.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Born and raised in the middle of Siberia, Daryana Antipova comes from a singing family. Her family band, Vedan Kolod, has played throughout Russia and the rest of Europe. She co-founded an influential Russian folk music organization and is the author of three published young adult novels. Antipova was bound and determined to come to the United States and spent years and plenty of money trying to do so before finally settling in Bloomington.
Daryana Antipova and her son, Iaroslav.Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She’s appeared before audiences since she was three years old, when she dashed onstage, unbidden, during a Shakespeare production in Leningrad. Kate Weber arrived in Bloomington from Russia and other outposts, including a 15-year stretch in New York City theater. She, her husband Jeremy Weber, and Konnor Graber have co-founded Eclipse Theater Productions here. Kate is directing a production of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” at the Constellation Playhouse. The show closes this weekend.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Was it just luck that his given name is a mash-up of two Bloomington streets? Woodlawn is becoming this town’s Matt Groening, taking real people — politicians, sports stars, entertainers, and more — and fictionalizing their foibles. He’s the editor-in -chief of the local satiric website, Limestone Ledger, and has been lovingly skewering people, places, and events around these parts since 2023.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Author Julia Karr has been presenting a series of writers workshops at the Owen County Public Library in Spencer, Indiana. Karr wrote the XVI trilogy, dystopian fantasy novels set around the year 2150. These young adult books portray a world where teenaged girls are told their only worth is as sex objects. One girl attempts to undermine that message. Karr offers exercises, tips, and guidance for both brand new and experienced writers.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Science isn’t just for scientists. That’s what Erika Biga Lee realized during a scientific conference some 20 years ago. The IU Luddy School senior lecturer on computer technology with interests in journalism and education learned about Cafe Scientifique at the conference and decided to bring the informal, public discussion of scientific matters to Bloomington. Europe’s Cafe Scientifique morphed into the US’s network of Science Cafes in cities from coast to coast. Biga Lee claims Bloomington’s version is the second oldest in the country.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Like many creative folks in recent years, LuAnne Holladay felt a need for comfort and relief from the unending stream of disturbing world and national news. She hoped to create a simple, collaborative project that would allow people to create, to breathe. She came up with “Give Your Word,” a crowdsourced, ephemeral accordion book on which people riff and draw on a series of single words. The idea for the book came together during Holladay’s participation in a “9×9” daylong retreat at The Hundredth Hill.
This episode aired Thursday, February 19, 2026.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The co-founders of MDWST Fable, “a benevolent conspiracy aimed at promoting more interaction and collaboration across arts, ideas, and media in Southern Indiana,” are staging an interactive exhibit probing the ways artists and the community seek solace and comfort in these turbulent times. Trista Newyear is an author and historian and is the lead writer for Rock Paper Scissors. Matt Rice is a creative director for Blueline Media. The two last fall staged the second annual Tale Blazing event at The Hundredth Hill. Their Solace exhibit will be at the Pillar Arts Alliance Center in the College Mall in April.
This episode aired Thursday, February 12, 2026.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
One of Bloomington’s beloved and definitive characters, Dan “Carp” Combs died suddenly at home earlier this month. We sat with the long-time Perry Township trustee in November 2016. The last of a breed who describe themselves as “FDR Democrats,” he was a teacher, a public servant, and a refreshing straight-talker. Combs viewed himself as a raconteur and a “hilljack.”
This episode aired Thursday, January 22, 2026.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Not only is the nation gripped by polarization these days but so are the worlds of science and higher education. Traditional scientists tend to thumb their noses at those who call for scholarly inquiry into subjects such as astral projection, extrasensory perception, hauntings, UFOs, seances and mediumship, and so many more. The two Indiana University professors hope to bridge the gap with a three-evening series of events called Weird Academia later this month. Ford has co-hosted the podcast Weird Science for eight years and Foster co-directs both The Center for Possible Minds and the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute.
Ford (L) & FosterHosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
We remember a Bloomington titan.
Charlotte in her element. Photo: Chris Howell/Herald-Times.Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
It’s a good bet many of the websites you visit know as much or more about you than your friends and family do. Journalist, author, and blogger Doc Searls wants the one-way relationship between sites and users to change as our cyber-lives evolve. We’re still in the nascent stages of the internet, he argues, so change can be implemented before its laws amd mores can be written in stone. Searls and his wife Joyce, both Ostrom Workshop visiting scholars, joined Big Talk host Tristra Newyear in the WFHB studios.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
He didn’t realize it when he was reading Jack London, Jack, Kerouac, John Steinbeck, and Edward Abbey but the authors who waxed literate about the road were preparing him for an odyssey. Last summer, Jon Vickers embarked on a five-week, solo motorcycle trip from Bloomington to Alaska. Along the way, the retired founding director of the IU Cinema viewed some of the Earth’s most beautiful land and North America’s most exotic big creatures.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She fell into cosplay in 2018 and now has no desire to lift herself out of the pool. Steph Slone, a communications specialist for Indiana University by day, is an imagineer, designer, seamstress, and mechanic by night. She uses all those skills to fashion fantasy costumes for characters adopted by her and her husband Myles. Slone has won national and international awards for her work and has immersed herself in the cosplay world.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
A true south central Hoosier — he swam in limestone quarry pools as a kid — Dason Anderson now guides this region’s online magazine as its executive editor. Running a news operation is especially challenging as we enter the second half of the decade. With many news outlets suffering due to federal funding and granting cutbacks and social media pressures, Limestone Post has survived through its first ten years of existence. Anderson replaced retired founder and publisher, Ron Eid, as editor, and has pledged to maintain the magazine’s high standards of accuracy and fairness in long-form journalism.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Steve Higgs has had two overwhelming passions in his adult life: the environment and journalism. He was a reporter for the Herald-Times as far back as when it was known as the Herald-Telephone. He’s also been treading through and savoring the land in every corner of Indiana, photographing and writing about this state’s natural wonders. Fresh out of graduate school, where he earned his journalism master’s degree, Higgs met Andy Mahler. Their lives over the next decades became intertwined as Mahler fought to preserve the beauty and scanctity of the Hoosier National Forest. Higgs has written a new book, Andy Mahler and the Hoosier National: The Folk Hero and the Forest He Loves.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She grew up in a comfortable Chicago suburb not really knowing what her ethnic heredity entailed. Then Dena El Saffar delved deep into her Iraqi roots. Along the way she became a classically trained musician, specializing in the stringed instruments. Dena now leads the Salaam Band and is part of a number of other performance ensembles. She incorporates a wide variety of musical styles into her work, including influences from West Asia, the Arabian peninsula, North Africa, and even western pop.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She’s fast becoming Bloomington’s empresario of author events. Molly Gleeson and the Writers Guild at Bloomington staged last year’s successful Local Authors Book Fair. This year she and the Guild are bringing the noted novelist, essayist, and journalist, Aminatta Forna, to town. Born in Scotland and of Sierra Leonean and Scottish ancestry, Forna was a reporter for BBC radio and TV and has penned a half dozen books, both fiction and nonfiction. Much of her fiction centers around Sierra Leone’s rich and complicated history.
Gleeson (L) & Forna.Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She happened upon a glassblowing exhibit at a Sandusky, Ohio amusement park and was immediately hooked. Abby Gitlitz has been working with glass — she makes it from scratch — her entire adult life. She founded the Bloomington Creative Glass Center and launched the annual Great Glass Pumpkin Patch open-air market for the delicate handblown squashes. The BCGC offers classes, training, an apprentice program, exhibits and special events.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
He experienced one tragedy that nearly cost him his arm and witnessed a second, fatal, tragedy. The incidents forced Bert Gilbert to assess his life. He opted to dive deep into his untapped reservoir of creativity. He was a construction contractor by day (now retired) and an artist and poet in his spare time. Gilbert now devotes all his days to making art in a variety of media. Several of Gilbert’s sculptures are on display at the Sculpture Trails Outdoor Museum near Solsberry.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Minka Wiltz will be telling a story this coming Saturday at The Hundredth Hill’s Tale Blazing fireside storytelling event. Sponsored by MDWST Fable, Tale Blazing will feature five creative raconteurs moving around campfires for an evening of woodsy community and Fall frolic. Wiltz, originally from Georgia, has experience as an opera singer, a composer, an actor, a standup comedian, and so much more.
Hosts Michael Glab and Tristra Newyear chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She wondered, Why couldn’t the visual artists of Bloomington, in all their different genres, get together for a community-building exercise? So, Babette Ballinger founded the Bloomington Paint Out. Artists of any level of proficiency, from professionals to wannabes, will gather Saturday at Bryan Park for the fourth annual celebration of en plein-air painting, drawing, watercoloring, and any other medium to create images of the town. Ballinger was a successful apparel designer, now retired, and is a member of several local artists’ groups.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The folks at Stages Bloomington take the old movie line, “Hey kids, let’s put on a show,” seriously. Stages is a local nonprofit that specializes in bringing young people — elementary and high school aged — into the theater. Annalise Cain has been hired as the organization’s teen programming coordinator. Cain, a former theater kid herself, works hand-in-hand with teens to develop and refine theatrical productions. Stages will present a new musical workshop presentation, “Nevere’s Love Potion,” Friday & Saturday, October 3rd & 4th.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
He has designed a public scratching post made of pumice and a time capsule encased in 10 pounds of beeswax. Artist and industrial designer Maxwell Fertik came from heavily forested New England and, there, learned to appreciate and love natural materials. He specializes in transforming material from local biota into usable items and art that celebrates the environment. Fertik’s co-exhibit with painter Meg Lagodzki, no_innocent_landscape, runs from September 5th through October 31st at the Process Gallery in IU’s Cook Center.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
A hot August week 57 years ago. Thousands of protesters took to the street during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. They faced off against thousands of Chicago police officers and Illinois National Guardsmen. Blood was drawn as the whole world watched. Aaron Cohen, a 15-year-old from the comfortable suburb of Winnetka was there, along with two siblings, brought by their parents. It was his parents’ way of teaching the kids civics as well as the imperative to stand up for what is right. It wouldn’t be the last time Cohen took to the streets.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The five scariest words in Bloomington: The students are coming back!
Author, artist, and PR maven Tristra Newyear joins us on Big Talk to discuss the coming 2025-26 school year at Indiana University. We ponder a complaint seemingly common to every lecturer and professor — students can’t read or write anymore. Is traditional literacy being replaced by a new type of communication, one based on visual cues or some other as-yet recognized way of getting ideas across? Plus, we riff on the usual litany of townie grievances and grousings at this time of year: parking, obstacle course driving, packed stores, and more.
This episode aired Thursday, August 21, 2025.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
We turn the tables this week as author, historian, artist, and PR maven Tristra Newyear interviews Big Talk producer and host Michael Glab. They discuss the July 10th, 2025 benefit celebration for WFHB at The Bluebird. It’s been 50 years since Mark Hood and Jeffrey Morris staged the first benefit at The Bluebird for Bloomington community radio. Newyear and Glab also talk about the WFHB history project, a book-length retelling of the radio station’s story.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The Busman’s Holiday boys, Lewis & Addison Rogers, have released a new album, Table Talk, this past June. Now in their 20th year performing together, the Busman’s boys will stage a gala album release show in September with special guest bestselling poet and author Ross Gay. The Rogers sibs’ music takes a bit of a turn this time around as they get a little more blues–y and rock-y.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She realized how inadequate her formal sex education had been when she took a Biology & Culture of Women’s Bodies course at Indiana University. Indiana schools prioritize abstinence over information when it comes to school sex education classes. Christine Brackenhoff, a nurse formerly with the Monroe County Health Department’s now-closed Futures Family Planning Clinic, interviews people about their sex education experiences in a new podcast, Hoosier Sex Talks.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
We pick up our conversation with Dave Askins, citizen-journalist and the outsider on the inside, who has resurrected his B Square Bulletin. He hopes to create a 21st century online daily local newspaper employing reporters and photographers covering a wide range of beats. He aims to establish a nonprofit corporation so he can solicit financial support for his operation.
This episode aired Thursday, June 19, 2025.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
He thought he’d had enough back in December 2024, so Dave Askins quit publishing his daily B Square Bulletin. After two months, he was back on the beat with an idea for a bigger, better online local news publication. Now publishing two or three times a week, Askins aims to fashion a more comprehensive daily online “newspaper.” He’s hiring interns, putting out the call for other citizen journalists, and hopes to create a nonprofit corporation to help finance his proposed operation. This is part one of a two part interview. Tune in next week for part two.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
For decades now, public libraries have been more — much more — than places where you can only borrow books. Libraries’ collections now include items from baking dishes to pickleball sets and even to seeds for your garden. The Monroe County Public Library’s Library of Things (its formal title) is the repository of the almost innumerable such stuff. Lisa Champelli is the Collections Manager for MCPL and must curate the library’s veritable warehouse of things.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
It was a silly film but Ian Mair was inspired by it. The Linton, Indian native saw “Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein” when he was a third grader. He’s been making movies ever since. Mair and his school chum James Stevenson went on to found Moonlight Films, a cinema factory that’s put out more than 20 movies so far. Armed with a new national distribution deal, Mair and company aim to be recognized, “The Kings of Micro-Budget Horror.”
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
When Anna Stamm was a little girl, she watched B-movies on TV with her father. She wondered how and why TV stations picked movies to air. Her curiosity has led her to pursue her doctorate in local broadcast history. Bloomington was home to one of the key figures in television and radio, Sarkes Tarzian. Stamm talks about his role in media history.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The second part of our conversation with minister, activist, antiwar protester, and advocate for death row inmates, the Rev. Bill Breeden. He earned national notoriety when he swiped an Odon, Indiana street sign honoring President Ronald Reagan’s national security advisor and Odon native, John Poindexter. Breeden began evangelical preaching at the age of 15 and eventually became a pastor in Bloomington’s Unitarian Universalist Church. Retired now, he’s working on his memoir titled “Billy Pilgrim and the Black Female Jesus.”
This episode originally aired May 15, 2025.
Breeden in 1986.Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
He went from being a teenaged country preacher to protesting war and ministering to death row prisoners. Now retired, the Rev. Bill Breeden has lived a wild, loving, socially conscious life. He’s spent time in American jails and a foreign dungeon. He’s stolen street signs and lived in a tepee. None other than Kurt Vonnegut dubbed him a “holy clown.” Part 2 will air next week.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
We began to explore the iconic musician, producer, engineer, and anti-star’s Bloomington roots and his sojourns to Los Angeles, New York City, and New Orleans last week. Bingham’s back in town now, having served in a “musical boot camp” while performing at the Orbit Room this spring. This edition of Big Talk originally aired Thursday, May 1, 2025.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
He’s back in Bloomington, for the nonce, after sojourns through Los Angeles, New York City, and New Orleans, among other ports of call. The one-time member of the storied Bloomington prog-rock band, Screaming Gypsy Bandits, former principal of the innovative, experimental Bar-B-Q Records label, and a key figure in the origin story of WFHB, Bingham has spent a lifetime tilting against the celebrity-driven music industry even as he made a living recording — and playing with — some of its biggest stars. Part 2 of our conversation will air next week.
This edition of Big Talk aired Thursday, April 24, 2025.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The co-founder of Ledgemule Press, Dave Torneo, has published Cincinnati poet Matt Hart’s latest volume of verse, Falling Fine, under the Pickpocket Books imprint. The book’s release party will feature an imaginative overhead-projector puppet show by artist and educator Johanna Winters, as well as music performed by several local players. Winters’ puppetry will explore the feelings of embarrassment and pleasure in women who enter middle age.
Torneo (L) & WintersHost Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She’s Bloomington’s Trans-dimensional Diva. She lives in the vestibule of a North Walnut Street portal to other realities. And she’ll be hosting the Alternate Dimension Mill, Saturday, April 19, at the Monroe County Public Library auditorium. McGee, a veteran of stage and small screen, has immersed herself in the imaginary Bloomingtons created by MDWST Fable, producer of the event that will feature performers and speakers representing a myriad of possible Bloomingtons. They’ll riff on how creatives and imagineers can work together to create a hopeful, more productive town.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The former guest host of Big Talk is wearing a new hat these days. Tying together his love for comedy, sports, and Bloomington, Alex Ashkin has organized a fundraising event to benefit both Middle Way House and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Bloomington. He has reeled in Jared Thompson of the Comedy Attic, New York and LA comedian Tom Thakkar, and the people who run the new Dave & Buster’s on the east side for the event April 22nd. Participants pay an entry fee to compete in a basketball free throw shooting contest. All proceeds will be split evenly between the two long-standing local social service organizations.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
A Bloomington tradition now in its fourth year, the Bloomington Indiana International Film Festival will draw cinephiles to Redbud Books and The Bishop Bar Thursday through Saturday, April 3-5. Matt Rice, who wrangles the filmmakers and emcees panel discussions between showings, joins Big Talk this week. Founded by local hero Byron Jordan Wolter, the BIIFF this year attracted some 200 entries from around the world.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
This week’s Big Talk is a sheer gabfest with retired Indiana University professor and internationally recognized expert on movies, James Naremore. He’s written countless books on cinema and has appeared on numerous Criterion Collection editions, analyzing and commenting on such classics as “Citizen Kane” and “The Magnificent Ambersons.” Naremore has written and lectured extensively on film noir even as he admits he cannot really define the genre. He also admits he was afraid to take a shower for a long time after seeing “Psycho” on the big screen.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Spring is here, after a long, hard winter. More trees will be will be growing leaves in Bloomington this year, thanks to Canopy Bloomington’s regular schedule of planting as well as its new Cool Corridors program. Staffers, board members, and community volunteers for the nonprofit were out in force in the Crestmont neighborhood this past weekend, digging holes, putting in trees, and educating neighbors on care and maintenance for the new plantings. Canopy faces reduced federal funding this year but Hartman and Vickers remain optimistic that its goals can be reached.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Artists need help — and who better to help them than other artists? That’s one of the goals of the Arts Alliance of Greater Bloomington. Charles Pearce was named the organization’s first executive director in December and it holds its annual meeting tomorrow at Fountain Square. The public is invited and will get the chance to see what the AAGB is up to and to meet and network with artists from many disciplines.
Host Michael Glab Chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Singer/songwriter Krista Detor so enjoyed her experience at Hedgebrook, the women artists’ retreat on Whidbey Island, that she was inspired to create something like it when she got back home to Bloomington. She and musician/sound engineer David Weber set about the task of creating a small complex of rooms and studios for creative types of all genders and identities on their 50-acre tract of wooded land north of the city. The Hundredth Hill will host a wide variety of residencies including writers, musicians, actors and many more this year.
Detor (L) & Weber.Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Their three-year term leading Indiana University’s Cultural Studies Program is coming to an end. Rebekah Sheldon and Tess Given are going out with a bang with Bikini Kill guitarist and self-described “cultural instigator,” Erica Dawn Lyle, speaking at their February lecture series installment. They’ve organized a two-day Cinema and Extinction Symposium this month as well. The lecture series and the symposium are open to the public and free. Sheldon and Given both like to explore ecological futures through the lens of speculative fiction and scifi.
Sheldon (L) & Given.Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She started out on a lark to design an outfit, never expecting her entry to be accepted, and soon found herself on stage, modeling her own creation. Sophia Wang designed and modeled in 2023 and 2024 and this year is handling social media management and marketing for the Trashion Refashion runway show. The 16th annual event this year will take place April 13th at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. We also include a snippet of conversation from our 2022 conversation with artist David Ebbinghouse, himself a regular participant in the festivities.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
A formally-trained singer in her own right, Suzanne Ryan-Melamed has guided Bloomington Early Music since 2022. Since that year, the annual Bloomington Early Music Festival has embraced a variety of worldwide cultures and populations that aren’t commonly associated with medieval, Renaissance, or Baroque music. This year’s fest, featuring live performances, artists’ discussions, and educational workshops, focuses on Early Music in the African Diaspora.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Inspired by his mother, 1980s disco hitmaker Roni Griffith, Caleb Ely dropped out of college to pursue a music career. Beginning as a DJ and then taking on audio production duties, he created streaming hits that have garnered millions of clicks. Ely (pronounced EE-lee) taught himself how to play musical instruments even as he mastered the hardware and software to produce digital sounds. Ely has authored the book, “100 Million Streams: How to Break Into the Music Industry.”
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
A stained glass window in an historic York cathedral inspired Shannon Gayk to devote her studies to Middle English literature. She found that the people who lived nearly a millennium ago in what became modern-day England were concerned with ecological disaster and climate change just as the people of 2025 are. Her new book, “Apocalyptic Ecologies: From Creation to Doom in Middle English Literature,” was published by the University of Chicago Press last month. An Indiana University professor of English, Gayk (rhymes with bike) introduces drama, humor, and irony in her classrooms demonstrations.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
When he first came to Bloomington, Peter Dorfman didn’t much care about day-to-day neighborhood issues. Then he heard of an outside consultant’s recommendation that would completely transform the community that drew him here in the first place. Dorfman was inspired to start Bloomington Dissident Democrats, an informal citizen-based advocacy and venting group. BDD has since taken up new conflicts like annexation.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
We conclude our look back at last year’s guests as we revisit our conversations with Pam Raider of the Brown County Hour; Jill Vance, interpretive naturalist at Lake Monroe; Terry Sloan, guerrilla publisher of Poetry to the People; and author Claire Arbogast.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The year 2024 was an exciting one for Big Talk conversations. People from all walks of Bloomington life joined us in the WFHB studios. This week, we’ll revisit our chats with Richard Fish, one of the early members of the core group that started this radio station; Dr. Maria Elizabeth Hamitlton Abegunde, who helped coordinate the Wylie House exhibit, “Stargazing: Re-Imagining the Life of Elizabeth ‘Lizzie’ Breckenridge”; Mitch Teplitsky, who is producing a documentary on Spencer, Indiana’s vibrant LGBTQI community; and Tristra Newyear and Eleanor Rust, producers and hosts of the limited historical podcast series, “Frances Wright: America’s Forgotten Radical.”
This episode aired Thursday, January 2, 2025.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
We delve further into our 2024 lineup of guests and conversations as the year draws to a close. We spoke with Richard Fish, one of the earliest members of the group that eventually formed WFHB; Abegunde (Dr. Maria Elizabeth Hamilton), who brought to light the life of Lizzie Breckenridge, a black woman who was an amateur astronomer in Bloomington in the 1880s; Mitch Teplitsky, a filmmaker working on a documentary about the LGBTQI community in Spencer, Indiana; and Tristra Newyear and Eleanor Rust, who’ve researched the life of Frances Rust, a 19th century feminist, author, abolitionist, and radical.
This edition of Big Talk aired on Thursday, December, 19, 2024.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Our look back at 2024 Big Talk guests continues as we revisit highlights from our chats with historical board game designer and producer Drew Wehrle, Hoosier Character coordinator Christine Friesel, Kinsey Institute executive director Justin Garcia, and JC Clements and Nicky 7 of Hoosier Original Music Association.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Join us in the month of December as we look back at the great lineup of guests who joined us this past year. In Part 1 of this series, we’ll re-hear from Steve Volan, long-time Bloomington city council member who branched out in new directions this year; Ron Eid, publisher of the Limestone Post, and Becky Hill, board president of Limestone Media; Katerina Koch, executive director of the Lotus Education & Arts Foundation; and Jordan Davis, host of the No Dishes podcast covering the local restaurant scene.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
With the fall session final concert set for Monday, December 16th, at the Belle Trace Senior Commons Center, amateur musicians are honing their skills for it for the next three weeks. We re-visit with New Horizons Bloomington co-founders Andrea Kleesattel and Audrey Jo Williams. The two, accomplished teachers and musicians, started the Bloomington branch of the international adult beginner orchestra organization in cooperation with Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Admission to the final concert is free.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
He started working for Blueline Media when it was housed in a barn outside the city some 20 years ago. Matt Rice now is a creative director for the full-service video and photo production studio with offices here and in North Carolina. Blueline has branched out, now making documentary films. The studio has produced docs on Hoosier football icon George Taliaferro, the plight of Hawaii’s native snails, and the 150th anniversary of the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Rice considers himself a translator, turning a company’s image of itself into a story, then a brand.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Her mother dropped her off at Rhino’s Youth Center when she was 12. Before she knew it, Jessie Grubb found herself deeply involved in radio. Rhino’s administered Youth Radio for WFHB from 2000 to 2019 and operated a dedicated studio for kids to learn and record in. Youth Radio has been a fixture at WFHB for nearly 30 years. Grubb is a teacher and applies her college training in education to her work as the director of the program that serves ages 13-20
Jessie Grubb (2nd from left) and some Youth Radio participants.Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people..
Trained as a cantor, Josh Dinner loved singing traditional Jewish songs because they brought people together and celebrated what humanity could be. Then he saw a rocket liftoff and realized space exploration did the same. Since then he’s devoted his life to shooting the moon, the stars, the planets, and the spacecraft that may one day get us there. A writer and content manager for Space.com, he staged his proposal to his future wife to coincide with last April’s total solar eclipse.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
He spent his adult working life manipulating the waves and particles that comprise the essence of physical reality. Terry Sloan retired as an engineer from the late, lamented Indiana University Cyclotron a few years ago and has since turned his attention to writing poetry — and helping others get their poetry out to the people. Sloan publishes and distributes Poetry to the People, a series of trifold, single sheets containing three to a hafl dozen poems each. An avid motorcyclist, he composes some of his poems while cruising down the open road. He has authored of book of his poems, “Questionable Poems: From Beyond the Event Horizon,” illustrated by IU Cinema founding director Jon Vickers. Poetry to the People, volume 7, will be released by the end of the year.
Host Michael GLab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Last week we discussed the history and culture of tattooing with Meredith Lee and Shane Greene, Together they teach an Indiana University course on all things tattoo. She’s an assistant professor of gender and he’s a professor of anthropology. This week, we delve further into the ink world. In addition, we’ll find out what the wrong body narrative is as well as how someone can be a misanthropologist.
This edition aired Thursday, October 17, 2024.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Tattoos, a body art once exclusive to merchant marines, street toughs, and shady characters, now adorn the ankles and shoulders of nearly every demographic group in America. Your grandma, your aunt, your minister, and your tax preparer might well sport one or more tattoos. What does this trend in tattooing say about us? What does it reveal about how we view our bodies? Meredith Lee, assistant professor of gender studies, and Shane Greene, professor of anthropology, have researched the ink phenomenon and teach a course in it at Indiana University.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
He co-founded the Bloomington Open Studios Tour in 2011. This year’s tour features six artists in and around town. Paul is a photo remix artist, manipulating digital images to create layered, re-structured works of art. He proudly claims he never attended art school or took an art class even as his works have won awards and have been hung in public buildings. The Open Studios Tour allows the public to visit artists in the work spaces and converse with them.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She withdraws from the world — both in her mind and, occasionally, physically — to write. Arbogast’s first book, Leave the Dogs at Home, was a heart-wrenching, unvarnished glimpse into a woman’s life of love, choices, grief, and rebirth. She has released her second book, a novel of a young woman struggling to find meaning and identity in the counterculture late-1960s., called If Not the Whole Truth.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Facing an uphill battle in a predominantly red state, veteran community organizer Michelle Higgs is squaring off against incumbent Peggy Mayfield in the November election. Higgs realized she and other Hoosier Democrats would need a lot of help so she put together the Indiana Rural Summit 2024. It’s a series of local gatherings featuring a dozen Democratic candidates for House district seats. Higgs et al hope to persuade rural and small town voters the Democrats are on their side. Republican candidate Mayfield has been invited to appear on the program before the election.
[NOTE: This recording features two four-minute silence gaps to allow for live pitching during our Fall 2024 Fund Drive.]Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Writing can empower people. Poetry, essays, memoirs, fiction — all demand the writer reach down into her soul for honest, unvarnished feelings. Sometimes writing can help people find out who they really are. Rebekah Spivey helps writers — professional and non — open up their hearts, and learn to ignore that pesky nay-saying voice in their heads, as a certified Facilitator for Women Writing for (a) Change. Spivey’s new book will be released this fall by Holon Publishing.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Molly Gleeson had written for her high school newspaper but when she reached adulthood, she believed she didn’t have anything to write about anymore. By the time she reached middle age, she realized she had a whole life’s worth of subject matter to write about. She has published short stories and has written novels and novellas. She’s the organizer for Writers Guild at Bloomington’s Local Authors Book Fair scheduled for November 2nd at the Monroe County History Center. The event is free and open to the public to meet and greet published Bloomington authors.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Last week, Indiana University professor of political science Jeffrey C. Isaac talked about free speech, political activism, and academic freedom on the Bloomington campus. This week, we turn our attention to the 2024 United States presidential election. Isaac doesn’t hold back with his opinions on Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. He reminds us there are several third party candidates as well. The November election may well go down as one of the most important in the country’s history; Isaac provides a passionate polemic on the race.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Longtime political science professor Jeffrey C. Isaac joins us at Big Talk once again. Outspoken during the spring pro-Palestinian protests on campus, Isaac defended the rights of students to publicly criticize the waging of the Israel-Hamas War and he stood behind a faculty member who was suspended as well as an artist whose exhibition at the Eskanazi Museum of Art was cancelled. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation; Part 2 next week will cover the 2024 US presidential election.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The education director for Constellation Stage & Screen has designed a wide-ranging fall program of acting, musical theater, improv, and filmmaking classes for kindergarteners through adults. Eric Shelley has led the teaching arm of Constellation since it was formed by the merger of the Bloomington Playwrights Project, Cardinal Stage Company, and Pigasus Pictures in 2022. Constellation has renovated and now occupies the Waldron Center and it has studio space for classes on East 7th St. The arts consortium offers classes year-round and has full slates of stage productions in the fall, winter, and spring.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
With rage emerging as a driving force behind political, social, and cultural discourse in the United States, Indiana University associate professor Wright has been attempting to plumb the public’s psyche to find out why. He has concluded anger is now the “central emotion governing contemporary US politics.” He has found many people vote to hurt others rather than help themselves. He discusses how politicians stoke and use rage to their benefit in elections.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She came aboard to a state park wrecked by flooding in 2011. After building Paynetown’s Activity Center back up from ground, interpretive naturalist Jill Vance oversees a dynamic program of tours, hikes, lectures, classes, and interactive activities showcasing Monroe Lake State Park’s dizzying variety of wildlife and plant species. Now, she’s spearheading a months’-long series of events celebration the 60th anniversary of the opening of Monroe Reservoir.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The 2024 Summer Olympic Games kick off later this month in Paris. One hundred years ago, Paris hosted the Games as well. One of the stars of that Olympiad was Harold M. Osborn, whose performance in France earned him the informal title, world’s greatest athlete. Osborn’s youngest daughter, Susan Jones, has collected and curated a history of the man and his time. Jones is a dedicated Bloomington volunteer, helping both Constellation Stage & Screen and the Monroe County History Center run smoothly.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The drummer for the fabled Bloomington post-punk band, Sally’s Dream, and a veteran of cable-radio WQAX (AKA Kwacks), Jackson was a music programmer for WFHB for 17 years. She’s now serving her second stint on the board and steers a ship that’s sailing smoothly. WFHB is healthier and stronger than ever in its 31st year on the air. Jackson tells her personal story and explains how WFHB got to this good point in its history.
Jackson (far left) was the drummer for Sally’s Dream.Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most facsinating people.
When WFHB’s signal finally was beefed up to extend into Brown County, Pam Raider got the idea that the place should have a show dedicated to it. The Brown County Radio Hour came into being in 2010 after several years of planning and organizing. It’s a variety show featuring the artists, the performers, the essayists, the wits, and the captivating characters of that most quirky of Indiana counties. And perhaps the quirkiest, most captivating character of all is Pam Raider.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She dreamed of being on the radio when she was eight years old. It wasn’t until she reached her 40s that Abby Noroozi finally got the chance when she volunteered at WFHB. She’d met and befriended former Music Director Christine Brackenhoff at Rock Paper Scissors, the noted Bloomington music tech PR firm. Noroozi watched Brackenhoff run the WFHB music department and learned from her. When Brackenhoff decided to leave, Noroozi was the obvious choice to replace her.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Tristra Newyear happened upon an historical marker in New Harmony revealing the spot as a one-time home of Frances “Fanny” Wright. Newyear discovered the Scottish-born American émigré was among the very first female newspaper editors, a teenaged author of a study of American customs and mores, an abolitionist, and a feminist who called for universal education, birth control, equal rights, sexual freedom, liberalized divorce laws, and so much more. Newyear and friend and colleague Eleanor Rust have produced an historical documentary podcast series, “Frances Wright: America’s Forgotten Radical.”
Rust (L) & NewyearHost Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Documentary filmmaker Mitch Teplitsky discovered Spencer in Owen County one day as he and his wife took a Sunday drive. He was drawn to its picturesque square and its civic-minding people. Then he learned about Spencer Pride and the town’s reputation as a rural center for LGBTQI people and their allies. He’s approaching the finish line for his documentary on the people and the town.
ScreenshotHost Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The second half of our conversation with Peter Lopilato, founder of The Ryder magazine and the Ryder Film Series. Peter died in March this year and will be long remembered for his contributions to the Bloomington arts and culture scene. Peter joined us in 2016 in the WFHB studios for an interview that became part of a short feature for the Daily Local News. We spoke for an hour and so now are able to present that entire conversation in this two-part Big Talk.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The founder of the Ryder magazine and the Ryder Film Series, Peter Lopilato helped define Bloomington’s arts and culture scene for nearly half a century. Peter died in March, 2024. He visited the WFHB studios in 2016 to record a short Daily Local News feature. Now, we present that entire interview, nearly an hour long, this week and next. This two-part Big Talk will explore the life and times of Peter and the history of the magazine and the film series. Join us next week for Part 2 of our conversation.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Breckenridge gazed into the heavens at night in Bloomington a century and a half ago. She scanned the vastness of space and contemplated an infinity of possibilities after completing her daily work as the paid domestic servant and nanny for the Wylie family. (Theophilus Wylie was a professor at Indiana University and a minister.) Abegunde, the first person ever to receive a doctorate in African American and African Diaspora Studies from Indiana University, worked with the Wylie House Museum, Dr. Raymond Wise of the Jacobs School of Music, and the African American Arts Institute to create a digital exhibit exploring the life and dreams of Lizzie Breckenridge.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
They hope to connect songwriters with audiences, audiences with songwriters, and songwriters with other songwriters. The Cosmic Songwriter Festival is all about connections. Founded by Fuentes and McDermott in December 2021, the nonprofit Cosmic Songwriter, Inc. has staged monthly showcases at the Orbit Room since then. Now, the two are working feverishly to produce the second annual Cosmic Songwriter Festival this month. Over a four-day period, they’ll pair national acts with local acts, with two acts appearing on the same stage at the same time. The acts will alternate playing songs, will comment and converse between tunes, and perhaps even come up with something entirely new and different.
McDermott (L) and Fuentes.Host Michael GLab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
As part of our effort to create a comprehensive history of WFHB, Bloomington community radio, we are gathering a library of oral recollections. Among the recordings is that of Richard Fish, a long-time audio engineer and old-time radio program archivist. Fish was in on the development of WFHB as far back as the late 1970s. His voice has been heard on WFHB since our first day on the air in January, 1993. Keep up with our ongoing series of blog posts on WFHB’s history here.
Rich Fish in 2003.Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Named the director of the Monroe County Public Library system in May 2022, Grier Carson knew he’d face some daunting challenges. But he was surprised by the news he received when he woke up on January 15th this year, The brand new, award-winning Southwest branch building had suffered extensive damage thanks to an overnight flood. The facility has been closed since then as all the parties involved sort out liability issues. Meanwhile, the system’s main library and Ellettsville branch remain humming. Carson oversees a library system facing an uncertain future in the shadows of the internet and rapidly changing information systems.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Like the robin and the crocus, Trashion Refashion is a sign of spring in Bloomington. This year’s runway show at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater is the 15th annual exhibition of clothing designs made of repurposed materials. Molecular biologist Bettina Kehoe is typical of the amateur designers who dabble in recycled couture. They join artists and trained designers in producing more than 50 looks on display this year. Stephen Hale is president of the Center for Sustainable Living, the financial beneficiary of the fundraiser.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She taught herself how to play the guitar and now she wants to help young girls, trans kids, and those questioning their assigned gender learn how to play music too. Amy Oelsner, known to many around Bloomington as Amy O and leader of two bands, one named for her and the other called Brenda’s Friend, is more interested in working with young folks than becoming a star. Winner of the 2020 Indiana Governor’s Emerging Artist award and a veteran of the late, lamented Rhino’s Youth Center, Amy founded Girls Rock Bloomington in 2019.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Audrey Heller, co-founder of the Jewish Theatre of Bloomington, has said it took a lot of chutzpah to start the stage company in South Central Indiana. The organization launched in 2005 and is reprising its very first production, “Another Antigone,” by academician and playwright A.R. Gurney. This iteration will be a staged reading with multiple performances in April. Directed by Martha Jacobs, “Another Antigone” dramatizes a test of wills between a college professor and a creative student. Heller aims to retire at the end of this year.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
With Bloomington’s music scene experiencing a renaissance in the wake of the pandemic, new performers are emerging and longtime singers, songwriters, and players are staging comebacks. They’re all entering (or re-entering) rapidly changing performance and recording environments. Guitarist Clements and WFHB DJ Nicki 7 last summer founded the nonprofit HooMac, the Hoosier Original Music Association, in hopes of guiding musicians through the thicket of the music business. HooMac is sponsoring FARMette, a one-day networking, educational, and showcasing event, in April.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
A little more than a year after the Indiana legislature voted to bar state funding for the Kinsey Institute, the world-renowned human sexuality research center will remain part of Indiana University. The IU Board of Trustees voted on March 1, 2024 to keep the Institute after considering allowing it to spin off as an independent nonprofit in the wake of the statehouse ban. Dr. Garcia recounts the reactions of faculty, researchers, and supporting academics around the world while the Institute’s future appeared to be up in the air.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She’s been helping people trace their Hoosier roots as the maven of the Monroe County Public Library’s Indiana Room for years. Now, Friesel is spearheading the MCPL’s effort in getting the Hoosier Character digital map of the state in the 19th century off the ground. The map depends on oral histories and traditional sources to mark where “the common and the bold” lived in the state. The MCPL works with Monroe County GIS and the Monroe County History Center to make the interactive map available to all Indiana residents and organizations. Hoosier Character has been launched as part of the state’s celebration of America 250, the 2026 anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
What started out as a side gig, a vanity project, has become Drew Wehrle’s day job. He and his brother Cole Wehrle founded the historical board game maker, Wehrlegig Games. Drew handles the production and business end of the operation while Cole is a noted game designer. They’ve produced two board games thus far: one dealing with the aftermath of the Russian and British colonial reigns in Afghanistan and the other with the people who benefitted from the East India Company’s control of the East Indies and the Indian subcontinent. This year the Wehrle brothers will launch a board game dealing with the cloistered queer culture of Georgian England. Historical board games are a fast=growing niche in the overall game market.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
He has bussed tables, washed dishes, waited on diners, bartended, managed restaurants, and now serves as the operations director for the Chocolate Moose. Jordan Davis realized early on in his career that making the dining out experience successful entails the efforts of many people, coming from many backgrounds, doing many jobs. His weekly No Dishes podcast allows viewers to peek behind the curtain of the restaurant world. His guests have included restaurant owners, bussers, chefs, and even a competitive eater and a person responsible for feeding Indiana University athletic teams. Davis also reveals how Food Truck Fridays came about.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Koch (pronounced kaw) took the reins last July from longtime executive director Tamara Loewenthal and this year will oversee the 31st Lotus World Music & Arts Festival from start to finish. Koch runs the business end of the nonprofit Lotus Educational & Arts Foundation while Loewenthal, who remains on board as artistic director, concentrates on the arts, cultural, and performance aspects of Lotus. Koch hopes to integrate physical and mental health, culture, music, and food in the Lotus world as she has run a southern Indiana network of clinics, has been a personal chef, and even worked in Bloomington’s venerable Goods for Cooks shop.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Online magazine Limestone Post has been publishing long-form articles on local issues as well as arts, entertainment, and cultural topics since 2015. With the slow demise of local daily newspapers, Limestone Media, the magazine’s parent company, hopes to fill the void with an emerging network of independent news sources in and around Bloomington. The nonprofit (since 2019) will serve as an umbrella organizer for a planned daily news site and will spend 2024 arranging for financing and assembling a team of contributors and participants in an ambitious project to bring news gathering into the 21st century. Limestone Media co-founder Ron Eid and Board of Directors President Rebecca Hill tell Big Talk the nonprofit will continue to publish Limestone Post in its current form even after the new site launches.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
For twenty years, Steve Volan represented the downtown district in Bloomington’s city council. His 6th district map was redrawn, largely due to his own efforts, and he was forced to run for reelection as an at-large candidate last year. He lost but swiftly shifted gears and now is running for Monroe County Commissioner in this year’s election. Volan talks about his years on the council and his wish that Indiana University students gain more representation in local government.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
His story can be read as a mini-history of Bloomington from the 1960s through today. “Strats’s” involvement with the Ashram; The Tao, The Gables, and The Uptown Cafe restaurants; and his work on the film, “Hoosiers,” all are legendary landmarks in the chronicle of this town. An inveterate raconteur, Strats has been a teacher, an entrepreneur, an actor, a cook, and an occasional mystic. He talks about the interconnection between many of Bloomington’s fabled eateries and how he taught film star Gene Hackman how to act like a basketball coach.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
They’re starting a new business in Bloomington but they’re not looking to become rich. Hannah Airiess and Micol Seigel are part of a collective opening a new book shop and gathering place in January 2024. They’ll open the doors of Redbud Books at 408 W. Kirkwood Ave. The nonprofit Redbud Books will be a community-curated book shop as well as a meeting place for people interested in reading groups, film screenings, art exhibitions, lectures, workshops, topical discussions, and more. Redbud is partnering with the Neighborhood Planting project to plant a tree for every book sold. Volunteers are filling its shelves with everything from poetry, science fiction, graphic novels, and children’s literature to Indigenous Worldview titles, Feminist and Black Thought, and Rustbelt Histories.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Perhaps the only thing they love as much as music is teaching. Kleesattel and Williams get to do both as co-directors of the Bloomington branch of the New Horizons International Music Association. New Horizons Bloomington is an adult beginners orchestra that meets weekly at the Bell Trace Senior Living center. Newcomers to playing symphony orchestra instruments can learn the basics and immediately begin plying with others. Kleesattel and Williams both boast of extensive experience playing with professional orchestras and as teachers in individual and group settings. Their 2023 fall semester class will play a final concert Monday, December 12, at Bell Trace. The performance is open to the public and is free.
Williams (L) & KleesattelHost Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Her two books thus far have reflected her passions. After visiting Russia as a 16 year-old and becoming a devoted Russophile, Tristra went on to pen the epic historical fantasy “The Tomb and the Stone,” set in Siberia. Recently, she’s become entranced by the 19th century Indiana utopian outpost, New Harmony. Fittingly, her new book is set partly there. It’s a cli-fi (climate fiction) dystopian fantasy set in both the past and the future called “Starfall,” the first in a series of four books. Tristra’s author byline is T. Newyear.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
His business card reads “Entertainer.” More specifically, Tim Reed is a composer, pianist, actor, writer, and piano & voice teacher. He’s putting on a big show Saturday, November 11, 2023 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater featuring performances by him, his friends, his students, and even members of the Indiana University ballet. The family-friendly program will include music, stories, and skits. Reed will also play several tunes from the movie musical, “Childrenopolis,” he has co-written.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
We continue our conversation with musician, performer, and teacher, Sarah Flint. The founder of WFHB’s Youth Radio, she continues to make music, live and recorded, and she offers music lessons online and in her Courthouse Square studio. Part 1 of our talk aired Thursday, October 26, 2023.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She fell in love with music as a kid, listening to the bands playing late into the night in her family’s first floor restaurant. She obtained her FCC broadcaster’s license at the tender age of 14. Sarah Flint went on to become a well-traveled singer and guitar player. She founded Youth Radio at WFHB and today is one of Bloomington’s most beloved music teachers. This is Part 1 of our conversation with her. Part 2 will air next week.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Co-publisher Piser and editor Beach crew the Bloomington editorial office of the humor magazine, Funny Times, along with co-publisher (and heiress to the empire), Renae Lesser. Founded by Renae’s parents Sue Wolpert and Ray Lesser in the Cleveland area in 1985, Funny Times continues to print a monthly magazine chock full of cartoons — many of them political — as well as essays and prose narratives. Featuring well-known contributors like Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Dave Barry, Michael Moore, Andy Borowitz, Garrison Keillor, and Alison Bechdel, Funny Times has developed a loyal reader following around the world. Lesser, Piser, and Beach are leading the magazine into the digital age while keeping its old school newspaper comics section feel.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Curiosity drove Debby Herbenick into the field of sex research and education. Almost immediately upon entering the field, she learned much — if not most — of what she knew about sex was wrong. Since then, she’s devoted her life to helping the rest of us shake off our misconceptions and misinformation about that universal activity Mark Twain described so artfully as “refreshment.” Author of a half dozen previous books, Herbenick’s new guide for parents, “Yes, Your Kid: What Parents Need to Know about Today’s Teens and Sex,” can be pre-ordered now and will hit booksellers’ shelves in November.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
The labor historian and associate professor of labor studies at Indiana University picks up where last week’s Part 1 left off. High profile strikes in the United States may be symbolic of a rebirth in labor unions. Bloomington and IU both are affected by unionization at Starbucks. Varga speaks of what he’s dubbed “The Great Refusal” on the part of America’s workforce.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
With the President of the United States at the UAW strikers’ picket line in Detroit as we record, Joe Varga joins us to talk about labor unions and the upswing in their influence. America’s labor history has been fraught with controversy, animosity between business owners and the rank and file, and even violence. We discuss unions’ political and social influence and the current revitalization of union participation and strength nearly a half century after President Reagan’s signature breaking of the air traffic controllers union.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
[Please Note: This recording contains two three-plus minute long spans of silence so we could live pitch for this year’s Fall Fund Drive.]With the 30th annual Lotus World Music & Arts Festival coming up at the end of this month, we’ve reached back into our archive for our 2019 conversation with then-executive director, Tamara Loewenthal, to present a re-edited peek into the Bloomington institution. Loewenthal now serves as the Lotus Education and Arts Foundation’s artistic director. She has been involved with Lotus Fest from its earliest days. It’s an herculean task to wrangle acts from all around the globe to perform in multiple locations around Bloomington. A performer herself, she’s been intimately connected to every aspect of that effort.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
[PLEASE NOTE: This episode contains two three-minute spans of silence so we could live pitch for our Fall Fund Drive. The first starts at 0:42 and ends at 3:42; the second starts at 21:39 and ends at 24:39.]The United Way of Monroe County will soon be no more. It’s not going away; it’s merging with United Way of Lawrence County to form United Way of South Central Indiana. President and CEO Randy Rogers will lead the new entity. Rogers took over for outgoing United Way of Monroe County leader Efrat Rosser last fall. She guided the organization through the COVID pandemic and now Rogers looks to keep it thriving as the world gets back to normal. The new South Central Indiana affiliate will host its 1st Annual Blue Jean Ball fundraiser later this month.
Host Michael Glab chats with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
He fell into the chair position almost by accident. Seemingly every other person in Monroe County capable of leading the party was running for office or working a campaign. David Henry promises he’ll only hold the reins for a short time but the truth is he loves politics: the game, the work, the issues, the …
The last of three Big Talk conversations with people whose job it is — and whose passion it is — to keep our Bloomington and Monroe County waters clean. We visited with Maggie Sullivan of Friends of Lake Monroe on August 17, 2023 and Michelle Cohen of the Lake Monroe Water Fund August 24th. Today, …
The second in our series of Big Talk interviews on the health and future of Lake Monroe, This week, Michelle Cohen, executive director of the Lake Monroe Water Fund, joins us. Deep Dive is a cooperative effort of WFHB News and Limestone Post magazine. Please read the Limestone Post article, How Healthy Is Lake Monroe …
Take a Deep Dive into Lake Monroe. WFHB News, Big Talk, and the Limestone Post have worked together to produce an in-depth look into the quality of the water in Lake Monroe. The source of our drinking water and a year-round site for recreation and an escape into nature, our lake faces challenges. Our guest …
They’re obsessed. And they want to share their obsession with you. Aja Essex and Josh Brewer run Cicada Cinema, a pop-up, volunteer-run movie theater in Bloomington. The two schedule film showings in locales all around town, sometimes indoors, sometimes outdoors. Cicada’s offerings range from esoteric art films to low-budget black-and-white horror movies. Essex and Brewer …
Our chat with NAACP branch president Maqubè Reese and her colleagues and friends, Monroe County Prosecutor Erika Oliphant and legal researcher and advocate Guy Loftman, continues this week. Reese and Loftman recount how their childhood families nurtured their worldviews and their future. Oliphant talks about her responsibility to address wrongs and inequalities within the county …
Joining us in the WFHB studios with her colleagues, Monroe County Prosecutor Erika Oliphant and legal activist Guy Loftman, Reese talks about the historic civil rights organization and the work it’s doing locally. She stresses the importance of thinking on a micro level, acknowledging injustice and racism in the wide world but concentrating on listening …
The executive director of the nonprofit antipoverty organization, the Rev. Forrest Gilmore, joins us again to update listeners on the state of homelessness and hunger in Monroe County and what Beacon is doing about those problems. Formerly known as the Shalom Center, the organization changed its name in 2020 to better reflect the various projects …
She was the first hire of the new nonprofit in early 2021. The executive director of the Lake Monroe Water Fund, Michelle Cohen, hit the ground running and already has started programs to help upstream landowners control erosion and runoff that affects the waters of the lake. One of 48 such fundraising and activist organizations …
Last week, Jeffrey began telling the genesis story of Bloomington’s community radio station. When he left off, the dreamers who’d held on to the idea for years were stymied once again. He picks up this week with the ultimately successful start up of WFHB. He also talks about his lifelong love for broadcast radio and …
He held on to the dream for almost two full decades before WFHB went on the air. While he was living in a converted garage with no plumbing in 1975, Jeffrey Morris began making plans to start up a community radio station here in Bloomington. A revolving cast of friends and like-minded dreamers came and …
A veteran of community radio as well as nonprofit fundraising, Brooke Turpin came to WFHB during the pandemic and has professionalized the station’s efforts to support and market itself. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Turpin worked for the grandmama of community radio, KPFA in Berkeley. The flagship of the Pacifica Network …
He was named the City of Bloomington Utilities department director when John Hamilton took over as mayor in 2016. At the time, the city’s drinking water delivery system was under fire both locally and nationally for taste and disinfectant-level issues. Since then, under Vic Kelson’s leadership, the Utilities department has refined its water cleansing process. …
With a dizzying array of private and public landowners as well as numerous governmental entities all responsible for the water that eventually drains into Lake Monroe from its plus-400 square mile watershed, someone needs to tie all those parties together to work to keep the lake clean. Maggie Sullivan, an environmental engineer, is the watershed …
With days to go before the deadline to vote, Big Talk has completed its second run of editions featuring candidates in the Democratic primary for Bloomington mayor. No Republican has declared as yet for the general election. An Independent has filed as a candidate. Big Talk will invite any and all candidates to appear on the program in the weeks leading up to the November election. Here are links to the Big Talk editions with the Democratic candidates:
- Susan Sandberg
- Kerry Thomson
- Don Griffin Jr.
Left to Right: Sandberg, Thomson, GriffinPrimary election day is Tuesday, May 2, 2023. Polls close at 6:00pm.
Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
With two weeks to go before Bloomington’s Democratic primary, we’re re-airing our conversations with each of the city’s mayoral candidates. No Republican has yet declared for the November general election and the party has until July to caucus a nominee in. If that does happen we’ll invite that person to the WFHB studios for a chat. An independent candidate has declared and we’ll visit with that person later in the year as we approach election day. Today we speak with long-time city council member Susan Sandberg. To hear Sandberg, please scroll down to our original air date with her, Thursday, February 9th.
Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
[This encore edition of Big Talk aired Thursday, April 20, 2023.]
With three weeks to go before Bloomington’s Democratic primary, we’re re-airing our conversations with each of the city’s mayoral candidates. No Republican has yet declared for the November general election and the party has until July to caucus a nominee in. If that does happen we’ll invite that person to the WFHB studios for a chat. An independent candidate has declared and we’ll visit with that person later in the year as we approach election day. Today we speak with former deputy mayor Don Griffin. To hear Griffin, please scroll down to our original air date with him, Thursday, March 16th.
Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Aashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
[This encore edition of Big Talk aired Thursday, April 13, 2023.]
She and her husband, Jared Thompson, already own a Bloomington landmark, The Comedy Attic. So when it looked as though another town landmark, the used and rare book shop Caveat Emptor, was about to close, Dayna Thompson stepped in and bought the place. The Thompsons, she jokes, are out to corner the Bloomington market in break-even businesses. Now more than 50 years old, Caveat will remain open for the foreseeable future with a revitalized inventory and a spruced up shop space.
Dayna Thompson and her husband Jared.Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
He turned his successful real estate business into something akin to a service ministry back in 2004. Since then, Don Griffin Jr. has become a key player in the community, serving on numerous boards and even being named deputy mayor in 2021. He encountered a townful of problems, including a flood, the ongoing pandemic, and the usual array of ills and emergencies every city, small or large, must confront. Our discussion with Griffin is the third in our series with the 2023 mayoral candidates.
Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She moved to Bloomington in 1997 and quickly established herself as a player in the city. As CEO of the local Habitat for Humanity operation, Thomson gained firsthand experience in housing, capital development, and the interplay between government offices and constituents. She’s been the executive director of Indiana University’s Center for Rural Engagement since 2018 and now hopes to win the Democratic nomination for mayor in this spring’s primary.
Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
We’ve invited all the declared candidates for Bloomington mayor in the 2023 municipal election to appear on Big Talk. First up, long-time Bloomington city council member Susan Sandberg. A self-described FDR Democrat, Sandberg has served during the mayoral administrations of both Mark Kruzan and John Hamilton. Now, she hopes to leave her own mark on the city. Stayed tuned to WFHB and Big Talk for more editions featuring mayoral candidates before the 2023 municipal primary, May 2nd.
Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Youth Radio has been around for almost as long as WFHB itself. The program began with a single young person interested in radio and grew to include, through the years, hundreds of teenagers. Saturday nights are kids’ nights on WFHB with Youth Radio broadcasting from 6 to 10 pm. The WFHB News Department is now in partnership with Youth Radio, helping teens learn how to produce interviews, on the street Q&As, and topical reports. Aja Essex was hired as the first full-time director for the program in December.
Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
In the wake of the contentious 2016 US presidential election, many people around the nation took to their corners and saw those they disagreed with as enemies. Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals too often refused to talk with each other and if they occasionally did, the exchanges turned into pitched battles. One group of people, taking their cue from Abraham Lincoln’s “better angels” speech, created a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to de-polarizing politics, fostering civil discourse, and helping people learn to listen to each other. Miles Eddy and Jeff Marks will serve as left- and right-leaning facilitators at Braver Angels of South Central Indiana’s Skills for Bridging the Divide workshop Sunday, January 29th, at the Monroe County Public Library main branch in Bloomington.
Eddy (L) & MarksHosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Ben Schwartzman was a normal kid: goofy, lovable, talented, confused. As a teen, Ben became a singer-songwriter, performing at coffeehouses and open mics and recording tracks. His dad, Ed Schwartzman, now the owner of BuffaLouie’s and Gables Bagels, attended his performances and encouraged him. Then Ben started descending into an abyss of depression. Psychiatric professionals and medications couldn’t halt his tumble. Many of his song lyrics bore harbingers of what was to come. On October 15, 2007, Ben took his own life at the age of 19. Now Ben’s music lives on through the efforts of “strangers,” as Ed describes them.
The National Suicide Hotline number is 988.
Ed (L) and Ben SchwartzmanHosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Her grown-up passions would become horror and goth films, as well as taste politics and the global rebellions of 1968, but as a young person Joan Hawkins loved creative writing. She got away from it as she advanced in the academic world. Now she’s come back to it with the publication of her new book, School and Suicide. The book is a collection of autobiographical stories, covering her life from age nine through 22. Hawkins at the age of 16 began working at a San Francisco Bay Area crisis hotline and learned how adults are “flawed creatures.”
Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She thought it might be fun but terribly scary to model in the 2017 Trashion ReFashion Rundway Show. She did it anyway and had the time of her life. Now, Nicki Stewart Ingersoll is a key member of the group of volunteers who put on the annual show featuring fashion designs made of recycled and retrieved materials or clothing that has been re-purposed. The group has put out a call for entries for the April 2023 show.
Hosts Michael Glab amd Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She expected to stay in Paris for a short time, enjoying the sights, the culture, the arts. Then the world changed. It was March, 2020 and Michelle Facos found herself unable to leave the city of lights. The COVID-19 pandemic may have shut the world down but Facos, an art history professor at Indiana University, opened her eyes and ears to take in the Gallic way of life. In her new book, “An American in Pandemic Paris,” she recounts her adventures in love, survival, and contentment, all taking place within a mandated kilometer radius of her temporary home.
Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
They were the last Big Talk guests before the COVID 19 pandemic hit and our WFHB studios were closed for nearly two years. Now, they’re back in that same studio, helping us put a punctuation on the shutdown. The Rogers boys will appear Sunday, November 13th, at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater as the opening act for another Bloomington institution, essayist and poet Ross Gay. Today, Addison and Lewis explain their songwriting process and how their mom talked Lewis out of becoming a professional cartoonist.
Lewis (L) & AddisonHosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
While studying filmmaking at Columbia College in Chicago, John Duffy envisioned a career making fictional narrative movies, but events got in the way. Duffy watched as the War on Terror, institutionalized racism, and so many other 21st century American ills and missteps compelled him to turn his talents toward uncovering them. His work has focused on the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath and the fallout from the Ferguson, Missouri shooting among others and now his first novel has been published. Alex Ashkin welcomes him to Big Talk.
Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Many of Bloomington’s trees have died off or suffered mightily from natural causes, aging, and climate change over the last few decades. While shut-in during the pandemic, Sarah Mincey and Sheryl Woodhouse decided to do something about it. Mincey, an urban forestry professor, and Woodhouse, a businessperson, founded CanopyBloomington in early 2021. The urban canopy is the “umbrella” tree tops provide us, cooling the city off and providing countless environmental, physical, and psychological benefits. The nonprofit’s forestry director, Hannah Gregory, joins us to explain exactly why the local tree canopy is so vital.
Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
She found her way to Bloomington and a reporter’s job at the then-Herald Telephone (now the Herald Times) in 1984. Since then Laura Lane has covered every big news event in town. From her H-T bio: “She covers crime, courts, cars and more, following issues and the struggles and triumphs of people in rural southern Indiana.” Lane is optimistic about the journalism profession even as some observers write obituaries for it.
Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
Antonia Matthew lived through air raids, blackouts, rationing, and the absence of her father when she was a small child during World War II. Her father, a major in the British army stationed in Burma, regularly wrote her letters until he was killed in action. She has written an audio play, “Antonia’s Home Front,” based …
More than a decade ago, preservation developer Cindy Brubaker walked past the old I Fell building on 4th Street every day on her way to work. She dreamed of restoring it to its former glory and transforming it into an arts center. Now the I Fell Gallery anchors the burgeoning arts district just southwest of …
Bloomington native Jennifer Raff hit the New York Times bestseller list earlier this year with her first book, Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas. In it, Raff traces the human development of the two continents using DNA science and relying on her own innate curiosity. Reviewers called the book accessible while still scholarly. One …
For the second week of Fall Fund Drive 2022, we feature more music created and performed by guests who’ve appeared on Big Talk through the years. Last week and this, we’ve presented music by Amanda Biggs, Busman’s Holiday, Henry Leck and the Indianapolis Children’s Choir, Jason Fickel and Ginger Curry, Jeff Isaac and the Postmodern …
This year’s Fall Fund Drive runs from September 8th through the 18th. As always, we’ll be interrupting normal programing to ask you, the listeners and community, for help to keep us on the air for the next six months. So as not to give short shrift to our guests, Big Talk this week and next …
Our conversation with Rick Armstrong, the new executive director for Stages Bloomington Theater Company, aired last week, Thursday, August 25th. Our chat continues this week as Rick tells us about his path to becoming a high school science teacher and youth theater educator. This edition of Big Talk aired Thursday, September 25th, 2022. Hosts Michael …
He staged plays with his stuffed animals when he was a little kid. Rick Armstrong went on to spend much of his adult life helping young people learn the workings of theater, both onstage and off. Now retired from Martinsville High School, he’s taken on the challenge of leading Stages Bloomington Theater Company, a unique …
There are still young, exciting writers in journalism, even as we tumble headlong into the social media age. Jeff LaFave began work as a reporter for the Bloomington Herald-Times and now teaches feature writing and literary journalism at Indiana University’s Media School. Writing news stories can be an art and, as LaFave explains to Alex Ashkin, …
He went from making old time music to making apple cider in Vermont. Then Sam Bartlett crossed the country serving as cities’ and towns’ artist-in-residence and “public art instigator.” His life took another turn with the publication of several of his Stuntology books. Bartlett creates art along the edges and, so, must make it constantly …
She asked her husband, a neurosurgeon, what he might want to do as an alternative to the pandemic-stressed medical field. Samantha Eads at the time was a nurse practitioner working toward her doctorate in Integrative Health. Her husband said he dreamed of owning a bookstore. Two weeks later Rick Morgenstern put out the call for …
She begins her second year leading one of the nation’s premier repositories of film and video. Alicia Kozma has studied, researched, written, and taught about films and other media since she was a teenager. She has focused on labor in media — who works in movies and TV and what their working conditions are — …
They didn’t become farmers until they were in their fifties. Now, Juan Carlos Arango and Robert Frew are all in. Their Sobremesa Farm just outside New Unionville, northeast of Bloomington, provides them and their customers with nutritious food grown using sustainable permaculture practices and it is a destination for vacationers, campers, and visitors from around …
His advice to aspiring filmmakers: “Choose subjects that you can’t stop thinking about and that you’re really passionate about.” Mitch Teplitsky arrived in South Central Indiana five years ago and when he discovered the town of Spencer and Owen County, he couldn’t stop thinking about them. Now he’s working on a documentary about the area. …
Now more than a half century old, the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra continues to provide South Central Indiana with professional-quality symphonic music. When conductor Alejandro Gómez Guillén came aboard, he pledged to diversify the orchestra and broaden its playlist and has done so. The BSO concludes its 52nd season with two performances of Gustav Holst’s “The …
She went from shoeing horses to playing a key role in preserving and administering Indiana’s art history. Rachel Perry’s new book, Painter of the Dunes: A Life of Frank Virgil Dudley, was published by the Indiana Historical Society Press late last year. Dudley’s oils depicting the state’s spectacular sand dunes off the southeast shore of …
Indiana University boasts some 10,000 graduate students, fully one quarter of whom are paid employees helping to teach undergrads among other tasks. More than 1700 of the paid grad students have signed union cards in the last six months. The Indiana Grad Workers Coalition is affiliated with the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of …
Civil rights attorney, law professor, and now an author, Dan Canon has delved deeply into America’s assembly line justice system in his new book, “Pleading Out.” He’s found that rather than truth or justice, the system values speed and ease. He suggests that legislators create many useless laws that criminalize huge swaths of the population, …
The graffitist formerly known as Tom Cat Spray has erased the line between art and day-to-day life. Part 1 of our conversation with Ebbinghouse aired Thursday, March 24, 2022. Part 2 aired Thursday, March 31, 2022 Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.
For years, few if any people knew who Tom Cat Spray was. The individual worked overnights, spraying colorful, provocative graffiti around downtown Bloomington. Tom Cat Spray eventually was revealed to be artist David Ebbinghouse. His street and wall work were only a small part of his vivid, lively portfolio of creative pursuits that included jewelry …
WFHB News Director Kade Young joins host Michael Glab to discuss recent Bloomington news stories. WFHB citizen journalists have covered a series of demonstrations at Indiana University protesting the invasion of the Ukraine, the city’s pilot Leaf Program, the IU decision to end its student mask requirement, the decrease in COVID cases in Monroe County, …
Three of Bloomington’s most respected arts organizations — the Cardinal Stage Company, the Bloomington Playwrights Project, and the Pigasus Institute — have agreed to a merger, creating one of the largest arts entities in the state. The new mega-organization — its name will be announced at an April 23rd fundraiser — will continue to stage …
He touched countless students’ lives and hearts while teaching at Bloomington High School North. Steve Philbeck realized he had a calling back when he was a kid and he was assigned to help a less fortunate classmate. He studied urban planning in college but found the lure of teaching irresistible. Philbeck also hosts a Thursday …
In the last decade, he turned the long-time WFHB interview program, Interchange, into something more in line with his personal vision. Doug Storm stepped forward from a group of five Interchange hosts back in 2013 and has been a mainstay on Firehouse Broadcasting ever since. Doug has decided the time is right to step away …
She’s spent her entire adult life teaching kids and encouraging them to read books. Kathy Loser began her working life as a school teacher and then moved into library science. For more than 30 years, she oversaw the library at Bloomington High School North. For the last few years, she’s served on the Monroe County …
He arrived in New York City earlier this century, not knowing how to speak English and hoping to study business at an American university. Love brought him to Bloomington, where his new wife was to work on her graduate degree. Wally Ouedraogo, born and raised in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, now is a fixture here …
A year ago she was a senior in high school. Today she sits at the head of the Republican Party in Monroe County. Taylor Bryant in December was named to replace outgoing longtime chair William Ellis. She became the youngest person to hold such a county position in Indiana state history. Active in politics since …
He came aboard as WFHB News Director in 2019 just as the city was following a wrenching, polarizing news story that had 1st Amendment implications and put people of color on edge. Kade Young has covered the city along with his assistant, Noelle Herhusky-Schneider, and their crew of independent citizen journalists ever since even as …
Her parents were accomplished, noted artists so she and her sisters were raised in art museums, galleries, and studios. Jaime Sweany has run several commercial galleries in Brown County, Bloomington, and now Owen County. The proprietor of Juniper Art Gallery on the courthouse square in Spencer, Indiana, Sweany has weathered both an historic economic recession …
When she came up with the idea to celebrate Krampus in Bloomington, Kel McBride promised herself she’d only wrangle ten of the annual Christmas season events. Last year’s would have been the tenth but COVID-19 got in the way, so this year’s is the final Krampus bash in Bloomington. The festivities begin at 5:00pm Saturday, …
His love of drawing and Japanese animation figures evolved into both a lifelong pastime and an adult vocation. Reilly Donaldson now spends his days helping to curate and care for the tens of thousands of articles of art owned by Indiana University. When not on the job, he turns his attention to creating live-action fantasy …
Five people from Bloomington who love movies, videos, and all forms of recorded visual art got together more than five years ago to found Cicada Cinema, a pop-up movie theater. Setting up ad hoc shop wherever they could, the five brought cult films, art films, and many other cinematic treasures to town. Nile Arena was …
A friend told Jessica Marchbank about All Options soon after she arrived in Bloomington. The pregnancy resource center was looking to hire someone to help with office operations. Marchbank leapt at the opening, was hired, and within a short time became manager of the facility on South Walnut Street. Now, Marchbank and her staff help …
He listened to the Drive-By Truckers on his headphones as he walked, daily, to the local coffeehouse in Birmingham, England. The band’s songs and lyrics made him think of his own hometown in the American South. So Stephen Deusner decided to write a book about the alternative Southern rock band. The book, Where the Devil Don’t …
Alex chatted with Jeremy Gotwals two weeks ago on Big Talk. Their conversation ranged far and wide and went way over our 28-minute program length, so today we present Part 2 of that tête à tête. Gotwals grew up in Bloomington and made a name for himself as a performer, creator, and idea person. He …
He and his wife Barbara started Harmony School in a vacant, dilapidated house on Grant Street in 1974. The couple hoped to recreate for students the strong familial and community ties that Roc Bonchek recalled from his youth in Cleveland. Harmony now serves as a model for similar independent schools around the nation. Serving pre-schoolers …
When he was a teenager, Bloomingtonians might have happened upon him at any time of the day or night walking down the street and bursting into song. Jeremy Gotwals never stopped singing even after he grew up, moved to Cincinnati, and started his own publishing and marketing companies. A person of unlimited energy and immeasurable dreams, …
Now that the United States military has withdrawn fro Afghanistan, we felt it was time to present a re-edited and expanded version of the entire 2017 interview we did with embedded journalist Douglas A. Wissing. Wissing warned us at that time that the US was bankrolling the Taliban and the group already controlled 90 percent …
Both are high-ranking members of the Biden Administration and both have visited Bloomington on a number of occasions. Power, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, is now head of the US Agency for International Development. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana and a 2020 presidential candidate, is the current Secretary of …
Only the second music director in the history of community radio WFHB, Christine Brackenhoff took the mantle of command from Jim Manion, who retired this past spring. Brackenhoff brings fresh qualities to the job as well as to the station as a whole: she’s young, eager, and represents WFHB’s goal of reaching as many diverse …
He dreamed for years of opening an independent bookstore in Bloomington. Finally, in 1996, he realized his dream. Within five years two national bookstore chains opened locations near his and he was out of business. Now that the big box stores are gone, Rick Morgenstern is back in business with a new bookshop/cafe/events center on …
He embarked on a new career when he came up with the idea to interview local characters on the opposite end of a see-saw in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dave Askins and his wife, Mary Morgan, then launched a news and civic service website in that college town. By then, he was hooked on journalism. The …
Big Talk co-host Alex Ashkin continues his conversation with “the Father of Green Cleaning” (and, incidentally, his own father), Steve Ashkin, in the finale of this two-parter. Part 1 aired Thursday, July 29, 2021. [Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.]
Working in the cleaning products industry, Steve Ashkin hit upon the idea that our efforts to sanitize our home and work environments needn’t foul our global environment. Moreover, he posited that our scrubbing, scouring, and wiping liquids and utensils shouldn’t make us sick in our own homes. Many in his industry scoffed at Ashkin’s suggestions …
The conversation with the reporter, photographer, author, and journalism instructor at Indiana University continues. Part 1 aired Thursday, June 24, 2021. [Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.]
He covered the biggest local stories of the ’80s and ’90s, including proposals to build a PCB incinerator, the privatization of Bloomington Hospital, and the clear-cutting of Hoosier National Forest. Steve Higgs, working for the Herald Times and, later, his own independent news magazine called the Bloomington Alternative, had strong personal opinions about these issues …
The anthropologist-cum-archeologist talks about people — us. Part 1 of the conversation with the Indiana University professor emeritus aired Thursday, June 10, 2021. [Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.]
When it comes to societies and cultures, they are what they eat. The world’s peoples see their cuisines as defining characteristics of who they are. Can the globalization of ethnic and national cuisines wipe out local flavors? Indiana University professor emeritus of anthropology Richard Wilk has studied and written extensively on food and its relationship …
He grew up loving radio. When he discovered “underground” radio, he came to love it even more. Jim Manion has been WFHB’s music director since the station first went on air in 1993. Now, after a long career herding hundreds of DJs and reviewing tens of thousands of LPs, CDs, demos, and streamed cuts, he’s …
She grew up in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and watched as the desert in that corner of the Arabian Peninsula was transformed into a major world metropolis. The transformation, she observed, carried with it both benefits and harms. One of the Science News 10 scientists under the age of 40 to watch in 2018, Attari …
Alex Ashkin speaks with martial arts maven Steve Scott. In this edition, the two discuss all forms of martial arts as well as local Bloomington practitioners who’ve made names for themselves, nationally and globally, in the world or competitive hand-to-hand fighting. Part 1 of this interview aired Thursday, April 30, 2021. [Hosts Michael Glab and …
As a young child, Steve Scott became an aficionado of martial arts when Bruce Lee appeared on TV as The Green Hornet’s sidekick. His family travelled the world because his father was a US Marine Corps general, the experiences broadening his horizons. Later, when he served his own stint in the Marines, he viewed a …
A former CIA operative whose task was to find and flip Soviet diplomats, Coyle came back to Indiana to teach international affairs and history of espionage courses at Indiana University, his alma mater. Now retired, he writes spy novels and enjoys taking naps almost as much as telling tales about his days as a secret …
He spent more than thirty years as a field officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. Now he writes spy novels as a retired Indiana University professor of practice. Gene Coyle lived an exciting — and occasionally dangerous — life as a CIA spy, residing in Lisbon, Athens, Moscow, and other exotic locales. He and his …
Brown County State Park has at least 28 miles of pristine biking trails with more added each year. The International Mountain Biking Association has granted the park’s trails its Epic status. With the pandemic forcing people outdoors for socialization and entertainment, bike industry sales figures have skyrocketed. Danielle and Kate Nolan opened their full-service shop, …
Public health expert and equitable health care advocate Faiz Kidwai chats with host Alex Ashkin. Now a psychiatric resident at the State University of New York (SUNY) Hospital, Kidwai has seen firsthand how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the psychological health of those who’ve contracted the virus and those who haven’t. This week Kidwai also …
He arrived in Bloomington from Pakistan as a young child with his family. As he grew up and attended Indiana University for his undergraduate degree, he felt himself the beneficiary of kindness and largesse from many people here. Faiz Kidwai eventually became a medical doctor and now believes he must repay the good others have …
After a long career behind the keyboard and specializing in travel writing Laurie Borman heard Indiana University’s Jim Madison talk about his book, The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland. She was so fascinated by the subject of hate that she switched writing gears and began to pen a long piece on the connections between …
It took her a while as she tried out first one then anther field of studies through her undergraduate and graduate school years, but Angela Babb eventually realized she felt most passionate about how food is produced and distributed throughout both our nation and our world. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Bloomington’s city-sponsored …
The Lively Death Lady, Kel McBride, counsels people who otherwise wouldn’t think about their inevitable demises to plan their exits from this life. McBride has made a name for herself in this town as a founder of the Bleeding Heartland Roller Girls, the driving force behind ten years of Eroticon events, and as the head …
Sex educator and advocate, roller derby queen, and certified death planner, Kel McBride has made an indelible mark on Bloomington. She and Pizza X’s Jeff Mease have conjured a fun weekend for COVID-19 shut-ins beginning tomorrow. Their X-Hunt, “Bloomington’s quirky scavenger hunt” to benefit the Hoosier Hills Food Bank, kicks off Friday, February 26th, at …
Since first meeting Josh Johnson when the two worked at Farm Bloomington restaurant, Alex Ashkin has watched him become one of the city’s premier events and entertainment coordinators. Johnson struck out on his own to produce punk rock shows in Bloomington and has branched out to conceive and produce all kinds of nightlife events. Like …
Pronounced Chahng Ho, she was born and raised in a small village north of Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, and came the the United States for college. After working around the country in human resources, she moved with her fiancé to Bloomington to live with his family during the lockdowns. When she wanted a wedding …
Alex Ashkin’s conversation with the author of “Forging Freedom: Black Women and thePursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston,” continues. Part 1 aired Thursday, February 4, 2021 on WFHB, 91.3 FM. Host Michael Glab goes one-on-one with Bloomington’s most fascinating people every Thursday at 5:30pm.
The author of the book, “Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston,” IU associate professor Myers has focused on the stories of black women who fought — and often gained — their freedom in the years prior to the US Civil War. She hopes to explode the myth that freedom …
Jeff and his long-time business partner and ex-wife, Helen “Lennie” Busch,” have run a Bloomington food empire for nearly four decades. When the pandemic and ensuing shutdown hit almost a year ago, their businesses, like so many others in this town, suffered. Still they survive, mainly because the pizza delivery business is running as strong-or …
With his long-time business partner and ex-wife, Helen “Lennie” Busch, Mease runs a food empire in Bloomington. Their One World Enterprises parent company operates Pizza X, Lennie’s, Bloomington Brewing Co., Hive, a catering service, an industrial kitchen open to other food entrepreneurs, and a Euro-style community garden on their 96-acre farm west of the city. …
With temperatures falling below freezing as we approach mid-winter, the city has opted to evict the tent residents at Seminary Square. Almost simultaneously, Beacon, Inc. (formerly the Shalom Community Center) announced the opening of a new low-barrier shelter in a large commercial gym facility near Switchyard Park. Beacon’s executive director appeared on Big Talk in …
Through the years many musicians have appeared on Big Talk. Back in December, we began to celebrate those musical guests by presenting their songs and work in a show dedicated to them. Now, a month later, we wrap up our celebration with music created and/or performed by the Indianapolis Children’s Choir, Travis Puntarelli, Jason Fickel, …
The second half of Alex Ashkin’s chat with Comedy Attic and Limestone Comedy Fest co-founder Jared Thompson. Part 1 aired last week, Thursday, December 31, 2020. Today’s Big Talk is our first program for the new year, marking the seventh year of Big Talks and the fourth year as a stand-alone program. Host Michael Glab …
Jared Thompson is co-founder of both the Comedy Attic and the Limestone Comedy Fest. Guest host Alex Ashkin finds out why the Comedy Attic has gained a national reputation as a venue performers want to play even though it isn’t located in a big city. Part 2 of this conversation will air next week. Host …
Guest host Alex Ashkin speaks with Doug Bauder, retired founding director of the Indiana University LGBTQ+ Culture Center. Host Michael Glab goes one-on-one with Bloomington’s most fascinating people every Thursday at 5:30pm.
Big Talk guests have included a stellar lineup of local musicians, some of whom have made national and international names for themselves. For a holiday season change of pace, we’re presenting songs, sung and played, by many of our previous musical guests on the program. Today’s edition features the Indianapolis Children’s Choir (founded by Henry …
The second half of our freewheeling, extended conversation with alternative newsweekly publisher, teacher, photographer, and curator Michael Redman. Part 1 aired Thursday, November 26, 2020. Host Michael Glab goes one-on-one with Bloomington’s most fascinating people every Thursday at 5:30pm.
One of this town’s long line of alternative newsweekly publishers, Michael Redman has also been a teacher, a film reviewer, a comic book shop proprietor, and he remains to this day a co-curator of the Bloomington Day of the Dead Community Altar, on virtual display during the COVID lockdown. He never became a rich man, …
She quit what she thought was her dream job to open her own business and hasn’t looked back since. A former acquisitions editor for Indiana University Press, Jane Kupersmith turned her love of coffee into the successful Hopscotch, a local coffeehouse and roastery. Still part owner of Hopscotch, Kupersmith now serves as assistant director of …
The second half of our conversation with songwriter, performer, storyteller, and radio personality Tom Roznowski. Go here for Part 1. [This edition of Big Talk originally aired Thursday, November 12, 2020.] Host Michael Glab goes one-on-one with Bloomington’s most fascinating people every Thursday at 5:30pm.
He’s not originally from Indiana (actually, upstate New York) but nobody knows the Midwest and the Hoosier State like Tom Roznowski. His book, “An American Hometown: Terre Haute, Indiana, 1927,” brings us to an era and a place like some magical combination tour guide and time machine. His radio shows have brought us plain folks …
The second half of our conversation with anthropologists Kathy Schick and Nick Toth, the founders of the independent Stone Age Institute. The duo, married for 43 years, met at an archeological dig and have been working together ever since to bring the history of humankind to other scientists and the general public. They work with …
They met nearly a half century ago on an anthropology dig. Since then, Kathy Schick and Nick Toth, now married 43 years, have spent their lives trying to understand human technology, adaptation, and evolution. The two founded The Stone Age Institute and they incorporate music into their efforts to bring bring their research findings to …
His father was an American emissary to Moscow and a Kremlinologist. He was born just as the Cold War threatened to turn hot. David Keppel began protesting and organizing against the madness of the nuclear arms race in the 1980s. Today he serves as an organizer for the Bloomington Peace Action Coalition and is a …
Lotus Education & Arts Foundation executive director Tamara Loewenthal faced a slew of challenges this year. Not only did she bring an almost entirely new staff on board but the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to turn the 2020 annual world music festival into a virtual affair. Most of Lotus Fest, starting tonight and running through …
The second half of our two-part conversation with Jim Poyser, playwright, environmental activist, and author. His book, “The Last Actor and Other Stories,” was published by Wordpool Press this month. Part 1 of our chat aired Thursday, September 10, 2020. Host Michael Glab goes one-on-one with Bloomington’s most fascinating people every Thursday at 5:30pm.
He wrote–plays, essays, fiction, even haiku–for years and years until one day he decided he’d never win the National Book Award and gave up writing. Then, with the pandemic on everybody’s mind, an editor read his decades-old novella about a global illness and offered to publish it as a book. Jim Poyser threw in ten …
Writing books, says Nancy Hiller, is a natural outgrowth of her primary vocation, working with wood. She’s been making cabinets, furniture, and even museum displays for the last 40 years and since 2009 has written a half dozen books on the pleasures and beauties of wood. Toiling in her workshop gives her plenty of time …
He came to Bloomington a little more than ten years ago and quickly found a position at the Shalom Community Center. Within a year and a half, Forrest Gilmore was the executive director of the city’s resource for homeless people. Shalom provides hot meals, showers, lockers, overnight facilities, and other help for people facing life …
They’ve established reputations as top notch local music-makers on their own but singer Ginger Curry and guitarist Jason Fickel also have done plenty of work as a duo. Ginger’s early vocal influences were gospel and choir while Jason cut his teeth on the blues. The combination of the their backgrounds and talents helped the two …
As the hot summer drags on and protests continue in cities throughout the nation, tempers are flaring and the risk of violence becomes greater. Even in Bloomington, protests have been marred by isolated violent acts and a few volunteer security people carrying semi-automatic weapons have been seen attending several street demonstrations. A group has been …
In the second part of our conversation with the singer/songwriter, Krista Detor talks about her and husband David Weber’s plan to stage live theater in rural Monroe County with the help of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts as well as several Bloomington area theater and arts groups. She also explains why she …
They love her in Bloomington. They love her in Europe. With luck and perseverance she might have become a huge star in America. But the path to megastardom was not one Krista Detor cared to take. An oddball southern California girl — overweight, pale, and ginger — she conquered her fears and doubts to become …
Following reports that Vauhxx Booker was allegedly attacked by white men at Lake Monroe on July 4th, he has become the latest symbol of the fragile state of race relations in America. The incident has garnered international attention but, as Booker himself has stated, “I didn’t want to become another hashtag.” Booker appeared on Big …
After working for The Equity Project at Indiana University for fifteen years, educator and poet Shana Ritter decided to try her hand at writing a novel. She envisioned a mother and her daughters facing expulsion from their homeland because they belonged to a banned religion. A Jew herself, Ritter traveled to Spain to learn about …
He started the magazine and the film series — both under the name The Ryder — 40 years ago. Peter LoPilato wasn’t sure if there’d be a second issue of the magazine or a second date for the film series, but both have become Bloomington mainstays through the decades. The COVID-19 lockdown has forced LoPilato …
This week’s Big Talk is a two-parter. First we chat with high-tech entrepreneur Mike Trotzke, co-founder of Cheddar, The Sprout Box, and The Combine. Then we welcome Anthony Duncan and Mohammed A. Mahdi, two of the three co-founders of Soapy Soap Company, a premium, natural body soap manufacturer. All three guests represent the type of …
Her family has been selling books and magazines since the days of the Great Depression. Margaret Taylor now runs the remaining business of a regional retail and distribution empire started by her parents, Barbara and Jim Spannuth. The Book Corner has stood at the northwest corner of Kirkwood and Walnut since 1964 and continues to …
He’s a fixture at Bloomington’s 4th Street Festival of the Arts, organizing and hosting the Spoken Word Stage. He has published several books of his poetry, has done rink side announcing for the Bleeding Heartland Roller Derby, has co-produced a zombie/roller derby film, chairs the Writers Guild at Bloomington, and has played a key role …
WFHB has been on the air for more than a quarter of a century, offering music, news, and conversation 24 hours a day to listeners in Bloomington and surrounding counties. Stashed here and there in the station’s Waldron Center headquarters are thousands of pieces of memorabilia: newspaper clippings, awards, magazine articles, proclamations, reel-to-reel audiotapes, videos …
Are we witnessing the death of the daily newspaper? Most informed observers seem to think so. The man who has brought daily newspapers from all over the state and the nation into Bloomington for the last five decades is calling it quits at the end of this month. Jack Dopp started out as a nine-year-old …
Like hundreds of thousands of young people across the nation, Charlotte Wager-Miller graduated from college this month and now faces an uncertain future. Will there be jobs for the new graduates? When will the lockdowns end? How long will the viral danger persist? Today’s college graduates are tackling a real world unfamiliar to the graduates …
The moment he heard that Caveat Emptor founder Janis Starcs wanted to shut the venerable used, rare, and collectible bookseller down, Eric Brown dashed over to the store and started negotiating a sale price. Now, four years later, Brown and his wife, co-owner Katy, are struggling to stay afloat with the city under the COVID-19 …
The founder of the Indianapolis Children’s Choir and a world-renowned expert in young people’s voices, Henry Leck retired from the ICC and from his post as associate professor of music at Butler University a few years ago. Now, he’s taken up painting. And exhibit of his work had been mounted at the Bloomington Arts Alliance’s …
While reading Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father and Audacity of Hope a dozen years ago, Craig Fehrman started wondering about the history of presidents’ books. He learned that few had done serious studies of the literary sides of our chief executives. So, he embarked on a decade-long exploration of the topic. His new book …
Due to the COVID-19 crisis, WFHB General Manager Jar Turner has declared the WFHB studios off-limits to show hosts and producers until conditions are determined to be safe. We’ll be airing encore presentations of Big Talk in the meantime. Today we present Part 1 of our January, 2020 interview with university chancellor, education consultant, and …
The finale of our two-part interview with brothers, fun-lovers, and Bloomington music makers, the Rogers boys. Siblings Addison and Lewis, have been making music together since, as small boys, they fiddled around with guitar and drums in their bedrooms. They now have three CD compilations and plan to release a fourth within weeks. Go here …
They’ve been making music and mirth together since they were little kids. And for just as long a time, they’ve dreamed of the stage and stardom. The Rogers brothers started busking on Bloomington’s streets early in this century and then became staples at the Farmers Market. Now they’re making recordings with professional production values and, …
Doug Wissing delved into the secrets of the Central Intelligence Agency to learn about the nearly-anonymous man who essentially ran the spy organization for 12 years, from 1969 through 1981. Ben Evans of Crawfordsville, Indiana, was privy to, as well as intimately involved in, many of the most important episodes in American history during that …
She has listened to and recorded people’s recollections of encounters with UFOs and abduction incidents for more than two decades. Susan Lepselter has written a book entitled The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity, and UFOs in the American Uncanny (University of Michigan Press, 2016) that gathers the stories together and tries to make sense …
From kids who have a hard time staying in school to people grappling with substance abuse to veterans bedeviled by PTSD, there exists a common soother. It’s no sure cure but it just may help some folks get a step or two closer to well-being. It is the horse. Bloomington’s PALS — People & Animal …
Most of us are aware that the 2016 presidential election process was tainted by the proliferation of social media pranksters, vandals, and outright liars. Foreign countries and domestic political entities gamed social media like Facebook and Twitter to create misinformation campaigns. With the 2020 primary season about to begin next week, are we any safer …
Coming from a long line of volunteers and extraordinarily good neighbors, it was only natural that Lucy Shaich would make volunteerism her life’s work. She’s been in charge of the City of Bloomington volunteer coordination program since the year 2000. The city’s Volunteer Network, an arm of the Department of Community and Family Resources, was …
Last week we began our conversation with university administrator and higher education diversity pioneer Charlie Nelms. The second half of our chat reveals many of the internal traits and characteristics that allowed Nelms to thrive in the world of academia after growing up on a subsistence farm without electricity in Arkansas when Jim Crow laws …
He was born to subsistence sharecroppers in Arkansas. One of 11 children, Charlie Nelms’ love affair with reading began when the farm’s landlord started bringing a weekly delivery of newspapers and news magazines. Nelms’ parents told him and his siblings they could grow up to be anything they wanted to be and the kids took …
Both Michelle Martin Coleman and Elaine Guinn have experienced the effects of suicide. Both have dedicated their lives to understanding the act and reaching out to people who may be considering it as well as those touched by the loss of a loved one because of it. They are part of Project Stay — its …
He juggles writing verse with trying to get rural electric customers to take a more active role in their energy delivery. Alex Chambers sometimes even combines his two passions, referring to the global climate crisis in his poetry and even, once, writing a poem for an environmental journal. Chambers, an adjunct lecturer at Indiana University, …
A part of the WonderLab experience since the mid-1990s, Karen Jepson-Innes now leads the science and natural history museum on West 4th Street. Jepson-Innes, a biologist, got together with other like-minded scientists who wanted to bring the wonders and joys of science to both children and adults alike. At first they traveled to schools and …
The Arts Alliance of Greater Bloomington at last has a home it can call its own. The long-standing arts advocacy organization signed a lease this month to occupy a space at the College Mall on the east side. Board president Himsel had tried to persuade the board to seek a brick and mortar site for several …
Flow arts mama Paula Chambers and poet-slash-foley artist Tony Brewer are co-producers of the third annual revue inspired by the storied song, dance, magic, and you-name-it traveling extravaganza that defined American entertainment from the late 19th through the mid 20th centuries. Vaudeville gave the nation the likes of the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, W.C. Fields, …
Gender and sex: Simple topics, right? Not so, especially in light of the changes in popular notions about these topics in the last few years. It seems most people who expound most vociferously on gender and sex know the least about the distinctions between the two or even what each word means. Jen Maher, clinical …
He started drawing at the age of two and almost immediately knew that’s what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Milton Knight hated school and was discouraged by his parents from making comic books but he taught himself the rudiments of drawing and read, voraciously, about the great artists. He has …
A senior at Indiana University in 2016, Alexi King turned her work at an internship into the Midway Music Festival. Dedicated to promoting and connecting women and those who identify as women through music, the Fest features performers and music professionals from all over the United States. The nonprofit, Midway Music Speaks, with King as …
As next year’s 100th anniversary of the ratification of 19th Amendment (mandating the women’s vote in all elections in the United States) approached, Monroe County History Center collections manager Hilary Fleck became curious about the role of local women in the fight for the vote. She was warded the May Wright Sewall Fellowship from Indiana …
After volunteering for the Lotus Education & Arts Foundation since its inception 26 years ago, appearing as a performer in Lotus Fest, and serving on the organization’s board of directors, Tamara Loewenthal became its chief this past May. Next week, she’ll oversee her first Lotus Fest as 27 international music, dance, and performance acts appear …
Previously un-aired conversation with six guests who’ve appeared on Big Talk during the last year. They’re passionate and committed. They give of their time and energy. They want to make their local community and the world better places. They are Tracey Hutchings-Goetz of Hoosier Action, Kassandra Botts of the Indiana Recovery Alliance, Dr. Rob Stone …
The nonprofits Hoosier Action and the Indiana Recovery Alliance are working together to raise awareness about the state’s work requirement for Medicaid recipients. Bloomington organizer Hutchings-Goetz and the Alliance’s interim executive director Botts hope to send a message to the Indiana state legislature from people all over the state that the requirement is a needless …
She didn’t know what to do with her life until, by chance, someone asked her to get on a skateboard. From that day, May 5, 2004, forward, Courtney Payne-Taylor has devoted her life to teaching young girls and not-so young women how to balance, how to fall, and how to get back up again. Skateboarding, …
As she approaches her third year at the helm of the Cardinal Stage Company, artistic director Kate Galvin talks about South Central Indiana’s premier regional theater company as well as how she wound up in Bloomington. The Cardinal’s 2019-20 season begins in two weeks with its production of “The Great Gatsby.” Galvin was an award-winning …
He’s our town’s doctor, having spent some 28 years working in the Bloomington Hospital emergency room. Now he tends to people in palliative and hospice care programs, helping them through the last stage of life. Rob Stone is a loud and insistent voice for health care reform in this country. A strong advocate for universal, …
Big Talk is back for a new season of original shows! This week’s guest is songwriter, busker, traveller, philosopher, puppeteer, off-the-gridder Travis Puntarelli. He’s an ambassador for music, both for the ear and the heart. Simultaneously soft-spoken and determined, he’s gone from high school dropout to husband, father, and self-supporting balladeer. Fellow street-music-maker Marc Haggerty …
Diagnosed as a small child with a learning disorder, Adria Nassim experienced problems with spatial recognition and social interactions through her late teens. Then she was told by her doctors she was on the autism spectrum. That inspired her to learn as much as she could about the neurodevelopmental disorder. Now she lectures and instructs …
Searching for direction after college, Wes Martin volunteered at WFHB at his father’s urging. Seven years later, he became the station’s fourth news director. Before taking the job, Martin had left Bloomington to earn his master’s in journalism and then to serve as editor of an English language daily newspaper in Thailand. Now he’s leaving …
Another helping of stories, flights of fantasy, gags, recollections, and observations from the two surviving members of the Firesign Theater, Phil Proctor and David Ossman. The pair came to town for the spring 2019 edition of WFHB’s Firehouse Follies, “Fireheads & Tales.” Thanks to Richard Fish for helping set up this conversation. Host Michael Glab …
The Firesign Theater created sketch comedy; fantastic, psychedelic, associative improv; and absurdist performances beginning in the mid-1960s. Four talented, imaginative friends began fashioning their own audio world at a Los Angeles listener-supported radio station. They graduated to albums, movies, and television through the years. Now only Phil Proctor and David Ossman survive. They bill themselves …
After Adam Nahas and his art school friends graduated from Indiana University they found themselves without the school’s physical resources and human network. So he and a few other artists started up a shared work space — akin to a clubhouse — for creative types here in Bloomington. Their seminal locus has evolved into a support …
After taking a “walkabout” for several years to raise funds for Wayne State University Press and then to manage the Boise (Idaho) Contemporary Theater, Gabe Gloden and his wife, actor and playwright Emily Goodson, came back to Bloomington. Gloden took over the Cardinal Stage Company without missing a beat. He had served as managing director …
Like many Americans, Denise Valkyrie has struggled to make ends meet and has experienced devastating health care expenses. She works multiple jobs to keep her family afloat. These experiences give her a perspective, she says, the current city council lacks. Currently administrative support coordinator for WFIU/WTIU and Indiana Radio & Television Services as well as …
One of two mid-20s candidates for city council in this year’s municipal election, Ryan Maloney also is one of two Indiana University students hoping to gain a seat. Born in Australia and raised in Nevada, Maloney has worked as a bus driver since moving to Bloomington to study at SPEA. He hopes to become a …
A software engineer and passionate environmentalist, Bingham takes on incumbent Dorothy Granger and fellow challenger Sue Sgambelluri in next month’s Democratic primary. The winner faces Andrew Guenther, running unopposed in the Republican primary, in November’s general election. Formerly co-chair of Bloomington’s Innovation Task Force, Bingham served on John Hamilton transition team after the 2015 municipal …
The ringleader of the whimsical voter participation advocacy group Grassroots Goofballs turns serious with his announcement he’s running for Bloomington’s top political office as an independent. A passionate lover of books and a dedicated student of theater, Arena hopes to bring the perspective of those just turning 30 to the civic forum. He claims it’s …
A “Bloomerang” resident since 2013, Matt Flaherty has returned to Indiana University as a student in his 30s to gain dual master’s degrees in public affairs and environmental science. This, after earning a law degree here in 2010. While working for a high-powered Chicago law firm Flaherty longed for a vocation that would benefit people …
A fundraiser for Indiana University, Sue Sgambelluri has had a foot in each of the worlds of corporate philanthropy and nonprofit organizations since she arrived to Bloomington in 1994. Sgambelluri’s experience witnessing the collapse of the steel industry in Northwest Indiana in the 1970s and ’80s inspires her to make sure Bloomington never suffers its …
Running for the second time for city council, Smith hopes to defeat fellow Democrat Jim Blickensdorf, owner of Grazie Italiano restaurant on the square, to fill the seat being vacated by single-termer Allison Chopra. Smith ran in 2011 against Marty Spechler, himself a one-term council member. Smith has worked all his life in the social …
The 2016 Bloomington Woman of the Year and a clinical social worker, Jean Capler is a first time candidate for elective office. She’s taking on At Large incumbents Susan Sandberg, Jim Sims, and Andy Ruff as well as two other first-time challengers Vauhxx Booker and Matt Flaherty in the May Democratic primary. No Republican is …
He’s the only Republican running for office so far in the 2019 Bloomington election. Guenther, a 2018 graduate of Indiana University, is hoping to unseat incumbent Dorothy Granger on the city council. Guenther already has made his mark in local politics, serving on several civic boards and commissions. He grew up in farm country and …
Currently the deputy director of the Indiana Arts Commission, Miah Michaelsen served as Bloomington “art czarina” (her words) under former Mayor Mark Kruzan. During her stint in city hall, she led the successful effort to declare the state’s first municipal arts and cultural district here. She also was instrumental in getting the city and Ivy …
A veteran of seven previous political campaigns, Kate Rosenbarger has announced her own candidacy for the Bloomington city council District 1 seat now held by Chris Sturbaum. Rosenbarger was deputy director of Liz Watson’s campaign for US Congress in 2018. Now the executive director of TEDx Bloomington, Rosenbarger previously worked as an analyst for NeighborWorks …
His work can be seen in any number of public locations around town, both indoors and outdoors. Joe Lamantia creates three-dimensional art with the help of individuals and groups, his collaborators ranging from pre-schoolers to the elderly. In Joe’s world, the finished work of art is nowhere near as important as the cooperative process that created …
He worked as a reporter and columnist for the Herald-Times for nearly 35 years. Then he went on to write and edit for Bloom magazine for another two years. Leonard is a journalist’s journalist. He’s covered everything from rock stars to elementary school teachers. Journalism has changed since Leonard came out of Ball State University …
Board chair for Bloomington Pride, Cummings has helped guide the LGBTQ advocacy and outreach nonprofit for the last three years. The organization’s signature event, the 2019 Bloomington Pride Film Festival, takes place this weekend, Friday and Saturday, February 1st and 2nd, at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater and several other venues. Cummings characterizes this year’s presentation as …
Future Georgia congressman John Lewis was the 25-year-old chairperson of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on March 5, 1965, when he participated in a voting rights march in and around Selma, Alabama. That day has become known as Bloody Sunday as some 600 marchers were attacked by state troopers and posse members. Lewis suffered …
She comes from a storied Bloomington family that’s produced a Shakespearean scholar, the city’s first civil engineer, and Iraq’s former ambassador to the United Nations. Teacher of the Arabic language and a long-time community activist, Zaineb Istrabadi calls herself a “midwestern gal” despite being born in England, raised in Baghdad, and having lived a large …
She cut her teeth working for a faith-based community advocacy organization in Minnesota and now she’s back in Bloomington, her home town. Hess Pace returned to her roots in 2017 to head up Hoosier Action. Serving as executive director of the citizen-empowerment group, Hess Pace hopes to rouse the troops in Monroe County and surrounding …
Celebrating one year of Big Talk as a stand-alone program following the Daily Local News every Thursday, we present an encore interview with our very first guest, Indiana poet laureate Adrian Matejka. The author of The Big Smoke, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Matejka is an associate professor …
Cindy Brubaker loves old buildings. So much so, she’s devoted her professional life to renovating and preserving them. The developer and manager of the I Fell complex, she is a key player in the transformation of the area around Rogers and 4th streets into a burgeoning arts and entertainment district just southwest of downtown Bloomington. …
The two-term mayor of the far-northern Indiana city has announced he will not run for reelection in 2019. Buttigieg gained national attention when he ran for Democratic National Committee chair in 2017 and was even mentioned as a potential party nominee for president in 2020. His decision not to seek a third term has led …
The longtime, plainspoken Perry Township trustee, Combs is a former schoolteacher who has also conducted classes behind state prison walls. A true party loyalist, he calls himself both a Roosevelt Democrat and an adherent of Jeffersonian democracy. His nickname came about when he left the US Army and took up fishing while looking for direction …
George Pinney helped start up the musical theater degree program at Indiana University’s Department of Theatre, Drama & Contemporary Dance. Throughout his 30-year career at IU, he nurtured talented performers who’ve gone on to become mainstays on Broadway and stages around the world. Invariably described as “beloved,” Pinney credits his ear for his success as …
Bloomington’s best-known figure in the Black Lives Matter movement, Vauhxx Booker, oddly enough started out life burdened by a profound speech impediment. He’s overcome that to become the spokesperson and the public face of the local BLM branch. He’s earned front page newspaper coverage, first disrupting Mayor John Hamilton’s 2018 State of the City speech, …
Scared and desperate, Debra Morrow walked through the front door of Middle Way House a decade and a half ago. Since that day, Morrow has created a new life for herself and her kids, earning a college degree, rising through the ranks at the domestic abuse resource center, and flowering as a whole human. Now she …
He pulls no punches. Outspoken Indiana University political science professor Jeffrey C. Isaac joins host Michael Glab to riff on the most ballyhooed mid-term election since the Republican Revolution in 1994. Were the results a repudiation of the Donald Trump administration or did the sitting president’s party strengthen an already rock-hard base? And what does …
She became enchanted with the idea of cohousing years ago and eventually helped start groups for people who might be interested in buying homes in the “intentional community.” Now Marion Sinclair will see her dream become a reality as building contractor Loren Wood will begin grading and excavating the land for the development on South …
A former high school math teacher, Loren Wood discovered his love for building homes during his summer vacations and eventually started his own business, Loren Wood Builders. Several years ago, he was contacted by members of the Bloomington Cohousing Project group to help them build their dream neighborhood, a car-free, shared-amenities, tight-knit community where neighbors …
Inspired to action by the contentious 2016 presidential election, Sarah Perfetti, Chelsea Sanders, and Kate Keith staged the first Be Golden Women’s Empowerment Conference in Bloomington in 2017. The second annual international gathering happens this weekend at venues all around town. The Be Golden conference seeks to include women and allies from all walks of …
After serving in Vietnam with the United States Marines and earning a Purple Heart, teenaged Marc Haggerty came back to Indiana and immediately got involved with antiwar protests. Since then he has taken up a variety of causes including voting rights, housing, the environment, prisoners’ rights, and many others. In recent years he has been …
Simon Coronel, internationally renowned illusionist, opens a one-person show, “Glitches in Reality,” tomorrow at the Bloomington Playwrights Project. Chad Rabinovitz is the producing artistic director of the BPP, who, after seeing Coronel on the television program, “Penn & Teller: Fool Us,” contacted the performer with an offer to collaborate on the stage presentation. Rabinovitz — himself …
Cristian Medina and the team at the Indiana Geological and Water Survey are searching for ways to safely dispose of the carbon dioxide gas created by the burning of fossil fuels. He hopes the solution may slow down global warming. The Chilean native practices a hard science but also has a passion for poetry. He …
Monroe County Commissioner Amanda Barge had an idea in 2017: Get community leaders, public officials, medical experts, and people with life experiences together to tackle the Opioid Crisis. She recruited Monroe County Council member Shelli Yoder to the cause and now the two are about to stage the 2nd Annual South Central Indiana Opioid Summit: …
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Reserve is a small group of unpaid, fully-trained, armed law enforcement officers who help Sheriff Brad Swain and his paid deputies in times of need and who hire out to private organizations for crowd control and security. The reservists came into being more than 60 years ago as Monroe County’s first …
Cindy Beaulé has been a member of the WFHB family since shortly after the station first went on the air a quarter of a century ago. She hosts a Tuesday afternoon music show and serves as WFHB’s volunteer coordinator, wrangling some 150 music, news, and administrative personnel. She explains what it takes to become part …
The son of the legendary Indiana boy — Hoagy Carmichael — who grew up to be one of the greatest popular songwriters of the 20th Century, Hoagy Bix is in town to help stage and promote the music and dance revue, “Stardust Road: A Hoagy Carmichael Musical Journey.” The show traces four decades of American …
Feliz Çiçek was born in the ancient land near the Black Sea in what is now known as Turkey that gave rise to the Amazons of Greek myth. Filiz hails from a family of female poets and musicians. She has combined the traditions of strong women and creative, imaginative ones to become an international advocate …
Maynard and his wife raise what they like to call “free range children.” He’s adopted the persona of a 21st Century viking and began to post social media anecdotes about his kids and the joys and horrors of parenting nearly a decade ago. The posts became so popular he’s turned the best of them into …
Both Chris Mattingly and Dave Torneo are lovers of words — and the means to convey them to the public. They have founded several old school, letter block presses specializing in handmade volumes of poetry. Mattingly, who has published three books already, will release his fourth, The Catalyst, later this month. His work deals with …
Brought up in a strict Pentecostal home in Indianapolis’ tough 2G neighborhood, Darran Mosley avoided the lures of the streets and fell in love with music. He’s making a name for himself in Bloomington as the proprietor of Misfit Toy Entertainment, deejaying and kayjaying all around town. He also sings lead vocals for the Prince …
She’s the “Fearless Ringleader” of the Hudsucker Posse and a tireless advocate for all forms of dance in Bloomington. A self-described “flow arts mama” and “am-bad-assador” for hoop arts, Chambers and her spinning, gyrating cohorts have hosted nearly 1000 twice-weekly jams in Bryan Park since 2008. A born performer, she fell in love with the …
As she closes out her star-turn run in the Cardinal Stage’s Company’s musical production, “Fun Home,” Amanda talks of her childhood in the tiny Illinois town of Bridgeport, the discovery of her own sexuality, and her deep passion for opera on this week’s Big Talk. Amanda is re-committing to the stage after a bitter-sweet dalliance …
Author of two books about the gifted but erratic World War II Life magazine photo-essayist Gene Smith, Sam Stephenson has dedicated much of his life to tracing the artist’s career. Smith ran away from his high-paying job, his family, and his comfortable upstate New York home to settle into a bare Manhattan loft from the …
He started out in radio at WFHB and now serves as the jazz director for WFIU. Like many young people, David Brent Johnson stumbled and fumbled through life upon reaching adulthood. He discovered jazz in his twenties, what he calls his “light on the road to Damascus” moment. Then, he and a partner produced an …
She taught herself how to make wood furniture as a young expatriate in England and then went to furniture- and cabinet-maker school on a dare. Now in Bloomington she’s a nationally-renowned creator of built-in and stand-alone wooden household furnishings. She has authored several books, including The Hoosier Cabinet in Kitchen History, A Home of Her Own, Making …
A scene has stuck in Michael Koryta’s mind since he was 17 years old — that of missing IU student Jill Behrman’s father, gazing into a creek where his daughter was thought to be found. Behrman’s body later was found elsewhere. Now Koryta has written a new book, How It Happened, inspired by that heart-wrenching …
It started out as a fun project for the family. Soon, Derek Richey’s photographic remembrances of bygone Bloomington became a full-fledged obsession. The co-founder of Bloomington Fading, co-author of Bloomington: Then and Now, and board president of Bloomington Restorations Inc., Richey talks about finding pavement where historic buildings once stood when he arrived in town …
She became entranced with Russia just as then-President Ronald Reagan was labeling it an “evil empire.” Novelist and Russophile Tristra Newyear visited the vast nation as a teenager and later worked there as an editor for the Moscow Times. In the meantime, she did her PhD work on the Buryat people, ethnic Russians nestled between …
Since becoming part-owner of The Back Door, Nicci Boroski, familiarly known as Nicci B, has become a local leader in the colorful, diverse community known by the five initials: LBGTQ. But, as Nicci would be the first to acknowledge, those five initials hardly begin to cover the the entirety of the wide number of choices …
Enamored with smart devices since he was a kid, James Clawson devoted his post-graduate studies to bridging the gap between the computer and health care worlds. He and his colleagues at Georgia Tech’s Everyday Computing Lab developed a mobile device to help rural breast cancer patients navigate both the disease and the often confusing health …
The first female firefighter in the history of the Bloomington Fire Department, Jean Magrane retired in 2013 after breaking the gender barrier in 1987. She passed the department’s physical agility test after several previous women had failed, then she was promoted to sergeant and eventually captain in charge of her own crew. It wasn’t easy …
As Bloomingon attempts to position itself as a tech innovation and investment center for the state of Indiana, the city depends more and more on angel investors and established tech company owners like Pat East. He and his wife, Jamie, founded their pay-per-click firm, Hanapin Marketing, some 14 years ago. The company is now running …
Heather Bradshaw is a research scientist in the Indiana University Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences. She specializes in studying lipids — fats, to the layperson — and their presence and roles in, among other things, the marijuana plant and olive oil. The lipids in pot may one day be isolated and turned into medications …
Author, journalist, and war correspondent Doug Wissing is writing a biography of Hoosier Benjamin C. Evans, Jr., one of the most powerful men in Washington spanning the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson through Ronald Reagan. Before this project, Wissing spent several stints embedded with US Army combat soldiers in Afghanistan, experiences that resulted in two books, …
He’s been embedded with US Army forces in Afghanistan numerous times. He’s climbed into the mountain regions of that country to get to know the Pashtun people. He’s written two books on what he calls our “failed war” in that southwest Asian land. He’s communed with mountain people in Tibet. And he’s studied the history …
Campus sexual assault and rape have been in the news the past few years. Colleges and universities have taken steps to address the problem. Some say those steps have trampled the due process rights of the accused. Amelia Lahn is a local attorney who practices criminal defense and family law. Much of her business comes …
He started out as a deejay at WFHB and went on to become host of the popular Friday afternoon music show, Soul Kitchen, on Bloomington’s NPR station, WFIU. Brother William, as he’s known around town, is a lawyer, a civic volunteer, a teacher, and an aspiring Episcopal deacon. His story reaches as far back as …
Jeff Isaac is a noted and outspoken professor at Indiana University’s school of political science. He’s the past editor of the academic journal, Political Science, and has written countless articles for scholarly publications and numerous books. The road he took to academia was never straight. A kid growing up in Queens, New York City, he …
Jeffrey C. Isaac is a noted observer of the American and the global political scenes. He’s been the editor of the respected journal, Political Science, has written numerous books, and his articles appear often in news magazines and academic publications. The Indiana University professor is outspoken, taking to social media on occasion to voice his …
She is the grande dame of Bloomington politics. Charlotte Zietlow jumped into the political fray nearly fifty years ago when she and a rag-tag band of newcomers took over City Hall in the 1971 election. Since then she’s pushed for programs and ordinances as both a City Council member and a Monroe County Commissioner. She …
Sue Rall performs acrobatics high above a stage as an aerial silks artist. She’s also a drag performer, appearing regularly at The Back Door in weekly shows. On this episode of Big Talk, Rall speaks with Michael Glab about her drag character and her earliest introduction to the drag scene.
She hangs from bolts of material and assumes positions testing the limits of both her artistic vision and her own body. The next night she may be seen performing as Jaimee Spangle, a glam rock star who doesn’t know yet that he’s washed up. Taking the stage as either an aerial silks acrobat or one …
Newly-named state poet laureate Adrian Matejka says Bloomington is an almost magical, mystical fertile ground for creative writers. A professor in Indiana University’s English Department and a National Book Award finalist for his poetic biography of boxer Jack Johnson, The Big Smoke, Matejka assumed his post as Indiana’s bard ambassador this month. He joins Michael …
Amanda Barge is a first-term Monroe County Commissioner and a rising star in the local Democratic Party. A family counselor who grew up in a politically active family, Barge finds her social work experiences were invaluable preparation for her stint as an elective officeholder. She has helped spearhead the county’s efforts to cope with the …
Joan Hawkins, associate professor at Indiana University’s Media School, is one of the organizers of an academic conference and festival marking the 50th anniversary of a landmark, revolutionary year. Titled “Wounded Galaxies 1968: Paris, Prague, Chicago,” the conference runs February 6-11. A pre-conference festival has already begun with film screenings, art exhibits, musical performances, and …