Big Talk – WFHB

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Now that the United States military has withdrawn fro Afghanistan, we felt it was time to present a re-edited and expanded version of the entire 2017 interview we did with embedded journalist Douglas A.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 …

The only music director radio station WFHB has ever known is retiring at the end of this month, May 2021. In this edition, Manion explains how he got “music DNA” in his genes. Part 1 aired Thursday, May 20, 2021. [Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.]

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 …