Inner States

A new show about art and culture in South Central Indiana from the producers of Inner States, Earth Eats, and Journey Indiana

Family recipes may be beloved within the family, but they don’t usually rise to the level where people ask for them outside the family. And when they do, sometimes the family is protective of the recipe. They feel it’s so much a part of their identity, they can’t give it away. I grew up with a chocolate cake recipe that my dad made for most special occasions. It was beloved within the family, and...

A couple months ago, I got invited to help put on an experiment in collective art-making. I was working with two smart, creative thinkers here on the IU campus. Carmel Curtis is the interim director of the IU Moving Image Archive – she initiated the project. And Linda Tien is the director of the Grunwald Gallery at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture, and Design. We invited people to the Grun...

On our last episode, we talked about welcoming refugees in the U.S. And it got me thinking about what it’s like to live away from the place where you’re from, especially if it’s in another part of the world. Say your mother is Lebanese and, I don’t know, your father’s…American but also grew up in Beirut, and their circumstances meant that you grew up in Cyprus and Pakistan and spent your later chi...

I’ve been thinking about borders for a few months now. The last time we had our current president, he talked a lot about building a wall between Mexico and the U.S. There’s been less talk of a wall this time around. Turns out, in the 21st century, a wall isn’t the most effective way to stop people coming into your country. It’s bureaucracy. Visas, passports, customs, resident status. You can stop...

There’s been a lot of talk in the past few months about a range of important issues: the rule of law, checks and balances, free speech on campuses, whether people’s jobs will continue to exist. You know what I haven’t heard people talk about much? Oranges. I’ve heard precious little consideration of what you might whisper to an orange before you peel it. Admittedly, I wasn’t thinking about that ei...

This iteration of How to Preserve an Orange, a participatory performance by artist and poet clay scofield, played on February 25, 2025 at Redbud Books in Bloomington, IN. This is the uncut performance itself. It's a bit of a ritual, or meditation, and you can absolutely follow along at home. If you do, let us know how it went! Send us an email or voice memo to wfiuinnerstates@gmail.com.

Local newspapers are disappearing left and right. Even when they still exist, they’re increasingly owned by private equity firms or subject to corporate consolidation, making them local in name only. This is a problem. It's a problem for democracy. Research has found that after private equity takes over local papers, voter turnout drops. People are more likely to vote straight ticket for the party...

Nathan Dillon is the director of Everybody Rocks. It’s a music education company, and these days, it’s focused on bringing live music to old folks. Another way to describe Nathan’s work is that he drives around and sings at senior centers. He’s been running Everybody Rocks for a couple decades now, and all that time has given him insight into music and memory, the invisibility of old people in mos...

The other day I went to check in on my 10-year-old during her screentime. She was playing Goat Simulator on her Switch. She was also watching Gravity Falls on her iPad. Other times she just watches people play video games. I get it. It’s my role, to not understand my kids’ media habits. And, as a parent, it’s also my job to worry about my kids’ screentime. Maybe you don’t worry. Maybe you’re at on...

My mission here at WFIU is to cover local arts and culture in Southern Indiana. The thing is, when you’re worried about the health of democracy in your country, local arts coverage can feel like too little too late. I believe you can’t have a healthy democracy without lively and thoughtful arts and culture. But still, sometimes you want to face things a little more head-on.  So I decided to invite...

Stephanie Solomon and I became friends in our early twenties. We talked about everything. Gender was one of those things. The assumptions people carried with them about how men and women should be in the world, or how relationships should work. We saw the problems so clearly. As you do when you’re young. A couple decades later, it turns out it’s not as easy to change it all as we thought. These da...

My 9-year-old admitted in early December that they already have a list of the most stressful things about the holiday season. Number one? Buying presents. There are things about your kids you can’t take credit for, and others you can. Unfortunately for my kids, I think I can take credit for that one. The holidays are a good excuse to treat the people you love. And it is so satisfying to give someo...

When you hear the term “American Heartland,” you probably think of fields of wheat, barns, quilts, and farmers—probably of northern European descent. There might be a sense of nostalgia. Perhaps even the sense that, as the non-multicultural counterpoint to the more diverse United States as a whole, this is the region that represents the core of the country, a core whose essence must be protected a...

As the final chapter of our missing cat saga opens, it’s getting to be winter, and Kayte still hasn’t found Rita. The odds of Rita surviving are getting slim.

If political news is too much right now, we’ve got a solution. It’s a story we aired a while back: The Third Time Rita Left. You can find the first two chapters here and here. The story takes place in the fall of 2016. Another election season. In Chapter 3: Missing Rita, things are not looking good. Kayte’s partner thinks Rita was probably eaten by a coyote. Kayte’s boss says cats just have their...

If political news is too much right now, we’ve got a solution. It’s a story we aired a while back: The Third Time Rita Left. The story takes place in the fall of 2016. Another election season. In Chapter 2: Finding Rita, we hear how Kayte and Rita first met, then met again, and whether, according to cat expert Mikel Delgado, there was any chance Rita remembered.

I’m writing this on election. By the time you’re reading this, you might know who the next president will be. You might be disappointed. You might be relieved. Either way, now might be a good time to turn your mind to more local, and personal, questions. So we’re bringing you a story we aired a while back. It’s called The Third Time Rita Left. The story takes place in the fall of 2016. Another ele...

Election day is around the corner. We’re going to be choosing candidates for offices from the president to the county coroner. And a lot of those offices are going to be sitting uncontested on the ballots. Only one person running. So many of those. And, interestingly, the races that aren’t being contested – they’re not split evenly between the parties. In 2022, Republicans let 14.5 percent of race...

I don’t know how to be cool. Which is fine. I’m cool with it, at this point. I feel like coolness is largely the arena of youth. In my case, I wasn’t cool then, either. Once, when I was 15, I was hanging out with some friends, and I don’t know what prompted it, but one of them told me I was already basically 30. She might have meant it as a dig, but I took it as an observation of basic fact. I too...

Mary Hunter runs the Materials for the Arts program at the Monroe County Waste Reduction District here in Bloomington. We know it as the recycling center. To find her, you walk past the Trading Post, where you can trade household goods, and open the door to the Materials for the Arts office. It’s maybe a 12x12 room, and it’s chock full of stuff. The walls are covered with handmade objects, made fr...

If you’re wondering which house in Terre Haute, Indiana has the most followers on Twitter, I think it’s safe to say it’s the one on N. 8th Street, surrounded by Indiana State University parking lots, just south of the marching band’s practice fields.  It’s the Eugene V. Debs museum. Long before it was a museum, it was the home of Eugene V. and Kate Debs. A hundred years ago, Eugene Debs was the mo...

I really believe in local government. It’s nice having a functioning sewage system. Zoning affects all of us. The parks here in Bloomington are hard to beat. And yet, in spite of all that, I can not get myself to a city council meeting. So I wanted to talk with someone who can, someone who was so into city council that they wanted to join it. Last spring, I heard Isak Asare on a local podcast, The...

When Justin Carney’s grandmother was alive, his family would get together all the time. His mom and aunt and uncles loved being around their mother – and each other. When she died, the grief hit each of the siblings in their own way, and for a long time, they didn’t see much of each other. Justin was in college at the time, studying art, and focusing on photography. He started taking pictures of h...

In 2019, singer-songwriter Amy Oelsner started Girls Rock Bloomington an after-school program and summer camp for girls, and trans and nonbinary youth. On this episode, we’ll hear from some of the youth at Girls Rock Bloomington, and Amy and I talk about how she got started as a musician – hint – it involved working at a Girls Rock program. We also talk about how personal loss can lead to creative...