Lives Radio Show & Podcast with Stuart Chittenden

She started her writing career writing sexy romances, but in 2008 Rachelle Chase discovered Buxton, Iowa thanks to her former romance writing instructor and friend, Leigh Michaels. By January 2017 she’d written, sold, and released her first nonfiction book, “Lost Buxton” and, in 2019, her second one, “Creating the Black Utopia of Buxton, Iowa.” In this show we talk about her writing, a l...

A conversation with architects Emily Andersen and Geoff DeOld, cofounders of DeOld Andersen Architecture . We talk about the purpose and possibility of architecture to enable human activity, strengthen neighborhoods, and activate public spaces, as well as how architecture can enable spaces to be both functional and beautiful. We also share a little of their own personal journeys and being a h...

Jody Wood is a New York-based artist using video, installation, performance, and community organization to engage with socially informed content. Jody is intrigued by interpersonal relationships – how they form, how they dissolve, and their delicate underpinnings. She approaches her artwork as an opportunity to explore this fascination and consequently has moved increasingly toward working directl...

Arun Agarwal is a former Wall Street investment banker at Prudential Securities who has primarily focused on healthcare and real estate initiatives. Arun began his own private equity firm in 2002, returning to Omaha, Nebraska to set up a home base for White Lotus Group , which has facilitated projects totaling over $1.5 billion. In our conversation we talk about private equity, risk, community dev...

Tim Christian is the visionary behind the film finance and production company Night Fox Entertainment . In our conversation, we talk movies, the difference between producers and executive producers, the business of film, and policies and tax incentives to support film making. Tim also shares more about his life, faith, and inspiration and the kinds of stories he wants to tell. Being first and fore...

Jen Fisher is Deloitte’s chief well-being officer in the United States, where she drives the strategy and innovation around work-life, health, and wellness. Jen is a leading voice on workplace well-being and creating human-centered organizational cultures. She hosts WorkWell, a podcast series on the latest work-life trends and is co-author of the new book, Work Better Together: How to Cultivate St...

Dr. Michael Dixon is president and CEO of the UNeMed Corporation , a company that works with faculty, students, and staff of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and Nebraska Medicine to help commercialize innovative, new ideas that have the potential to improve public health for Nebraska residents and beyond. Under his leadership, UNeMed has more than do...

The trauma of managing her father’s stroke was one catalyst that took Victoria Kirilloff into her own business as a Divorce and Family Financial Mediator and Holistic Wealth Consultant . Victoria shares stories of how her father – a Russian heritage nuclear engineer – found love in rural Nebraska, built several businesses, but suffered an untimely stroke that had Victoria questioning not only her...

Sandra Reding joined the Aksarben Foundation as President in 2017, where she oversees and implements its strategic direction. For over 100 years, the Aksarben Foundation has been focused on giving time, energy, and resources to create a better heartland. Enabling talent to flourish in Nebraska has become a focus of the Aksarben Foundation over the last few years. In our conversation, Sandra talks...

Over the last few years some military veterans have been guests on the show. As this week marks Memorial Day, honoring and mourning the military personnel who have died in the performance of their military duties, I listened back to a few conversations with guests that speak to their own experiences in the armed services and its context in their lives. This show features parts of my conversations...

Julia Weist is a visual artist who explores how the process of record keeping reveals crucial social truths around shared systems of knowledge and power. In our conversation, Weist talks about her interest in how non-artists document their lived experiences, shares her experience as an artist in residence within city government, and considers the nature of public space and digital space, all illus...

Business and life partners, Patty and Mike Malone started as a photography company shooting film and held on for the ride through the birth of digital photography and then digital motion. They have led their small production crew to document extraordinary places, such as Mexico’s Banco Chinchorro Biosphere Reserve, home to the largest and purest population of American Crocodiles, and document extr...

Jamie Berglund is the Executive Director of Spark, an Omaha-based community development organization focused on catalyzing transformative community and economic development initiatives. In our conversation, Jamie describes community and the long road to community development, gentrification contrasted by positive community wealth building models, what true listening to neighborhood residents...

Rachel Fox is a multiple entrepreneur, author, teacher, and founder of You Go Girl , a non-profit organization dedicated to ending the cycle of self-doubt and low self-esteem in young women and girls by creating a vision for who they can be. Honored many times for her community and business leadership, Rachel talks about the personal impact during her early life moving from the South to the Midwes...

Chris Harding Thornton talks about her magnificent debut novel “Pickard County Atlas,” sharing how Shakespeare influenced the book, as well as how themes such as free will or the lack of it play on the lives and actions of the main characters. Thornton also talks about her life and its geographic dislocations and how the craft of writing emerged for her.

This show's guests are poets, teachers, and community leaders Kathie Klarreich, founder of Exchange for Change - a nonprofit teaching writing in prisons - and P. Scott Cunningham, founder and executive director of the O, Miami Poetry Festival , which celebrates Miami, FL through the lens of poetry. Together they host the Florida Prison Poet Laureate initiative. They talk about the importance and i...

Liz Gre is a composer, vocalist and performance artist writing genre-less compositions with Black Women for Black Women. Her practice is rooted in storytelling and the viscerality of the imaginary. Currently, she is a PhD student at City, University of London in the UK, studying how ethnographic composition can best answer questions around the Black Woman immigrant/expat/trans-national identi...

Dr. Maryanne Stevens, RSM, for over two decades has served as President of College of Saint Mary, the Omaha region's only Catholic university for women. Inspired by her upbringing and faith as a Sister of Mercy, Dr. Stevens has led College of Saint Mary to develop several innovative programs to increase accessibility and affordability of higher education, including an on-campus residence hall wher...

Tom Emmett was born in Colorado to a family with roots in Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa. He grew up along the Little Thompson River on a small quarter horse ranch and, as the son of a United Airlines pilot, he was privileged to see the world. His diverse career has included being an antiques dealer, financial planner, pension plan president, senior pastor, and currently executive director of the Hist...

In the wake of the February Level 3 Energy Emergency Alert and rolling energy blackouts across the Midwest and the traumatic debacle in Texas, my guest Eric Williams discusses the deceitfully opportunistic and ignorant claims made around the energy infrastructure crisis, and talks about climate change, environmental justice, the future for renewables, and more. Eric is the Natural Resources Planne...

Something of a Renaissance man, Jason Fischer is an artist, designer, photographer, film-maker, community activist and entrepreneur. His agency, Surreal Media Lab, is a place and a philosophy where Jason’s creativity, business, and community endeavors can be for profit and mindful of matters of humanity. In this conversation, Jason talks about his entrepreneurship, creative philosophy and work, an...

Erin Vik is a well-known figure in the region’s food and hospitality landscape. Erin worked at local independent restaurants, private clubs and corporate hotels, and oversaw operations for the Institute for Culinary Arts at Metropolitan Community College, working with the culinary, hospitality and horticulture programs. His current role is Director, Nutrition at Westside School District, each...

Andrea Lawse is the founder of Artemis Tea and Botanical and is a Clinical Herbalist. She is a Ph. D Candidate working on a dissertation in Critical Plant Studies, specifically focused on relationships between humans and the vegetal. Her studies of the interconnection between the nonhuman and human worlds—all have culminated in building Artemis. Andrea says, however, it is without a doubt the gard...

Sue Thaden founded Client Resources Inc., a women-owned IT talent and solutions business in 1999, growing to employ over 180 IT professionals with clients across numerous industries and geographies. Its innovation lab has spun out other successful endeavors, including From Now On, a sports and event based marketing and communication platform working with more than 100 U.S. college & athletic d...

Poet Aisha Sharif is a Cave Canem fellow living near Kansas City, Missouri. In many ways, much of her poetry and nonfiction addresses the politics of “bordering identities.” As an African-American Muslim woman originally from the south, her work explores how racial, gender, and religious identities align, separate, and blend. Her poem, “Vanna White Reconsiders Her Pact with Her Jinn” was nomi...